STi front lip blown up by the wind
 

I've had the car for a month now and last weekend my front lip just decided to commit suicide while running at 220km/h. The dealer installed the lip before I took delivery of the car and they don't want to take responsability for waht happened. I've never scrapped or touched the lip beforehand. Am I crazy to think that the dealership should take responsability for that?

Here is a picture of what was left of it.

I don’t know what you expect. Unless you can prove there is an issue with the instal they are not going to cover it. Could have been a manufacturing defect, rock kicked up from another vehicle. Who knows.

you were going beyond the allowed speed limit on public roads when this happened.. definitely not covered by the dealer from that alone

if it was on track.. well.. it happened on a private road where you are responsible for any and all damages

plastic doesnt just "explode" like that from wind resistance. it made contact with what is likely a rock, and at that speed, a rock will do a lot of damage

this car tops out at 140mph, so we were near the top speed/limit of the vehicle itself

if the dealer didnt install it properly, it wouldve fallen off long before you hit that speed.

Yes.

I don't think there is a track in North America with a straight long enough to get a 2nd gen up to those speeds.

There is ONE - ;)

If you nail turn 9 at Big Willow perfectly, your exit speeds should be close to, if not just past 100mph followed by a downhill straight. You can get close to 130-135 on stock power… however, you’re not taking turn 9 that fast without some serious tire and aero on a brz/86… and a borderline psychotic skill level

ACS.... for now.

While not a 2nd gen....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU4Sa3RCCV4

Québec City, Quebec, Canada
Willow Springs International Raceway, 3500 75th St W, Rosamond, CA 93560
44 hr (4,792.2 km) via I-80 W

Doubt OP was at Willow Springs.:thumbup:

The point was it probably didn't happen on track. You could get 130-135mph at Pacific Raceways too.

I just don't get why it would make a difference if the speeding was made on track or not. The lip still f* off at that speed on a car who is made to go at that speed.

If you look under the car is there still plastic left around the mount points and screws intact? Not sure about the Gen2 but there's something like 18 screws holding on the Gen 1 lip.

All the screws are gone except one. And the plastic around the bumper holes is still intact!

Because you expected the dealer to cover it.

Show me where it says the STI lip is designed for that? It is a vanity part after all.

The speed itself is not the point. The fact that you hit something at some point at that speed is. You may not know you hit something but you did.

The fact that he hit something, at that speed, and that the lip was the only thing damaged, should be something to be thankful for. At least that's how I would see it.



Which is the exact reason why I have my lip kit, should I hit something, I rather have the lip kit be destroyed.

Your situation sucks and hard to prove faulty installation or product. 60% of my time behind the wheel is spent at 80+ mph so I don't think speed is a factor in breaking it loose but hitting a small object at that speed can be a big factor. Ask anyone who replaced a windshield from a stone kicked from a truck.

My advice is this. Your time is worth more than trying to fight it and the outcome will likely not be in your favor. You can install a new one yourself in about 2 hours and reinforce it with 3M tape.

Buy a new lip from Subaru, have it shipped to the dealership and get your free shipping and 15% off parts discount (I don't know if the discount is universal but that's what I do.)

Good luck.

It could have also failed from preexisting damage you didn't know about.

Maybe one time going out to eat you accidentally tapped the curb and didn't know it, caused a crack that slowly grew over time. Then when you decided to be boy wonder on the street the stressed part finally failed.

Either way, just buy a new lip on move on with your life.

It's a consumable. It's like picking up a nail in a tire. It sucks but front lips break all the time. That's why I don't have one...However, my bumper is trashed lol

Check underneath and see how many mounting points it was secured with.

