Toyota 4U-GSE
2.0 L · flat-4 · naturally aspirated · petrol · 2012–present
Also known as: 4u-gse, 4u, gt86 engine, brz engine
The 2.0 flat-four in the Toyota GT86, Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S.
⚑ It is a Subaru engine with a Toyota injection system, and that joint parentage is the whole diagnosis. The block, heads and architecture are Subaru's FA20; the D-4S combined port and direct injection is Toyota's. Neither company's material alone describes the whole engine, and searching only one badge misses half of it.
The famous complaint is the torque dip around 4,000 rpm, and it is a characteristic of the intake design rather than a fault. An owner describing a flat spot there is describing the engine.
Its real known items are oil-related. It consumes oil by design more than most modern engines, and the level between services matters more here than the interval does — a low-oil condition on a flat engine reaches the bearings quickly. Valve-spring and fuel-pump recalls exist on early cars and are worth checking by VIN.
Cars fitted with this engine
2 generations, across 2 makes. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Scion
Subaru
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Posted about this engine
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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