idosubaru

follow my steps above and i think that will help us help you. #1 and #3 are really easy - they're free, easy, and only take driving to an auto parts store and looking at the trans pan. the friendly auto parts store person can even probably eyeball the pan for you. or post a picture on here. or print my steps out and ask them to test #1 and #3 above for you.

We are still unclear what the symtpoms are which makes it tough if we can't see, touch, drive, or smell the car - but a front differential most definitely does not cause slipping, or sound like what you're dealing with. Actually a front diff can cause slipping but if you're not embarassed or scared to drive it, it's not the front differential, it would sound like this: CLACK CLACK CLACK GRRRRRRR, CRICKETY CRACKETY SLACKETY BAM, CRIKEY WONKY KABASH....

1. read the check engine codes (free at any national chain) - maybe this is engine related and not transmission (they're easily and often confused - happens all the time) really need a quality diagnose to help over the internet - is tis engine or transmission? have someone else drive it and ask them? 2. Some H6's have TPS issues that cause erratic shifting, but I don't think it usually cause slipping that I know of. i doubt this is your issue, but TPS replacement is the cure for those with erratic shifting. 3. check the transmission pan and make sure it's not dented. it'll restrict fluid uptake internally as the clearance between the pan and sump are tiny. 4. change the fulid - on an unknown vehicle, it's not a bad idea. So the fluid is slightly overfilled? those readings are hard to get accurate, they're really annoying sometimes. That shouldn't cause an issue - but go ahead and get it to the right levels if you're having issues and you know it's high. the ATF control unit is the computer for the transmission. we can tell the fuse isn't blown or it wouldn't shift at all.

oh yeah - that, they reversed how the solenoid functions.

No financial incentive (needs to be cheaper than the currently available $30 part?) and resource intensive 3D scanning and printing and logistics organizing people/financing/shipping/costs make it a tough fit. These are large parts, beyond the scope of most of the entry level printers...but even then it would still be hard to pull off. someone posted a a year or few back that he had access to a printer and wanted to produce stuff for Subarus, got lots of suggestions. find that thread? i think it went nowhere though.

how many and who have you asked? call more places or ask around anyone you know that might know someone that will do it for you. if you stop in - in person - you can tell them, you're not interested in holding them liable if the issue persists or gets worse (which is likely). they don't want to change the fluid, then have you blame them for something that was already broke or going to break no mater what anyway. i suspect if you just stop by some local oil change joints one of them will do it for you of course. you "can" get hit by a meteor in the next 16 seconds. i think the most accurate way we can put this, with what little we know is: 1. there's a high probability that the fluid condition has caused the current shiting issues. 2. wether that's a fluid issue, mechanical issue that was caused by the fluid, or a combination of both, (which determines if fluid changing will help) - is probably hard to guess. I think it's rare to see dramatic changes in AT issues with fluid changes only - but sometimes it happens. 4WD components in clutch packs can be freed up with fluid changes and it's far less intense than swapping transmissions so why not try it?

Option A: Keep driving it as-is without changing fluid, see what happens? No risk of new fluid harming anything, But no chance of new fluid helping the current situation/promoting longevity if the trans is good. Option B: Drain and refill it with fresh fluid. Preferrably 3 times after any amount of driving. Just like an oil change but easier as there's no filter required. Might cause issues? Might save the trans? If the new fluid causes issues then your transmission was likely about to fail anyway...as it's presumably already doing. I would stick to proven ideals of good maintenance -drain and refill it now and see what happens. Avoiding rare and hard to verify issues like "new fluid causing problems" seems the lower percentage option in my book. If you did this 1,000 times I think yo'ud win more often choosing the fluid change. But there's otherwise no way to verify the best choice for this exact transmission Well - you could pay a really qualified person $1,000+ to disassemble the valve bodies, measure fluid contaminants, and check for debris/possibiliies - I'd want at least $2,000 to do that myself. But yeah, no one is going to do that - so you just have to make an educated guess.

nice hit! find a rust free one and cut it out. call every yard that has one and see if they'll cut and ship. www.car-part.com they generally don't ship large parts though if yo'ure wanting an entire rear quarter. around here the rust gets so bad that repairing a panel buys you a few years before it's rusting elswhere or the parts adjacent to the panels up underneath are cancerous. kind of a long term battle. the same reasons you don't want to do it yourself means it won't happen - Cost (financial, time, and opportunity costs to be specific), And then a group project variables are even more complicated pay up front, or later who holds the money, what if they disappear, quantity requirements, too small of a market, how long, who is going to send a good one for a template, people request different shapes, sizes, years, models, primed or not, shipped overseas...et.al. All that for a part that like 7 people want and most only want one if necessary - not preemptively buy one because they love it and plan on keeping it 10+ years. there will be a couple of those, but very few.

