Commuter

I also have a 97 OB. 402,000 km now. Automatic transmission. I've never really had any idle issues, but I have had the low rpm stumble a couple of times. The first time, about 3 or 4 years ago, it was from a carbon build up. A MotorVac cleaning resolved that. Then it happened a year back. My usual tricks (gas cleaner, a couple of tanks of premium) did not get rid of it. I started suspecting the O2 sensor. I never had any codes. They said the sensor was ok, just acting a bit "slow". I eventually decided to change it. The low rpm stumble improved dramatically immediately. After several weeks, it was totally gone. So... I'm saying that you might have an issue with a weak O2 sensor causing the engine to run rich. And these cars run rich to begin with (fuel maps are that way it seems). One other thing. When I had my engine changed just over 2 years ago, I opted to put in the liquid filled engine mounts that the 2000+ Legacys use. This might be partly why I don't get a shake developing. But, as I mentioned above, I didn't have a shake issue even the first time it happened. I've read of issues with half shafts, but I can't really comment there. I fail to understand how they would cause a shake when you are not moving. Well, I can think of a couple of things, but it just seems very strange to me. When the shake is happening, is it only at that particular rpm? That is, if you touch the gas to increase the rpm by (say) 100, does the shake get worse, or go away? Is it a case of a resonance frequency being excited? Commuter

This thread has lots of info for you as well. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2498&highlight=climate+control+backlight Commuter

One calculates gas milage by distance driven over gas consumed. It has nothing to do with the gauge. Eg - Start with a full tank. Reset trip odometer. Drive 300 miles (or whatever). Fill up tank. Note how many gallons to fill the tank. Let's say 10 gallons. Therefore 300/10 = 30 miles to the gallon. What the gauge is reading when you fill up doesn't matter. What you can determine is some idea of the accuracy of the gauge. This comes back to the original post in the thread. If you have a 15 gallon tank (for example) and you have put in 10 gallons to fill it up, one would expect the gauge to have been reading 1/3 full (5 gallons were remaining). If it was reading otherwise, then there is a gauge error. My experience has been that gas gauges are not the most accurate, or linear of devices. It would not surprise me one bit that they are purposely non-linear. I can see how that would have come about, as also discussed in a prior post. Commuter

I know of 3 replacement part numbers (in other words, they are on the 4th gasket design) for the Phase I engines. AFAIK, the one I got just over 2 years ago (p/n ends with 610 IIRC) is still the current one. The gasket is a 4 layer affair. The orginal was three layer. I don't know about the others (but they have been superceded anyway). 2.25 years and 140,000 km later, my head gaskets are still holding together. Knock wood. Commuter

Along with the ATF cooler (which I totally agree with), I'd suggest you put in synthetic transmission fluid. Again, just another margin of safety you can give yourself. Synthetic ATF will run cooler, and tolerate higher temperatures before breaking down. If it was my car and this had happened, I'd be changing out the ATF, even if it was just changed recently. Heat is the cause of 90% of transmission failures from what I've read. Heat rapidly degrades the fluid. The loss of lubrication properties results in wear and tear. Result - damage occurs. Result - big $$$. Commuter

I have a 97 OB with an EGR issue that's been going on for a year. Hopefully, it will be resolved tomorrow. (Nothing major, it's just that the first failed item found wasn't the only failed item, and I've just been lazy about dealing with it.) There are a few threads on here discussing EGR problems. It seems to be fairly common around the age and milage of your vehicle. Commuter

It depends. There is no way to really answer you. I had 2 or 3 alignments done by the dealer. At their old location, they use to send them down the street to some other shop because they didn't have their own equipment. Result - I always had a "slight" pull to the left. I was beginning to think it was endemic to the car. Then... bought a set of tires from a specialty tire shop. I had them do an alignment. No pull. Best so far. I think they did a second one too, but not sure. Recently, I had the dealer change my rear struts. I let them talk me into an alignment, as they are now in a new location and have their own, brand new, SOTA equipment. Result - a "hint" of pull to the left. *shrug* YMMV. Commuter

Where are you located? Unless you have a very oddball assembly, you will have the Phase I DOHC engine. I'm assuming you are in North America. You can tell if it is DOHC or SOHC by looking at the timing belt covers. Commuter

