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but a few other things could cause it too.

unless there are versions out there I am not aware of.

in airfreight in the past I agree with you. They have an incredible work ethic. Did you know we taught them quality? After WW@ Deming could not get American companies to listen to his ideas but the Japanese did! Then they nearly put America out of the auto business. I don't know how old you are but I am in my early 50s and I remember just how bad American cars were in the 70s. We had to get back on the ball, and now American products are far better. It really depends on the factory though, management proceses and I think how much of it is automated. My BMW is American made and is top notch. The only problem items have been German made and designed. With my Japanese made Forester fit and finish were great, if they had spent a bit more time on the engineering it would have been super. I do suspect the 2.5 was designed and built just before GM bought Subaru when the company had no money for new machine tools. It just seems like they stretched the engine and found the breaking point. A whole new design would have been more appropriate, not a bandaid.

paint so you should be able to blend it very well. Sorry I was tardy about answering and I am glad Strakes got you the info. I took the day off work to help decorate a Christmas train for the Toys for Tots program. We run a steam train down the Caltrain line with decorations and Xmas characters. This year the old steamer is in bits so a Diesel will have to do the honors. The langka will come with good directions I hear. I have a ton of chips I intend to touch up this winter so I will be ordering some myself.

I think that is how it is spelled. I have it at work if noone here has the website. It is a system that allows professional touch up that is very hard to detect.

so change those timing belts on time.

defer to consumer reports for the first few years. Thier surveys indicated Subaru was better than average for the few years they go back. The problem here is that on this board many owners have end of warranty cars that CU really isn't looking at. I think they may be a pretty good if you have a new car and have the dealer immediately fix any problems. I purposely bought one of the older cars with several problem possibilities and now I figure I made an error as I developed every classic 2.5 problem. If I was doing it again I would have bought one about a year old with a warranty.

I live accross the Bay from the Nummi plant that makes Toyotas and Chevys in Fremont. The Nova of a few years ago was just a rebadged Corrolla. I used to be in the shipping business and we had daily shipments of all the power train stuff from Japan. Parts come from all over and are merely assembled in the American plants. Some GM engines come from Brazil. with large multinationals it is cheaper to build one plant to specialize in a componant and ship parts to assembly plants world wide. This has been going on for nealy 100 years in the auto industry and before that with industrial equipment. Fairly recently we have Land Rovers and Jeeps that were assembled everywhere and before that Model T fords that were even assembled in Russia. It would make little sense to have two engine plants for the same engine. This makes me think that the worst quality stuff on Subarus were likely designed and manufactured in Japan. Anyone out there who has looked this up?

come from Japan? On BMWS all the engines come from Germany.

record that Subaru 2.5s have had with head gaskets and clutchs I would agree with you. All it is is an insurance policy and I do agree that if it is third party it would not give me the same confidence. But if I was buying a new Subie 2.5 that is exactly what I would do. With the BMW after the regular warranty ran out I decided I wanted the last upgrades to be sure as I intend to keep the car. Just the new fuel pump and sender would have set me back several hundred bucks, but I got new window regulators and had the cruise control fixed. BMW lost money on this one.

I have it on my BMW and I have have used far more than the price of the extension. BMW excess costs have been zero. Excess costs on my Subaru have been well over $4,000. You will have a lot of the upgraded stuff so yours should be less, but why take a chance?

trained with they showed a tension scale that looked sort of like a scale you use to weigh fish. I never used one myself and never knew anyone who did. What I have seen with belts that is more of a problem is universal types that are just a bit thinner than stock that don't run correctly in the pulleys. Now of course we have serpentine blts that cause tensioner problems and cost more to rectify than some of my first cars. I just push down on the belt for deflection and if it squeaks I tighten a bit more.

gasket issue with the latest, and I have the latest clutch up grade and they seem to have gotten that right too. Time will tell as I am sure some of these folks have heard "we have cured it"since 1997. On the good side I am not hearing of problems with the smaller engines or the H6. It seems to me that the H6 should have smaller bores and may not suffer the dread gasket problem. Any experts want to weigh in here?

very precise or we would all have dents on one side.

or a leak in the air suspension system.

it sounds like a tired clutch to me. Sometimes they start to come apart and pieces flap about when the pedal is down. Tough to tell when you cannot hear the noise. Have it looked at by a mechanic as it might fail if it is what I suspect.

found another automatic marked 4:11. that is a pretty stiff rear gear for an auto. I learned about gear ratios by accident when I was a kid. Someone gave me a Rambler wagon with a six and three speed overdrive, and someone else gave me a six automatic sedan. Myself and a couple of friends energetically changed this rusty old torque tube rear end from the auto into the stick wagon. You could go about 60 MPH in first after slipping the clutch like mad to get going. Second was good till it topped out at around 80 from lack of engine power, and third was an overdrive. The only time you could engage the overdrive was down a steep hill. I read axle tags after that.

rear unless mom has owned it since new. I have seen some strange swaps in FWDs and people don't always get the correct diff ratio.

but it could be a loose hose or a number of other things. Good thing you are on warranty.

and I bought it becuase I thought it had a lot less chance of head gasket trouble. Here in CA we just got DMV fees tripled and in the Bay Area we were forced to go to dyno smog checks at three times the cost. I figured if I cut down to two cars and kept 99 as the top end I would save a fair amount of money. There will be no raises in my field for the forseeable future so saving where you can is good. Arnie just got elected and says he will roll beck the vehicle tax, but we'll see. I actually thought that based on things I had heard that I would buy a 99 Subaru and put very little money in it for several years. Curses, foiled again.

head gaskets and should be good fro a while. That's what I tell myself anyway.

discount on head gaskets? As Subaru says "what head gaskets?"

To the discovery Channel? They have the Mythbusters show with those two mad scientists who would love this one.

pop that fuse too.

the machinist. They know when you need to do major service if they see heads every day. I had forgotten the old tricks to check by inspecting. In Maine when I was a teenager we used to put kerosene in the intake and exhaust on heads to see if valves were sealing, and pop the springs off and grind them with a hand grinder and compound. most of these suckers start burning oil after doing a valve job because they already have high mileage by the time the valves go. If you get up to about 100,000 to 150,000 miles what do you expect? On my subaru forester I had the heads disassembled and the valves ground when the head gaskets leaked. Several thousand miles later it uses a half pint to an oil change which I figure is about right for approaching 100,000 miles.