Gloyale has commented some on front diffs and backlash over the years: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/145014-99obs-mt-diff-side-retainer-and-seals/ http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/87305-easy-transmission-front-seal-replacement/ i feel like he had an automatic he replaced bearings in as well too, but i can't find that thread.

The most important point hasn't been discussed: have the timing components ever been replaced? tensioner and 3 pulleys? If not - they probably fail more often than belts which tend to be robust. timing belt replacement is 105,000 miles or 105 months rubber components don't do great when they sit for extended periods of time, whether that short of time or frequency of driving is enough to compromise more than average I have no idea though. It's just statistics - like you have an 8% chance of the belt breaking in the next year and 17% chance of a pulley failing in the next year....made up numbers, but it's going to be something like that. so - you've got like an 80% plus chance of no issues too. how do you view risk? if you replace it - get a timing kit with all new pulleys and tensioner.

I would be looking for a fluid exchange only for around $100, no filters. Subaru calls the spin on filters life time parts. Not a bad idea to replace but you don't have anything to gain by replacing it now either. Don't let them replace the internal filter and gasket - that's pointless. They're just big mesh screens like in your window screen at home (except they're metal). They're never clogged and if they were you're about to need a new transmission anyway. Risk to repair is probably greater than the risk to leave it alone, completely pointless. This might not be true of other manufacturers, so a mechanic might not know Subaru's enough to understand that. i think that's why they're replaced more than necessary. ATF is a closed system with no vectors for particulate intrusion like an engine has. a lot of car people don't get that and just borrow engine oil ideology for their ATF. works fine, but it's overkill and not the same.

Price check alternate fluids and don't replace the filters, or at least not one of them. There are alternative fluids to the Subaru fluid in that car - castrolmax J or something like that. might be cheaper. Subaru calls the AT filters life time and they never need replaced - i'm all about replacing it when it's convenient, but if much older, well used, 200,000 mile cars aren't having issue with them, i wouldn't worry about it on such a new low mileage forester. I'd wait until an ATF change around 120k to replace the filter. I'm not sure why he's saying there are "2 filters" - if he means the "filter" in the transmission pan, definitely don't replace that, that's probably where most of the labor is as you have to drop the pan, clean it, and reseal it. if they are clogged with crud you're about to need a new transmission anyway. the risk of future pan leaks from that job is more risky than the nearly nonexistence risk you're trying to mitigate in the first place.

***Do not replace all 4 bearings. The general automotive idea to replace things in sets and pairs is one of the most asinine archaic assumptions in auto world. There is absolutely no reason to replace 3 good beaings when you have 1 bad one. If the bad one wasn't failing, you wouldn't be replacing any of them. hundreds of tousands of other vehicles with the same age/mileage, or more, are running around with original bearings. they give MONTHS of noise and ample time to plan a repair, there's no risk of catastrophic failure, and you get no labor break when doing more than one. And even for those who say "well they can fail later"....that's still a terrible maintenance approach - if we reduce this to a statistically robust approach to maintenance "replace things with an XY% failure rate (similar to the 4 wheel bearings)" - you've got a long list of items to replace and wheel bearings are way down your list, they won't be up to bat any time soon. So in short - replace the one failing wheel bearing. Cheapest can be installing a used hub. $50 and less than an hour to swap out - should be $150 or less. Bearings will be more like $250 each for parts and labor. Rusted cars suck - you're going to have a lot of issues moving forward - noisy heat shields, sticking calipers, rusted exhaust flanges, P0420. Parts: aftermarket driveshafts suck - you shouldn't be using them. reboot your original axles (no matter what the mechanic says, he's not right). or buy a used Subaru OEM axle and reboot it. motor mount - maybe it was the wrong motor mount and not the vehicle or prior history. struts are very roughly like $250 per corner to replace - $1,000 for all 4. $500 for just fronts or just rears. use KYB's.

Easy: 1. replace transmission fluid (not the differential fluid - front and rear diff fluid doesn't even come into contact with the rear extension/4WD components so that was pretty much pointless to replace which is why it didn't help). need to do a few drain and refills or a flush 2. if that doesn't alleviate the issue then replace the clutch plates and file down the grooves on the drum 3. if hte AT light is blinknig 16 times at start up then you probably have a Duty C solenoid failing, replace that. some people replace it preventatively while doing the clutches so it's all new - they rarely fail but if you're paying all that labor it might be nice to just be done with it. No - the 4EAT is robust and there's no components in the transmission that really ever need replacing - it's just the clutch plates, Duty C, and front diffs (which are rarely repaired anyway) that sometimes have issues. The rear differential has nothign to do with this - Subaru rear differential failure is basically unheard of - 90% of the "failed rear differential or 'i replaced my rear differential'" comments you hear are misdiagnosis and incorrect. heck i'd guess it's even higher than 90.

