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Comments
'02 OB Wagon. TIA.
-Jason
I'd go for the aftermarket complete system. Add the Subaru tweeter kit if you don't already have it. Alternately, on the cheap, you could upgrade speakers first & see how that sounds.
Guy: 80 on I-5 btw Portland & Longview?!?! Must have been a no-traffic day! Last couple times I drove that stretch I must have picked the wrong time of day!
Cheers!
Paul
Guy, the fix for the floor mat in the rear compartment is a couple of bits of velcro on the underside of the mat. If you put these in the centre area, it will not obstruct access to the underfloor area
Cheers
Graham
I am really impressed about how Subaru really does a good job of matching car personalities to their niche market goals. The VDC is quiet, smooth, compliant, safe to my wife's goals, but with enough performance and handling for me. The WRX is brash, fast, fun to my goals, but practical and comfortable for my wife. She had refused entry to the Supra for over a year. Subaru seems to know my family well.
The cars also look great in the garage together. My wife thinks the WRX is the little irresposible brother of the OB.
Anyway, Happy New Year to all on this board. You have been both educational and fun over the last several months.
Mike
Question:
I know the Outback AWD must be flat-bedded when towing to avoid damage to the AWD system. Is it possible to incur damage to the drive system in an automatic car wash when the rollers pull or push just one set of tires to move the vehicle through the wash tunnel?
Thanks for any advice.
cw
-mike
Happy and Healthy and Safe New Year to all.
Mark
Happy new year, Eric
The GT is a little stiffer but not what you would notice a lot, the GT is to me an incredibly smooth car.
I origionally wanted an outback,but I also wanted the moonroofs, and they only come in the outback LTD. my wife did not want leather, I had leather in several cars and she hated it.
I also did not think I would be able to afford to buy new, but Subaru,s hold their value so well we gave up on used and bought the GT wagon new as this was the best compromise, I have no regrets we absolutely love this car.
My advice, buy the wagon although you may not always need the room it is nice to have when you do need it, also to me anyway the wagon is a much better looking car.
Cheers Pat.
Thanks again,
Jason
--
Jason: I agree with Paul, add the tweeter kit. You can get it for about $75 online, and it is easy to install. Regardless of what you do with the other speakers, this will improve sound quality significantly. While the stock speakers are not great, they sounded good enough to me. I left them alone.
I opted to add the Subaru CD player to my old Outback when I bought it. You can get that online for about $275-300, and it's also a fairly easy install. No question, an aftermarket CD/receiver is a better value and will probably sound better, but I wanted to stick with stock components. I think they blend in better and are less of an attraction to theives.
--
In other news, my parents drove off with my old 2000 Outback yesterday, on their way back to CT after their holiday visit. While I love my new Bean, that Outback was a great car and I am sorry to see it go. But, I'm glad it's going to a good home where I can visit from time to time! As my dad drove off and shifted gears, I got a good earful of the H4 rumble and it sounded nice (first time I heard it from the outside). Sort of like a farewell salute from the car, I think. I can only hope the Bean will be as great of a car, and early indications are that it will be even better.
Craig
Jim
It does sound like your clutch may not be operating correctly. If the dealer is not handling the problem right, contact Subaru via their 1-800 number, or talk to the Subaru rep (Patti) here on Edmunds. She takes good care of us.
For what it's worth, 1st is difficult to shift into on most vehicles when moving, since it doesn't usually have a synchro. However, I never had problems downshifting my Outback into 1st when entering my driveway, which I did almost every day -- it just took some practice to get the right touch.
I would not attempt to upshift from 1st into 2nd in stop and go traffic until you can hit at least 3000 rpm. Anything less, and you will most certainly lug the engine. In most stop and go situations, I left it in 1st gear all the time. You can certainly creep forward while engaging the clutch, but I would expect that the clutch should be fully engaged for anything more than about 5mph. On a flat surface, the car will happily roll along in 1st gear at part throttle.
So I guess my point is that I know the car drives fine in stop and go. If yours doesn't, then something is probably wrong with the clutch engagement. Definitely contact Subaru.
Craig
Back to today. My wife and I like the Bean so much I'm looking at replacing a second car with a Legacy. I called the salesman to ask if I could test drive one that showed up in their inventory. His response was: If you are looking to buy a car from us then they would let me drive a car. "Our management doesn't want to put needless miles on our new cars." I told him I would pass.
What a way to do business. Chances are they would have been in the ball park price wise now because there are no factory to dealer rebates to not pass on. Don't think I'll try them again. Just thought I'd pass on a dealer experience. Jack
Cheers!
Paul
-mike
The reason I did not pick up on this earlier was that you really have to move it with deliberate force...more than I was comfortable doing with a new car. Apparently everyone else who bought OB's at this dealership figured it out because it's never been brought to my salesman's attention. Either that, or their mirrors happened to be adjusted "correctly" right from the factory.
Anyway, now that we have the '02 LTD and have driven it more than a test drive,, I can say that it is head and shoulders above our '97 LTD. Smoother, QUIETER (that drove me NUTS), better audio, and the interior re-design is damn near perfect. Now, if we have the same luck with reliability, it'll truly be great.
Thanks again everyone,
Bob
Does anybody have information on this model? Afer reading all the good stuff about the RE950's I was thinking about trading up to them before I put too many miles on these. This guy already said he couldn't "trade" or credit me because they cannot be sold to another customer as new (or even "almost new") and the factory wouldn't be held liable if something happened.
