friendly_jacek

Congrats on the dealer. It's a keeper. When I diagnosed my tensioner noise under warranty, it took a lot of my effort to convince the dealer to fix it. They said they did it, but probably lied since the noise came back later.

I didn't understand, you did disconnect the drive shaft and still got the problem? If not, did you look into the rear diff? It can fail too, but usually with a catastrophic effect. BTW, FWD fuse gives no MPG benefits. Once I did 1000 miles of hwy with and without and didn't see a difference.

That sticky also needs "torque bind" issue addressed as this generates 1 new post a day or so.

With this type of service, change oils every 6 months. 7500 miles OR 6 months is the maximum limit with regular oils or maximal limit to sustain warranty. The 7.5/15 k "maintenance checks" at $300-600 (honda is the worst) is just a way to fleece new car owner, unless you are totally cluless about cars. 30/60 k is different, lots of fluids changed.

All you neysayers, just lift up your butts and do an experiment yourself. But seriously, if you are all worried about constant cicumference due to the steel belts you are totally missing my point of measuring the ROLLING diameter and not the actual diameter of the tire. You see, the load of the car makes the tire deflect, and the amount of the deflection is proportional to the load on the axis and reversly proportional to the tire pressure. In other words my pressure manipulation changes the degree of tire deflection only. C'mon guys, this is very basic physics. I know schools are bad in US but can't be that bad!

Setright, the issue is not believing, we are not talking religion here. Feel free to do a measument yourself. I did and saw a 2mm difference. Yes, it is too small to see it with just eyes. YMMV with different tire type. One more thing, if you are correct, why underinflated tires wear on edges and overinflated in the center of the tread?

Like almost everyone else said, avoid pre-00 subarus, unless you can find the rare 2.2 engine. The 00-03 still has a HG problem but it has an external leak and is covered by a recall and extended warranty. I believe 2003+ is HG safe alltogether. The 2.5 H4 has good power if you are not afraid to rev it 3000-4000 RPM. I pull a boat (2000+ lbs) and the engine is not stressed. I can easly go 75 mph fully loaded and with a boat with a room to accelerate faster. Legacy wagon line is most practical and the best value.

The center diffs ARE failing frequently. At least I can see numerous posts about torque binds. I would venture to say this is #1 problem on this board, followed by HG problems. The diffs in 2WD are different as they do not have slip clutches with limited lifespan.

I just figured a way to deal with uneven tires and thought about sharing the idea. During recent tires rotation I realized that the rear tires had a funny conical shape and short of grossly misaligned suspension the belts probably snapped. Interestingly, there was no major drivability issue, except for increased tire noise and mild vibrations. The tire shop's diagnosis was partial tread separation and they issued me 2 brand new tires same type for a nominal prorated cost as the old ones had only 8000 miles. Because of the 2 mm tread difference translates to roughly half inch difference in the circuference (twice the acceptable number) I considered running the FWD fuse or shaving the new tires. However, I figured out a way to adjust the tire pressure to equalize the rolling diameter. Turned out that a difference between 32 and 36 PSI neutralizes the difference in the tire diameter. Furthermore, the difference in increased load on the front tires was enough to allow for the same rolling diameter with EQUAL pressure (36 PSI) and UNEQUAL tires. I learned a few valuable lessons from this. Not only one should be anal about identical tires in AWD but also about identical pressures between left and right and also about enough pressure difference between front and rear to allow for same rolling diameter. Lesson 2, pay attention to the production code of the tires you buy. The potenzas 950 I got in 2004 were produced at the beginning of 2001! Now they are 5 years old and no wonder there are disintegrating themself.

Since it was revived anyhow, can I measure my ground connections with ohmometer and determine that my connections are close to zero enough that I don't need to redo the connections? What would be the magic number? 0.5 ohm, 0.1 ohm?

There are a couple of things that need to be checked. Was the HG repaired with the new-style gasket? It could be determined from the repair paperwork. I remember from this board that repair with old style gasket would lead to repeated HG problems. Second, do a careful compression check. You never know, it could be damaged from overheating.

