rysbrnr

I checked each of the 50 AMP fuses and they were good. Next was the 100 AMP fuse. I started the car and took the back of a screwdriver and tapped around the nuts on the fuse and sure enough, the car shut off. I pulled the 100 AMP bolt-in style slow blow fuse and it had some corrosion on the curface contacts. I'm pretty sure that was the problem. used some sandpaper and a flat blade screwdriver to scrape the crusty corrosion off the contact points. To help prevent future corrosion I just slapped on a little electrolytic grease on the contact points. Problem solved. Hope this helps someone else who might have this problem. BTW, this was on a 2000 Legacy L Sedan with 197,000 miles on the odometer and still running great!

I'll go and check that right now and post results soon after. Thanks nipper!

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I'll check into the ground on the car. I know those could probably become corroded and cuase an intermittant connection. Nipper, I lose complete power to the whole car, not just the engine shutting off. Everything that needs electricity is off (dome lights, radio, wipers, heater blower, etc) Originally I thought it might an intermittant short inside the battery so to test this I jump started the car and disconnected the battery while it was still running...so far so good. it runs great without the battery connected and is not just running off the alternator. I take off for another drive and BAM, happens again even without the battery connected. So now I know it's not the battery. That's when I jumped on USMB's to see what you guys thought.

Anyone ever deal with this before? My 2000 Legacy L just started doing this. It does start up and drive anywhere no problem. But randomly the car would just shut itself off and die. But in this case, the whole entire car shuts off, (headlights, radio, pwr windows, etc) as if I just removed the keys while driving. The battery is fairly new and I just had the alternator checked today. They are both deemed to be in good condition. When it dies, NOTHING comes on (dome lights, radio, heater blower) nothing! I would disconnect the battery and in a few minutes, re-connect the battery and the car would start up and drive like normal. Is there some main relay that could be going bad? I'm not too confident about driving this car around now until I KNOW exactly what's causing this.

I guess you can click on "Photos" at the upper right corner of the forum. Type in "fuel pump assembly" in the search function. This would be 10x easier if I could just post the pic right in this thread. BTW, does anyone need a fuel pump for cheap? It's been used for about 1 minute and I can't return it to the parts store anymore.

I guess you can clock on "Photos" at the upper right corner of the forum. Type in "fuel pump assembly" in the search function. This would be 10x easier if I could just post the pic right in this thread. BTW, does anyone need a fuel pump for cheap? It's been used for about 1 minute and I can't return it to the parts store anymore.

No... it wasn't the actual fuel pump itself. There's a white plastic canister that is part of the fuel pump assembly and it had the brass CAP that was leaking. The pump fills this canister first THEN the fuel goes out into the fuel line. The problem was the fuel would leak out of the canister first before it even made it to the fuel line to the front of the car. Look in my photo gallery to see the pic. I don't know how to post a pic from there to this thread.

okay... nevermind the previous post above. I found the problem.. The fuel pump assembly (made of white plastic) has a small resevoir canister built-in to it. There's a brass cap on the bottom of the canister with an O-ring that seals it off. The pressure broke the brass cap's retainers and allowed a small leak which bled off the pressure before it even left the pump assembly! NO other cars that I've worked on in the past has this resevoir canister thingy on the pump assembly... I dunno why Subaru designed this into the assembly. I should've taken pics of it so other board members can refer to it for help in the future. I bent the retainers back into place and re-seated the O-ring and put it all back together... then BAM it started right up like nothing happened. If any of you have taken out the fuel pump assembly on a 2000+ Legacy you'll see the built in canister I'm talking about. I just wasted 80 bucks on a new fuel pump that I didn't even need! BUT all the troubleshooting I did pointed to it... oh well, I guess it's better than getting raped by dealership prices. Check my photo gallery to see an illustration of the pump assembly.

Okay... did a lil more research and apparently there is a "fuel pressure control solenoid" in the fuel line between the tank and engine. It's under the car somewhere, I'm still trying to find it right now.

I was checking fuel pressure the ghetto way by turning the key to "ON". The pump turns on for about 1 second with this method. I measured voltage at the pump and it was 11.24V which is low but not so low that it won't pressurize the fuel lines. I'm trying to find the damned fuel pump relay on this car so I can bypass it and just have the pump running constantly for troubleshooting purposes. I can hear it clicking somewhere under the driver's side dashboard. The fuel is BARELY dribbling out of the hose that goes IN to the fuel filter under the hood. Is there another in line fuel filter on this car that could be clogged? All I know is, the gas is NOT making it to the fuel filter with enough pressure. There's a new pump installed. There's 11 volts at the pump. There must be something else blocking the fuel.