Those are hooks for tether straps. I know that there are 3 positions in my 97 OB. It's not for putting a seat in the back. They are there so that you can anchor a tether strap (from a car seat in the back seat) to any of the three (left, center, right) car seat positions. I hear what Strakes is saying about the size of the car seats. I had nice trim ones for my 2 kids. I could have fit 3 across in my 97 OB, albeit probably a bit snug. The bulky ones that I see now, probably not. If you use reasonably sized seats, I think you'd be fine until they a couple of years old anyway. Commuter

As far as I know, the position of that loop didn't change from the 97 that I have to the 2000 (next generation) that you have. You just have to reach in there with your hand and fish around until you find it. It is slightly off center, to the passenger side in my car. Close to the seat belt buckles. I had to do the same thing a few years ago. I couldn't recall just how it came loose, what was holding it, where that catch was etc. I eventually found that "loop". Commuter

Doing this will ruin some transmissions (I've heard BMW) in very short order. I don't know how Subaru transmissions respond though. What do you mean by "starting" it? Did you just "bump" it over? Or start the engine? How long did you let it run for? Even with doing this, there was probably still several quarts left in the transmission. Between the torque converter, cooling lines to radiator, valve body, etc. When you drain one of these transmissions, only about 4 quarts of the full ~10 quart capacity comes out. Get the level right first by draining the excess, then hope that you haven't done any damage. Commuter

I have a 97 OB and I've had a couple of rear bearings go, both on the right side. I don't think I'd change the other one unless it goes bad. 400k km and I haven't had to touch the left one yet. In my case, the seal area on the half shaft was pitted, so they had to change it too. Fortunately, there are reasonably priced remanufactured half shafts. If tire rotation didn't change the noise location, it is most likely the bearing. That would be my guess. It does sound like a noisy tire in the early stages of failure, and slowly gets progressively worse. Commuter

I have a 97 OB. The way the head gasket fails, the "leak" may only open up when the engine is under some load. Eg - towing, highway driving, hills. There have been cases where people drove around town and everything was fine. Compression tests were fine. All the tests indicated AOK. But... put some load on the engine... and the overheating would start. I never actually saw the gauge move at all on my car, and I was watching it closely. I discovered 'residue' in my coolant expansion bottle. I caught it early. And I was doing 90% highway driving at the time. I figure the leak was still quite small in my case. I never overflowed the expansion bottle, but it did fill nearly to the top. I had the bubbles coming up thru the bottle as well. Another tell-tale sign. Commuter

Can't help you on that one. What is it doing? I had that too (97 OB). My new engine is better, but it's still there. Other than the noise, it doesn't seem to really do any damage. As long as it goes away when warmed up! Been there, done that. Keep your fingers crossed. Unless you have a really oddball setup, you will have the Phase I engine (DOHC). Just look at the timing belt covers. You can tell from that. As I said above, piston slap alone doesn't seem to kill these engines. www.ccrengines.com is the place to go for a rebuilt engine. The engine does not have to come out to do that head gaskets. Commuter

Are you sure that the delay circuit is inside the stalk? For my generation of vehicle? I would think that it would just be a variable resistor or something like that feeding the module. I'm not electrical though. However, I did figure out how to add the RainTracker and I'm glad I did. In 3.5 years on this board, I haven't heard of anyone just changing the stalk to get variable intermittent wipers on a 96-99 Outback. Then again, I'm not sure that anyone has tried. My dealer is not perfect, but I've rarely caught them out on stuff, technically. Why doesn't someone try it? Then we'll know. Commuter

No! I have the exact same car. The dealer checked into it a few years ago. Told me that I'd need the stalk, a different module, some wiring probably (labor), etc. The whole thing was going to end up costing in the order of $400++ Cdn! (You could look thru junkyards for stuff from a Limited model, but I still don't know if it is directly swappable.) There is a cheap little module from Canadian Tire that can add intermittent wipers. I just couldn't find a spot to mount it that I felt I could live with. (I had used this module on a couple of 80's Civics.) I decided to install a raintracker. I love it. Works great. www.raintracker.com You could try a search, but I think the posts I put on here are gone now (old ezboard). I have a second one that I never installed. It was to go into my wife's van. Commuter

Not as far as I know. Impreza (platform) from Japan. Legacy (platform) from USA. I hope this is still up to date info. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Commuter

They added the "torque box" in front of the throttle body. That was one thing. I also have a "Shop Talk" somewhere that talks about shortened pistons, moly coating on the pistons, etc. There were some internal changes from 96 to 97. I think they even played with the compression ratio a bit. Commuter

