cheetah8799

On my old 98 Outback I had them removed. They were constantly rattling and I couldn't keep them fixed. Other folks here had said they did it, and a family friend who owns a shop advised removing them as well. So I had him cut them off and it worked fine for me.

Thanks Mike104. Great info, will help a lot. I had looked up the recall a few weeks ago actually, and it is rear only, thanks for suggesting it though. I wish I could be that lucky.

Hey gang, I am driving a 2005 Outback Wagon 2.5i, 5sp manual. I believe my wheel bearings are bad on the front left wheel. Loud humming/vibrating at speeds over ~20 mph when going straight and louder when turning left, smooth and quiet when going right. With the 2005 it looks like Subaru switched to a hub assembly instead of having to press the bearings. The local shop here quoted me the same price Subaru sells for, $150, plus labor. I can buy online for $130 roughly. Since it is an assembly, I figure I can likely do this myself, I hope. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for doing this project?

Thanks wtdash, I did check for play in both rear wheels, there was none.

Bending back the shield around the disc didn't change anything. I noticed the calipers are probably bad, old, rusty, no lube. When going around corners, taking a left corner makes the back right wheel grind. Right turn makes the back left wheel grind. Wheel bearings maybe? They have never been checked as long as I've owned the car...

Just got back from another test drive and also inspected a few things. I found after being more careful about my corner testing that if I go slow, like crawling, it does not rub. I found that if I go faster, like making the car lean a little around the corner, I can make it rub worse and worse the faster I go. I listened closer to the sound, and it does seem to be coming from each wheel and not the center. I suspect the reason I couldn't hear it from outside the car two days ago is because we were going slow in a parking lot and instead of taking the turns fast like I tested today. - The shield behind the rotor was in fact an initial problem for the short 1/4 mile drive I did in the dark the night I did the back-right brakes. I cleaned it up of loose rust and bent it back a little and that problem went away. I inspected again today, not touching as far as I can tell. Not seeing any bad scoring from it at least. - The disc and pads appear to be giving off more brake dust than I would have expected after 20 miles of driving it home and a mile or so of street corners today. There is some scoring where the pad edge is on the disc, not sure if this is normal. They are cheap discs and pads, so maybe. - Heat shielding looks good. The majority was removed a year ago due to horrible rattling, the large piece on top is firmly in place though. - Tranny mounts look solid. - I have not pulled the drive shaft to check the carrier bearing, wanted to check the easier stuff first. I am going to go back to bend back some more of the shielding around the discs to see if that makes a difference. Though it currently has what should be plenty of room, and if there is that much flex in the system it makes me a bit nervous. Any thoughts?

1998 Legacy Outback, 158k miles, 5sp manual. In the last couple days my brother and I finished two projects on my old Outback. We replaced the viscous coupler in the transmission, as well as replaced the rear brake discs and pads. We did the tranny work with it in the car, meaning we disconnected the exhaust, front half of the drive shaft, and pulled the back of the tranny off. Everything went well with the tranny work, but I had some rust flakes causing noise in my back rear wheel, so I went back today to fix that up and properly test-drive the vehicle. It seems that the torque bind issue that I replaced the viscous coupler to resolve is now in fact fixed. However now there is another new noise coming from the rear end of the vehicle. It runs and sounds fine when driving straight, any speed. However when I stop at a corner and turn left or right 90 degrees, I get a grinding noise from the back end. It is coming from the center part of the vehicle, doesn't seem to be from one wheel or another. I had my wife drive in circles in the parking lot and I could not hear any noise from the outside of the car from either wheel or anywhere else. Once in the car though I could hear it just fine. It makes the most noise immediately after coming to a stop from a drive and taking a corner. When in a parking lot doing circles the noise is there, but not as loud and is a little more intermittent. Being the rookie that I am, I have some ideas, but as usual they are probably wrong. Here they are anyway. - Possibly something damaged from taking off the back rear disc brake, I had to bang on it pretty hard due to corrosion. - Possibly the rear differential, it shows some sign of leakage, and I have not re-filled it's fluid. - Possibly something from when we re-assembled the drive shaft, we simply bolted it back on, did we skip a step? What do you guys think? Anything stand out as obvious that I'm not seeing?

Grossgary, I was actually thinking of doing that before fully replacing the stud. I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Nevermind guys, I ran some more searches here with different terms for the stud and found plenty of posts with helpful tips.

The bolt that the lug nut screws onto to hold the rim on the car. There are five of them. "hub bolt" according to the service manual that I am reading. Checker Auto calls them "Wheel Lug Stud/Bolt".

Greetings again everyone! I managed to partially strip the hub bolt on my 98 Legacy Outback wagon last night. Both the bolt and the nut show some stripping. I tried using different nuts that weren't stripped to see if they would go onto the bolt, didn't force anything, but no luck. So now I am looking at the service manual for how to replace the hub bolt, and it looks to be a bit more involved than I expected. It suggests using a couple different presses that I do not have. Does anyone have any tips or tricks up their sleeve for this project?

98 Legacy Outback with 2.5 engine and 5sp manual here. Since purchasing my car used around seven years ago, I have never seen better than 24 mpg. I could get 23 to 24 mpg fairly consistently when driving long distances at about 60-65 mph. In town going to work and such I would always get 20-22 mpg. In the winter (Minnesota) I would get 18-20 mpg in town. So in my mind, the mpg you see is in range with my vehicle. However I have seen posts from guys getting 25+ consistently. You have the 2.2 engine though. My 05 Outback 2.5i with 5mt gets 25-26 consistently, touch better on the highway trips around 65mph.

I think the website is just a guide for newer modes that they can more accurately predict the trade-in value of. Older models they would probably value on a case by case basis.

