Aces36

Every car manufacturer has expectations on reliability. Subaru supposedly has high expectations since they advertise that 90% of Subaru's sold in the last 10 years are still on the road. The other brands of cars that I own or have owned with low reliability expectations are Audi, Cadillac and Chevy. But yet I have owned a Cadillac every day since my first Eldorado in 1992 and Audi's on and off since my first A8 in 2004 and have been to the Cadillac service department once with a 1998 Eldorado with a broken sunroof switch and never to the Audi service department. The Chevy Impala LS I bought new in 2000 and sold in 2016 with 77,000 miles and never had a problem with it. I have never had a check engine light on the Cadillacs or Audis. But yet my Legacy has left me stranded twice and been on a flatbed twice. I guess I got stuck with the remaining 10% of Subaru's that are lemons.

I am finally saying good riddance to Subaru. I just sold my Legacy 3.6 and soon my sons 2019 Impreza. My wife has a 2017 outback with a little less than a year on the warranty so she is holding on to it for a few more months. Our 3 Subaru's have been nothing but problems with constant check engine lights and mechanical problems. My Legacy has been so unreliable with only 60,000 miles on it I am afraid to drive it too far from home. The Impreza has had numerous check engine lights with only 11,000 miles. The Outback with 30,000 miles has had no engine issues but many other problems such as the rear defogger not working twice and having to replace the window twice, the head unit replaced twice, a transmission issue, and a rear axle problem. Luckily these are not our only cars and we have had other cars to drive while they were getting fixed. I don't understand how people get over 100,000 miles out of their Subaru. It must cost a fortune to keep them running when they get a few miles on them. So my Legacy is gone, the Impreza will be up for sale in August when my son goes to college and the Outback will be sold in the next few months. I will never own another Subaru. Thanks all who have answered my questions on here in the past.

Thanks for the suggestions. There is a lot wrong with this car. Shortly after the warranty ended, its been nothing but headaches. Even under the warranty, it was a regular at the dealer. I bought it with 23,000 miles from a Subaru dealer but I have a feeling that it really had a lot more miles than that. I should have paid more attention to the small details. The seat leather was worn and some of the buttons were worn. That doesn’t happen in 23,000 miles. Right now I have 3 codes and the CEL and all other lights are on. I have P0014, P0300 and C0057. From what I have read, the first two codes are most likely the exhaust oil control valve on bank one. That should hopefully take care of those first two codes.

I have a 2013 legacy 3.6. It has 60,000 miles and it seems like every other time I drive it, the check engine lights come on. I have a few codes right now that are high severity that I really don't want to deal with repairing myself. If there is anyone here who lives in Westchester County in NY, do you know of any good Subaru mechanics in the area?

I have read the P2097 is such a generic code that it takes many steps to diagnose it. The Innova scanner showed me that code and also showed it was the bank 1 sensor 1 oxygen sensor that was bad. After replacing it , I erased the code. A few days later I got another check engine light. I plugged the scanner in and it came up as bank 1 sensor 2. So I replaced that one. And yet again a few days later I got another check engine light. This time it was bank 2 sensor 2. I replaced that and all has been good for now. I am just waiting for that last sensor to go bad.

I was talking to a friend of mine about all the problems I have with this car and the constant check engine lights and gave a brand new Innova 5210 scanner to keep. He has a BMW M5 and M3 and he won't work on them himself so he has no use for the scanner. I plugged it in and sure enough it had the P2097 code. I hit erase and it erased the code. I still have to figure out what is causing the code. I guess I now have a scanner to use that works on Subaru's. It wasn't one of the ones I looked but if it works I will hold on to it. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have researched a lot of scanners and one of the complaints is some of the less expensive ones will not erase some codes. A lot of those complaints are Subaru's and Ford's. It seems like all you can do on a Subaru with most scanners of any price is reset the check engine light and a few will let you do a couple of other things.

I have a 2013 Legacy 3.6 with 55,000 miles. It seems like every other time I drive the car I am getting a check engine light. I take it to my local auto parts store and they scan it for me and I buy the part. A friend owns the store so he will clear the code for me on his own time because the store is not allowed either by law or store franchise policy. Now I have a P2097 code that can be a few different problems. I want to get my own OBD scanner so I can diagnose and clear the codes myself. I have read where some scanners can be finicky with some brands of cars. I was looking at the BlueDriver for the iPhone. It seems like it is one of the best ones on the market right now. Has anyone used this one on their Subaru? If so how did it work? It seems like a lot of the dedicated scanners interfaces are harder to use but better able to read and clear all codes.

Sorry for the delay in the reply. I had a bad reaction to a migraine medicine and spent some time in an out of the ER. Before I got sick, I changed the sensor on top of the right converter. The sensor wires are color coded so its easy to know which one needs changing. So far no check engine light has come on. Hopefully that was the problem.

On my 2013 3.6 Legacy I just had the check engine light come on with all the other flashing lights like cruise and stability control. I got the code checked and it was post catalytic converter O2 sensor bank 1 sensor 2 so I ordered the sensor to change it myself. I can't find anything online about which sensor it is on this particular car. Anyone know where this sensor is or have a link to any website explaining which one it is?