yes they can be random and variable, very common. one would think a breach should immediately get worse with combustion temps/pressures, but somehow they don't always. the EZ30D is even crazier - it can overheat once or a few times and then not exhibit issues again for a year, or even only hvae issues above a certain ambient temperature and A/C on - i've seen it multiple times. granted they eventually get worse and are easily discenerable. i get it, but at the same time i'm surprised that it can vary based on ambient temps considering how much smaller they are from combustion temps and how the engine is presumably well regulated in temperature by the cooling system. there's very few people i would have even believed if they had told me that before i'd seen it multiple times.

also check the transmission pan - if it's dented it can restrict fluid flow into the pick up.

transmission is about the most expensive repair you can get into - i'd be changing the transmission and front differential fluids no matter what at this point. yes - wipe stick and reinsert. the readings are wonky and hard to get ;ike he said - but a cursory glance should be telling. a "little bit low" isn't going to slip. if it's not reading on the stick or barely touhing - then that's proably your slippage and it needs to not be driven or started until that's remedied. low/no fluid will destory internal components and require another transmission. if the fluid is grossly black - that's problematic as well. i'd be changing the transmission and front differential fluids.

01-04 H6 engines are all interchangeable. Transmission: You can use 01-04 H6 non-VDC transmissions. when I replaced mine I remember the H6 transmissions all saying they were like 1 or 2 year only parts but i've swapped them just fine. while i haven't tried every combination or permutation, my guess is 01-04 should all interchange if they're H6 and non-VDC. when parts were hard to find for these cars years ago i remember trying to figure out if VDC and non-VDC transmissions could be interchanged - im' guessing they can in 01-04's - but i was always able to get the correct trans and never had to try it and was never able to verify it.

backlash and bearing preload make this not for the faint of heart - very few people do it. Did you drive this car with a failing diff for awhile? the one I disassembled had some damage in the rear extension housing - shims were busticated and had significant wear. i'm assuming the front diff may have caused that rear extension case wear through too much shaft play? if that's possible (i'm just assuming that) and yours has similar wear - does that wear leave any play that could damage the new front diff? - you might want to inspect yours or even migrate the entire donor trans rear extension housing assembly onto/into your trans. that uncertainty aside (i'm not sure), here's what the process looks like: get everything from the donor transmission front diff into your existing transmission. You want to gut your transmission diff case and install everything exactly the same way it was in the donor transmission. get all the shims, side bearing cups with seals, count the number of turns when removing the bearing side seals and reinstall them exactly the same way so you're retaining the same clearances that were in the donor trans (theoretically/hopefully anyway). get an exploded view of the front diff and the FSM pages correlating to the front differential so you can see all the bits and removal/build process. technically you should be resetting bearing preload and backlash from scratch since it's a different case, but one guy on this forum did it before in his forester (you can search and find his thread). i talked to him and was about to try it myself but i stumbled on $75 transmission i was going to use the front diff for but it ended up only needing some wires repaired and pan replaced so i used that as-is and never had to dig into the front diff.

yes, some have heated windshields. if it's been replaced before, they could have installed a non-heated windshield in it's place because they're chaeper and presumably less prone to crack on certain years/models (though i don't think late 90's had cracking issues?)

1. is the check engine light on? 2. if it is go to any national chain that reads the codes free and tell us the exact codes. 3. have the codes read even if the check engine light isn't on (bulb blown or pending codes are possible) 4. check ATF and i wouldnt' drive it one foot until you do. yellow dipstick in this photo under the brake master cylinder. go to a shop or auto parts store and have them find it for you http://www.subaruforester.org/vbulletin/attachments/f88/4053d1166801354-how-check-tranny-fluid-level-atf-dipstick-2.jpg it's possible the yellow handle is broken off. look from the bottom if you have to - there's along metal tube the dipstick slides down into - above the drivers side axle http://www.justanswer.com/uploads/molurch/2009-07-11_195337_out.png

Thanks for the heads up though, I'm sure i'll see this again and go with plug next time.

I hit it with cleaner/compressed air/cleaning and then RTV'ed it. Only because I didn't want some debacle where it doesn't come out or new one doesn't seal right. Got nothing to loose - if this doesn't get it, I'll get a new plug.

ah an MT fits but an AT doesn't in the tunnel? spacers between the crossmember and trans mount to push it down enough?

the mechanical part will be easy - AT bolts in just like an MT but has different length so the rear driveshaft is a little shorter. other than that it drops in mechanically just the same. computer and wiring is going to be all different and need completely migrated from one chassis to another, so it's just the same wiring circus but much bigger project to get it running via the TCU.