Subaru TY75 / TY85 (Subaru manual)

6-speed manual · longitudinal · 1989–present

Also known as: ty75, ty85, ty756, ty856, ty856ub1ka, subaru 6-speed manual

Subaru's longitudinal manual transaxles — in the Impreza, WRX and Legacy.

The TY85 six-speed is the STI gearbox and the one people seek out: it was built for the rally programme, it is much stronger than the five-speed beside it, and it is a common swap into cars that never had one.

The five-speed's weakness is well known and specific: fifth gear and its bearing. On a modified car it is the first thing to go, producing a whine only in fifth or fifth jumping out under load. A gearbox that pops out of one gear is a fork or a worn hub rather than general wear.

The centre differential is inside the transmission, which is what makes these unlike any other manual here — a bind or a judder in tight turns is the centre diff or the tyres, not the gearbox, and mismatched tyre circumferences are a real mechanical fault mechanism on a Subaru rather than a wear question.

They take a specific Subaru gear oil, and the front differential shares the case with the gearbox while the rear does not — so a Subaru has two or three separate oils and getting them confused is a recurring and expensive mistake.

Cars fitted with this gearbox

3 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.

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.

Community experience

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.