Quote:
Originally Posted by DeeezNuuuts83
Has the transmission had any significant number of cases of failure? I honestly don’t know.
But that aside, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the WRX has a glass transmission that can’t handle more. That same figure being used across the board and also having that peak across such a broad range is the result of Subaru (de)tuning it that way deliberately. I doubt that the transmission is going to shatter from bumping it up from that, but perhaps Subaru wanted to artificially keep it at that to give the STI a comfortable lead to maintain its status as their performance flagship. Plus it’s just the figure that they use — I remember when the FA20F first came out, some publication dyno’d it (in the WRX) along with that generation STI, and their torque at the wheels was much closer than the claimed figures would indicate.
I think torque hasn’t been much of a concern in turbocharged four-cylinders probably in 20 years, so it’s not that much of a marketing strategy to try to blow people away with musclecar torque figures anymore. They just need a good figure and a reasonably flat curve, plus the marketing will revolve more around hp anyway.
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No, the 15+ WRX hasn't had much problem with transmission failures even on tuned cars. So yeah it's 100% Subaru limiting the WRX based on that being their internal limit for the gearbox. I mention because the tiny power bump and zero torque bump going to the 2.4L was such a head-scratcher for so many people and usually someone would guess at the CVT being the limiting factor. The HTCVT handles 300 lb-ft in multiple applications, it's absolutely the manual gearbox that is the limiting factor, and that resulted in the VB having the surprisingly small gains over VA.
Then consider the STI's gearbox is 1. generally renowned as among the best and 2. zero development cost, zero emissions/efficiency impact to implement. Whatever dollar adder it would be to put it into the WRX I think most people would happily pay. I'd expect with the gearbox no longer a limiting factor they could re-tune the engine for 280hp/tq without changing a single other thing mechanically and for very little EPA impact. The biggest reason they haven't done any of this would be that a VB STI was long-planned and only cancelled a the 11th hour. I wouldn't expect any changes to WRX that were enabled by the STI cancellation until the refresh, if ever. Any performance package they had in the development pipeline probably wouldn't have added anything beyond what prior WRX performance packages added.