Have been impressed enough with my new Baja Sport's handling on snow and ice to look for an older used Legacy as a second car. Just test drove a 96 Legacy L 2.2 automatic wagon with 130K miles, in fair condition. Tested the AWD by stopping in an wide open parking lot coated with hardpacked snow and ice, stomping on the gas while turning. This started spinning the back tires, and started doing a donut, I had to countersteer to recover. It felt like I was driving a RWD car. I thought if AWD fails all the torque goes to the front wheels?

 

Took the Baja back to the same spot to try and reproduce this, the Baja just goes where its pointed, like its on dry pavement.

 

The Baja comes with standard LSD and stock Bridgestone Potenzas, the Legacy had all-season tires that looked OK, assume no LSD on a Legacy L.

Take it to a hill, stop halfway up and restart. That will tell you which wheels are grabbing.

Why not just install the FWD fuse?

Have been impressed enough with my new Baja Sport's handling on snow and ice to look for an older used Legacy as a second car. Just test drove a 96 Legacy L 2.2 automatic wagon with 130K miles, in fair condition. Tested the AWD by stopping in an wide open parking lot coated with hardpacked snow and ice, stomping on the gas while turning. This started spinning the back tires, and started doing a donut, I had to countersteer to recover. It felt like I was driving a RWD car. I thought if AWD fails all the torque goes to the front wheels?

 

Took the Baja back to the same spot to try and reproduce this, the Baja just goes where its pointed, like its on dry pavement.

 

The Baja comes with standard LSD and stock Bridgestone Potenzas, the Legacy had all-season tires that looked OK, assume no LSD on a Legacy L.

it depends on how you drive it. i purposefully do that with my 96legacy to do donuts. if you take a 4x4 truck and stop it, turn and floor it then you're going to do donuts. 4wd doesn't matter

It also may depend on how hard you hit the throttle. I've got a 95 2.2 wagon. Since 90% of power on the auto tranny hits the front wheels under normal driving conditions, when you gunned it on ice the front wheels with that 90% force spun something horrible, thus causing the car to quickly transfer the power to the rear. Once the power hit the rear, with your wheels turned to one side up front, that started the donut effect. After you got the spin started, AWD or not the donut would probably still continue even when power rebalanced between front and rear.

 

 

That's just a theory, though. I'm new to Subes, but I did do some similar playing on parking lot ice in my AWD auto wagon.

It might be the LSD in the rear. When we were shopping for our Forester, I drove an L model and found it would oversteer much greater if the rear wheels got a big dose while turning compared to our OBW, which has rear LSD. The Forester we bought is an S with LSD, and it won't "donut" like the non-LSD models we test drove.

Does AWD ever fail as RWD only? I like RWD but want to know if the front wheels are pulling too.

 

When I get Subaru #2 shall have to get LSD. Is there enough slack between the rear CV's to R/R the rear diff w/LSD, without touching brakes & wheel bearings? Or plan to disassemble the entire rear suspension?