Thanks and Happy New Year to all!
Bob
Other than some initial shuddering on damp mornings (common to several stick shift cars I've owned), I have had no problems with this transmission. It shifts as good as any Honda or Toyota I've had. If you have that many problems, the dealer should to something.
GAM2
You think your mileage is bad...how about 14mg in the city, 17-17.5 combination and 20.5 on the highway. I have an '01 VDC. This car has been back to the dealership 4 times for this. However, they never find anything. Even didtheir own mileage test and they said they got 23.5 in the city....no way. Their report was 106 miles, 4.5 gallons. Sure enough, I went to pick up the car, there was the 106 miles on the trip A odometer. I stopped at gas station less than a mile away from the dealership and the car took another 1.2gallons !!!! Now I don't drive like a hard and but I'm no feather foot either. I guess you would say I'm pretty average. I've kept a detailed log for the past 2000 miles and this lousy mileage has been consistent. We have a lemon law in Arizona and I plan on using it if this is not resolved somehow. Now I must say, I really like the way this car handles. It's a dream to drive and if I could resolve this performance issue I'd be a happy costumer
highndry
A day or so ago, I posted a queery as to what happens if the oil is overfilled. My fuel consumption had leapt 15% after a recent service and I could not get a reliable reading on the oil level. Took it to the dealer today who confirmed the oil had been overfilled. They believe this would result in the increased fuel consumption as the loading from pushing the oil around in the crankcase would increase. I will now recheck consumption and check if this is correct.
Cheers
Graham
Keep in mind the Passat 4Motion and Volvo XC get 17mpg in the EPA city cycle. Edmunds routinely gets 14-17mpg in mid-size SUVs with less power than your H6, too.
Hopefully the engine is green, and your mileage will improve by 2 or 3 mpg once it's fully broken in. My Forester took more than a year to reach peak efficiency.
So, I was wondering about the new Outback tires. The sidewall just says "Potenza". It's not the same as the RE92, though, which is V-rated and lower in profile. I thought it might have been the same as the RE950, but I guess not.
-juice
-juice
Bob
If you look at the 02 Outback brochure, you can see that they airbrushed "Bridgestone Potenza" on the 00-01 product photos which had the Firestone Wilderness tires. Very sneaky. For a while, I was wondering if they just re-badged the Wilderness tires, but the new Potenzas are in fact different than the Wilderness tire, and they drive/handle much better.
Which reminds me -- I drove to work this morning after my Bean had been resting in the garage for about 5 days. With the old Wilderness tires, I would have expected some vibration for the first 5-10 minutes of driving as the flat spots worked out. Not an issue with the Potenzas -- seems they did not take a set while parked.
Craig
But the overheating problem hints at a bad water pump. Some mechanics recommend you change this when the timing belt is done, and that's at 60k miles for most cars.
Are all the accessory belts OK? If belt tension was bad, it's possible that they were slipping and not providing the needed power to the water and oil pumps.
Another thing to check is the rubber hoses for the radiator coolant. Any small leak would cause a loss in pressure, and that basically kills the effectiveness of the cooling system.
97k is certainly an early death, but parts like belts and hoses are items that wear and need replacement, whether it's a Honda, Mercedes, or Subaru. A malfunction is these wear-and-tear systems could have caused your more serious problem.
-juice
Bob
I'm sure it's in the owner's manual.
-juice
and here's a photo of my tires:
The tread looks the same to me. So maybe these Potenzas are RE92s after all.
Craig
Bob
Maybe they copied the tread design, but went with a more durable rubber.
-juice
Bob
With THULE Excursion roof carrier: 21.0mpg all highway 70-75mph. Measured over 962miles.
W/O carrier: 24.1mpg all highway 70-75mpg. Measured over 1151miles.
Conclusion: The carrier is a MPG killer but we need the space. Granted it better than a bigger SUV but I expected closer to 30mpg highway. When it was newer it was a little better but since about 10k there was a slow decline which stopped at 25k. It did not increase after the 30k "tune-up".
I dont think you will win a lemon-law case just based on poor fuel economy in any state. The EPA determines "average" fuel economy using a completely crazy set of calculations to simulate different driving conditions on a dyno. Subaru does not determine them. I guess you could sue the EPA for misrepresenting estimated fuel economy. However, since its an estimate, deviations from the average are expected. According to my personal calculations the H4 (auto) should be listed at 17city/24highway. I dont think the EPA numbers of 22/27 are correct for the H4 PII engine with the auto. I would expect your larger more powerful H6 auto to be a little worse....so 14city/21highway is not out of line with what I would expect.
Lots of times belts and hoses will look fine, but they should still be replaced at a certain age (usually with the timing belt). For instance hoses usually corrode from the inside out.
Your brother is likely a great resource, I hope he can fix it for a reasonable amount of money. He may also be able to tell you what caused the failure once he rebuilds it.
-juice
Is your brother going to open the engine up and see what happened?
Bob
Bob
Lorrie: I think your multiple posts are coming up because you are hitting the reload button on your browser. It's a pain, but you have to manually re-enter the page after posting, rather than just reload it, to avoid re-posting your message.
I hate to say this, but catastrophic engine problems that happen within a week or two of dealer service are often caused by something they did. I would be on the lookout for low fluids, disconnected wires/hoses, etc. Wouldn't be the first time that a mechanic ruined a perfectly good engine.
Craig