A coworker of mine who is a very non-Subaru guy has a 2000 Outback that he obtained very cheap. Recently he has started to have problems with it.

 

Starting from a stop sign, the car will take off like it is in 3rd gear. But if you pop it into neutral the revs climb up fine, re-engage drive and the car takes off like normal. The car did this off and on for a little bit.

 

Now the whole car will surge as it is driving along. It will surge quickly, like once or twice a second.

 

I have no real knowledge when it comes to automatics and I was wondering if this problem has shown up before. He has had it at the tranny shop a couple of times and they don't know what to do and said a flush might make it worse. Now he is thinking of trading it in for a Hyundai so his wife & little kids can have a reliable car. (He thinks 104k is high mileage.)

 

Help. I wouldn't even know how to start seaching for this problem. And since these problems are straight line, that effectively eliminates the diffs (center or otherwise).

Dirty throttle position sensor probably. That causes these transmission searching problems...

hey- let him think it's a broken down piece of junk so he'll sell it to you cheap:banana:

Check to see if there is a flash for the TCU. There was one for my 2000 Legacy GT auto.

I've seen it posted that some ~'00 AT's had some issue with a seal in the fluid pump or something causing issues, not sure if these symptoms would be indicative of that or not?

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Actually, I think the faulty pump/seal resulted in delayed engagement especially going from R to D.

I've seen it posted that some ~'00 AT's had some issue with a seal in the fluid pump or something causing issues, not sure if these symptoms would be indicative of that or not?

Has anyone else experienced the starting out in the wrong gear problem?

 

Could the surging possibly be the torque converter locking and unlocking that quick?

he needs to check the fluid level and condition first.

 

check to make sure the transmission pan isn't dented. a dent in the pan from underneath is a hard problem to diagnose if you don't look for it and restricts fluid flow since the sump is so close to the bottom of the pan. a dent will restrict that already tight clearance.

 

these are simple checks that require no skill at all. you didn't mention if the AT light is blinking at all. that tells you the TCU knows there's a specific problem with the system. the code can be pulled and help narrow it down.

 

aside from that....i'm betting it was sold because of this problem since you say he recently got it and it started doing this...and that would explain why he got it cheap.

 

if he's interested in dumping it on someone else, tell him to email me. depending where it is in ohio i may buy it from him.