Originally Posted By: horse123
Originally Posted By: Nick1994
I'd take the CR-V.
Don't Subarus have a pretty high rate of random engine failures and oil burning? And head gaskets?
Head gasket issues resolved, oil burning is actually lower rate than a lot of vehicles... for some reason a lot of people were really vocal. Never heard of a random engine failure in any recent model year.
Subaru's issues were from 96-99 and then 00-04. Headgaskets for the 96-99 was the result of boring out the EJ 2.2 to a 2.5 and it is suspected that 1 in 7 were machined incorrectly (or at least not within a tolerance that would not stress the HF in a high-temp situation). Thus you could have a internal HG failure. It hit Legacy and Impreza models with the Phase I 2.5 engines. The 00-04 (or 98-04 for the Forester) were Phase II EJ 2.5. The machining issues was solved, but the supply for the composite gasket F***ed Subaru over and under-speced their product resulting in external HG failures. What really stunk was that Subaru was using the 2.5 in almost EVERY CAR. Worse, the boxer design gives you two HG to fail so you were really having a high chance issue. So the problem seems a lot more frequent than it was although it is thought that the Phase II engines were not an issue of "if" but an issue of "when". Now note, it was a manufacturing/part issues. Once repaired, there was no worry about re-blowing the HG due to a bad design. Take Honda's transmissions problems that could eat several transmissions in a row. A very different issue compared to the Subaru.
Now, it is important to specify the difference between the internal and external failure. Both cost about the same to fix but are a world apart. Internal failures are bad/worse. This is when you have coolant leaking into the engine. There are a lot fewer signs and can do more damage is not caught early. All subaru folks would watch that temp guage when climbing a hill. Any small jump and a Subaru owner should run into a shop. External failures are when the coolant leaks out of the engine on the driveway. Technically, you can drive the external failure for as long as you like as long as you top it off. The problem is when people just drive on it and warp the heads. Then you are on another level of cost.
Since about 2005, the HG issue is basically silent. You hear about the odd problem, here and there but it is a non-issue. Now, technically the boxer has two HGs so you are twice as likely to have the problem but I have not heard of one single Gen IV (2010-2014) HG issue yet. However, I can point to a few Civic-related HG issues as well. Since yours is a EJ, I would be fine with that vintage engine. Another thing to look at is the EJ UOA. It is probably the best testing engine for being "easy on oil". Some of the UOA reports for 7.5K+ look like 1000 interval.
As for the oil burining... the FB engines might have a few. I know they did a TSB/Recall for a few for improperly seated rings but it is not as vast of folks would like to think. One of my co-Workers has a "burner" but it is a 1qt every 1500 miles. The thing that I think it is using oil from is that my co-worker commutes 70 miles up a mountain every day. You can't drive up 2000 feet at highway speeds every day and not use oil. We are watching it and it had it checked by Subie. While I think that there were some vehicles with issues, I think the real issue is going to a 0w20, longer OCI, and a LOW OIL LEVEL LIGHT. I am certain that 95% of those claiming the issue have never checked their oil in between oil changes. The addition of that light is finally telling them that something is using oil. Mine will be about a qt low at 6,000 and I do a fair amount of mountain climbing. That is about normal for most cars except my old EJ motor.