Entirely possible it was not secured with all the available screws/bolts

Out of curiosity, how are people installing front lips?
OP mentions all screws being gone but one - which I would assume to be the one that is holding the leftover lip piece in the picture.
I don't think any kind of screw could really hold a lip at such speeds if it is simply screwed through the bottom of the plastic bumper.
On my first gen, I was supplied with bolts and nuts which I used to secure the lip to the inside and outside of the bottom of the front bumper (not an STI lip). This would make it literally impossible to create the kind of scenario OP describes unless all the bolts were to come loose.
I was in a situation once on the highway in which the car in front of me had something unexpected fly out from the bottom of it and catch my lip. It broke the whole front half of it off. Bolts and nuts were still intact.

the oem lip uses something like 12 wellnuts with bolts and 6 or so plastic clips, along with double sided tape on the ends where it flares up onto the bumper

after installing my oem sti lip, i gave it multiple good yanks and it wanted to pull the bumper off more than anything

OEM body parts are usually secured very well and are made to cause the least amount of stress and damage to body panels in the event of an accident(hence the well nuts, not a nut/bolt and washer, that can likely rip the bumper itself should the lip get snagged and pulled)

At that speed the air pressure probably pushed down the lip and it touched the ground.

Good to know. Though I don't necessarily see how the well nuts would protect the bumper itself from ripping off any more than the standard nut/bolt combo. But I can see how it would be of slight benefit and a cleaner installation.

This is possible. Even a slight rise in the road surface could catch it and BOOM. There isn't enough profile for the wind (even at that speed) to rip it off on it's own but deformation and contact would do the job.

But it is interesting, because the lip is literally tiny as hell. Maybe 1-2 inches out past the connection points? I'm just basing that off of a picture of one. The car is quite high up off the ground as well and based on OPs photo, he looks to be at stock ride height. If he were to scrape the ground due to a slope or something going at such speeds, That would only be a scrape from the bottom. But as many mentioned, it has to be something that caught it and ripped it down under. OP states he has no screws/bolts/whatever left aside from one. And as far as I understand, sounds like OP endured no damage whatsoever to the bumper. So it had to be the cleanest hit ever to catch the half inch of lip that pokes out, rip it clean off with all the hardware, and have no effect on the bumper at all.

Might be harder to see from my photo, but my bumper did endure some damage even though the object barely caught my lip. In fact, it tried to pull the whole bottom portion down, and you can see the bottom grille popped out of its clips. The bumper also endured solid scrapes and paint fully rubbed off near the connection points of the lip.

Ya the thinness of it is what makes it hard for me to believe that there was enough air pressure to just rip it off. Unless he hit mach 1 of course.
If there was a picture of the remains it may be more clear what happened but my guess is that anybody going that fast isn't going to bother to go back and clean up their mess.

I recently installed mine. Not a fan of the wellnuts using compression to hold this thing in place. It’s possible whoever installed it made the holes too big and they let loose. I followed the instructions to the T and still managed to loose a nut and screw during normal driving. Definitely planing on replacing everything with bolts and locking nuts for some peace of mind.

This won't be a comforting post, but... you can feel relieved that nothing else got damaged in the process. Yes those lips aren't cheap, but think about how much worse it could have gotten.

Note to self, don't get the sti front lip its apparently a flimsy pos

I hit a duck at speed with my Lancer once. It knocked the fog light housing into the wheel well which took out the brake line, wheel sensor and fender liner.
Things could certainly be worse.

I'd call Subaru corporate and try to get some warranty info on the thing. Can't hurt.

Safe to say your Lancer got ducked up pretty bad...?

Had a big quack in the bumper yes.

if it uses those wellnuts, those are less than useless. my armrest included, i've never had an install with those that a bored toddler couldn't pull them out..

and i drilled my armrest wellnut holes 1-size smaller and forced the nuts in to try to provide some amount of friction-fit.


my suggestion? get better mounting hardware, but next time, it'll take the entire bumper off...

And it is on Quebec roads, in Canada.

I’m planning of that for sure……BUT, what if it’s designed this way so you don’t rip off your bumper. If OP did hit something, it seems to have worked flawlessly.

I would much rather lose a lip than crack a bumper cover!