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What year Subaru do you have? My 1999 Owner's manual devotes about 1 page worth to the issue of tire pressure and while it does say to make sure to use the same size, etc. it is in the context of replacing tires and does not even mention the 1/4 inch circumference issue between all tires as I feel they should have if that is such an important issue. Nor does it tell you at what frequency to check tire pressure it just says, "The tires should be checked frequently for proper tire pressure, wear and cuts." (1999 Subaru Owner's Manual page 10-46.) It is not my intention to make money or "strike it rich" by suing them, but to try to make sure this sort of thing isn't repeated, if a manufacturer knows of such a potential problem, the buyer should be warned adequately and not so vaguely. Moreover, when Subaru owners started expxeriencing this issue with the VC unit, Subaru should have issued some sort of letter to the known owners that bought vehicles previous to the problem experienced by so many Subaru owners. Don't get me wrong, we also love our Subaru. Aside from this problem, we really have no complaints about the car. It has performed quite well and actually better than other vehicles that we have had at such an age (8 years). I just think Subaru should have been more diligent in warning owners of this issue and the damages that could be caused from not maintaining same or similar tire pressure/circumference. BTW, according to some messages within this forum, some say this can develop rather quickly. ********************

I have a 1999 Outback manual transmission with 100K miles that developed torque binding problems probably due to a tire with low pressure. Thanks to this forum, I was able to quickly diagnose this problem and found disturbing news that, in order to prevent the expensive replacement of the viscous coupling (VC) unit, the tires' circumference must be kept within 1/4": http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4961&d=1181855424 (when was this link placed?) and http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=18. I do not know the date of these links or their origins. This very important information is not mentioned in the owner's manual and I think it is Subaru's fault that so many persons were completely unaware of this "time bomb" issue. Had I known of this critical information, I would have more careful in checking the tire pressure regularly. The manual does have a warning message about keeping all tires the same size, construction and brand in order to prevent 'severe mechanical damage to the drivetrain'. Well, although I followed these instructions, all my tires are Michelins with the same size I still had to replace the VC unit. I am not a lawyer but I think we may have a class action legal case here against Subaru of America. Most likely they did not even know about their VC unit's limits and performance. As proven in at least one message in the forum where the author went to the dealer with torque binding problems and they replaced the CV axles; of course this did not solve the problem. During my search of messages concerning this problem in this forum, I found as early as 2000 a message of a member trying to collect information about the number of persons experiencing this problem. The key is to find out if this torque binding issue was well known to the automotive manufacturers' community prior to Subaru's use of the VC unit. Once we can reasonably document that this potentiall expensive problem was well documented, it should be reasonable to assert that Subaru is negligent for not warning all it's customers of that problem. Further, the Subaru dealerships should have employees working in their repair bays with sufficient training to handle this issue, therefore all the dealerships might also be held negligent. Do I have a point here? I would like to begin a poll as to how many persons have experienced this torque binding problem with their manual AWD vehicle.

Jamal is correct. I removed the drive shaft to the rear wheels and my Outback will not move easily. The engine makes a lot of effort and after few seconds I can hear weird noises coming from the tranmission/ transaxle area. BTW, I have a 1999 Outback with manual transmission that has been developing torque binding problems lately. I wanted to run the vehicle in FWD to prevent more damage until I am ready to replace the VC. Some people were able to do it without any problems. It seems that this temporary fix may not work in all the Subarus. Any comments?

It seems that I have the same problem with the viscous coupling. My 1999 Outback with manual transmission has exactly the same symptoms. I found out from 1st Subaru parts that the new vc costs about $450. How complicated is the removal and installation of this partr? Do I have to drop the transmission? Any help would be appreciated.

How common is this viscous coupling faillure?

Yes, it would be more more thing that would be prone to fail like the speedometer head in the 99 Subarus. I prefer the old and simple CABLE. I had this problem with the electronic speedometer and I hate it. I do not understand why they like to complicate things

There is another way to determine what the problem is. If your vehicle is equiped with cruise control and it keeps on working when the speedometer head fails, then most likely the problem is the speedometer head. The speed sensor feeds information to both the speedometer head and the cruise control. How about the trip and mileage counters, do they stop working when the speedometer does not work?

Carl is correct in regards to the parking lights, check the switch on to top of the steering columm. As for the other problem, according to other threads, it seems that you have a bad speedometer head. Apparently it was a common problem in the 1999 subarus. There is one test you can do: if the problem does not affect the cruise control them most likely you have a bad speedometer head, if it does, the problem is the speed sensor located in the transmission. I have the same problem and I found this information here in the forum from 2002. Do a search and you will find that this is a common problem. Subaru should recall the speedometer head