Subaru Crew Problems & Solutions

hondafriek

Hi Juice and Ken regardless of what anybody tries to tell you, this is indicative of worn or weak first gear synchro and definitely is not going to get any better, get it fixed while you still have warranty.
Cheers Pat.

grugru

I think that RainX accelerates the breakdown of wiper blades.

Question - how long does the Sube (or any car) have to sit before you can get a "cold" psi reading on the tires?

jg

bluesubie

IIRC, the manual states cold is a car driven less than one mile. I don't recall if it mentions a cool down time or not. Seems like I remember something about 1 hour. Anyone else?
Dennis

locke2c

Cool down time depends on 3 things:

1) temp of the tire
2) compound of the tire
3) ambient temp, sunlight and temp of the ground where you park

It can take anywhere from 10 minutes (maybe less, if the tire was effectively "cold" to begin with) to over an hour.

I would definitely agree on the approximately 1 mile to keep a tire cold for accurate pressure readings. Keep the speed down and accelerate, brake and corner gently and you'll keep the temp down longer.

Do the reverse and summer tires will really be working. ;-)

-Colin

kens

Pat:

I agree, but thing is that I just had 1st gear replaced last year because it was popping out. I don't abuse my tranny so I can't imagine the problem is back again from wear and tear.

While it's not a situation you often encounter, it seems like a saftey issue to me. The first time it happened was when I was going down a snowy downhill road. Traffic was backed up and crawling. Rather than riding my brakes the whole way, I left my vehicle in 1st. It was kind of scary when the tranny suddenly pops out and your vehicle starts accelerating forward because it's in neutral.

jg: I believe it was 3 hours and not driven more than a mile.

Ken

paisan

I usually test TP first thing in the morning without having driven it at all.

-mike

hammersley

turned out to be (allegedly)"steering rack gear tension" needed adjustment. Better now, but still somethin' knockin' under there... may have to crawl under there with the lithium grease... or throw it back in their lap next week...

Hey! Chat countdown! T-minus 35 minutes & counting!

Cheers!
Paul

hondafriek

Ken it is not a matter of abuse or even wear and tear it can be related to any number of causes defective gear clusters,clearance issues in the transmission less than satisfactory rebuild in the first instance. You may have a problem selling them on a safety issue although i agree it can be a pretty hairy situation. keep after them though to fix the problem it is only going to get worse and you do not want to have to pay for it out of warranty. believe when i say a transmission has to go together like a watch in order to work properly.good luck.
Cheers Pat.

miksmi

You've been giving some great advice. Just wanted to say thanks.

Cheers,

..Mike

kens

Paul,

Did your "clunk" happen with every big bump you went over? From what area did the sound eminate from?

Ken

kens

Ditto on the advice.

Thanks,

Ken

ateixeira

I never expected Colin to tell us how to cool down tires. Warm them up, certainly.

-juice

locke2c

Heh. You can also mist the tread down with a water spray bottle, that will cool them down considerably quicker.

-Colin

hondafriek

Thanks Mike and Ken for the vote of confidence I have had some great advice myself on these threads and I am only to glad to jump in when I can. Ken one other thing I have advised before is to make sure there is a work order generated for each time you have tried to have this problem addressed and insist that you get a copy, this way you have a paper trail on your attempts to have the problem corrected, this advice comes from bitter experience in getting screwed by a dealer.
Cheers Pat.

kens

Hi Patti,

Is there a way I can get my contact info to the Senior Rep that you mentioned? I haven't heard from her yet. I thought it might make it easier for them if I left my phone number in addition to my e-mail address.

Thanks,
Ken

BTW -- how was the engine rebuild?

hammersley

Seemed to come from the front left, although it was hard to pin down. Couldn't hear it any better with the window down. Almost seemed to originate from under the driver's floor pan, and it would generate going over anything from manhole covers to expansion joints to potholes. It's better now than it was, but still a hint of clunk remains. Guess I'll run it in again next week, time permitting.

A side note worth mentioning: My salesman saw me come in... chatted me up for a bit, and when it came time to pick up the car, I found out the sales dept. had paid half the bill! ($20 out of 40) Guess he wants to sell me a few more cars... Patti, are you listening? This guy has customer satisfaction & service written all over him! One attaboy his direction!

Cheers!
Paul

paisan

My salesman has paid for my first 4 oil changes! Everytime I go pick up my car it's already been paid for. He's awsome, but I've also brought him about 5 sales this year too! Hey patti can you e-mail me mike@iace.com cause I was curious about jobs @ SOA.

-mike

subaru_team

I'll follow-up with Dene on Monday. She is working from a remote location, so that may have delayed her contacting you.

