cheetah8799

On my old 98 Outback I had them removed. They were constantly rattling and I couldn't keep them fixed. Other folks here had said they did it, and a family friend who owns a shop advised removing them as well. So I had him cut them off and it worked fine for me.

Thanks Mike104. Great info, will help a lot. I had looked up the recall a few weeks ago actually, and it is rear only, thanks for suggesting it though. I wish I could be that lucky.

Hey gang, I am driving a 2005 Outback Wagon 2.5i, 5sp manual. I believe my wheel bearings are bad on the front left wheel. Loud humming/vibrating at speeds over ~20 mph when going straight and louder when turning left, smooth and quiet when going right. With the 2005 it looks like Subaru switched to a hub assembly instead of having to press the bearings. The local shop here quoted me the same price Subaru sells for, $150, plus labor. I can buy online for $130 roughly. Since it is an assembly, I figure I can likely do this myself, I hope. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for doing this project?

Thanks wtdash, I did check for play in both rear wheels, there was none.

Bending back the shield around the disc didn't change anything. I noticed the calipers are probably bad, old, rusty, no lube. When going around corners, taking a left corner makes the back right wheel grind. Right turn makes the back left wheel grind. Wheel bearings maybe? They have never been checked as long as I've owned the car...

Just got back from another test drive and also inspected a few things. I found after being more careful about my corner testing that if I go slow, like crawling, it does not rub. I found that if I go faster, like making the car lean a little around the corner, I can make it rub worse and worse the faster I go. I listened closer to the sound, and it does seem to be coming from each wheel and not the center. I suspect the reason I couldn't hear it from outside the car two days ago is because we were going slow in a parking lot and instead of taking the turns fast like I tested today. - The shield behind the rotor was in fact an initial problem for the short 1/4 mile drive I did in the dark the night I did the back-right brakes. I cleaned it up of loose rust and bent it back a little and that problem went away. I inspected again today, not touching as far as I can tell. Not seeing any bad scoring from it at least. - The disc and pads appear to be giving off more brake dust than I would have expected after 20 miles of driving it home and a mile or so of street corners today. There is some scoring where the pad edge is on the disc, not sure if this is normal. They are cheap discs and pads, so maybe. - Heat shielding looks good. The majority was removed a year ago due to horrible rattling, the large piece on top is firmly in place though. - Tranny mounts look solid. - I have not pulled the drive shaft to check the carrier bearing, wanted to check the easier stuff first. I am going to go back to bend back some more of the shielding around the discs to see if that makes a difference. Though it currently has what should be plenty of room, and if there is that much flex in the system it makes me a bit nervous. Any thoughts?

1998 Legacy Outback, 158k miles, 5sp manual. In the last couple days my brother and I finished two projects on my old Outback. We replaced the viscous coupler in the transmission, as well as replaced the rear brake discs and pads. We did the tranny work with it in the car, meaning we disconnected the exhaust, front half of the drive shaft, and pulled the back of the tranny off. Everything went well with the tranny work, but I had some rust flakes causing noise in my back rear wheel, so I went back today to fix that up and properly test-drive the vehicle. It seems that the torque bind issue that I replaced the viscous coupler to resolve is now in fact fixed. However now there is another new noise coming from the rear end of the vehicle. It runs and sounds fine when driving straight, any speed. However when I stop at a corner and turn left or right 90 degrees, I get a grinding noise from the back end. It is coming from the center part of the vehicle, doesn't seem to be from one wheel or another. I had my wife drive in circles in the parking lot and I could not hear any noise from the outside of the car from either wheel or anywhere else. Once in the car though I could hear it just fine. It makes the most noise immediately after coming to a stop from a drive and taking a corner. When in a parking lot doing circles the noise is there, but not as loud and is a little more intermittent. Being the rookie that I am, I have some ideas, but as usual they are probably wrong. Here they are anyway. - Possibly something damaged from taking off the back rear disc brake, I had to bang on it pretty hard due to corrosion. - Possibly the rear differential, it shows some sign of leakage, and I have not re-filled it's fluid. - Possibly something from when we re-assembled the drive shaft, we simply bolted it back on, did we skip a step? What do you guys think? Anything stand out as obvious that I'm not seeing?

Grossgary, I was actually thinking of doing that before fully replacing the stud. I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Nevermind guys, I ran some more searches here with different terms for the stud and found plenty of posts with helpful tips.

The bolt that the lug nut screws onto to hold the rim on the car. There are five of them. "hub bolt" according to the service manual that I am reading. Checker Auto calls them "Wheel Lug Stud/Bolt".

Greetings again everyone! I managed to partially strip the hub bolt on my 98 Legacy Outback wagon last night. Both the bolt and the nut show some stripping. I tried using different nuts that weren't stripped to see if they would go onto the bolt, didn't force anything, but no luck. So now I am looking at the service manual for how to replace the hub bolt, and it looks to be a bit more involved than I expected. It suggests using a couple different presses that I do not have. Does anyone have any tips or tricks up their sleeve for this project?

98 Legacy Outback with 2.5 engine and 5sp manual here. Since purchasing my car used around seven years ago, I have never seen better than 24 mpg. I could get 23 to 24 mpg fairly consistently when driving long distances at about 60-65 mph. In town going to work and such I would always get 20-22 mpg. In the winter (Minnesota) I would get 18-20 mpg in town. So in my mind, the mpg you see is in range with my vehicle. However I have seen posts from guys getting 25+ consistently. You have the 2.2 engine though. My 05 Outback 2.5i with 5mt gets 25-26 consistently, touch better on the highway trips around 65mph.

I think the website is just a guide for newer modes that they can more accurately predict the trade-in value of. Older models they would probably value on a case by case basis.

Hey guys, possibly a dumb question here, but I wanted to ask anyway. I recently bought a used 2005 Outback 2.5i. It is running great, and I am now doing the first oil change since buying it. I normally use FRAM filters, so bought the PH9715 which is what FRAM says to use for the 2.5 engine. I got home and looked under the car and noticed that the filter that is on the car is twice the size as the one I just bought and not at all the same size filter. I went back to look up the model that is on the car and see that the previous owner installed the filter that FRAM says to use for the 3.0 engine, PH3593A, not the one for the 2.5... So now I'm sitting here wondering if either FRAM is telling me the wrong filter to use or maybe they used to recommend the larger filter and now say to use the smaller one. Does anyone have any insight they can share?

Just got back from the parking lot, plugs all appear connected. Kinda tough to see under there though, so I'll dig further when I get home and see if I missed something.