Ravenwoods

My daughter's 2000 Legacy has the Check Engine Light on and the code is P0420. Something about Bank 1. Automatic Transmission. About 180,000 miles. So is the code referring to the Oxygen sensors on the Catalytic Convertor? One upstream and one downstream from the catalytic converter? Or is this somewhere else? The car is running normally with good gas mileage.

Normally you can find used or new parts on ebay for reasonably prices but nothing came up. Rock Auto also doesn't have this part. There are other sources online but the prices are $80 or more. I might try the local car junk yard. Or I could swap out the one on my 95 Legacy with her 95 Legacy and see if I get a P0400 in my car.

None of the vacuum hoses are cracked, but the rubber is old. So maybe the old rubber results in a less than perfect vacuum? What is the control valve?

I found a non-automotive hand vacuum pump that did the job. So at idle when I connect the hand vacuum pump to the EGR it causes the car to idle very badly and almost die. So I guess that means the EGR is working fine? Maybe the system just needed cleaning. I'll get the car insured and take it for a 50 mile drive and see if the P0400 code comes back and see if the gas mileage is back to normal.

Okay, the tubing spanner or the flare nut wrench arrived this morning and I got the tube off this afternoon. The tube was not blocked and looked rather clean. No partial blockage either. Perhaps with all my cleaning perhaps I've solved the problem. But I would like to make sure the egr solenoid is working. Seems like I saw somewhere how to test that. Also Someone recommended testing the egr with a hand vacuum pump while the car is idling to see if the egr works.

Everything appears correct.

It was a Craftsman for $6.95 and free shipping.

I was thinking I should get a tubing wrench but didn't know the name for it. So I searched Ebay and lots of tubing wrenches from China, England and Australia. So that gave me a clue that maybe they go by a different name here in the USA. Seems they are known as Flare Nut wrenches in the US. Lots them show up in Ebay with shipping from the US. So I ordered one.

I found it, a vertical tube about 12 inches long. Nut takes a 17mm wrench. I sprayed some PB blaster fluid on the top one as it doesn't want to turn. It's such a thin nut I'm afraid of the wrench slipping and rounding the nut corners.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

What is the head? Which tube are you thinking about? So you traveled up from the lower 48 to do halibut fishing? Or you decided not to to go halibut fishing because rentals were too expensive? Did you look at cars on the Turo car rental place?

My daughters 95 Legacy, Automatic Transmission, almost 190,000 miles, has had the P0400 code for some time. Comes back almost immediately after I clear it. Engine idles fine, starts fine, runs fine, but very poor gas mileage (140 miles used 3/4 of a tank). So I removed the EGR and transducer yesterday and have been cleaning them. The transducer has a little removeable cap with a spongy filter there and I cleaned that too. I can depress the valve on the EGR and put my finger on that vacuum tube connection and it hold the valve open until I remove my finger. None of the tubes or hoses appear to be blocked. The all seem open. So what about the EGR solenoid? Is there a way to test if that needs replacing? We are preparing the car to sell since she recently bought a 2000 Legacy.

My daughter just bought the car for $1850. The owner volunteered to lower the price from $2000 because the Auto-Start stopped working and she hadn't been aware of that. Now our youngest daughter has the newest car. Now she well sell her 95 Legacy. Our eldest daughter has a 96 Legacy with only about 150,000 miles on it. My wife has the 98 Forester that doesn't want to die. I have a 95 Legacy with 207,000 miles on it and a 97 GMC 2500 truck. At one stage I had two 95 Legacies just for me, so we had three 95 Legacies all at the same time. I had picked up my second one for only $400. It needed lots of work so I fixed it up and then sold it for $1100.

Currently my 21 year old daughter is serious about the car. The owner hasn't advertised it online yet, as she is giving us a few days to decide on it.

This is a 2000, bought in 2003 by the current owners. She said there is a maintenance record indicating a Subaru Recall where they replaced the head gaskets, I presume this was done by the first owner.