Can you send me your number to PMICKEL@Subaru.com? It might speed things up!

Type/chat with you on Monday!

Patti

subaru_team

Howdy. I just sent you a message. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Patti

ateixeira

Any sales staff out there that wish to send me money, my address is...

;-)

-juice

calessan

I tried that Prestone stuff, and haven't had trouble with the front ducts. However, the back wiper fluid duct is still getting clogged. This is a stupid question, but is it a different reservoir? Once it's clogged, is there a way to declog? (ie, with a toothpick)

Cristina

blane

calessan:

The fluid has a much longer way to travel to get to the rear nozzle. Just use the rear washer a few more times to get the newer fluid through the lines, to replace the older mixture.

ateixeira

I'd avoid things like a toothpick, which can break off and get stuck in there, clogging it for good.

There is one reservoir, so let the rear one run for a while. If you used a different color washer fluid (i.e. orange instead of blue), you can even see that it will eventually change colors.

I looked the other day, and the blue stuff protects to about -20 degrees F. That's their claim. Others go to -30 or even -40.

I think the thing is that there is a windchill effect, so outside temps at around zero are still probably enough to freeze the fluid in those lines.

-juice

bluesubie

Also try to clear it when the temp. gets above freezing, to get it going through the line. It's been in the teens F and no problems with the Prestone here.
Dennis

tincup47

Has no effect on anything but living things. The temperature is the temperature. Wind chill is how cold it feels not how cold it is.

natescape

but I had my rear stop working a while ago. Turned out I was nearly out of fluid, as my front stopped working a couple of days later. When I refilled under the hood and ran the rear for a few seconds, everything worked great.

ramon

is the rear winshield nozzle spits out water instead of spitting out jets like the front?! Is there a way to fix this?!

paisan

I have the same problem both on my '97 Rodeo and '00 Trooper. At first i thought it was broken, then I went to a dealer and tried out 1/2 a dozen, and they all spray(spit) instead of blast out onto the rear glass! I wish it sprayed too.

-mike

Karen_S

I've heard this complaint on other makes. It's more like dribble than spray, right? One remedy you might try is replacing the back end nozzle with a nozzle intended for the front windshield. I know this works for some makes, but I don't know if it will for the Subaru.

KarenS
Owner's Club host

ateixeira

Good idea. I think mine dribbles out, too. I don't use it very often, though.

My friend used to have an old Montero, and the little hose came loose once. So his rear washer would shoot water out backwards, a few feet behind him.

It sure stopped tailgaters!

-juice

vince14

Though this doesn't really apply to problem posted, for anyone who did not know, Outbacks (and I think Foresters, too) share one fluid container. When the level gets low, the rear wiper won't wash while the front continues to. It (intentionally or otherwise) serves as an early warning that your fluid is low, and when the level is raised, the rear wiper starts washing again. Just in case anyone didn't know...
Vince14

P.S. I love my Donnely ECT mirror thought it does seem to have a noticable vibration to it.

ateixeira

Interesting, Vince. Mine's always full so I've never noticed that early warning.

-juice

kens

I believe the rear nozzle was improved in later model Foresters from the "dribble" type to a fan spray. I wonder if you can simply buy a new nozzle and replace the old one.

Vince 14 is right on about the front and rear sharing one resivoir. I believe the rear washer feed is positioned higher in the resivoir so after a certain level, the rear stops working first -- a logical design.

Ken

ramon

i tried toadjust the shooting angle with a pin. but the thing is stuck! i know some suvs have the nozzle on the top and spits down. let gravity takes its course. IMHO that is a better design. Whoa! my first ever praise for an SUV! And I mean EVER!!!
My Impy OBS shares one reservoir too.
BTW, does the washer fluid destroy the paint?

paisan

Mine does shoot down on the Trooper and I have a separate resivor in the rear. On my XT6, the headlight washers and the windshield wiper share a bottle which is over 1.5 gallons! It's awsome that I don't need to constantly fill it.

-mike

ateixeira

Wow, ramon, you're not going soft are you? ;-)

My old Mustang had two resorvoirs. The rear one leaked all the time so I basically didn't have a rear one at all.

Some people say the fluid can harm the paint, but I've never seen any evidence of this. It's so watered down I doubt it would.

-juice

ramon

juice used to own a Mustang. wow.... I can imagine you then. A young carefree Brazilian amigo. Speeding down a neighbourhood and honking at all the hot babes. Wait a minute! Don't you still do that?

subaru_team

Was that you I saw when I was driving my '67 1/2 Mustang Ragtop? Ahhh - what a car. Major mistake giving it to my son when he turned 17. He started to "customize" it to make it "cool". Now it's living with the
(\o/)'s
/_\

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane!!

