100% DI Failure with Nurburgring rentals

[civdaddy]

I think the thing that really gets people going about the more serious problems with this car is that they don't want another car. This car is special and they just want it to be reliable so they can continue to enjoy it. This car is not like a plain old 4 door eco, point a to point b car where there are many others to choose from if you decided to jump ship.

[Lonewolf]

Originally Posted by civdaddy

I think the thing that really gets people going about the more serious problems with this car is that they don't want another car. This car is special and they just want it to be reliable so they can continue to enjoy it. This car is not like a plain old 4 door eco, point a to point b car where there are many others to choose from if you decided to jump ship.

Exactly, I want this car badly...and I don't dump cars like girlfriends. For the most part I keep cars for years and years, and with the FRS I would like to hold on to it...that's why I truly want any serious issues addressed as soon as possible so I can start enjoying this car!

[thill]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

Never said it was, but I'm not going to ignore the issue either...

Right but you will always find a percentage of people that have engine, transmission, etc failures on any car. Go look at the Gencoupe forum on how many owners are on their 2nd and even 3rd transmission. Plenty. But in the big scheme of things, the numbers are still small compared to Gencoupe owners who have had none. And while some FR-S and BRZ owners have the "chirps" every single (as in 100%) 2013 Gencoupe owner with a 2.0 turbo engine has a wastegate rattle that Hyundai says is normal. And this rattle is loud enough to drown out a chirp .

Point is, if you look hard enough every car has their fair share of warts. I won't even get into Ford, Chevy and Dodge. German cars? Been there, done that four times. One VW qualified in the state of VA for lemon law, with the second VW one more repair shy of lemon law status before I traded it in early on a lease. I loved my BMW too, but that car spent almost as much time in the shop as it did on the road.

[Rampage]

You can believe there is a problem or not. That is your choice. What everyone should realize though is that track use will expose any engineering weakness in a vehicle much sooner than DD street use. That does not mean the problem will never arise on a DD FR-S or BRZ. It just may take longer. If you drive the car hard enough on the street to replicate track like condition once in a while then the problem will likely occur sooner.

Most people do not drive their cars even a 5/10 of the cars maximum performance threshold. If they did then they would likely crash the car long before any engineering flaw would cause a failure. I would say that is probably true of almost everyone on this forum also. Combine that with the fact that most people have owned their cars less than a year and have driven less than 12K miles and I do not find it surprising that there have not been a lot of injector (or axle, for that matter) issues reported on the forum yet.

Do not expect Subaru or Toyota to step up and be proactive in addressing this alleged problem. It could cost them millions in repairs and lost future sales. It is much more likely they will deal with issues on a case by case basis and do the repairs on the down low much as Toyota did the pre-cat failure issue on the MR2 Spyder. In that case, they never officially acknowledge the problem despite many documented cases of destroyed engines. However, they did replace many of those engines.

Now that I have a FR-S in the family, I will continue to track this potential problem and watch closely for any telltale signs on my son's car. No amount of fanboism or forum skepticism will make me bury my head in the sand and ignore issues that other owners are having.

It is in everyone's best interest to educate themselves and learn everything they can about these cars. That includes both the good and the bad. That is why threads like this are so valuable. Whether you choose to believe it or not this type of information may save you from huge financial headaches someday.

These are still GREAT cars! The sky is not falling!

Yet............

[Lonewolf]

Originally Posted by thill

Right but you will always find a percentage of people that have engine, transmission, etc failures on any car. Go look at the Gencoupe forum on how many owners are on their 2nd and even 3rd transmission. Plenty. But in the big scheme of things, the numbers are still small compared to Gencoupe owners who have had none. And while some FR-S and BRZ owners have the "chirps" every single (as in 100%) 2013 Gencoupe owner with a 2.0 turbo engine has a wastegate rattle that Hyundai says is normal. And this rattle is loud enough to drown out a chirp .

Point is, if you look hard enough every car has their fair share of warts. I won't even get into Ford, Chevy and Dodge. German cars? Been there, done that four times. One VW qualified in the state of VA for lemon law, with the second VW one more repair shy of lemon law status before I traded it in early on a lease. I loved my BMW too, but that car spent almost as much time in the shop as it did on the road.

VW and BMW...they always seem to be the problematic ones don't they? Lol...

I will just watch and observe how this plays out, and then determine when I'm comfortable pulling the trigger on the FRS...

[denkigrve]

Originally Posted by suaveflooder

I hate to say this, but even adding a sample size of 4 to the cars on here, failure rate is pretty low.

