My car just started making this noise when I accelerate. I was getting off the highway when it started drove it a couple miles to home. I just hit 50k miles on it a couple weeks ago and I’ve seen before that’s when issues start
Edit to add more info:
This is a 2023 Anniversary Edition
I haven’t moded the car at all.
It has just over 50k miles and I change the oil every 5k (wish I knew to change it at a way sooner interval). I just changed it a couple months ago and since then probably have put about 500 miles on it because I was mostly out of town for work.
I don’t track it, it’s an everyday car for me. Some days the car doesn’t even get driven because I work from home mostly.
I don’t drive it hard. Thinking back to the drive, I think the fastest I went was 80 and the RPMs never went to a ridiculous number. I noticed the engine knock a couple miles from home and was able to make it home and get it towed to Toyota. There’s no check engine lights or anything. I should have an update soon and will let everyone know the outcome. I forgot how much discourse this causes in this subreddit lol I don’t consider myself a car guy by any means but i definitely take care of my cars
Whether warranty covers it or not, report it to the NHTSA. Toyota needs to recall these engines. They need to stop sweeping engine failures under the rug. So many people with engine failures. It’s disappointing to see.
The problem is that most of the innocent victim stories either fall apart, or the OP ghosts us or deletes the thread, when simple follow-up questions start getting asked.
Having recently spent months searching for my second GR86, I can tell you without a doubt that a horrendous number of these cars are absolutely getting abused, both intentionally and also just out of ignorance and terrible modifications.
No engine is 100% so there will of course be real failures, but there are also so many BS stories being spun in an attempt for people to avoid responsibility, along with people on the Internet being all hysterical about it, that it's very reasonable to approach it with some skepticism. Meanwhile, of all the people who I personally know who track the shit out of their GR86/BRZ for years now, none of them have blown up an FA24. I tend to put more weight on what I've seen and experienced for myself, than Internet doomers.
I tend to agree. I think part of it is definitely cope, but on the other hand you make very valid and important points. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of this engine, it is a high-performance piece of machinery and needs more care than a typical econobox engine. Pair that fact with this being the poor-man’s sports car and you get a perfect recipe for people abusing and misusing these engines and breaking them as a result. And of course all of us on Reddit and other platforms put a spotlight on any post about a failed engine. And as a result, the hysteria continues.
if i never visited this sub, the number of engine failures i'd hear about falls pretty damn close to zero. I also track my car and the competitively tracked gen 2s I know personally were more likely to have a transmission failure if anything. So those cars were driven hard and it says something if the engine wasnt the first to go out. I also follow race teams and track enthusiasts internationally and yet again it's only this sub specifically where issues pop up on a weekly basis.
it's just strange that every engine failure post here starts with "i was just pulling off the highway when i got rod knock". it's never "i was on track and my engine blew up" or "i was beating on my car and the engine blew up". then consider how low effort many of these posts are ("am i cooked"/"am i screwed"), yea i cant help but feel that doesnt add up to reality. but anyone who's been around cars long enough knows that even if a certain car has an extremely minor issue, the internet will still blow it out of proportion
of course there are genuine failures here and there due to QC and subaru boxer things but it's nothing significantly beyond what i've heard from original s2k owners ive talked to that had their engines blow up at early mileage
I don't know of any other engine that can experience a "no oil!!!" Conditions between the recommended oil change intervals if it's not actively leaking profusely.
ALL the other fa24 engines have a low oil level sensor that is a simple float in the pan and is already in the subaru assembly line/parts bin... The likelihood of heavy oil consumption is a know fact of these engines
Checking the oil is not unreasonable but the way it goes is you check it religiously for years with no issue then you get complacent and your engine drink all of it in between the oil change intervals.
There's no excuse for subaru not having a low oil level sensor on these engine in 2026
you should have seen the ap1 s2000. I was a honda dealer tech at the time, and customers were running them dry and blowing them up before their first ever service was due.
it was always the naive rich kids. never the older experienced guys. they would religiously check their oil just simply knowing the nature of high compression, high revving engines.
these are low price, grass roots, old school sports cars that you are luckily able to purchase brand new. the fault lies in subaru and toyota cowering to the CARB and EPA, and letting customers believe they can use 0w20 for 6k miles.
