(PSA) If you're considering a BRZ I personally don't recommend it

[runfrodorun]

Disclaimer: Everything expressed here is strictly an opinion and an after-the-fact recollection of many experiences that happened over the course of a year.

So I know I'm probably saying this to a pretty tough crowd, but I have had a situation that has been occurring over the past few months, and it has left me more frustrated than I can remember being in my entire life.

TL;DR: My car has less than 50k miles on it, is on the second transmission, and I think it needs a third, I insist that Subaru should fix it under warranty and they disagree.

Sorry for the mouthful, just venting... so it's been a very long time since I've posted, because this site doesn't have HTTPS which is really unnerving; that aside, a select few of you may remember that I had transmission issues about a year ago. Several of the gears would grind aggressively when I attempted to engage, and fourth gear was damn impossible to engage without grinding incredibly badly. Even when double clutching if I was more than 1% off it would still grind.

Anybody who has one of these cars and has been around the Internet once or twice knows that this is a serious and ongoing issue with the BRZ, although some people appear to be more or less affected than others. Here are just the top search results, I didn't scrutinize them very hard, but you get the idea:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DacRREzFcI[/ame]
http://www.seriesblueadventures.com/...nder-warranty/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ft86/commen...es_new_brz_in/
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19985
https://blog.modbargains.com/how-to-...r-in-fr-s-brz/

Some people have even gone so far as to design custom after-market synchros, which they claim have entirely fixed the problem. So it is not unclear that the problem is a combination of the design of the transmission box, possibly coupled with the viscosity of the fluid that is used from the factory. I bet you could find 100 threads on this forum about transmission issues, and two of them would be mine including this one.

Anyway, back then, Subaru eventually was convinced to replace my transmission, but only because they admitted 4th gear was grinding more than it should (in my mind grinding at all is more than it should). They also replaced my HPFP which was chirping on and off depending on what fuel I was using and how hot it was outside that day. But not before vehemently denying that there was any chirp coming from it (there was)

So for a while, I was happy. For about one week I had a brand new transmission that was a little clunky but in my experience within tolerance (I've been driving stick for about 9 years, and have never taken a break. I've driven over 200,000 miles all in stick). I put the vehicle away for the winter about a week later. I asked the dealership that did the swap if this was normal, and they claimed that transmissions needed to be broken in before they feel right. That didn't sound right to me. I've never driven a new car that didn't shift nicely. I also asked if it was possible that it was a clutch adjustment issue. They said no.

After getting it out this spring, I was in between jobs and went on a huge road trip. Over 10,000 miles in one month in the BRZ. It was shifting just fine for most of that. And then I drove through Utah.

I don't know if it was the extreme heat of the desert summer, or who knows possibly even something about the way I was shifting (if we're being fair, though I severely doubt it) but literally within one day, **** just totally hit the fan in spectacular contrast to how the car had been driving/shifting and it was grinding like there was no tomorrow. I was convinced that I was not going to make it another 100 miles without destroying the transmission. I deliberated for a day, and then decided to finish off the road trip. It was all highway miles, so I wouldn't really have to change gears, so I opted to just carefully double clutch every shift. That went mostly ok.

I should also qualify this with I don't hoon around in the car, I'm like a grandpa driver. No racing, no jacking around with the car.

After I arrived at my destination, I brought the car into a subaru dealer and told them what was going on. They drove the car with me on a test drive. It behaved kind of ok, but not exactly like a princess. I was decently pissed off, but told them I'd bring it back if it happened again. It was fine on the way home. The next morning when I drove to work, it ground like crazy. I brought it back, told them we should drive it in the morning when it was colder outside, thinking it was a temperature variable at play.

I come back the next morning, and get in the car with the tech, and I tell him don't even pull it up, the first couple shifts are horrible. He gets in the car and we take off. The first couple of shifts, with HIM DRIVING it ground so bad I thought he was going to break it. When we get back, he says (you can't make this **** up) "That's normal, all BRZ's are like that"

Well ****, if all BRZ's are like that I smell a lot of new transmissions getting installed for free. Now I know that can't be entirely true. It can't be that simple, we know that some people for some reason or another get better results with the BRZ transmissions, and some people put different fluid in or synchros or whatever. But the fact is the transmission is just junk from the factory, and half of the BRZ owners I've met have had tremendous problems.

Now my transmission has not been as bad as it was in Utah since I've gotten back, but it certainly hasn't been the same as it was before. I know in my heart that something is wrong.

So begins a several months long epic tale of me bringing this car back to the dealership over and over again, having them demonstrate the issue on at least half of those occasions and deny that it was an issue all together. I was still under power-train warranty. I finally got pissed off enough that I called Subaru of America and told them I wanted them to buy it back.

