pjsemmer

Consuming 1 qt of oil in ~3000 miles is by no means normal. I've never owned a car that burned oil on a new engine with the exception of the Acura I mentioned and I most definitely believe that it was due to leaving the original oil in for 3700 miles. As ballitch mentioned, new engines need to be broken in and at no point in an engine's life, does an engine wear as much as when it is new. The rings need to seat themselves into the cylinder walls and in doing so, shave off more and more bits of metal with each stroke of the piston. Those metal shavings are going everywhere within the engine and causing wear to all moving parts. Original oil and filter shouldn't be left in for more than 1000 miles maximum and I had first-hand experience with my Acura that the oil should be changed at 1000 or less. Even my 1980 Oldsmobile which I bought in 1985 did not burn any oil between changes until it reached about 120,000 miles.

oops, need to update my profile! I no longer live in NY and I no longer want a WRX! Plus the fleet has a few more miles on it now! shows how long it's been since I've posted on here!

You know, whatever happened to the old school of thought that you should do your first oil change at 1000 miles? Is that what Subaru recommends as the first oil change nowadays? I had a '99 Acura CL and the dealer told me to leave the original oil in for 3750 miles before doing the first oil change. I've bought 3 brand new cars in my life (one was the Acura, one is a '90 Mazda MX-6 Turbo and the other a '99 Outback) and I changed the oil at 1000 on both the MX-6 and Outback and have never had problems with oil burning between changes. After following the dealer recommendation on the Acura, wouldn't you know that the son-of-a-bit*h then burned a quart of oil between changes! Thankfully, I sold the Acura after owning it for 2 years. Are automakers nowadays that confident that their engines are so well built that there's no need to change the original oil at 1000 miles? And what is this mystery 'break-in oil' that they claim to put in a brand new engine? I don't know, but I think I'll follow what people have been doing for years and change the oil at 1000 on my next new car (probably a Legacy GT Ltd) as well.

I shudder to think that those of you with Outbacks/Foresters who've had so many problems with them would be indicative of the majority of those cars, rather you all are the exceptions who may have received the "lemons" of the bunch. Lemons exist with just about any car on the road. I owned a '99 Acura CL for 2 years which came from the factory with a defective auto transmission that needed to be replaced, front disc rotors that needed replacing at about 8000 miles and a V6 engine that burned 1/2 quart of oil between oil changes. I am happy to say (while knocking on a wooden table!) that my '99 Outback has been relatively problem-free since I bought it in October of '98. It currently has 54K miles and I've always done oil and filter changes every 3000 miles using Mobil-1 synthetic, have gone through 2 sets of front and 1 set of rear brake pads, new fuel filter, K&N air filter, new belts and plugs and have changed the coolant once (at 46K miles). I also changed the tranny fluid and filter at about 38K miles. I feel bad for all of you who have had so many problems. I am glad that we have this forum though, so other owners know what to look for and try to take counter-measures to try and prevent things from happening.

Is there any official information posted somewhere about this? That is great news if it is fact. It is very admirable of Subaru to acknowledge this and will go a long way in terms of people buying again.

Hello all... Has anyone with a standard Legacy/Outback ever done a conversion to the variable speed intermittent wipers that come with the Outback Limited? Almost every time it rains or snows, I wish I had the ability to adjust the time delay between wipes rather than just have one delay. This doesn't sound like a difficult conversion and I'm sure the parts can be obtained from the local Subaru dealer. I may look into it soon if nobody else has. If I find anything out, I'll post my findings.

Just to let everyone know, I came back from my trip to Pennsylvania on Saturday evening. Drove about 470 miles altogether. The coolant change proved to work out well. Temps were right where they should and have always been. Even with sitting in an hour-and-a-half worth of 5 MPH traffic with the A/C running in 90-degree heat on the Belt Parkway the day after the big East Coast Blackout. (It seems everyone decided to go away that weekend after all had the day off! Encountered the same thing coming back on Saturday night as well. BTW, New York sucks, just to let everyone know. I don't think that there is anywhere in the U.S. with such a clusterf**k of a highway system. As soon as you get out of New York, you basically fly all the way to your destination unless there happens to be an accident (which we did encounter on the Jersey Turnpike to boot!) Anyway, enough of my ranting about NY. I highly recommend that everyone regularly flush their cooling system and replace the aging coolant. I believe that regular maintenance of the cooling system will keep it clean and working properly, thereby reducing the chance of anything causing the system to overheat. I would even go as far as recommending that the thermostat be changed with each flush and refill. It is definitely cheap insurance.