First off, I'm new to this site, so hello, and I really hope I can get some insight from someone.

 

We have been having problems with our subaru for a while now. It's been to 3 garages, and still no luck.

 

Timing belt, oil change, lots of stuff was done to it at the beginning of this year, was just inspected and it came through fine.

 

The problem comes when my husband drives up large hills...........on an incline, the engine seems to hesitate and then the check engine light comes on.

 

He is no mechanic, not handy one bit, me, well, when I have to be I can be, but I come from a family of plumbers, not mechanics. Any ideas. My dad thought maybe the fuel pump? I'm preparing myself now for the bill that will probably bankrupt me at the dealership, so just give me the bad news straight up.

The problem comes when my husband drives up large hills...........on an incline, the engine seems to hesitate and then the check engine light comes on.

 

He is no mechanic, not handy one bit, me, well, when I have to be I can be, but I come from a family of plumbers, not mechanics. Any ideas. My dad thought maybe the fuel pump? I'm preparing myself now for the bill that will probably bankrupt me at the dealership, so just give me the bad news straight up.

First of all stay away from dealerhips!!

Find a local subaru shop, dealerships are very bad at troulbeshooting, they are trained for parts swapping, so they will end up just throwing parts at it to fix the issue, rather than taking the proper troubleshooting steps.

 

So this happens when going up hill?

I am assuming under load? ie gas pedal to the floor?

Have you check the simple things? Air filter, fuel filter, plugs, wires, etc?

The problem comes when my husband drives up large hills...........on an incline, the engine seems to hesitate and then the check engine light comes on

First thing to do would be to have someone pull the fault code (when the check engine light comes on, a fault code pointing to the cause is kept in the ECU memory. By reading posts on this board I know that Autozone can pull the code for free if it's OBDII which it probably is. If not, others here will tell you how to pull the code. A plumber's daughter will certainly be able to do that.