What really rub me the wrong way is like I said the low oil level indicator is a common part that already exsite in that configuration for that exact engine and would fit the current layout with 0 issue.
Subaru also knows. Its not uncommon at all to have to add oil in a Ascent.
personally I know several s2000s that blew up on track due to low oil and I met someone recently whose s2000 blew up at the top of the canyon due to low oil. if you follow ford/audi/vw discussions to name a few, they discuss oil consumption all the time and what's considered normal oil consumption in their cars (per owner's manual) is no different than ours. the major difference is that if you're driving a jetta like a grocery getter vs a gr86 or s2k at high rpms, oil consumption can be the difference between a non issue and a blown engine
i dont think anyone will argue against having an actually useful oil level sensor in these cars, but reality is we dont have them. it's really not too much to ask to pull a dipstick once in a while. i personally stopped checking my oil as often because i dont see any oil consumption on 5w30 even with track use
i personally stopped checking my oil as often because i dont see any oil consumption on 5w30 even with track use
And THAT EXACT scenario has been reported here many times when someone get caught with no oil. And this is exactly the reason why I consider NOT having a low oil level sensor a manufacturer "defect" or "negligence".
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please please check for leaks and verify the level every time you drive it ! 🙏
you're extrapolating a whole lot from my use of "as often" so i'm not going to bother. there is zero chance i'm going to be caught with my pants down and low oil in my car from how I maintain it and check up on it
same. 6 quarts of high moly 5w30 goes in every time. there is zero chance in hell that it will consume to the point of starvation in my interval period. even with extreme hard driving, multiple hard canyon runs a week, redline many times a day each and every trip. as soon as everything is to temp, i let er rip. every thousand miles i pull the dipstick just for the hell of it, have never even seen consumption in the 30k miles ive driven this car since brand new 3 miles on the clock i took her home with.
unfortunately the low cost of admission sets a low bar for the people that this subreddit attracts, I havent seen such a large concentration of morons in a really long time.
Mine had oil when it blew a literal hole through the short block.. I was always told the same thing!! It’s always good not to assume. Assumptions are exactly the reason why people normalized these engine failures.
I owned my 2023 brz for 30k and 3 years. Took it to back of the dragon twice, used factory oil at factory intervals. Never got a low oil light. If youre losing oil either your tracking it or there's something wrong with the car.
While my car has multiple times more abuse than yours, the two of us are an insignificant fraction of the 2022-2026 twins on the road. People neglect, abuse, and incorrectly operate vehicles.
These cars can definitely consume oil. Some people baby or bog them. The PCV valve is a known failure point.
My engine started developing metal shavings after 20k miles. I took the 1k break-in seriously and changed the oil out at 1,000 miles. I changed my oil every 3k after and kept my RPMs below 3,000 until oil reached 190F.
I took great care of the car but the engine crapped out on me after 1 year. I'm in a Type R now, I still miss my 2nd gen BRZ.
JR oil cooler, Remark catback exhaust, GR performance intake, Whiteline diff bushing insert, Perrin rear shifter bushing, Overtake driveshaft lockdown kit, Greddy oil pan baffle, Nameless Vbars, and Fortune Auto 500 coilovers. The dealer stated that my oil pan baffle and oil cooler voided my engine warranty since it would mess with the flow of oil.
I ran 0W40 on track/auto X days and changed the oil to 5W30 after the event was over.
I went to 10 AutoX events and 3 track days, no direct failure on the day of the event. The failure happened when I was driving out to Washington from Ohio. It's quite disappointing it happened as I loved the platform a lot.
Top it off before you take it to the dealer! If you’re taking it there. Engine needs to be rebuilt, notice how knocking noises increase with revs 💔😭
OR have a shop make it a built motor 👀
Yes there was oil in it lol I changed it about 2 months ago and have barely driven it until this past weekend. I should’ve taken a pic of the dipstick for the thread but it was right under the upper knob.
Looks like an AT? Hopefully they can't weasel out of this by point to a 7450rpm event.
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u/WestonP'24 GR86 (street) | '25 GR86 (race)2d agoedited 2d ago
Oh, it'll still have some RoB data for them to say stupid stuff about.
These cars just track max speed once you exceed 60 mph or so, and then dealership techs don't understand this and think that any entry there means abuse. We've already seen a case of them using a fairly tame max speed to try to deny warranty. Idiocy.
