[sperry]

Let me count the number of people I know that have broken a gear on a WRX tranny.

Zero.

Yep, not a single person I know has broken a gear on an '02-'05 WRX tranny. Now, if you want to talk about blown synchros... that's a bit of a different story... but as far as I know, nobody I know personally from SECCS, I-Club or NASIOC have actually broken a gear.

IMO the gear-set is strong enough for 300 crank hp/tq. Toss some shock-proof in there to help the synchros grip, and learn how to shift smoothly and slowly with rev-matching, and I contend you can race a WRX on one of those gear boxes without issues. Just ask Gary Sheehan.

Hell, in about 50,000 miles, I never had an issue w/ my gearbox, and about 35,000 of those miles was at 200awhp, and involved a bunch of racing. And I was still able to get into 1st gear on the autocross course in anger w/o grinding or other issues. And all that was in an '02, the most notorious of trannies. And I'm planning on getting further use out of it once it's swapped into my SVX.

Now I'm not saying that the WRX tranny is great, but I think the generalization that they're crappy is greatly inflated by the fact that those with problems are far more vocal than those without. In addition, I think most of the people that have had problems are asking for a lot more out of the tranny than Subaru ever intended.