2000 Legacy L. 190k miles on the odo. The other day it just stalled in traffic. I tow it home to sort it out and find that there's hardly any fuel going IN to the fuel filter. I could easily block the fuel with my finger on the filter's INLET hose. I don't have a fuel pressure gauge and being in a bind I just went ahead and bought a new fuel pump. I throw the new one in and STILL doesn't start. And I can still hold the fuel back with just my finger... normally an unregulated fuel pump can pump 40-50 psi and more but not on my car! There's a spark on all four plug wires also... What's up with my car?

In regards to piston slap, does the 2.5L have cast or forged pistons? Piston slap is is kind of a trait that comes with having forged pistons. You don't usually hear of imports with stock cast pistons slapping.

The CEL doesn't always mean you need to replace a sensor to remedy the light. Knock can be induced by several things. It could be low octane, too much ignition timing, hot spots in the combustion chamber, high intake air temps, etc. Throwing a new sensor at the CEL isn't garaunteed to fix it. For example, today I drove for 30 minutes and the CEL never came on at all... and didn't reset the CEL previously. I haven't taken any action towards my CEL and overheating problem yet because I'm still "collecting data". Being that this a "new to me" car, I need to drive it enough to get some type of owner history on it. I need to know WHEN it overheats, WHAT the conditions are when it does, etc. Right now the problems I'm having are intermittant which makes things harder to troubleshoot. Once I can get it where I can predict reliably WHEN the problem will occur, I'll have a more accurate diagnosis. A question for Subie guru's. What makes the CEL for knock sensor come on? - Anytime it hears ANY pinging in the engine? - If the knock sensor is unplugged or when the ECU doesn't "see" the knock sensor hooked up? Does Subaru's ECU knock sensing circuit detect knock according the frequency of the sound picked up the microphone of the knock sensor? Is the output of the subaru knock sensor a voltage 0-5v? It's normal that a car knocks a lil from time to time and the knock sensor is just there to tell the ECU to retard timing to protect the engine. I don't want to just throw a new sensor on only to find that something else causes the knock CEL. Then again I don't know anything about the reliability of the Subaru knock sensor... which why I'm here on this site researching the car I just bought. On my turbo DSM, I have a datalogger that reads ALL of the what the ECU sees and puts it in a graph. I can see exactly how many counts of knock occurs, at any given RPM. I can see exactly how much timing advance the ECU is giving the the engine along with o2 sensor voltages at any given RPM versus % of throttle (load). Johngenx, I have kinda have an idea on how cars, ECU's, CEL's, and sensors etc work. Thanks for your input though:)

I started looking for that post by Setright about coolant flushing procedure. No luck finding it so far. Just be spending some time searching I found that the "phase 2" 2.5 SOHC in my Legacy has less of a chance of having the dreaded head gasket failure. Glad to know that now! However it's been said that my SOHC 2.5L may have chances of developing an external coolant leak... so far no green fluids on my driveway (knock on wood). Above the knock sensor problem, the intermittant overheat issue still worries me. I don't want my pregnant wife driving around in it and having it overheat on her! Back to searching and reading I guess...

thanks for the input guys. Tonight I just went out for another cruise to see if would still do it. It doesn't now?!?! I let the car idle while the a/c was cranking away, then I drove around town at lower speeds (non-highway speed) and the temp needle didn't move above mid-point. What gives? Both the fans work and come on as usual when the a/c is turned on. What I did notice was that the non-a/c fan was running a lot more than on my other cars... maybe a sign that the cooling system isn't working too efficiently? I just bought this car today and during all the test drives in town and highway, it didn't overheat. This is a strange intermittant problem. When it overheated today, it was around noon and a lil warmer than my test drive tonight. I'm going to try flushing the coolant tommorrow and we'll see how it goes. Anyone got any ideas on the knock sensor CEL? Is there an easy way to pull the CEL codes yourself without using a scan tool? How do you clear the codes?

Hi everyone, new to the Subie world. Just heard about the good rep so I bought one for a daily driver. It's a 2000 Legacy L with 180k miles! The car is very clean and looks very new inside. The problem is, when I turn the a/c on it overheats and does so within minutes. When you turn the a/c off, everything is okay. I tried the a/c on the highway, same thing, the temp gauges still rises. Also, today the CEL came on and according to Auto Zone it was the knock senor....I had them reset it and it came on again later in the day. Does anyone know where to start with the "overheating while A/C is on" problem. And what about the knock sensor? is the common problem where I could just replace the sensor with a new one? Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. rysbrnr