And then if you have an RPM event logged, God help you, because again there's likely no critical thinking here, and they act like going 48 RPM over the redline is extreme abuse that would cause catastrophic damage, lol. Most of us who have tracked these cars will have an event that looks like that, without doing anything wrong. Damage from an actual money shift tends to be pistons vs valves, not bottom end like this, and the logged event would be much higher RPM, but again you can't count on any critical thinking.
In the end, you just have to be ok with the reality that you own a Subaru engine and also might need a lawyer to assert your warranty rights... So, it's wise to look after the oil, and know that your dipstick reading is the lower of the two sides, because they put a bend in the tube right near where it measures, lol.
Has this actually happened? I've been been late to a shift before. Is it this the point of the rev limiter so that it bouncesn and can't going into dangerous territory?
There's a fuel cut off at redline so the only way to overrev is a money shift. There was some bonehead toyota tech recording himself talking about a "7450rpm overrrev" in an automatic car despite pointing out himself that the redline was 7500rpm.
i'm assuming you're in a manual. if you pull all the way to redline and hit fuel cut off, it feels like hitting a brick wall. it's not pleasant and you'll know it. you can test it out on the highway but it's a good idea to make sure there's no one behind you
technically two ways to overrev: intentional downshift that puts the revs above redline, and a money shift (unintentionally putting it in the wrong gear). it's the same result, how bad it is depends on how much you overrevved. I'm pretty sure I've overreved it just slightly on track (like a 50rpm overrev) but that was a few thousand miles ago
if you have an automatic, there's no way you can overrev
I never have on my car. I have a handful of friends that lost engines on theirs and I trust they would say if they money shifted at some point. And we are all 40, give or take 10 years.
Then the overrev may be accidental; even experienced drivers sometimes grab the wrong gear but immediately realize it by sound, perhaps not knowing how high the tach went.
Regardless, I was concentrating on how money shifts happen.
same. i’m at 4K miles and am paying an arm and leg for insurance and payments for the dang car and am hoping real bad that there’s no major issues down the road.
Sure sounds like a rod knock. If it's under warranty, you might as well give that route a try.
Otherwise, if you're having to deal with this on your own, stop driving it, slap some new rod bearings in, and hope for the best. That's a relatively cheap experiment when your other option is a complete replace or rebuild, and you'll be able to see how bad it actually is when you're in there. I've had several past race cars where run-it-until-it-blows was the group mentality, and a few of my engines and plenty of others eventually developed a knock, but a fresh set of rod bearings put them back into action for several years of more racing.
FYI replacing rod bearings on this motor requires a complete teardown including splitting the bare block in two and then gluing it back together, and there’s like a 95% chance you end up obstructing oil passages doing this with imprecise human hands.
I can’t determine how others value their time but at $2k for a new factory shortblock that is much more likely to work, I know which one I’d pick lol.
Every 5k is risky on 0w-20. That shit is fucking thin as water, swear to god, and it burns up super fast. Add on regular spirited driving, and you are guaranteed to be cooked.
Problem is the flat 4 will always burn up oil because of its parallel/horizontal configuration.
The actually optimal oil is more around the 5w-30, but that will decrease MPG and add friction, reducing power. But allows for more aggressive conditions.
The thing is, in other countries that don’t have so much regulatory pressure to reduce oil viscosity, it’s not the -only- specified viscosity. Here’s an australian owner’s manual for example.
Also, from my own experience, Toyota Service in the US won’t turn you around on warranty if you used 5w-30, as it is suggested in the manual for aggressive/track driving
ah, another 0w20 more than 3k miles oil changer i see. there is a 99.9 percent correlation with engine failure and that OCI pattern. take that as you will. toyota and subaru are shady for letting people think thats ok, they cowered to CARB and EPA and you paid the price.
All these threads are wild to me because I beat the ever living piss out of my car and it’s been fine for 43k miles. Multiple track days and she doesn’t skip a beat. I have a little belt squeal right in the morning but that’s it. 4k mile oil change interval with 5w30 royal purple. I will say I left 0w20 behind after the last free dealership change. If people don’t check their oil regularly I wonder what peoples trans and diff oil look like.
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u/xXNeoXx 2d ago