They said they were going to call the dealers and ask them about it first. I tell them the dealers have demonstrated the problem and wrongly insisted that it's fine, and then they don't fix it. I tell him the dealers will tell him the same thing and then because of that Subaru won't buy it back; you don't have to be a psychic to see that's exactly what's going to happen. He said, paraphrasing: "don't worry, the customer relations team does what we do to handle the exceptional cases of things that happen." Not feeling reassured I let it go for a week. He calls me back in a week and says that "we're not going to buy it back because the dealers said everything was fine"

Like 6 veins popped in my forehead.

Fast forward to today, the car has been sitting in my driveway for 6 weeks, I have not started the engine or opened the door, and I've tried to pretend it's not even there. My blood pressure was so high after that last call I thought I was going to need years of therapy. I've done the best to forget about it and have not called Subaru back, because there's only so many times I can watch somebody shift a car, have it grind spectacularly, and then say it's normal. This has not been the most upsetting event in my adult life, but it has definitely been the worst I have been treated by a company that has made a good name for themselves, and I remember making great cars back in the day. I just want to know what happened. Worse, I wish I could say this was the only subaru I'm having issues with. My grandmother's CVT was having issues engaging at 1000 miles out of the factory. Again, they said it was normal for it to take 2 to 3 seconds to shift into drive. So apparently Subaru gets to dictate to us that extremely dangerous behavior that is exhibited every time an 88 year old backs out of a driveway into a road with cars coming is totally normal and expected.

Here's the thing... I've owned 4 cars that have had manual transmissions, driven them literally hundreds of thousands of miles. If I'm really the one doing something wrong here then why is my 200,000 mile BMW on it's original transmission and clutch? Something just does not add up here. I know in my heart that something is wrong. And I don't know how to get rid of the car because I don't think I'm going to be able to live with the guilt of ripping somebody off with this piece of garbage. And that's assuming I can even find one other person who doesn't work for subaru who will get in the front seat drive it ten feet and not know something's wrong. I'm not confident I can do that; it's that bad.

To add insult to injury, for the 3 weeks that they had the car away from me supposedly "test driving" it, they refused to let me use one of their loaner cars, because I was "too young." So what? Half of the people who own BRZ's are really young. I work a serious job with tremendous responsibilities and worked hard to get there. Showing up to work smelling like a** because I had to walk there is humiliating. I paid for the car like everybody else. They offered to subsidize renting a car by some pathetic amount that wouldn't even come close to covering it, which was honestly just insulting, especially when you remember that young people have a tough time renting cars for exactly the same reason.

If I wanted to be treated like a second class citizen, I can probably find better ways to do that then spending 25k on a the car just like everybody else that did. The excuse of course for not allowing me to use a loaner is Insurance. Guess what Subaru: I have paid for my own car insurance since I was old enough to drive. It's not like it doesn't exist. And if you don't want to treat all your customers the same, you shouldn't sell anything to them at all. Better yet- sell us cars that don't seem to need a transmission every 10,000 miles and I wouldn't even notice that you won't let me use a loaner car.

All I'm saying is I certainly would have never bought this piece of garbage if I knew I was going to have this many issues and be treated like this and, to be figurative, take years off my life from the high blood pressure calling subaru, and staying up all night dreaming about this because I'm so upset.

I understand this is just my experience and not everybody had the same experience, and who knows... maybe the extreme amount of driving and road trips wasn't really handled in their engineering testing. In fact, they did replace the transmission gear oil and it has performed slightly better since. But even that made me mad, because when they did it, they cited that they put the wrong oil in every BRZ from the factory, and it was a TSB. Don't even get me started on how much the possibility that that might have been my problem the second time around pissed me off. Especially when that TSB was released at the time (I think, don't quote me on that). I think we need to just put this in perspective a little bit: Tons of people have had transmission issues, almost everybody has had the crappy fuel pump issue, and Subaru in 6 years of production has fixed nothing. Nothing at all. They just kick the can down the road and do the minimum to get by (and sometimes that does include giving us a new transmission with the same design flaws) And the reason they have fixed nothing is because they don't have to. They've gotten away with it for 6 years and we keep buying the cars. And for what... so that we can own a car that has better-than-average but still sub-Porsche handling, costs twice what a good used Porsche does, and is so embarrassingly slow that we can't overtake Honda Accords. And to take another angle, the carbon footprint of the BRZ is abysmal. Not to mention I'm pretty sure the cabin is loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage on the long trips I've taken.

