scorch

I've got a '96 Outback Legacy and the ABS light just came on. I shut the car off and continued to hear a hissing, whirring sound from the engine compartment. I opened the hood and the sound was apparently coming from the hydraulic control unit (apparently just the hydraulic control unit, not the control "module," which according to Haynes is located in the dash in this car). This is located in the front passenger side corner of the engine compartment. It sounded like a pump going on and on, even though the car was off and the key was out of the ignition. I had to disconnect the wiring connector to the unit to get it to stop. What is likely going on, and what are my next steps? Thanks for helping.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. You recognize that subaru was wrong about ommitting a tranny fluid interval, yet don't believe that they could possibly be wrong about ommitting an interval for the throttle body. I've seen it in other manuals as a 60K maintenance item, but considering how easy it is and how often they get varnished with gunk, I think 30K is not unreasonable for the sake of preventive maintenance. If you saw how much gunk was on mine after 90K of mostly highway miles you might not begrudge a shorter maintenance period. Well, nobody's saying to do the job wrong! And of course you'd want to use throttle body cleaner to clean the throttle body to avoid problems. Makes sense, doesn't it? Besides, Subaru's TB is not coated anyway. There are no seals around the TB shaft and besides, if you use a rag and a Q-tip to clean it it's not an issue anyway. It's about as easy to do this job as it is to do an oil change, for the price of a two dollar gasket, with more immediate and noticeable improvement in performance if it's even a little bit dirty.

I was noticing that in the Haynes manual, there is no recommended interval for cleaning the throttle body. This item should be done every 30,000 miles to keep the idle smooth and the fuel injection efficient. Is there anything other maintenance particular to these cars that should have been included as a periodic/preventative item that isn't in the book?

I've got a '96 Legacy Outback. I was noticing some front end clunks, and I poked my head under there over the weekend to see if there was any looseness. Of course it's very difficult to put enough force on the components to reproduce the problem, and the only thing I noticed was some looseness going into the steering gear. Is this normal, or should it be as tight as everywhere else? There seemed to be some clunking coming from both sides - right where the steering gear boots are. So if I need to replace something, am I looking at replacing the entire rack, or is there an inner tie rod end behind the boots? Also, how should I proceed when even trying to jerk the wheels around with all of my strength doesn't really reproduce the sound that I'm hearing on the road?

I'm pretty sure it was fairly recently, within the last six months. It's not a huge tear, but it's not small either. I'm going to take a chance and just clean it really well and regrease.

I need to replace the outer front CV boot on my '96 Legacy Outback. Do I need to take the whole axle out, or can I just take it apart at the outer CV?

Does anybody know where I can get some poly control arm bushings for my '96 Outback?

What do you mean by "tongue weight?" I thought that term was specific to trailers.

I'd like a slightly more sporty (but not too stiff) suspension in my '96 outback wagon. The front end is starting to clunk so I'm planning on rebuilding it myself - bushings, tie rod ends, ball joints, & struts. What are some good options for aftermarket strut inserts that would give me tighter cornering without my wife complaining that it's too harsh? And secondly, is the strut job pretty easy? Does the top nut or anything else require any special tools?

Looking at the Haynes manual, it's not really clear if I need to remove the center console in order to swap out my burned out shift indicator light on a '96 Legacy Outback. Do I have to take the console and/or the shift knob off, or is it accessible by just prying off the cover? I would just pop it off to find out, but I'm kind of superstitious about interior plastic - I've broken enough pieces over the years to want to minimize what I'm doing with it. Also, I want to budget my time tomorrow evening.

Most people are not very good with money and make dumb consumer decisions. They are irrationally attached to warranties, they like to own cars when they have high rates of infant mortality and during the years of the most rapid and extreme depreciation. Their foolishness is our gain!

If it was still the original thermostat after 150K, I'd say that's pretty impressive that it would last that long! You shouldn't try to push it much more than 50-60K without swapping in a new one, even if the old one is still working. It's an inexpensive preventative maintenance item that will save you a world of pain and $$.

How many miles did the thermostat have on it? Even an OEM thermo won't last forever....

Oh, I get it. Because you're threatened that I challenge your ideas and naivety, without any basis or knowledge you're taking a blind stab at my socio-economic status. Nice. One day you will learn that what Mommy and Daddy can shell out for you doesn't make you what you are in this world. (And at least I can spell "probably.") Again, more irrational thinking. That's like saying if oil did its job, there would be no need for engine rebuilds. Or if tires did their job, we would never need new tires. And I don't recall that anybody ever said they performed "flawlessly." We merely asked you why you felt that they didn't do their job of filtering the fuel, to which you have yet to respond with anything of substance. Because of the higher quality of today's gasoline, in fact there is much less need for injector cleaning, so much so that nearly all manufacturers have dropped this item completely from their maintenance schedules. Twenty years ago that was not the case. Clogged injectors were much more common. Today it is not uncommon for cars to last their entire service life without needing an injector flush. Nobody has suggested that over a long period of time, your throttle body won't see some varnishing, and your injector pattern could never become compromised. These things happen, but they're the result of high mileage, not fuel quality or inefficacy of the specified filter.

That sounds about right. But for $200 I find it highly unlikely that the shop did a bench flush of your injectors, and cleaned your throttle body, which are the two most important items to do on high mileage engines that can see some accumulation of varnishing (and that has nothing to do with your imaginary "soot" or "dirty" gasoline in today's pumps. On that matter you are simply uninformed, and would find it difficult to substantiate your impressions (and by the way, merely repeating the claim is not the same as substantiation). But you obviously have more faith in your numbers than logic would dictate. Your scoop mod, especially, has about a zero chance of improving gas mileage, and if anything would only increase drag (to say nothing of dependability, as you will no doubt find out when the rains come again). Your choice of words implies that you think both things that you did were of positive benefit, and between the two they gained you four MPG. But the only thing that could have possibly helped was your injector cleaning. After all, five minus one is four, but that doesn't mean that the COMBINATION of five and one is four. And besides, you still have not explained how you got your numbers. As has previously been mentioned, unless you got these averages over several thousand miles, and either averaged out or controlled for influences such as driving conditions, driving speed, tail wind & head wind, grades, tire inflation, pump calibration, and several other factors, your numbers don't stand up to scrutiny. I don't know why you would ask me about my location, because that has nothing to do with it. Your beliefs in this matter are simply contrafactual, perhaps based in naive, vague political notions about the evil Republicans hell-bent on deregulation (this kind of ignorant bias is par for the course for today's college student, sadly). But there has never been more regulation on gasoline content than we have today, and in fact the quality of fuel (and other automotive fluids as well) is extremely high across all brands. Consumer Reports, among other groups, have done exhaustive studies to confirm this. And moreoever, the idea that today's gasoline contains "chunks" and "soot" that can magically pass through a Subaru fuel filter and clog up your injection system is laughable.