Hey guys, possibly a dumb question here, but I wanted to ask anyway. I recently bought a used 2005 Outback 2.5i. It is running great, and I am now doing the first oil change since buying it. I normally use FRAM filters, so bought the PH9715 which is what FRAM says to use for the 2.5 engine. I got home and looked under the car and noticed that the filter that is on the car is twice the size as the one I just bought and not at all the same size filter. I went back to look up the model that is on the car and see that the previous owner installed the filter that FRAM says to use for the 3.0 engine, PH3593A, not the one for the 2.5... So now I'm sitting here wondering if either FRAM is telling me the wrong filter to use or maybe they used to recommend the larger filter and now say to use the smaller one. Does anyone have any insight they can share?

Just got back from the parking lot, plugs all appear connected. Kinda tough to see under there though, so I'll dig further when I get home and see if I missed something.

I'm gonna feel pretty dumb if it's a simple plug under the seat that the previous owner disconnected.

Does anyone by chance have the service manual pages or any other docs that show how the electrical connections are set up for the 2005 Outback heated seats? The passenger side works fine, and both dials on the center console light up when it is turned on. Driver seat never warms up though. I haven't torn anything apart yet, but will need to before the next winter rolls around. I've gone soft...

When I did the belt on my 98 Outback (manual tranny) I recall sitting in the car and holding the brakes so the car wouldn't rock while my dad tightened it down. Same as what Olnick described. I'm not sure how I got it off exactly at the time, chain grips or something like that. Pain in the butt if I remember correctly, but it came off.

Dumb question maybe, but isn't that a heck of a lot of fluid to drip out onto your exhaust and drain the tranny fluid completely to not notice it sooner? I've had oil leak onto my exhaust, and it stunk bad, and that wasn't even a lot, just dripping. What I'm getting at is that isn't it fair to assume that when they did all the engine work the first time around, maybe they drained the tranny and forgot to fill it? Just a guess.

Subaru wants $550 for the center differential for my 98 Outback. $1000+ if you include labor. Many others have posted similar and higher quotes as well. If you need more info on torque bind with the manual tranny, there are a handful of threads here that I was able to dig up using the search feature. All the descriptions posted matched my symptoms exactly. I have not fixed mine yet though, trying to track down a used part instead of new...

Based on the abundance of information here, the VC is the most logical thing bad with it (torque bind, manual tranny, etc.). I could write up more on my symptoms, but it'd just look like a carbon copy of the other threads already up. I only mentioned doing the vc alone because it *might* cost less if I found a salvage part or something, but that seems to be a bit of a long shot at the moment. I was curious about which years/models might match just so I have more information and options when I do make it to the salvage yard. I've located a couple salvage yards up here in Minnesota with whole transmissions from matching vehicles for $350, so will most likely be going that route.

Greetings everyone. I am currently trying to find a replacement used transmission or viscous coupler for my 1998 Legacy Outback with 5sp manual. Can anyone tell me what other years and model Subaru vehicles would have the same part(s) so I can expand my search for a better price? Thanks

That's what I'm doing right now. Just babying the car, checking fluids after each drive and watching temps and other funkyness closely. I'll be calling around today to locate someone to do the labor, since I think this project is above my skill (and patience) level. Again, sorry for filling the forums with yet another head gasket / overheating issue. Thanks everyone! I'll be sure to report back once this is all sorted out.

When it overheated I did not observe any bubbles in the overflow tank. It was just filled to the top. Head gasket is original I believe. I purchased the car with about 45k on it from the dealer. I'll do some digging into the various head gasket threads on the forum. Hopefully that isn't the problem. edit: Just found a thread with this posted. Sounds scarily familiar. I'll keep digging. Thanks. http://home.comcast.net/~skipnospam/Head_gasket_replacement.html

Greetings everyone! I'll keep this short if I can. '98 Legacy Outback Wagon, 147k miles. I changed my thermostat and radiator hoses about 4 or 5 months ago due to a cracked hose and leakage issue. Non-oem thermostat, couldn't get an oem one at the time. No problems for quite a while, a few longer trips (300 miles) were taken, no issues. This past weekend I was on the road when the car overheated. 40 miles into the trip only, speeds around 65mph the whole time. Nothing aggressive. I heard some squeeling (coolant on the belts it turned out) and noticed the temp gauge was pegged. No check engine lights or anything else else. I pulled over to inspect and saw lots of coolant had burst from the top of the reservoir. I let the car cool down for about 5 to 10 minutes (sub freezing temps outside in MN). Some of the coolant from the reservoir pulled back into the radiator, not all though. I could tell a fair amount had spilled out though. I started the car again and the temp gauge would quickly rise above normal when I revved the engine. I also noticed I could not get any heat to blow out of the vents with the fan on high and heat maxed. Only cold air. Stopped the car again, dug out a bottle of water and mixed into both the radiator and reservoir to try to top it off. Roughly 10 minutes later after letting it cool more I started the car. The heat came on this time. I started driving for home hoping I'd make it all the way, or at least to a gas station. The car ran fine the whole way... Temps stayed great, even when I brought the speed up to ~60mph. I ran the heat and fan on high just in case. Three days later now, no problems on the short drives to and from work and such (5 to 10 miles). This morning I noticed on the way in, temps -14F outside, the engine warmed much faster than usual. I expected it to overheat, but it steadied at the usual mark on the gauge and was fine when I got to work. I was having a hard time getting the heat in the car to really warm up as well. So, any thoughts as to what is going on here? My dad and I suspect the thermostat I installed a while back is sticking. I am not finding any coolant leakage at all on my driveway or in the parking lots. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.