okay, so the 'check engine' light comes on in my MY2002 WRX yesterday. motor sounds just fine. drive it on over to the local dealer to have them check it out. report back later in day is that the ECU is registering an out of parameter/false misfire on cylinder 3. cylinder checks good, so, ECU going off to 'factory' to be reflashed (this is bone stock).

i've been driving my WRX almost exclusively since i bought it. so i know the 'feel' of it on the road - the turbo lag, the sweet spots, etc.

they give me a loaner car - a brand new forester 2.5 XT. i drive it out of the lot - and i'm totally blown away. this thing blows the doors off my WRX! instant acceleration response, mash the pedal, instantly go faster. no 'mash the pedal, count to three, then go faster'.

the forester XT is 210HP @ 5600, and 235ft/lb at 3600.
and my WRX is 227HP @ 6000, and 217ft/lb at 4000.

so is the higher torque at lower RPM the secret?

i'm hoping the reflashed ECU might help, but i don't see it making that big a difference.

this is very disappointing.

 

It's the torque from the huge 2.5 liter engine! It ownz all of us with a stock WRX.

 

gawd that sux. so soccer moms can wax my tail. how lovely.

i will say though that the WRX feels a lot more stable and controlled at speed.

 

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.........

 

If she can work the stick.

 

Supposedly Subaru underated the horsepower on the XT as well. People have been dynoing stock XT's and getting great numbers. I'm sure Subaru didn't want to advertise the XT with more power & torque than the WRX.

 

Yeah, they should do awat with the us spec ej20 and throw in that xt 2.5

 

The way I see it, it makes sense that there's a forester that is faster than a WRX...each line they have has a 2.5T model, so why wouldn't the Forester line? If you want a 2.5T engine in an Impreza...it's called an STi.

 

The Forester XT is underrated it's closer to 240 BHP or more. It's been shown quite a few times. Poke around here:

http://www.subaruforester.com/

There are dyno plots.

There is also no turbo lag to speak of and the rear is 4.44. Now at a stage 2 Cobb I'm somewhere around 285 BHP and 319ft lbs of torque. My boost on a good day is about 16.5 psi-g. I've put in Forester JDM STi Springs, upgraded the sway bar, wheels and tires. In stock form the handeling is scary, mostly due to the really crappy tires. Now with a few upgrades its much better. I like the sleeper aspect myself plus I can haul quite a bit.

I'm still running the stock turbo but a few guys have installed the WRX STi turbo, IC and the ECU from an STI just plugs in (same motor) they have been posting nice numbers doing that.

 

One thing I was wondering, is how come test #'s on the WRX in
major magazines have shown a drop in performance? Car& Driver Road &Track,
Etc. These mags had much better 1/4 mile and 0-60 #'s for WRX in 2002 compared to the recent model! Test where showing 5.4-5.7 0-60 compared to the 5.9-6.2 that is the current rating. Is it possible the WRX has been de-tuned to encourage sales of the STI?

John

 

The mid-to-low 5 second WRX times were really overrated actually, so it's probably a little of that plus what you said. The original Car & Driver numbers were most likely from a ringer car, because I've never known anyone to get those numbers (unless they didn't like the tranny).

 

I am sure they did pound the hell out of the tranny too get those #'s but they would do the same to the new model as well. Something fishey here!
John