I have been reading and trying to see the truth to the "WRX gearboxes are glass" myth. From what I read in an amazing write up, if I don't launch the piss out of the car, powershift, or drive like an ass, the tranny should do fine. Truth be told I will be autocrossing whatever I buy for a daily driver and having fun on mountain roads. With a proper shifting technique will the 02-03 tranny take that much abuse? Also how much stronger is an 04-05 Tranny compared to the 02-03 Tranny? I know the gear sets are wider but is it that much stronger?

No one knows how much stronger. If you were to put a gun to my head, I'd guesstimate 75% stronger as we've seen (historically, based on broken tranny posts) at least a 75% reduction in 04+ vs. 02/03 trannys. Some of this 75% can be attributed to people not driving like idiots as much as they used to as well though.

lol. Well I don't plan on drag racing the car....ever. I might launch it...but thats in autocross, and you can't really launch that hard when your lauching into a turn.

Remember though.....most broken trannys aren't caused by launches. Most of them occur when people are pulling into 7-11 to pick up a Slurpee on a Tuesday at 7pm in second gear at 3200 RPM. This is NO JOKE either! Most people break their gears NOT by power shifting or launching, but by complete failure at unexpected times for NO REASON. This is due to shock load and the tranny reached it's failure point and it was TIME to go rather than it met it's XXth launch or XXth power shift. Launches and power shifting, etc. just hasten the failure time and they aren't necessarily the physical cause, but rather and reason behind. Like smoking.....most people don't die with a Marlboro in their lips, but all that smoking catches up to them.

Yeah Unabomber is right all the way. I have a FPGreen on my stock tranny. And I tell you what, it's crazy power. I just hope it can last long enough for me to afford PPG gears. And their are people out their that they have made over 300WHP and it's lasted over a year before. You just have to stay out of first and second mainly and don't put drive line shock and it will hopefully hold. Well that's what I'm hoping at least.

So a bug eye would be a bad canidate for autocross huh lol. Wow Unabomber I would of never expected it to just fail like that. I guess its 04-05 all the way then lol. Thanks guys.

they dont just fail like that.....after lots of abuse they become ticking time bombs. AZScoobie ran over 400whp on stock trans/clutch on an 02.