D-2.5-GT Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 On my commute home this evening, about 5 miles from home, my car decides to throw a check engine light and flashing cruise control. Great! Here we go. Very cautiously drive it the rest of the way home. First thing i do when i park it is to pop the hood and see if anything seems out of place. Sure enough, my coolant is bone dry, with maybe just a drop or two in the tank. The best part...the car was at the dealer all day last thursday for its 30k check-up with no issues. My service statement says coolant was flushed and replaced with 4 bottles of new stuff. How do you go through it that fast? Clearly they F'd up something!! I can't wait to get there bright and early tomorrow morning and give them a piece of my mind. They better give me something for this one on top of fixing whatever the issue is...none of that free service either cause i guarantee my car will not be there again after this is fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devobuzz Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 Well either it all leaked out or they forgot to put some in. Did you see the temp gauge peg on high? I'd be worried about warped or cracked cylinder heads / blowing head gaskets now. That totally sucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chappy Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 On my commute home this evening, about 5 miles from home, my car decides to throw a check engine light and flashing cruise control. Great! Here we go. Very cautiously drive it the rest of the way home. First thing i do when i park it is to pop the hood and see if anything seems out of place. Sure enough, my coolant is bone dry, with maybe just a drop or two in the tank. The best part...the car was at the dealer all day last thursday for its 30k check-up with no issues. My service statement says coolant was flushed and replaced with 4 bottles of new stuff. How do you go through it that fast? Clearly they F'd up something!! I can't wait to get there bright and early tomorrow morning and give them a piece of my mind. They better give me something for this one on top of fixing whatever the issue is...none of that free service either cause i guarantee my car will not be there again after this is fixed. Damn!! Who is your dealer? That is not cool. How much did the 30k service cost you? I would demand a full refund of it. Seriously. You could have done some serious damage to the car if you didnt realize that the coolant was gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subastew Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 With all these dealer horror stories, I'm scared to take my precious to them. I think I'll do all the stuff I can myself and take it to the dealer when they need to take ownership of bigger things. That way I can get really mad at the big stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerseyglock Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 Hey, thats the new invisible coolant you just paid for. Define 4 bottles of new stuff. j/k They just might left something loose and it never over heated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 15, 2005 Author Share Posted September 15, 2005 I hooked up the wires under the dash and was able to pull my error code...this is not looking good.... I pulled a P0021....Intake Camshaft Position Timing - Over Advanced Anyone have any idea what that means??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 15, 2005 Author Share Posted September 15, 2005 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subaguru Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 had the same code on mine.. 1 week at the dealership & a lot of frustration, I replaced an ocv oil control valve & idle pulley. Funny, but this was at 30,000 miles as well.. had them do the service too, maybe I should check my coolant reservoir too.. haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agctr Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Just go in there carm and ask to see the SA Manager and take it from there. Get the principal involved if you have to but as the very last resort. Best of Luck. Ada///M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mui01 Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 DUde, sorry to hear about your problem. Good luck and hope you don't have a bad feeling towards Suby now. Kept us posted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opie Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 With all these dealer horror stories, I'm scared to take my precious to them. I think I'll do all the stuff I can myself and take it to the dealer when they need to take ownership of bigger things. That way I can get really mad at the big stuff. Don't let a few stories scare you from all dealers, just remember which ones have the problems, if you want to find the best dealer for service ask the other Subaru owners you see while out and about who they use or recomend... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Update: Well I was the early bird at the dealer this morning. I was there a good 20 min before the service department even opened. First one through the door to get the car checked out. The dealer was surprisingly, extremely cooperative, which is good. I told them my problems with the coolant and the CEL. They immediately checked things out. Apparently the coolant was low, but it was not completely empty. There was some left in the reserve tank. As the service manager explained to me that as the engine cools down it pushes the coolant back into the tank. Since i had checked it when it was hot, there was not much in there. He did admit that it was about 1- 1 1/2 Qts low. At no point though did he say i was running without coolant, so that was good. He said when they "burp" the system, they probably didn't do it long enough so when it was filled it appeared to full, but once things ran and settled it was low. They filled that up. On the CEL i was able to pull. They confimed that it was in fact the P0021, which was the camshaft timing. They checked everything out, reset the light and took it for a test drive to see if anything came back up. After reseting the code, there were no further issues and no more codes came up. He told me it was most likely a fluke which threw the code and that i shouldn't worry. You would know immediately if something like that code was causing problems as the drivability would