November 11, 200916 yr 2004 Outback, H6, 73k. Saturday: Started my car up this morning and it was fine. Got about 1/2 mile down the road: 1. The battery light came on 2. The emergency brake light came on. 3. The car will not let me turn, (I have to really really force the wheel). Ugh. Any advice about whats going on? It did get pretty cold last night. I let the car warm up before driving it this morning. 2004 Outback.. Monday: Replaced idley pulley, new belt, new bolt. Car ran fine. All issues went away. Tuesday: Drove car normally, about 100 milesish. Driving home, the car starts the same exact issues as above. Luckily, made it home. Open hood, a different pulley is now off and broken. WTF is going on???
November 11, 200916 yr was the idler pulley a brand new one, and then that got destroyed, or was it a used one. how tight are you putting the belt? maybe too tight. or else you have a AC compressor seizing up. saw your post on the other board with pics. Edited November 11, 200916 yr by bheinen74
November 11, 200916 yr Author was the idler pulley a brand new one, and then that got destroyed, or was it a used one. how tight are you putting the belt? maybe too tight. or else you have a AC compressor seizing up. saw your post on the other board with pics. The Idler pulley that was replaced was replaced with a brand new one. Its a different pulley that got destroyed this time. I'm not even sure which one it was.its to the bottom left of the idler pulley.
November 11, 200916 yr Oh, not the new pulley but a different one altogether. Could have been damaged when the other pulley blew up. They are plastic, and plastic generally gets brittle with age. Inspect the belt, replace if necessary (probably necessary), and install a new pulley is about all you can do. Then find something else to break. Like the dome light. Because if one thing is broken and you fix it, something else that is required for proper operation will break. So if you break something that isn't too important, nothing else that really matters will break. It's one of those car laws. Like right after you detail the car a bird will use it for target practice.
November 11, 200916 yr Author I did replace the belt when I replaced the other pulley just in case. I'll have to take pictures tomorrow in the daylight so I can try and figure out which pulley broke now? Unless anyone knows of any diagrams online?
November 11, 200916 yr 2004 with low mileage bad bearings in the pulleys......i would talk to the dealer this is not quite right. soa will probably send a tech out to take a report.
November 11, 200916 yr Author I will have to give the dealer a call tomorrow. They both had exploded bearings in them
November 11, 200916 yr there is a known problem with bad pulley bearings on the h6. both of these idlers probably have the same bearing in them. if the pulley isn't torn up you can just replace the bearing. i sold grossgary a couple of them a while back for his car. it's the same bearing used on the ac idler in the lego/outback 95 - 99, i think. you might check with him. i may have some more bearings. but time and distance could be a problem. Edited November 11, 200916 yr by johnceggleston
November 11, 200916 yr Maybe I missed something in all this. No one mentioned the belt tensioner. Its pulley is the same as the idler. In my situation (2001 H6 Outback wagon-140k miles), the tensioner pulley seized up and threw the belt. My car had the same symptoms as the original poster. A year later on another 2001 H6, I heard the tell tale "chirp" of a belt slipping on a pulley and knew that tensioner or idler pulley failure might not be too far down the road. This time I changed the tensioner, idler, and serpentine belt. Fifteen months later and no problems. I kept the old tensioner because all I have to do is replace the pulley or bearing and I have an emergency spare. Anyhoo, that's my story. Thanks for reading.
November 11, 200916 yr Author I bought a new tensioner/pulley today. Hopefully replacing it will fix the issues. :-\
November 11, 200916 yr what we are saying is the H6 had known tensioner pulley bearing failure of the Timing belt tensioner. You DO NOT Want to have that one blow up. I think Subaru had a service bulletin on the timing belt tensioner so talk to the dealer to see. If you have the AC/alternator belt bearing fail, then the next one to fail is the Tbelt and that is bad cookie.
November 11, 200916 yr what we are saying is the H6 had known tensioner pulley bearing failure of the Timing belt tensioner. [...] Are you referring to the timing chain?
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now