I replaced mine and put some antiseize on last weekend. The plugs previously changed at the dealership had no antiseize on but maybe some oil at the threads. Was easy to remove them BTW. So, not everyone uses antiseize.

If the engine overheated indeed, this looks more like neglect and abuse rather than engineering problem. If subaru determines that there is an user error here, they may not be willing to foot the bill.

I more or less like my subaru car but the subaru dealerships, at least where i live are complete jokes. Rude, incompetent, and overcharging SOBs. Toyota dealerships used to be bad but the ones I deal with are excellent nowadays.

As an owner of 00 subaru, I agree that typically there is no significant (less than 0.5 l) consumption in 5-6,000 miles regardless of type of oil. However, I see posts like this a couple of times a year, do a search. Some other posters with similar story prematurely switched to synthetic oil. Did you? You may want to try 15W40 oils to slow it down. Despite what many poorly informed people say, 15W40 is not too thick for subaru.

I remember people advising this. Yet it didn't work for me in my 2000. ? why, maybe i'm too short?

I bought a lifetime aligment from the tire shop that sold me bridgeton tires. Why are you asking? Arent you the guy with viscous coupling failure? Did you check your tires for uneven wear/pressure?

figure out why it failed in the first place. Are your tires uneven/different/underinflated?

I'm glad your dealer cooperated. I don't understand why people ignore recalls! To be on a cautios side, I'm having coolant changes done by subaru, so there would be no doubt that I'm covered by the 100000 warranty.

I'm with you 100%. I suffered my share from subaru dealers and also have 2000. I also had the recall done on 01, this was when the machanics broke the plastic underengine covers and refused to fix. Recently, I changed the front sensor again (60000) hoping to increase MPG. The above advice is axcelent. Soaking in penetrant is the key to success (i use CRC6-56). Access is the major chalenge though. I used ramps and ended buying a special oxygen sensor wrench WITH OFFSET from Advance Auto, to get it out. As soon as was able to fit the special tool in, the sensor went out with no resistance. I could not fit anything other than the special tool, though. BTW, while I could not measure an improvement in MPG in city, there was some on long distance hwy trip (25 to 26 MPG). Good luck with yours. While it sounds a little like a long shot for idling problem, the sensor is cheap nowadays to try. Have you looked unto gentle cleaning of TB/injector cleaning? And yes, get rid of bosch, NGK is the way to go.

You are right, one has to use a common sense and make sure that fluids are replaced in reasonable time intevals. What infuriates me is that you can't trust the official info posted on the subaru website. If one followed the schedule literaly, ATF would never be changed. No wonder we have posters posting every other day about torque binding "cured" by ATF change! Edit: One more thing. Third party source, http://www.cars101.com/subaru/subaru_maintenance.html lists drive belts as replace items at 60,000 while subaru lists them at 90,000. Should I go with 90,000 if there are only minute cracks? I planned to do drive belts with timing belt at 90,000.

BTW, there must be tons of new and recent cars flooded in hurricanes on the market these days. A potential to scam lots of people.

I'm religious about my maintenance. The 60000 miles are approching and wanted to make sure I have all filters/fluids on hand. I looked up the official subaru maintenance recommendations on the subaru webside for MY 2000 federal spec cars and discovered that it is diffrent from what is printed in my car maintenance manual/booklet: http://www.subaru.com/owners/schedules/index.jsp?navid=SCHEDULE_2000 By the booklet, one has to change ATF every 30000 miles with standard service. The webside only asks to inspect ATF every 30000 miles. Is this a mistake? Unless I reading incorrectly, one should replace diff fluids every 15000 miles under severe service. Isn't this an overkill even with severe service? Also, there is a recommendation to "Inspect Front and rear wheel bearing lubricant" How does one do that? Thanks!

if you removed it, why didn't you put a new one in?

Please fix this sooner than later!