The fact that Bill Knose weighed in, certainly adds credance as well.

Previously, I only knew of this issue on the '03 STi. Subaru offered a free reflash 'recall', but I'd not heard about it affecting other cars. Well, I had hooked my Delta Dash up to a friend's '03 WRX and saw where his IDC's were maxed on an otherwise completely stock car.

It doesn't seem right to me that the manufacturer would build a car with these sorts of issues and then act as though they were previously unaware and further, offer no recompense to remedy the situation.

 

03 STi??? usdm or jdm?

 

Edit: Yeah. 2003. My buddy (and a few others that I knew in Hawaii) bought his in May '03 and had the pinging problem until the local Subaru dealer reflashed the ECU for them gratis.

 

Reading this stuff is a little disheartening. I've had my 05 WRX for not quite a year and have heard pinging now and then. I also bought the car for autocross and stuff like that and I thought it would be a good car that could stand up to using it like it was designed to be used. I have not ever done autocrosses but would like to eventually. I know they do them around me.

Now I'm worried that maybe leaving it completely stock is not the way anymore. How funny that modifying a car may be needed to make it run as long as possible! Seems opposite of normal.

The Access Port on the Cobb site seems like a good solution? The site makes it sound like you could have that Access Port and then take it off when going into the dealership and no one knows so no troubles with the warrenty?

I don't understand what's flashed and whats not flashed though. It says you can only do it 100 times but that you can change the programs as many times as you want. Do you have to flash the computer in order to run one of the real time programs or can you just run it over top of the stock program?

 

I have finally reached the 1000 mile mark and have been driving the car in the upper RPM ranges.

I can certainly feel the hesitation before and then rush of power after 5k rpm.

On a good note, it is nice to finally feel the potential of the car. It's pretty quick but needs tires and suspension work.

 

Richard,

Do you plan to track the car or drag/street racing?

I mean, this doesn't compensate at all for the 'potential' lemon you've purchased, but I really wonder what sort of R&D was put into the development of the '04/'05 ECU's? I wonder what their though process was. What were they trying to 'cure' or overcome? If they know about this problem, I wonder if there's some sort of safety measure that even Bill Knose and Shiv aren't able to see?

I mean, if there wasn't any sort of intensive testing or some sort of mitigating function installed to overcome the knock, that's gross negligence as opposed to just an oversight.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, huh?

 

I will never take the car to a drag strip I imagine and will not be using it for any sort of sanctioned track racing or anything like that anytime soon but I did intend on driving the car in a fun manner. I do a lot of track events in my miata and would like to eventually do them in this car but not for a while.

From reading that post, it seems that 2004 was a milestone year as far as emissions standards. It seems that they needed to meet some new goal set by the EPA and rather than decrease the HP rating on the car, they choose this route.

As we all know, from a engine safety standpoint, it's nice to have the fuel in the combustion chamber as soon as the cylinder pressure starts to build with boost. Of course that extra fuel richens up the mixture and helps cool the combustion chamber which helps keep pre-detonation from happening (knock, ping) and keeps things nice and happy until the spark comes and lights it all off.

Of course the flip side is that a whole lot of that nice extra fuel that keeps things rich and cool also gets sent out the exhaust valve without getting burned. Unburned fuel equals increased emission readings.

Seems like Subaru had a couple choices in order to meet the EPA goals. Either decrease the specified output of the motor which of course would not have been good for their image or they could figure out a way to manipulate the engine management to both decrease the emissions and maintain their ability to continue advertising the "rally bred 227hp Subaru WRX".

Holding the fuel back in the beginning of the onset of boost in lower RPM situations won't effect the peak HP numbers so Subaru could continue claiming 227 hp. I think they obviously knew that this move would cause detonation which is bad but they also knew the ECU would eventually tune much of it out by continually pulling timing. Of course that also kills the power....................so does the car still have 227hp after it's all said and done?

Sure it does, go reset the ECU and dyno the car....there's all your hp....and some ping and knock to go with it.

The funny thing about all of this is that Mazda had a couple situations over the last few years that were sort of similar. With the 2001 Miata, they advertised the car had 155hp which was up from 140 the year before. People put the cars on dynos and got the same numbers the pre 2001 cars had. Mazda later admitted they had to reprogram the ECU's and change the exhaust design for emission reasons and that sucked up the extra hp. They offered to buy back the cars from anyone that wanted or you could take a $500 pay off or something liike that.

This same sort of thing happened with the RX8s.

In Mazda's case, they choose the route that would keep the engines safe but might affect the specific HP output and in the end they payed for it. Maybe Mazda's example of having to buy people out of the cars persuaded Subaru to take the route they did.

I imagine that people like COBB and Vishnu have already provided excellent solutions to this problem. The ability to reflash the ECU is great and presents a fairly easy fix but the question of warrenty coverage then becomes an issue. JumpMyRX points out that the Cobb site says their solution give you the opportunity to set it back to stock and that they should not be able to see you ever did anything but does Cobb guarantee this? I bet they don't and wouldn't expect them too. I think if you change something as significant as the ECU programming you have to expect some sort of warrenty issue if they find out.

 

Speaking of Mazda, wasn't the RX8 advertised similarly as having more power than it actually did?

It is now sort of funny to me to think of the reality of the octane game. On the one hand, ow many thousands of people buy (or at least used to before gasoline prices rose) 93 octane for their 87 octane cars. On the other, I'm starting to have the opinion that if you buy a brand new car that stipulates anything higher than 87, you know that the chances of it knocking have increased greatly. Bad gas, change of baro pressure, temp or humidity, or maybe the computer develops a glitch one day. Compound that with the percentage of, at least with regards to the Impreza, owners who modify their car; mostly blindly.

