otis

you raise a good point but it will be a tough burden on my part to say the dealer is negligent. they did what I asked them to do- change a timing belt. I think they would be a "good" dealer for recommending the idler, but not doing so doesn't make them negligent (just means they're an overpaid bunch of techs and not true "advisors" as they claim.) the challenge then becomes I have to be my own best advocate. sites like this are great, but things fall through the cracks when it comes to me absorbing and processing it all. to be quite honest, I'd love to be ignorant and have the trust to rely on my mechanic to do right. the car is at another dealer (just because it happened to break down by them). I don't trust them to be a good advisor either after their stong recommendation was to pay $1000 to find out how much more it would cost to fix. but what can those of us that are not tight with trusted mechanics do?

I talked to the owner and he was very helpful. He's going to sell me a rebuilt engine. If I were in MI, it would be pretty easy for him to do the swap. I ended up hiring the dealer to do the swap. It's more expensive obviously, but it also comes down to not knowing a local shop. All the shops I called just quoted me the standard "shop hours" to do the swap and a lot ended up being more expensive than the dealer. Some were cheaper, even considering I had to pay for another tow, but I decided to bite the bullet and pay extra for the convenience of already having it at the dealer. In the end, I'm paying less than the original dealer "best case scenario" of $3700 but paying $1000 more than what it should have cost to begin with. Oh well.

Holy moly John! I may owe you a dollar. I don't know which pulley failed, but it was a dealer that did the hg/timing belt work. As for the $1000 to pull apart the engine, that must be par for the course. I don't know what their shop rate is, but eyeballing their price chart for brakes and oil changes, I bet they're pricey. Unfortunately, I think I broke down in an expensive suburb of Minneapolis. I'm asking every one around about Indy shops.

I'm in the Minneapolis area. The car is ok otherwise. In fact I had the timing belt changed ~115k miles when I had to replace the HG for a 2nd time. There are some minor issues I can live with. Just got off with the dealer and he's giving me some estimates ranging from $3700 and up. Of course I realize I'm paying dealer rates. I would love to explore the indy shop route, but my problem is I dont know any. I got a couple of recomendations from friends, but they're not interested in doing it. The dealer just priced himself out as an option.

like the title says, I screwed up my car, a 2000 Forester with 140k miles. It's at the dealer now. They are saying at a minimum, I need new valves, but, more likely, more. For $1000, they will take apart the engine and tell me how much more pain I have in store. I suppose it didn't help that I tried to keep starting the engine after the pulley failure and having things smash together. Dealer mechanic also said he could only turn the crank so far without hitting "metal." I told him I didn't see the point of spending $1000 to tell me I need thousands of dollars worth of repairs if the car is only worth $2-3k (when running). I told him I'd think about it. I called another indy shop and asked about it and the possibility of just swapping the engine. He was ball parking about 2-3k to replace valves and recommended against getting a new engine. His thought was you don't really know what you're getting when you get these replacement engines. I don't mind spending a little more than what the car is worth to get it running again. THe car is in reasonable shape otherwise. But once I start hitting the $4k repair mark, I start to think that money gets me into some other car options. What are the odds that the repair will go that high? Dealer won't tell me unless I spend the $1000 to pull apart the engine (I don't think they're trying to be crooked, they just can't see what needs to be replaced it seems). Any thoughts or advice?

A couple of years ago a CEL came on (p0328- knock sensor). I always said I would change it myself and never did. So finally after 2 years, I just had the dealer do it last week. The first thing I noticed when I got the car back, was a slight sputtering when I was stopped at a light. A couple of days later, the CEL came on again. I went to Autozone and the codes came as follows: P0328- knock sensor P0127- throttle position sensor (although another reference said air too hot) P0171- fuel too lean P0130- O2 sensor fault I guess my question is this... Did the dealer do something wrong? Or did all these other problems occur during the 2 years of my putting off any repairs? (I never read the code in the 2 years, so if there were other codes before my dealer visit, I wouldn't have known.)

