Hello All I am looking for some possible input on my girlfriends situation.... 05 Legacy  2.5 N/A Limited with Auto Trans

After sitting for a few days outside with the consistent temps from 0-30 give or take and quite a bit of sleet/snow/ice she finally tried to run to the store today and had immediate loss of power.

She only got a half a block before calling it quits and turning around.... 

Long story short and about 5 hours later I scanned it and got Cylinder 1&3 misfire.

Started up and it ran fine.. took it for a quick test drive trying to get it to replicate... but it did not work. it had plenty of power and felt smooth but a quick talk to an old suby tech was saying that it could be a cat issue and under recall??? and would it show its defect more when the car has sat for a few days... because up until recently she was driving the car daily with no problem.

She got this used a little over a year ago and everything has seemed to be up to date as far a plugs/wires maintenance goes and never missed a beat until now.... 

I was thinking possibly some moisture build up somewhere or maybe bad grounds... I did spray around with a squirt bottle to try and get an arch but had no success. 

I only took a quick look at it but was looking for any advice and will get it up to my shop tomorrow to get a better look at it.

I am gonna drive it again tonight to see how it goes and will give any updates.

Thanks,

Greg

Make sure there is no moisture down in the plug wells. Had this happen occasionally on my 96 if it sat in wet weather. Causes a fit of misfiring until it gets good and warmed up, the moisture then evaporates out and the misfire goes away.

 

Pull the wires or coils (if it has COPs), check for moisture and make sure they're nice and dry. Wipe some silicone grease around the top where the boot seals to the head to keep more moisture from getting in and make sure the wires click down all the way on the plugs.

ok cool will do. I was figuring it would be something like that but didnt have any motivation to check last night with sleet/rain coming down and working outside. 

I will let you know what I find later on today.

thanks

Greg

This may be something you wil have to wait for better weather to fix, but it sounds like bad wires deep in the spark plug buckets. If you replace the spark plug bucket seals (OE) and quality wires, it shoudlnt happen again.