Back in the mid 90's when my grandmother passed away, I took her 1988 Olds Delta 88 coupe with only 28,000 miles on it. I wanted a stiffer ride so I swapped the stock springs with Moog Cargo Coils and KYB shocks and struts. After a month or so, one of the rear shocks blew out and I had to drive about 20 miles home with the rear of the car bouncing around. Ever since, I have not used KYB for anything.

Thanks. Makes sense now. All I could find as far as struts was KYB OEM type. I am not a big fan of KYB but I guess that's all that is available without going with coil overs.

I have a 2013 3.6 Limited. My front left strut is leaking so I figured with the car just out of warranty, its time to upgrade to a better quality suspension. I want to change all 4 struts and springs to something a little more performance orientated. I don't want to lower the car but if I have to only minimally,less than an inch if possible. I cant seem to find a website that sells everything all together. I want one site that sells it all. Where is everyone getting their parts from?

Yes. That is the one Crutchfield sells. They even had me connect it to the computer to reset it and program it for my specific head unit.

I had the non nav HK system and replaced it with the Alpine INE 960 nav head unit. I ordered everything from Crutchfield and it all worked well. The only thing that did not work was the steering wheel control adapter. The first one did not work and I called Crutchfields support and they could not get it to work. They sent me a second one and could not get that one to work either. Anyone have the same problem with the steering wheel adapter or did it work like it was supposed to?

A couple of years ago I installed the Opt7 led bulbs in my '13 Legacy. The light output was nice and white and it lit up the road much better than the halogens. My only problem was when winter came and I had to drive 17 miles to work at night in the snow. The led's don't heat up and melt the snow off the headlights. I live in lower Westchester in NY and the streets are well lit so it was not too much of a problem but I can see it being a problem on streets with no street lights. Maybe one day I will install the HID kit.

I have the same car, a '13 3.6 with non nav HK stereo. I installed the Alpine INE-W960 navigation head unit but kept the factory amp and speakers for now. That will change soon. Definitely go with Crutchfield. They will supply you with all the necessary wire harnesses and and XM antenna adapter to do the install and also with the master sheet explaining exactly how to disassemble the dash and doors if you are replacing speakers. The only problem I had is the Axxess steering wheel control adapter did not work. I tried two of them and with the help of Crutchfield support, they still did not work in my car. For the phone mic, I ran it to the stock location in the overhead console. Just unscrew the factory mic and put it aside and with a little double sided tape, I put the Alpine mic in its place. My future plans are to install 2 sets of Diamond Audio component speakers, 2 Alpine PDX amps and 2 Solo Baric 12" subs. I have all this from my previous car and have been too lazy lately to install it.

Nameless is awesome to deal with. Great people that work there. They replaced the complete axle back with a brand new set. The new set has 4" single wall tips that fill out the bumper cut outs a lot nicer than the double wall tips.

Thanks. I got some homework to do as far as finding what fits. I don't see this exhaust system lasting more than another year or so. I have never seen an exhaust system rust out this bad in only 6 years. I had a 2000 Chevy Impala before this car that I bought new. It had 78,000 miles on it when I sold it. The exhaust system on that car had very minimal rust on it. The only problem I had on that car was the resonator developed a small crack at the flange weld 3 years ago right before I sold it.

I currently have the stock exhaust with a stainless 5" Nameless axle back. The tips on the muffler are starting to crack so Nameless is replacing the tips under warranty even though the mufflers are three years old. They are putting on single wall instead of the double wall tips. They seemed to have problems with the early double wall tips cracking. While removing the Nameless mufflers to put the stock mufflers on for now, I noticed the rest of the exhaust system was in really bad shape as far as rust goes. The flanges where the mufflers attach to were peeling in layers of rust and are getting real thin. Eventually the whole system will need replacing very soon and may be an excuse to get the Raptor headers to have a complete stainless system. I did a quick search and can't find much of a complete system in stainless for the 3.6. If I remember correctly, will a cat back system from the 2010-2012 GT fit the 3.6 directly?

I have the Whiteline 24mm rear sway bar with Moog end links on the stock shocks and springs with BF Goodrich G-Force Comp 2 tires. I have the sway bar set on the middle setting. The car corners flat and goes right where I point it and I noticed the Rally Armor mud flaps don't scrape on the ground as much. It stiffened the ride very slightly but I don't mind it.

My wife has a 2017 Outback 2.5 and that car is always beeping different tones at random times from the dash and no warning lights come on when it beeps. I have never seen any other car that beeps as much as her Outback does. It does get annoying after a while and she wont let me shut off any of the safety features.

I just hope the tabs on the seat frame where I put the quick links don't rip off after a while. It seems like the clips Subaru uses to secure the lumbar cable is nothing more that a heavy duty paper clip bent into a hook shape.

The lumbar support in my car broke 3 times in 3 years. The first time was a few weeks after I bought the car and was replaced at no charge, the second time about a year after I had the car and that was under warranty and the third time last week, not under warranty. The first time the dealer said they installed heavy duty hardware and it shouldn't break again. The second time they supposedly replaced the seat frame with a heavier duty design and said it won't break again. I call BS on the first two fixes. They obviously replaced the same weak hooks with new weak hooks. I searched on here for a fix and took all the advice and did my own fix with real heavy duty shackles. This should last forever. It was easy and took about 5 minutes from start to finish. Thanks all for the instructions in other posts.

It was easy. Just a couple of clips on each caliper and the cover bolts right on.