Patti

nematode

In the 2k OB its hell. You have to take the glove compartment off using lots of force, the side trim next to the shifter using force, have to remove about a dozen screws (really about 7)....just to change 2 little filters that just pop in. It took me about 1 hour the first time I tried it because of the brute force involved and there was a -10 deg wind chill when I decided to do it.

I wonder if people are blowing it off? I have not heard any complaints about it at all. Not even one. The dealers will not change it when required unless you ask specifically and then you have to wait for the part to come in. Neither dealer near us had it in stock. I change ours every 10k miles. Its supposed to be done every 7500miles or 1 year. Its pretty dirty after 10 miles but its such a pain......I wonder what the dealer would charge. Probably quite a bit because it needs lots of hands-on time (at least 20min if you know what you are doing).

Has anyone else tried this in the OB????

ateixeira

Nah, mine wasn't much of a classic. '81 Mustang Ghia, 3.2l straight 6. It had so much room in the engine bay you could sit inside while you worked on it. Which was often.

nematode: it's much easier in the Forester and Impreza models. Check it out:

http://thejuiceman.homepage.com/air.html

Just loosen two screws, slide the single filter in (yes, there's only one), and reinstall the cover.

You get me back on the rear diffy protector, though. You can just screw it on Outbacks and Imprezas - while I had to remove the exhaust!

Guess the Impreza is the easiest to work on.

-juice

texsubaru

Well, I'm not a physicist nor a meteorologist, but I think wind chill (as a general concept, that is, not as the specific "feels-like temperature" usage heard on your evening newscasts) has some practical, albeit rather limited, effect on inanimate objects. I believe cold wind blowing will tend to help dissipate ambient heat off any surface exposed to it, like a car windshield, faster than nonwindy conditions. But I believe it cannot actually drop the temperature of that surface below the actual air temperature around it. So I suppose if cold wind was whipping around a wiper fluid line after you parked your vehicle outside at night (with the hood up, maybe?) when the air temperature was below freezing, the fluid might drop to freezing faster than it would if it was sheltered from that wind, but if the air temperature is, say, 30 degrees, the fluid in the line shouldn't cool below 30 degrees no matter how fierce the wind. None of which has any practical use to the issue of declogging wiper ducts, so I'm suddenly not altogether sure why I'm even typing this theory ... ?

ateixeira

Now that I think about it, several times I've had the washer fluid on my windshield freeze, but only when I start moving. I get a micro-thin layer of ice on my windshield.

How is that explained?

-juice

paisan

Juice,
I think because you have the liquid squirting onto a cold surface and a great surface area (kinda the way a thin layer of eggs on a hot frying pan will solidify faster than a large amount of eggs in a smaller frying pan)

-mike

ateixeira

That makes sense, but if the actual temperature isn't any colder, why does it freeze?

Maybe my wind-chill idea wasn't so bad after all.

-juice

paisan

I think that those "good to -20f" claims are a big bogus. I haven't tested em, but from my experience, they freeze before -20.

-mike

ateixeira

I fully agree. The blue stuff freezes even above zero. I'd say even in the teens sometimes.

But noone has explained why mine doesn't freeze in the lines, but then freezes on the windshield while I'm in motion.

Calling all thermodynamics specialists!

-juice

armac13

I would suggest that the lines are in somewhat protected areas receiving heat from the engine compartment, car interior, etc. Even when standing still, heat dissipating through the wind shield may be enough to keep it liquid (a slight trapped layer). Start moving and you have a constantly replenished supply of cold air to dissipate the heat. Sounds good anyway!

Ross

p0926

Juice- Good question. I too have sprayed wiper fluid on a cold windshield only to have it freeze (but not before coating the entire surface) ;-( And we're talking temps in the 20 degree above (not below) range!

FYI- the 2001's still have the sucky rear washer dribble/spit nozzle.

-Frank P.

ramon

the only time when my windshield washer didn't work was after a massive ice snow storm bonanza. the driver side nozzle froze. I think it was clogged with ice. Poor me had to rely on the passenger size of the windshield. So, yeah.... it does get stuck when there's some kinda freak snow/ice storm happening.

fernieguy

Up here in Canada we expeirience the freezing of windshield washer fluid quite a bit. the reason it doesn't usually freeze in the lines is because in order to freeze it has to expand a little, in the line it can't expand therefor it doesn't freeze. But once it hits the windsheild which is colder and it can expand, once it has that very thin film it can freeze (especially if you're silly enough to thin the stuff with water)if you crank up the defrost you can usually get rid of that frozen film pretty fast.

Stephen