Correct. There needs to be a much bigger sampling size to really understand the impact of this. I worked for an electronics company, our focus in field failure analysis (until I wanted to live the startup life. lol). Based on what I know from doing that for a few years, this sample size and current information available is EXTREMELY low. It's easy to say "this is a HUGE issue" when it's close to you, but you need to see the whole picture first.

Some questions I'd want answered if I was doing this for work:

-What were the build times for those cars? Were they all from a similar production run and purchased as a batch?
-Why has no-one in Japan been complaining about this? The car is infinitely more popular in Japan than it is here, I'm shocked that this is "such a big issue" and "all cars will be impacted by this" yet there is no word out of the Japanese tuners complaining of this?
-Along this line, is it only impacting certain regions and not others? What type of gas/oil is being used in the US and EU? Could there be an impact there?
-What is the average time to fail for these issues in the cars that have the issue? How were they driven? Did this happen to any of the daily driven cars?
- What mods have been done to all of these cars? Did this happen to any stock cars?

I think there are close to 10k+ twins sold in the US alone, and close to 20-30 people talking about having this issue on these forums, and then the 4 cars in Germany. So let's take the high end approach, that's 34 cars. That's a .3% failure rate. It's really low. That number only gets smaller as more actual sales are added in. We also don't know how many people have this and don't know it. We only have hard evidence to go on. Anything else is based on assumption.

You can't jump to conclusions and think that all cars are bad without having factual evidence. If all cars were bad then folks that are tracking/Auto-Xing all of the time would be the ideal candidates for running into this. So far it's only a few. I feel really badly for CSGMike, he's taken what seems to be the brunt of this, but I know others like ScoobySouth, Blainewashere, Motomiwa, and others that are in their cars ALL of the time and don't have this problem.

I guarantee you that someone in Toyota/Subaru is actually looking into this, but until those reported numbers start to climb above 1% of the units in the field, the company isn't going to say anything. They're also likely trying to find the least cost impactful way of resolving this. If they are ignoring it and it turns out to be a really big issue, then it'll only bite them in the ass when they get sued and we all get free re-built motors.

I dunno, if it were me in my old job, I'd be making sure someone was looking into this, but we'd never see this since most of that works is done in confidential environments, and the only time the customer knows is when something is actually done/fixed/etc.

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

VW and BMW...they always seem to be the problematic ones don't they? Lol...

I will just watch and observe how this plays out, and then determine when I'm comfortable pulling the trigger on the FRS...

I honestly can't blame you either. It's never a bad thing to take the prudent path to protect your investment in the platform as well. Jumping in first sometimes has great rewards, other times it bites you in the ass. We'll see how this pans out for all of us that own them so far. lol

[thill]

Originally Posted by civdaddy

I think the thing that really gets people going about the more serious problems with this car is that they don't want another car. This car is special and they just want it to be reliable so they can continue to enjoy it. This car is not like a plain old 4 door eco, point a to point b car where there are many others to choose from if you decided to jump ship.

The car is a $25-28K vehicle that has a very resonable warranty. If you are that concerned, get a 10 year 120K+ mile bumper to bumper warranty...

If the engine blows up at 10k, 50k, or 119k miles you will be covered.

[thill]

Originally Posted by denkigrve

Correct. There needs to be a much bigger sampling size to really understand the impact of this. I worked for an electronics company, our focus in field failure analysis (until I wanted to live the startup life. lol). Based on what I know from doing that for a few years, this sample size and current information available is EXTREMELY low. It's easy to say "this is a HUGE issue" when it's close to you, but you need to see the whole picture first.

Some questions I'd want answered if I was doing this for work:

-What were the build times for those cars? Were they all from a similar production run and purchased as a batch?
-Why has no-one in Japan been complaining about this? The car is infinitely more popular in Japan than it is here, I'm shocked that this is "such a big issue" and "all cars will be impacted by this" yet there is no word out of the Japanese tuners complaining of this?
-Along this line, is it only impacting certain regions and not others? What type of gas/oil is being used in the US and EU? Could there be an impact there?
-What is the average time to fail for these issues in the cars that have the issue? How were they driven? Did this happen to any of the daily driven cars?
- What mods have been done to all of these cars? Did this happen to any stock cars?

I think there are close to 10k+ twins sold in the US alone, and close to 20-30 people talking about having this issue on these forums, and then the 4 cars in Germany. So let's take the high end approach, that's 34 cars. That's a .3% failure rate. It's really low. That number only gets smaller as more actual sales are added in. We also don't know how many people have this and don't know it. We only have hard evidence to go on. Anything else is based on assumption.