be seriously hampered. He told me to come back any time if i threw anything again in the next week or so, but that i shouldn't have anything to worry about. So overall, they were very cooperative and took care of the issues in an extremely timely manner. I do still have to say though that this still shouldn't have happened. On a better note i was able to pull the engine code strictly from the car alone. There are some plugs tucked under where the fuses are in the car, you connect the white male and female connectors and press the trip reset button during the gauge sweep and the error code is displayed right on the odometer. Excellent idea, no need to go anywhere to pull CEL codes as the car can do it on its own with no external items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerseyglock Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 You never over heated and why you want to kill that dealer. They should teach that tech on how to bleeding air pockets from coolant and how to top of coolant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Second Update: Well, after getting to work with everything fine, I had to go out again at lunch for some errands. Everything was driving fine. As soon as i pulled into the parking spot back at work, the car almost instantly started to idle really hard. The whole car was shaking pretty good, much more than normal. Enough that i could tell the whole car was vibrating just by looking in the mirror. I shut it off, turned it back on, still same thing. If i gave it some gas it went away, but as soon as i let off the pedal and it returned to its idle rpms, it came back. No CEL or anything though yet. I called the dealer right away. I have an appointment on monday to get it looked at in detail, with a loaner to boot, since i bitched, even though they claimed they didn't have anything to give me. After finally leaving work a few hours later, it started up with no issues and i didn't feel it at all for the roughly 30 mile trek home. It seems like it drives ok now, but something just doesn't feel right about this whole situation. I can see it being just my luck that i won't have any codes and the dealer won't be able to find anything when he checks it out by monday. Thats a good thing i guess, but something is slightly unsettling. We'll see... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subaguru Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 That's just what my car did when it coded the the same as yours. I was in the middle of traffic and it started to shake violently.. it went away.. then came back.. then went away.. until it started to do it more frequently. The result was as I mentioned previously.. the ocv oil valve was stuck on and caused something to seize and warp my intake pulley. Don't mess around if it doesn't seem right, get it in and get it fixed. 1,000 miles since the replacement and it seems to be alright now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subaguru Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 more on what they found: http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18318 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 ^^ Sounds like my issues....wonderful. Will keep you guys posted as to what they find on Monday, but i will definetly mention this and have it checked. PM sent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_m Posted September 19, 2005 Share Posted September 19, 2005 Same thing with me, I got the cel p0021 and car was shaking noticibly at idle and other times would run smooth. First time dealer blamed it on a batch of bad gas but when the problem came back they tracked it to an ocv valve in the AVCS and replaced the faulty unit- that was 10K kms ago and all is well now. . It appears this is a fairly common issue with the leggy, incidentally my problem happened at about 50K kms. That's just what my car did when it coded the the same as yours. I was in the middle of traffic and it started to shake violently.. it went away.. then came back.. then went away.. until it started to do it more frequently. The result was as I mentioned previously.. the ocv oil valve was stuck on and caused something to seize and warp my intake pulley. Don't mess around if it doesn't seem right, get it in and get it fixed. 1,000 miles since the replacement and it seems to be alright now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coxx Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 Same problem for me too, CEL & rough idle, only mine happened after an oil change @ 18k miles. Since then I had the car in the dealer numerous times & was given every excuse from "dirty gas", faulty wiring harness, cam sensor, & finally the OCvalve. about 500 miles since the ocv was replaced & so far so good but I'm keeping fingers crossed on this one. Since the dealer replaced 4 different parts I have no confidence that they know what they're doing on this one. Took about 6 weeks of back & forth to the dealer & each time they swore they had fixed the problem. I'm praying that light stays off for good. It makes me nervous about doing anything to the car mod-wise until I can be sure the problem is gone for good "Barack Obama, mothaf#%@a! Barack Obama! I'm the president...of hittin' the ass!" -this is not a political view it's merely a quote from a hilarious tv show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted September 29, 2005 Author Share Posted September 29, 2005 Mine turned out to not be the OCV valve, but the Variable Valve Timing (VVT) Solenoid. Since getting the car back on tuesday, no issues yet and its running great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UPSGuy Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 Does anyone know if this could happen with a WRX? My mother drives one, and one day after startup it just sounded seriously sick - as though it were under load at idle. Shut it down right away, and had to towed to the dealership (on their dime). Start it up there, and of course, it's fine... It never threw a CEL though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-2.5-GT Posted October 1, 2005 Author Share Posted October 1, 2005 I don't know if it could be the same as my issue. I think mine was involving the AVCS system and i didn't think anything short of maybe the new 06 rex had that. Its possible it could be some of these other issues though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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