This car has an automatic transmission and 176,000 miles on it. A decent set of summer tires as well as a great set of Toyo winter tires, both mounted on rims. The current owner is the second owner (since 2003) and has a complete history of maintenance done by a local shop here in Fairbanks, Alaska with an excellent reputation for working on Subarus. We don't get the corrosion here typical of other areas such as the lower 48 where salt is used to de-ice the roads. Salt is not used here so the car has little corrosion. The body looks fine. It has a new windshield too. My daughter currently has a 1995 Legacy L that works fine and has close to 190,000 miles on it, but is cosmetically challenged, with quite a bit of corrosion, and the ABS brakes don't work. She only drives about 3000 miles annually (probably less), dislikes driving, and never drives any significant distance, rarely if ever more than 30 miles away. So with the 2.5 engine from this era, I understand the head gaskets are the weak area. We do have a 1998 Forester S that we have had since about 2003 that currently has 316,000 miles on it. We had the local shop do the head gaskets and valve seals at about 160,000 miles and the car just keeps going. To be fair, the previous owner did set it up for towing behind an RV and they said about 50,000 miles on the odometer are towing miles. So the engine might only have 260,000 miles on it or less. So my main concern about buying this car are the head gasket issues. The engine is a SOHC. Our Forester has the DOHC. So I'm not sure if that makes a difference concerning the headgaskets. As far as my car repair skills, I have replaced all the timing belts and pulleys on the family fleet of four Subarus and changed out the CV axles when needed. But I've never replaced head gaskets or valve cover seals. So if we did buy this car and the head gaskets needed to be replaced I'm not sure about doing that myself. Would be worth it to replace the head gaskets on this car? The owner did take it to the local shop for an inspection before advertising the car to be sold. They did mention there is a head gasket leak. The owner isn't sure what the car is worth but mentioned $2000 as what she had in mind.

EBay has an OEM sensor for $9.79

We changed the timing belt, pulleys, water pump about 20,000 miles ago

Last night my daughter reported her car died just when she got home and wouldn't restart. This morning I dropped by and it started right up and there was a code for Crank position sensor malfunction. I cleared the code and took the car for a test drive. No problems. Should we just preemptively replace the sensor or wait and see if the problem repeats? Car is automatic transmission, wagon, less than 200,000 miles.

I found that the rear right wheel had a bent lateral control arm (rear arm) and it seems the wheel was toed out. I finally discovered this after the rear right tire showed excessive wear on the inside so that the steel belts became exposed. So I got new control arms (both front and rear) from Rock Auto. That long lateral bolt that often needs to be cut out was no problem. Mine wasn't rusted at all and came off easily. Now that winter is starting I will soon know if that eliminates the squirrelly feeling I always experience while driving on icy roads. I used a DIY toe adjustment method I found described in a YouTube Video to set the wheel to a neutral toe.

Turns out that the rear lateral control arm was bent. So I got both front and rear new arms from Rock Auto. I used a DIY toe alignment method to set the toe for the tire.

The struts only have 14,000 miles on them.

My 1995 wagon, AT, 201,000 miles, has inner tire wear. I am guessing that those bushings on the control arms need replacing. I was able to remove the long lateral link bolt that both control arms attach too quite easily. Often that bolt is seized and needs to be cut out. The outer rubber on the bushings looks very weathered and cracked but I don't detect any sloppiness. Should I assume they need replacing? The car drives straight down the road but in the wintertime the car acts squirrelly on the ice and snow. The previous owner did lots of driving on a long rough gravel road here in Interior Alaska. So that would probably account for bushing problems. Looking forward to advice.

My 1995 Legacy with an automatic transmission, has some starter issues. The battery terminals are clean and there doesn’t seem to be a bad connection. sometimes when turning the key there is a slight hesitation before the starter does anything. Twice it has acted like the battery was dead but the battery was fine. Today it happened again and it was several minutes before the starter returned to normal. Any suggestions on what the problem might be?

Thanks for the very interesting and useful information.