Hi all! My 1999 Legacy Outback has developed a disturbing problem. Sometimes when I put it in drive, it just sits there as if in neutral. Reverse works, but and of the forwad gears just at like neutral. If I rev the engine up a bit it will usually start to creep forward, or just clunk into gear. I had the transmission svericed, fluid change and both filters. This solved it for a while, but it is back ,like a bad habit. Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Nickatnite

I think the problem may be caused by a sticky valve. I don't think it will hurt anything but I would let it gently engage rather than rev the engine and make it jerk.

 

Here is a link to a site that you may want to try their transmission additive to see if that will solve the problem. They have a good product I think but I have not tried any as of yet.

 

http://auto-rx.net/

This is about the fifth post recently on vehicles with this problem, mostly 99 or 00 models, no answers yet, but something is up.

Hi all! My 1999 Legacy Outback has developed a disturbing problem. Sometimes when I put it in drive, it just sits there as if in neutral. Reverse works, but and of the forwad gears just at like neutral. If I rev the engine up a bit it will usually start to creep forward, or just clunk into gear. I had the transmission svericed, fluid change and both filters. This solved it for a while, but it is back ,like a bad habit. Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Nickatnite

 

I changed the fluid twice and the external filter once. That corrected this problem on my '99 Legacy GT. I'm not a technician, but my theory is that fresh ATF is highly "detergent" and by changing the fluid twice (about 150 miles between changes), it either dislodged some varnish or swelled up a shrunken seal. Whatever the case, it's been 8000 miles and 10 months since I did this, and the transmission still goes into gear promptly when the shifter is moved to "D"

A have a 2000 legacy and use it hard, so I am worried about the above mentioned problem.

However, I always suspected that people reporting these problems did not change ATF every 30000 (15000 severe service) as recommended. I personally am a believer in the 15000/30000 intervals, synthetic oils and transmission coolers. So far so good.

Has anyone tried the Auto RX product? I have the same problem with my 98 transmission. Im desperate to find a fix rather then replace the transmission again!

All,

Thanks for the input, however . . . the tranny absolutely refused to work in any forward gears, so I got it to a transmission shop. The torque converter had gone out and took a bunch of other stuff with it. It is being rebuilt. They said it was very unusual to even see a Subaru in the shop with transmission problems - at the most they get one to two per year. A good tribute to the way Subarus are built. Unfortunately, ours was one of them. I bought the car used and attribute the failure to the first owner not servicing the transmission. I will be taking care of it!

 

Nick