 

The tone of this thread is running towards the tinfoil-hat conspiracy-theory mentality. Subaru tuning their engines to *cause* detonation, just to reach 227hp and pass California LEV laws? Subaru has been accused of many things on these forums, but intentionally defrauding consumers and giving them a car with an engine ready to grenade itself seems unreasonable and unlikely.

The little "flat spot" in the HP/Torque curve of the 04-05 series was also there in the 02 series; I just had mine tuned out by Dyno-Comp last week. One of the many interesting things that Richard (tuner, owner) told me while dynoing my 02 WRX was that every single Subaru he gets is slightly different, and some are dramatically different -- each gets an individual tune at the factory, and you can't make blanket statements about any of them. The "flat spot" in the curve only shows up if you are WOT; strange as it seems, the WRX is actually a 4-door sedan, and it is tuned for everyday driving, not for WOT in gears 3-5. Unless your everyday driving includes a drag strip, the majority of Subaru drivers aren't going to find that flat spot. Try driving any typical 4-door sedan at WOT and you'll find all kinds of squirrely behavior (my friend's turbo Volvo makes a screaming sound like it is going to explode!)

Dynoing my 02 WRX we found it was putting down slightly more WHP than most stock, but still running pig-rich below 3200 RPM (as you noted, this is to promote cylinder cooling). We were able to smooth out the a/f curve and lean it out in general without detonation, and added 60hp while only adding 1.1 psi of boost (turboback exhaust helped in this, as did a high-flow filter). Most WRX models (including his 06 STi he just dyno'd) come from the factory with an extremely conservative tune, and even a jump of 40hp is well within the safety margins of the engine.

What am I driving at? The Subaru ECU is an extremely sophisticated device, of a class typically found in race-prepared vehicles. I've read articles in non-fanboy magazines about how powerful and complex that ECU is, and how adaptive it is to changing fuel quality, conditions and engine behavior. Coaxing 227hp out of a 2.0l turbocharged engine while maintaining California LEV status and 18-22 MPG in town is an amazing achievement, and this is done without stressing the engine or its components. If there is a little knock and ping at a tiny part of the RPM curve it could be due to any number of factors, such as water in the gas (more common than you think!), temperature, altitude and many other factors. The important piece of information is that the 2.0l and 2.5l powerplants can handle it just fine, and has headroom for much more. Dyno-comp set up a 550whp STI with only bolt-ons and ECU tuning (no internal engine mods) and daily-drove it for 55k miles, and it is still going strong.

 

I understand what you're saying but I don't think it's much of a stretch to consider that the tuning was changed for EPA reasons. It's a theory shared by more than a few people. I also don't mean to suggest the motor is going to grenade. It may be the difference between 95k miles and 110k miles but it does have an effect in the long run.

I suppose it is more of a piece of mind sort of thing for me. I installed a turbo on a car that did not originally have a turbo. I obsessed over the fuel and timing curves and made every effort to ensure no spot in the load/rpm "map" was left over timed or under fueled. I know very well how much of an achievement it is to coex 227 hp from a relatively small engine and still meet emissions goals. My 1.6 liter miata put out more than 200hp at the wheels but still easily passed the "rolling road" dyno emission tests.

It goes without saying that all of this crap can be tuned out. I don't want to have to do that and void a potential valuable feature of the new car buying experience....the warrenty. I suppose a lot of this is just dissappointment on my part because I just had it in my mind that the car was pretty much bullet proof from the factory as is.......provided you don't drag race at least.

I totally agree with you that for the most part, this is a 1 percenter problem. For 99% of the people, this is a complete non-issue and for the other 1% it's probably about a 1/4 of the problem it's actually percieved to be.

 

Ahoy! ^^ I concur!

 

Reading over my post I realize I wasn't making much sense -- I was a little distracted. I understand your concern, and certainly anyone who paid that much for a performance vehicle is entitled to every last bit of power. You are right, no car should *need* to be modded from the factory, but I don't think that is the case here -- the Subaru ECU is pulling timing to prevent damage during that flat spot, at the penalty of a little performance; it is designed to preserve the engine over all other considerations.

However, you should rest assured that even with crappy gas and the factory tune, that engine is nowhere near the ragged edge you ran with that Miata -- and the ECU does adapt over time, meaning that you might actually improve as the engine matures; I know my 02 WRX felt much better the second year I had it. One tip that is good in general for the boxer engine configuration is to drive it very conservatively (below 3000 rpm, no boost) until your oil temp is at 185 degrees and oil pressure has leveled off (obviously you have to have aftermarket gauges to see pressure). The head mechanic at my dealership said he's seen Subaru engines treated this way go well beyond the 200,000-mile mark.

If California (the state which somehow manages to dictate EPA policy, for reasons unknown) continues to restrict and crack down on vehicle emissions, we may indeed end up with a lot of cars shipping detuned from the factory. The fact that I was able to coax an extra 35hp out of my 02 WRX with just a *software* change is proof that this is already taking place. Perhaps we'll even see manufacturers put out a "California edition" of their cars, with ULEV status, and then a LEV or unlimited edition for other states...

 

I've pretty much decided that I am not going to worry about it too much. So far I have not heard obnoxious knock or ping and it's about to get colder where I live so I don't have to worry about that too much.

I'm just sticking with my original idea at this point and keeping the engine stock and not messing with crap. I live in an area that gets nice gas (93) and has 94 available so I'm sure things will be fine.