So anyway, again, this situation isn't so cut and dry... and if you're enjoying your BRZ, power to you. The car does behave better or worse at times, and it does seem to be better now that they flushed the fluid. I'm glad that Subaru did make /some/ effort to make it better, but I'm obviously not happy, and I know something is wrong still. I think I've been treated like crap and now I have a pile of garbage that I'm never going to drive again sitting in my driveway that I pretend does not exist most days.

Thanks for nothing Subaru, hope you enjoyed the hard earned money that I busted my a** for so that I could give it to you and be treated like a second class citizen with a car that I don't think is worthy of the name.

Thanks for listening,

-R

[Mr.ac]

Dam, dude tell us the name of that shit hole of a dealership.
First of all after the 2nd tranny you qualify for lemon car law. Being a '17 it should have the "better" tranny than the pos '13-14's had.

Your mistake was going back to the same dealership after they treated you like shit.

In my book once they give you the stink eye I burn that bridge and never give them my business for years. Till there is new management.

But yeah, that dealership should have done things better.

Nothing much you could do now besides switching to a performance tranny oil like Redline or Motul gear oil.

The loud cabin noise is easily fixed by plugging up the sound generator intake hole. That's the first thing I did to BRZ after a week of driving it.

Also, carbon footprint? Da fuck are you on about that? Lol.
Besides that if you don't like it sell that pos and get a _____ (fill in the blank with any car).
I always recommend people trade up to a Honda Civic SI. Just because.

[CJRhoades]

The transmission in my '17 BRZ is the worst of any car I've ever owned. Until it warms up. Then its the best of any car I've ever owned. Cars a lease though and I've only got at most another year with it so it doesn't bother me any.

[Tcoat]

My transmission is 100% fine. So are the many tens of thousands of other people that just don't say so on the internet. It is always the vocal minority that makes an issue seem worse than it may actually be.

I will reserve all judgement on the dealer since we have only heard one side of the story. Their version of events could be radically different but we will never know.

[Breadman]

this is my first manual and after changing the trans oil i havent had an issue with it. i have a 2017 too. even if you were unlucky and got a fucked transmission twice even if it was a 1% failure rate, it would be a 1 in 10000 chance. that is more than they sold my16 and my17 combined. sounds like a pebsaw.

[86MLR]

Originally Posted by CJRhoades

The transmission in my '17 BRZ is the worst of any car I've ever owned. Until it warms up. Then its the best of any car I've ever owned. Cars a lease though and I've only got at most another year with it so it doesn't bother me any.

I replaced my drivetrain oils after about 1000km with some Penrite Pro Gear GL-5 75w 85, the gearbox is more compliant when cold now.

Disclaimer: 75w 90 is what Penrite recommend though, I was given 4lts of the 85 for free, I asked the Penrite rep I got it from and he said it is fine for my application, daily with casual weekend abuse

As for the bad boxes, I've never heard of any issue in NA cars, even the boys I know who track/khana/abuse them regularly.

Weird?

[Tcoat]

OK so I have sat through that painfully long video three times and did not see one single thing wrong with the 2nd gear shift. Nothing! There is no grinding at all and the "notchyness" is no different than most transmission mounted, RWD shifters out there. This is a directly linked shifter without any cables, long rods or other extensions to provide room for error. It is not some sloppy ass FWD Civic shifter and that is why it feels different to some.
As far as the comment of how load the car is I find it hilarious that you can hear the driver breathing while he is accelerating. Ohhh hearing damage must be the result.


I am with the dealer in saying there is no problem with that shifter.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

OK so I have sat through that painfully long video three times and did not see one single thing wrong with the 2nd gear shift. Nothing! ....

And I thought I was missing something, although I admit I only watched it once.

[Kimsey47]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

OK so I have sat through that painfully long video three times and did not see one single thing wrong with the 2nd gear shift. Nothing!

Agreed... Gosh that was a painful video...

[guybo]

I don't hear or see anything wrong in that video. I guess you can feel grinding better than see/hear it, but that video shows a perfectly fine shifting car.

[Chikna]

Where is the issue with 2nd gear?

[Summerwolf]

Much like torque dip, are you sure you're driving the car right?

In all seriousness this transmission is clunky and notch when cold, but nothing too crazy. I watched the video and it showed nothing to me. It just looked like you were shifting between 1 and 2 trying / hoping to get something to happen.

Maybe actually go out and slam that 1 - 2 shift a few times and let it break in. Cars and transmissions do typically have some break in after they're used for a bit, what they told you there is true.

Change the fluid if it makes you feel better. I swapped my trans and rear diff fluid at the same time and it alleviated 90% of cold clunkiness.

Dont let this "take years off your life." Its a car. Enjoy the thing or sell it. Someone will enjoy it.

[StraightOuttaCanadaEh]

what's this concern about HTTPS?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by StraightOuttaCanadaEh

what's this concern about HTTPS?

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123219