99legacy2.5GTLTD Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Hey guys, I'm knew to this board but I figured I would jump right in. I just bought a 99 legacy 2.5 GT Limited, 117,000 mi. This was a fun car to drive until a week later the check engine light came on and everything went wrong. I noticed just after I bought it the speedo would randomly drop to zero. No big deal would get to it when time permits. But when I took it to a local repair shop they check the codes and said it was my knock sensor. They wanted another $160 to put one in on top of diagnostics cost. So I told them to wait until I could order the part myself. So I left the shop with car not repaired. Drove about a block and immediatly noticed that it would slam from gear to gear,(AT by the way). So I went back and they told me that the car just needed to relearn its shift points. When I had a friend pull the codes again for me it came up with faulty ECU. Three days go by and still shifting hard. So I went back and they told me there was nothing they could possibly have done to cause this to happen. So today I took it to the Subaru dealership. It will cost another $65 to hook it to the computer. Now they tell me it is my vehicle speed sensor and it will cost $434 parts and labor and may not fix the problem. I love the car but It's slowly costing me a bundle to repair things. So if any of you have some advice for me I'm open to hear it. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cougar Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 I agree with the shop. From your description it sounds like the vehicle speed sensor is the problem. You may have a bad knock sensor also as they can fail. Hopefully that will be all you need to get going again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huffer Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Sounds really bad! I have 98 GT, and my speedo is intermittent. From what I understand on there are two speed sensors on the transmission. At one point my speedo did not hookup for a few miles, and that threw me a CEL. I drove home, using rpms to work out how fast I was travelling. Did an ECU reset and cleared the CEL. I find that my cruise control doesn't work when my speedo is out, and that this usually only happens in colder weather. I should also say that my auto tranny shifts fine even without the speedo... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
99legacy2.5GTLTD Posted January 17, 2005 Author Share Posted January 17, 2005 I didn't mention it in my original post but I have seen no corrolation between the bad shifting and the speedo working or not. The cruise control works fine so that must be on a different sensor than the one for the speedo. One other thing I was wondering. I bought a new knock sensor for this car and when I pulled the old one it read 570k ohms, the new one read 1.5 Meg ohms. Does anyone know they correct spec for this. I did not install the new one since the connector did not match up correctly either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowmaker Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Hi just rebuilt 99 Engine. Think I Have a Knock sensor Lying arround The engines Changed in 99 I Have the Early Model so if you Check the plate should tell Engine Type I didn't mention it in my original post but I have seen no corrolation between the bad shifting and the speedo working or not. The cruise control works fine so that must be on a different sensor than the one for the speedo. One other thing I was wondering. I bought a new knock sensor for this car and when I pulled the old one it read 570k ohms, the new one read 1.5 Meg ohms. Does anyone know they correct spec for this. I did not install the new one since the connector did not match up correctly either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cougar Posted January 18, 2005 Share Posted January 18, 2005 The 570k ohm reading is about what a normal one will read from what I have seen in the past. Not sure why the new one reads so much more. The real test for these is the output signal. You can replace the sensor with a 560k resistor and fool the ECU into thinking things are normal. I did this once while waiting for a replacement sensor to keep the engine in the normal running mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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