You can't jump to conclusions and think that all cars are bad without having factual evidence. If all cars were bad then folks that are tracking/Auto-Xing all of the time would be the ideal candidates for running into this. So far it's only a few. I feel really badly for CSGMike, he's taken what seems to be the brunt of this, but I know others like ScoobySouth, Blainewashere, Motomiwa, and others that are in their cars ALL of the time and don't have this problem.

I guarantee you that someone in Toyota/Subaru is actually looking into this, but until those reported numbers start to climb above 1% of the units in the field, the company isn't going to say anything. They're also likely trying to find the least cost impactful way of resolving this. If they are ignoring it and it turns out to be a really big issue, then it'll only bite them in the ass when they get sued and we all get free re-built motors.

I dunno, if it were me in my old job, I'd be making sure someone was looking into this, but we'd never see this since most of that works is done in confidential environments, and the only time the customer knows is when something is actually done/fixed/etc.

Great post. According to stats from goodcarbadcar Toyota and Subaru have sold just shy of 35k cars in North America alone. I would daresay to double that number for worldwide??

[Gixxersixxerman]

20k on my car and I'm not sure how many trackdays I've been to or autoX events.. No issues really... Once all the lights lite up and they swapped out the ECU.. And sometimes after a session out on the track, when I parking usually backing up into my pit, I'll get a P0011 code and cel.. Cam position over advance.. I clear the code and everything is ok.. I just started getting the crickets, but it's barely noticeable.. I've had the car since August.. So far I've either been lucky, or my car just doesn't have these issues.. On the last trackday I did get a red warning light.. Off the top of my head I don't remember is it was for the engine oil or A/T fluid being hot

[bestwheelbase]

Originally Posted by thill

If you are that concerned, get a 10 year 120K+ mile bumper to bumper warranty...

If the engine blows up at 10k, 50k, or 119k miles you will be covered.

In general, the way I have seen people jerked around for warranty coverage... It's not some guaranteed safety net.

Clearly this is in the very early stages of gathering information and sharing knowledge. Lets withhold judgment until more time passes, more instances are investigated, and we begin to see a clearer picture of what we're facing.

[Gixxersixxerman]

Also, I have to wonder.. For the people that are having this issue.. How many are actually giving the full truth.. I mean say I did have this issue in ... Idk 5k miles.. I'm telling my dealer, I've never tracked this or driven it hard.. So how many on here are just saying the same thing, when in reality they are driving it a lot harder... That's something I think could make a difference.. Lets say the only way to make these fail is hard abuse, then Toyota at least has a direction on where to look, as if maybe the redline is to high... For the seal, to much cyl pressure, or something along the lines of that..

[thill]

Originally Posted by bestwheelbase

In general, the way I have seen people jerked around for warranty coverage... It's not some guaranteed safety net.

Clearly this is in the very early stages of gathering information and sharing knowledge. Lets withhold judgment until more time passes, more instances are investigated, and we begin to see a clearer picture of what we're facing.

And usually the jerking around is due to the buyer buying a third party extended warranty. A geniune Toyota or Subaru warranty from the manufacturer is the way to go if you are overly concerned and this eliminates most of the jerking around.

That said, if you are going to heavily modify your car, then there is not much point on any warranty.

[thill]

Originally Posted by Gixxersixxerman

Salsa, I have to wonder.. For the people that are having this issue.. How many are actually giving the full truth.. I mean say I did have this issue in ... Idk 5k miles.. I'm telling my dealer, I've never tracked this or driven it hard.. So how many on here are just saying the same thing, when in reality they are driving it a lot harder... That's something I think could make a difference.. Lets say the only way to make these fail is hard abuse, then Toyota at least has a direction on where to look, as if maybe the redline is to high... For the seal, to much cyl pressure, or something along the lines of that..

Probably a good percentage. We seem to live in a society now where many people don't accept respsonsibility for their actions and always want to blame someone or something else.

[bestwheelbase]

Originally Posted by thill

And usually the jerking around is due to the buyer buying a third party extended warranty. A geniune Toyota or Subaru warranty from the manufacturer is the way to go if you are overly concerned and this eliminates most of the jerking around.

That said, if you are going to heavily modify your car, then there is not much point on any warranty.

Just to be clear so that people reading this in the future will understand my point, I am referring to the standard warranty that comes all new cars. Let's hope it doesn't come to this, but the reality is that getting a manufacturer to warranty a costly item is sometimes quite an unpleasant battle. For this very reason, it is great that we are sharing information. If it turns out to be a minor issue, good. If it turns out to be something more significant, then it will help us all to report these issues and discuss them with one another so that we can be better informed.