Here's my "anecdotal" tale.... I've bought batteries from whatever store was convenient to where I've lived or worked or happened to be on sale. so far I have yet to notice a difference.

there's always the anecdotal tale the salesguy will tell you where he knew of a guy who bought the extended warrenty and came across some catastrophic problem which would have cost him thousands of dollars. while there are certainly true tales like that, there seem to be MORE anecdotal stories where: a) the extended warrenty company goes out of business the warrenty company finds a way do deny your claim (I was told headgaskets are "wear" items, like brake pads, and therefore not covered) c) nothing "catastophic" goes wrong within the first 7 yr/100k miles. Here's my anecdotal tale. We bought a warrenty on our first subaru. we paid about $1000 and got about $200 worth of repairs. we would have gotten another $150 worth of repairs had the warrenty not expired the week before we were aware of the last problem.

I think it's ok... hard to tell unless you see/drive it. I did notice it had a "start/stop" button. I just don't get this trend. There are some cars where you just leave the key in your pocket and you just press the start button (pretty cool). But then most cars I see with this feature, you have to insert your key, then press the start button- kinda stupid if you ask me. It just makes starting your car just a little more cumbersome. Other than the "gee-whiz" factor, what function/convenience does adding a start button offer?

no, I think you missed my point about the for sale ads (although I suppose this proves data can be interpreted based on the observer). My point was that if a car can't even last 200k miles, it will head to the scrap yard. meanwhile cars that continually last will be passed along- maybe even sold on sites like cars.com. I was only trying to show cars with HIGH odometer readings do exist. In contrast, there are virtually no audi's out there that can last >200k miles in comparison. I came to my (apparently) not so scientific study because I saw a ford festiva on the road and was surprised it even ran. also I remember seeing quite a few of those cars around during the early 90's, but until I saw that one, I didn't think they existed anymore. My (questionable) conclusion was that those cars were junk and by some miracle, one car did not make it to the scrap yard. So, I should have been more clear, but my earlier post was to show that Subarus DO HAVE high mileage expectancy.

this is by no means scientific, but just for kicks, I went on a cars.com and searched for all subarus from 1990-1995 with over 200k miles and came up with 17. meanwhile honda had just over 100. I don't have any numbers of how many cars each company sold during that period, but I bet honda sold at least 6x the cars subaru did. now a few things to keep in mind: a. past performance is not any indication of future performance. b. these are 2 very different population sizes, so a comaprison isn't really fair. c. cars for sale is not the be-all-end-all indication of reliablity. but all that said, I think I can anecdotaly say subarus can hold up with some of the other "reliable" brands. PS. only 1 audi showed up under the same criteria.

In my experience, increasing the tire pressure gives a slight or negligible increase in gas mileage opposed to decreasing the tire pressure which gives a noticable decrease in gas mileage. I guess what I'm saying is you can blow your tires up to 44 psi and you won't see that much of an improvement in gas mileage. of course YMMV (hey a literal interpretation of that expression). this is after the fact, but you may consider getting low rolling resistance tires next time if mileage is a concern.

The HG will cost $850 or so and the timing belt would be changed for the price of the parts only. So, it makes sense to do it if I was already going to change the timing belt anyway. My question is specific to the water pump and some of the other "recomended" work that should be done at this age/mileage. what is the marginal cost of getting the water pump changed if I am getting the HG done? in other words, how much more money will I have to spend? Then as a separate question, how much would it cost to replace the water pump as a SEPARATE job. What I'm getting at is that I am trying to be cheap this month. In doing so, am I missing out on the opportunity to get "free labor" while the engine is apart for the HG job? EDIT: apparently I can't read and after re-reading nipper's post, I see I may have to pay for labor all over again if I elect not to change some of these additional items now.

So, our 00 forester is at 110k and we have our 2nd HG leak in 3 yrs. Since it's due for the timing belt, we're having the dealer replace that while they are doing HG. now i'm going back and looking at some older posts and folks recomend doing water pump and an assortment of seals. I understand the concept of preventative maintenance, and under normal circumstances, I might go ahead and do the whole kit an kaboodle. But $$ is tight this month, and I'm already upset enough about having to do the HG again. Here's my Q: what will it cost me to replace some of these items at a later time? in other words, is a lot of the labor redundant (as in the case of timing belt while doing HG)? so what would be the marginal cost of getting some of these items replaced now while the engine was apart vs. what it would cost to do this on a separate visit. thanks.

I once took someone to small claims court and won my judgement. Well that was great except I never saw a dime. Winning is one thing while collecting is another. if the guy didn't have insurance, I have a feeling he wasn't rolling in the dough. Like I said before, it's best just to file a claim against your insurance company then they will go after the other guy (if they think it's even worth it)