Lol I was reading the FB posts poor Nick I had to laugh lol.
To be fair though, he did it to me first.
He has spent 80% of his life making me feel hugely inferior to him, so some 6AM annoyance is the least he can expect as payback. And he did do it first...
He boiled the brakes on my 205GTI; so I drove his A3 with no brake fluid.
It's all tit for tat and totally justified IMO.
I missed the insults, hope it was a good one.
Oh and Subaru's sound the way they do for a number of reasons, firing order, manifolds, opposed pistons, but mainly because in a 4 cylinder inline engine, there's a secondary force imbalance, because the pistons coming up move (say, 2 and 3) at slightly different speeds to those coming down (1 and 4)
To create a boxer from an inline 4, (in abstract terms of cylinder balancing!) cylinders 2 and 4 are rotated about the crank by 180 degrees.
So, the secondary force imbalance contribution from the cylinders 1 and 3 is now (almost) balanced by that from 2 and 4 as they are now on opposite sides of the crank - the ony reason why they don't fully balance in all senses is the cylinder offset, and so, there's no unbalanced force, but there is an unbalanced secondary moment.
With regards to the manifolds being a flat engine, some constraints are imposed on the manifold design.
On an inline 4 engine, the equivalent would be a manifold where cylinders 1 and 2 formed one downpipe, and cylinders 3 and 4, the other. Owing to the distance across the engine, these 2 downpipes must remain independant for a longer distance than would otherwise be the case. An odd layout for an inline engine, but, almost enforced on the Subaru.
In practice, there's one short pipe, and one long one, to move the exhaust away from the centreline of the car, and I think it's this asymmetry that makes these cars sound a bit rough even when they're running right.
The actual combustion is even but the uneven distance that the sound/pressure wave travels cause the 'burble'.
See, I really am the fountain of all knowledge.
I was expecting you to kick off but respect to you sir.
