Should anyone with a 2011 WRX hear a whining noise coming from under the car around 4000 RPM's and higher when the accelerator is depressed or while coasting in neutral, get to the dealer asap! The car was 3 weeks old with 1600 miles. The bearing was on backorder and I was in line behind one more '11 WRX with the exact same problem (somewhere in the US). Just got the car back after driving a '11 Base Forester around for two weeks... Thank God. The expert opinion of the techs at Morrie's Minnetonka was that the tolerance of the original shims likely caused the problem or... the bearing was faulty from the manufacture.
Are you sure that is an axle bearing? That looks like a transfer gear bearing. I've replaced a bunch of these on older WRXs trannys. ~Dan
It is the transfer bearing. I got the pleasure of looking at this car for a couple of weeks. The wingless is ftw.
The guy I was working with at Morrie's called the burnt shaft "the axle" as the bearing was wrapped (melted?) around it I just assumed that it was an "axle bearing". I've stated several times before on this site that I just drive cars, I don't work on them Thanks for the correction.
New update on crappy bearings in my WRX's drivetrain: A different bearing in my transmission failed recently. This time I was just pulling into Sparta WI for a weekend getaway (4 hours from Mpls) and heard the whining noise that I had heard before. I knew instantly it was something similar to before. After being towed to the La Cross Subaru dealer they found the "throughout bearing" to be at fault and had it fixed in about a week. Conveniently I was on vacation the whole time so that was nice at least. That said, what a complete pain in the ass. This is twice now in the first year (14,000 miles) that the transmission/drivetrain has been taken apart to replace a failed bearing. Now I assume some may be thinking that this could be less car and more driver related, but I really don't drive this car hard. In fact I could write a whole post about how I don't find this car to be that much fun in the summer which I admit could be the fault of the factory tires. Either way, since the snow stopped falling the most exitement this car has seen is merging onto the freeway. I also realize that while the body of my '11 WRX looks like an STI it's not at all the same car underneath and hence is not as "tough" as an STI. But come on, it's still a $27,000 "performance sedan". You'd think the parts in the drive train would be able to handle the stock power and/or whatever is causing these failures. So I'm wondering, has anyone else had an issue like this with their '11 WRX? I'm now more than a little concerned that my warranty stops 6 months shy of the end of my lease.
A throwout bearing failure means you probably sit in traffic with your foot on the clutch, and not in neutral. Or just plain get stuck in traffic often. It could happen to ANY car.
Hmmm... I understand that may be a cause but it's not the case with me. I never sit in neutral with my foot on the cluch and actully give my wife a hard time about doing it on the rare occasions she drives the car. I live and work in Minneapolis so I rarely am stuck in stop and go traffic on the freeway. Also, my last car was a Civic Si Sedan and I drove it WAY harder than this car. Yes, it had lower horsepower but nothing ever failed. I took it to the 8000 RPM redline many times per day for 3 years without issue. I'm still of the mind set that certain parts on this car cannot handle the forces that are being exerted on them. Thanks for the comment. I completely agree that leaving your foot on the clutch is a bad habit, just not the case in this instance.
Wow, interesting. I just picked up my 2011 a couple weeks ago. Keep us posted on anything you find out. I haven't seen many 2011 failure threads in my browsing at Nasioc, and there are a good number of them on the road now. Hopefully it's just a specific incident with your car (well, hopefully for us, still sucks for you).
