tranny failed on 91 legacy

[glyfx3d]

I have a 1991 subaru legacy ls wagon awd and at 260k miles the cars tranny has failed. It was interesting how it was failing but took a month for it to act very wierd. Because of the cost of replacing it with a used unit at $3,000 CDN I decided to let it go. The tranny started to exibit symptoms early on. When comming to a stop the tranny draged the engine down to a stop and stalled the trany. It also did this when placing the car in reverse. Did this off and on and finally replaced the fluid even though the fluid color a bright pink was in great shape before replacing it. After replacing that symptom stopped and was replaced with another symptom. It would slip comming off from a stop at random times and had it diognosed from a tranny freind but he could not find the problem. Driving it for about a month it suddenly started doing some strange things. Would not drive in first but in nutrual. Make lots of noise in gear while driving and in nutural. I finally parked it looked at the tranny fluid and the color/smell looked right. I figured somoething has finally failed internally but not having any experiance in transmissions I do not know. My experaince comed from many years as a diognostic and mechanical mechanic in the past on most makes and model vehicles. Its been a good reliable car and had it not been for a misdiognosis from another shop while I was driving on the road the head gaskets would have lasted and not had a head gasket replacment.

 

BTW, Is the gas millage for 2.2 typical for engines of this size or has subaru not figured out a way to increase its millage? thats my only gripe.

 

I would like to possible replace the tranny but need cost estimates and a good reliable source of used subaru trannys for this car.

 

Loren

[Legacy777]

gas mileage unfortunately is not really as good as some of the other manufacturers like toyota or honda with the same size engine. However the subaru motor is more powerful.....it's a trade off I guess.