If it wasn't already changed, I'd change it. Commuter

www.ccrengines.com Rick and Emily. Several people have bought from them. They know their stuff. In fact, probably know more about how to eliminate (well, at least mitigate) the weaknesses of the 2.5L Phase I engine. The warranty should tell you something. I was thinking of going that way with my 97 OB. The head gaskets failed at 160k miles. I decided to just fix the gaskets. Then the bottom end failed. Now that I'm told is quite unusual, and I don't think one had anything to do with the other in my case. I just had a weak bearing that was already nearing failure and I didn't know it. The latest gaskets seem to be working. Knock wood, but I've got over 2 years and 87k miles on my 'new' engine. Commuter

Are you talking on the inside, along the bottom of the window? "Moulding strip along top edge of interior door panel" perhaps? I'm not sure of the exact name for the second item. The triangular piece is a 'cover' over the screws for the exterior mirrors. At least that is what it sounds like to me that you are describing. I still have mine, since I put on the little tweeters in that spot. I cracked one when I was removing it. You should be able to find them for a few dollars. Commuter

I've chimed in on extended warranties in the past. I use to weight in more on the "don't bother" side. Today, I'm more of a fence sitter. Cars are getting more and more complex, and more and more expensive to repair. It's not just Subarus. But I will agree that Subaru has slipped in reliability since the mid 90's. No first hand experience on that. Simply a trend observed by being on this board for 3.5 years now. In many respects, the answer can only come from the individual. Everyone's situation is different. It's a financing issue. Can one absorb an unexpected big repair bill? Can one be disciplined with maintaining their own 'car repair' fund? Can one do some of their own repairs? Or have access to people that can? It's a comfort issue. Are you willing to pay (for the warranty and financing) peace of mind? You have to decide for yourself in the end. Yes, it all is a bit of gambling. I tend to keep my cars for a long time (10+ years). I would like a new car every 4 years, but I don't like to "always" have a car payment. In the 90's, my wife and I went 5.5 years with no car payments on 2 vehicles. I paid like $205 Cdn for a warranty on my 85 Civic way back when (never used it), but I have not bought an extended warranty since. If you keep a car much past 5 years, I think one has to "expect" a major repair bill. It may not happen at all. It might not happen until 10 years. But I think you are fooling yourself (and I don't care what the brand) if you expect a car to not need some major work as you approach 10 years. It may be expected work that one can at least plan for and schedule (eg, a clutch, struts, radiator, A/C, CV's, etc.), or it might be a 'sudden' breakdown (eg transmission failure). It's a trade off for owning your car and not having monthly payments. To each their own. This simply has been my approach so far. I've heard over and over that there is about 50% markup on these warranties, so one must bear that in mind when purchasing. I've also heard that one can wait and buy the warranty just before your basic warranty runs out. Another option. Yes, on the whole, the "warranty" companies expect to make money from their sales. I don't know if I have helped at all. Just food for thought. Commuter

I was going to suggest the contacts as well. There were quite a few posts on this board about 2 years ago with people having that exact issue with mid 90ish vehicles. We are at a point in time now where the same problem will probably show up in the late 90's vehicles. There was one other post recently, but I don't recall if that was actually the person's problem. I have a 97 OB. 400k km (as of yesterday). So far, no starter issues (knock wood). Commuter

The A/C on my 97OB is what I would call "marginal". I forget the temp drop that the dealer told me they measured, but I think it was only in the 20F or 25F range. Whatever, I was told it was within limits. The OB has a lot of interior volume which doesn't help. I find that I will usually drive for a few minutes with a window or 2 lowered to try to move some of the hot air out, then I'll put on the A/C with recirc on number 3 or 4 fan speed. Even at that, on a hot summer day, it can take about half an hour of driving to get the residual heat out of the car. Then I can drop back to no. 2 fan speed. Without recirc, the system really can't handle more than about an 80F day. It's livable. Better than no A/C (like my 85 Civic). But it can't blast you with cold air for a 5 minute run to the store. In those cases, I usually don't even turn it on. I've never noticed too much of a hit on gas milage to be honest. At least not with highway driving. Commuter

A better topic title would have helped. There is a ton of info in this thread. Probably everything you ever wanted to know about climate control lighting. Scoobymods (sp?) has a good post on this too, with pics. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2498&highlight=backlight Commuter