Outbacker4214

Hi all! My 96 Outback Legacy seems to require a higher amount of effort to slow down the car. In other words I have to push harder than normal on the brake pedal. Any ideas what could cause this and how it could be fixed?

Oh and to add... The other thing wrong with the shifter is that it is sort of "sloppy". It wiggles and jiggles a bit whether in gear or out of gear.

Hi everyone! I'm doing some work on my subaru, fixing this and that. One thing that has been bugging me about it is that the stick shift is not so smooth. It is particularly stick in between 1st and 2nd gear. That is to say, you can of need to force it into gear, or sort of use the magic touch. Any ideas what could be wrong, or what I could do to fix it?

Hi folks, I am new to this forum, I signed up because for the first time I am having problems with my 96 Outback Legacy. I'm not much of a mechanic or a car wiz so I am not sure where to start. It's got the 2.2L and is a manual transmission. It's got over 230,000 miles on in its always ran fine, except it's always seemed to burn a lot of oil. Then all of the sudden it goes through oil fast, and now the check in light is on and it has a weird vibration when it idles. With the help of my dad I found out that the compression is very low in one of the 4 cylinders. So, it still runs fine but I know that this is problem. I've heard that certain subaru engines have problems with the head gasket. I think this might have been something my dad and I replaced when I first bought the car. Is this likely to be the problem now? If not how can I find out exactly what the problem is? Then, I need to figure if it's worth fixing the motor, or replacing it, or sell the car for scrap. If I replace the motor how do find out what kind of motors are compatible, and what is the cheapest way to do this? What is the most reliable? I know that's a lot of questions, and I really meant it when I said I'm not a car wiz so I've got a lot to figure out. Thought I'd ask the experts if anyone has a good suggestion on how I should proceed. I need to have wheels!