nipper

It can either be coincidence, or the fresh fluid degummed an already bad Duty C solenoid. I know the FWD fuse sends a signal to the TCU, and the TCU lights up the FWD lamp. I wonder if your TCU is bad. I am not home, and wont be home till monday. Much to my surprise my manuals are not on this laptop. I am sure someone else will chime in. nipper

considering the largest repair bill on a suby is the headgasket (assuming the engine or tranny dont go poof, a rare occurance), I would reject the warrenty. If you were going to pay cash for the warrenty, put the money in the bank and forget about it. nipper

All the times I've crossed the boarder, coming into the US has been much easier then going into canada. It may just be because I am a US citizen. I have never gotten searched coming into the US, but have gotten searched 35% of the time going into canada. Its gotten so bad that I pack the car in such a way to make life easy for everyone. nipper

First check the gas cap, they do go bad. Is the charcoal cannister in in that area? If it is pull it out and look for any hairline cracks. Also you are in the rust belt, so it is possible your filler neck is leaking. Another way a shop tests for this is to take a hydrocarbon sniffer and check all the likely places for fuel vapor. The sniffer can detct them before you can. Remove the two access covers in the trunk and inspec the rubber hoses etc coming out of the tank. nipper

You have many things inside the tranny that will shed material. Thats how AAMCO and other tranny places scare people. They show you all the debree in the pan, which is normal. Magnets are good ideas, but they dont need periodic cleaning The external filter will trap all non ferrous materials. IN all honesty, as long as there are no large chunks, there is nothing to worry about. nipper

No this is not a dedicated subaru mechanic, but he has treated me and my subaru very well. He also knows when he has to use subaru parts and can use generic parts. I would recomend him to anyone. They arent just mechanics, but car guys nipper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6xt1Vh26kE sorry i couldnt resist nipper

http://endwrench.com/images/pdfs/2.5Timing.pdf you mean that? nipper

In NYC we had that problem with "fine innner city youth" . One women even had a frozen turkey thrown through her windsheild. Needless to say the cops are very good at finding these people, and they go to jail for a long time. nipper

first thing to do is to remove your battery cables, clean them, clean the battery terminals, then put everything together tight. See if this has any effect. nipper

You actually have neighbors in North Dakota I thought there were so few people there that that was easily avoidable :-p :-p nipper

This is the first I heard of it in a subaru. Sometimes it happens in a manual (and easy to rectify). My sisters BMW had it happen 3 times in her new car (that was drive and reverse). In cars that are not computer controlled its extreemly rare, and i thought impossible. You may have a hard part failure that is causing this. nipper

Well in this neighboorhood where people think that having to bring in their own garbage cans and actually doing thier own cooking for thier kids is an inconvience, yes that are too firm nipper

http://endwrench.com/images/pdfs/TBeltEWWin05.pdf (you dont need the special tools) nipper

Agreed. When you use the interval in the owners manual, you should be comfotable in knowing that your engine will be healthy. This is the fault of too little oil, and too long a maintaence interval. Professionally I dont buy they extreem differnce in oil temperitures. If that was true everyone with an external engine oil cooler would see the same thing. nipper

OK I feel better. I just needed some reassurance nipper

You need a transmission. What is happening is for some reason two gears (2nd and who knows) are both engaged at the same time. You cant do that..... the transmission locks up, and usually with a bang if the car is moving. I think all the playing with the car got them to release, thats why it was fine today. nipper PS - do you have reverse? can you start off from 2nd? Can you manually shift the car?

Towing, flats or other emergnecies. Look at it this way.... when your AWD is cooked, the car really isnt driveable with the AWD in full application (there is another post where a member had an interesting expierence on a curve in the rain ... and got to see a pole up close, luckily not personally). If the duty C was fried, you would have to rebuild the AWD and replace the solenoid. Now you have a good duty C, but no cash for the repair. This is what we call "borrowed time". You use the fuse and can extend the driveabilty of the car. How long does it last? There are a few people here that have had the fuse in for a few years, others the Duty C fried out in a year. It really depends upon how old the Solenoid is and how its aged. These are things you cant tell. When you do get around to fixing it, replace the Duty C weather or not it is still working. Murphy likes to hang around the parts bin and can enact his laws on that first test drive. Personally, I would flush the tranny and see how the car behaved. If it stil acted up I would put the fuse in the holder and save money for a repair. nipper

have you tried contacting alpine? nipper

http://www.autosafety.org/getcat.php?cid=28 That sums it up nipper

I like a tught ride. I expect a GM ride from, well, a GM. I expect a tighter ride from a Japanese car. Blu has 1 blown strut and one in the rear making noise. Right now Blu rides like an oldsmobile. I'm glad you like them, its putting me at ease. nipper

I just made an apointment to have Blu's struts replaced with the KYB's I bought over a month ago. Blu goes in next wed. My Mechanic said he refuses to sell KYB's because they are too hard. I trust my mechanic. So what say ye who have had KYB I have a week to decide, as I can always sell mine on ebay. nipper

SO it sounds like his clutchpack is fused together. nipper

Sadly an audible alarm on the oil pressure is still one of those that would be "i just want to tell you its too late but you now own a paperweight" things. Altenator is hard to do too unless the threshold is set at 10.5-11 volts. Technically you dont read the gauges, you scan them. Your supposed to be scanning your spedometer to check your speed, and you scan the gauges at the same time. Race car drivers have far more to concentrate on then we do, and all their gauges are set up to be scanned by the eye (ever wonder why all the gauges point in different directions...so when everything is normal all the gauges point the same way). People dont listen to the buzzers the cars have now (key in ignition, seat belt) as it is. The only one that can have an honest threshold is the engine temp gauge. I scan my dash fairly regularly, but dad was a professional driver, my drivers ed class (way back when), and my enginnering background have trained me to do so regularly. There have been cars with buzzers for oil pressure (back in the 60's) but they were shown to be too touchy. Now with 100 watt and higher sound systems, i dont think anyone can hear anything in a car. I dont even hear my cell phone ring most of the time. I will admit that the idiot lights have gotten so small sometimes it doesnt matter if they come on or not, no one can see them. The other trick is to put the gauges in your line of site. Thats usually the best thing to do. Sometimes its just really hard to engineer around the carbon based interface. :-p nipper

Ok you made it sound like you were talking about a gen2 clutchpack. nipper