2013 Subaru BRZ Limited Grasshopper noise?
 

Coming from left side of engine when in Idle / slowing down at lower speeds. Immediately stops when accelerating.

Anyone know what this could be?

Crickets.. Not grasshoppers

Turbo spooling

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It's the high pressure fuel pump. The sound is normal. Search for "crickets" and you'll find dozens of threads, including the 200 page mother of all cricket threads.

There is no 100% reliable fix. Some have had good luck changing fuel, using Lucas upper cylinder lube or adding TCw3 oil to their gas, but none of those is foolproof. There is a TSB to replace the pump, but it's a waste of time because the crickets come back with the new pump.

turbo spooling

normal sounds

Mine sounded like a rusted turbo with really really bad bearing.


The OP may be right, some grasshopper does make similar sound to crickets. :lol:

Here, read through this:

Engine idle chirping (cricket) noise poll.

Don't just skip to the end. Be sure and read every page.

I took my car in to have them replace the most up to date fuel pump last month. And it happens again last week, so I took it back in then they told me to wait because they are gonna notify Subaru factory about the issue. Then I just got a call from my local Subaru dealership today. They said the manufacturer is calling it normal now, because it doesn't indicate any problems or issues. And it only happens now when I drive for like 1 or 2 hours. But it is really irritating the s**t out of me. I don't know about you guys but I bought the extended warranty. It's up to 5 year/100,000 miles. So if anything happens, I'd be covered.

Nothing is going to happen. So far nobody has actually reported a pump failure. It doesn't affect the reliability of the pump. It just makes a stupid noise.

This is not the only car that does this. There are other cars with HPFPs that make this same noise. More and more car models will have this issue until someone finally designs a pump that can move fuel at that pressure without cavitation.

If it really bothers you, try running either Lucas upper cylinder lubricant or TCw3 2-cycle oil in your gas. Those are not 100% effective for everyone, but they seem to give the best chance of getting rid of them based on the posts from people trying them.

Also, different gas blends and brands will make a difference. On some tanks you may have no crickets at all, and on others you will hear a cricket symphony. Unfortunately, gas that's labeled the same is not the same at every station even within the same brand, so it's really a crap shoot. If you find an individual station that consistently gives you no crickets, try to fill up there all the time. Some people have good luck with finding a local station with 0% ethanol gas, NOT because of the lack of ethanol, but because the additive package in that gas doesn't result in cavitation in the fuel pump.

Seriously, read through some of that monster thread I linked above. It will give you a real sense of what the owners as a group have tried to exterminate the crickets.

Welcome to the forums :)


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Non-ethanol gas worked for my 2013 BRZ Limited.

Lucky y'all. I was so excited when I saw the "No Ethanol!" sign. Then I still had crickets.

:sigh:

In my case, when it is hot, the no-ethanol will still chipr a little bit. Atfer much experimentation I settled on half E0, half E10/94 oct and 1 oz of Lucas 2-stroke oil. No more crickets ever. I try to push the octane as high as possible because the high compression of 12.5:1 translate into some engine pinging (we should have a thread on that!). All in all, I'm quite satisfied with the current cocktail although it's a bit of a pain but at least the car is frugal....

I still have no idea what you guys are hearing lol I never hear my frs' pump make any noises that calls for me being super irritated lol i guess i got lucky ? lol 5600~ mi. 91 octane no ethanol

Its the ethanol or other additives places that use ethanol are likely to use.

Yep, took me 2.5 tanks to get rid of them.

But that doesn't make sense to me, because the few times I've gotten a good tank of E10 that gave me no crickets, the change was almost immediate. I filled up with E10 from a Chevron station over in New Iberia, LA and heard the crickets die when I cranked the car and the new gas hit the HPFP. The exact same thing happened again at a Marathon station in lower Alabama. If the problem is cavitation in the fuel, filling the car with a full tank of fuel that resists the cavitation problem should cause an immediate change as soon as the new fuel reaches the pump. The E0 produced no change whatsoever.

I am still convinced that ethanol has nothing to do with it, especially since some E85 users are still reporting that their crickets go away when they switch over. I still think it's the additive package. When you get ethanol-free gas, it's coming from a different distribution system from regular tier 1 gas, and I think it lacks the additives in the tier 1 gas that contribute to the cavitation.

And speaking of cavitation, if that's where the pressure behind the plunger in the HPFP drops low enough to pull gas bubbles out of the fuel, could that be eliminated mechanically by raising the pressure behind the HPFP? I'm wondering if replacing the other fuel pump with a higher flowing model might pump enough pressure into the HPFP that the cavitation doesn't happen. Is anybody here running an aftermarket fuel pump under the rear seat?

i dont see what the problem is. 50k miles on my OEM crickets. Never had the crickets replaced or serviced. car preforms just fine.