Zerohour Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Hi Everyone, The Legacy has been roo'ing along through winter. I've been really happy with the car. As I've put down some serious miles since October 2014, I'm trying to get together a list of proper proactive maintenance (versus the reactive repairs). Currently, I do not have exact details on the maintenance histoiry of my transmission. I've drained and filled the front and rear diff. The trans is a whole different bag of cats, but here are my thoughts. The previous owner said the trans was "serviced". With no actual idea what was done. The front and rear diff fluid was due. So I don't really think any "service" was actually done. The transmission fluid seems to be some form of red/slight brown, so it was changed at one point. No idea if it was a flush,repair,rebuild, etc. But at 225k, I currently have a fairly consistent first-to-second hard shift. To address, i'm thinking the following: 1) Pull a quick drain and fill on the pan while it is still bitter cold. 2) drive until March and see if anything improves/changes. 3) If the first drain and fill seems to do the trick, drop the pan, replace the filter, refill. 4) If the first drain and fill didn't seem to help, I'll drop the pan, replace the filter, and swap in a new solenoid A (I believe this is the 1-2 solenoid, please correct me if I'm wrong!). 5) Pending #3/#4, come end of April or early May, drain and fill again. I believe this should put me back in a reasonable spot to maintain the auto trans. Just other thoughts: I drive ~ 400 miles a week By late April / early May I will be off winter car I have a LSD differ to swap into the back end (hopefully this summer once I'm on the non-winter car) Anyone think I should bother working on the auto trans? Or just go right into swapping a manual? Or should I look into doing a "shift kit", which I seem to find reference to in a lot of the 4EAT threads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
93ej22 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 the 1-2 shift on a 4eat is supposed to be fairly hard, keeps the bands from slipping as long and lets the transmission live longer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunny5280 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 I had a hard 1 - 2 shift in my 1997 4EAT. Research, and inquiries here, showed it to be normal and would not cause any damage to the transmission. There is a kit to make it smoother but I didn't feel the cost was justified to perform the work. As an FYI I did have the fluid replaced and I did not observe any reduction in harshness afterwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnegg Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 As an FYI I did have the fluid replaced and I did not observe any reduction in harshness afterwards. me too. all suabru auto trans 90 - 01 have a ''hard than most cars'' 1-2 shift. i assume it continues up to 2015 cars but i don't know. i have read it helps make them stronger and more durable. they trade comfort for durability, i have heard. my 97 GT is worse than normal. when cold it really jerks when it shifts. so much so my wife and son have nick named it the jerky turkey. but after it warms up it is not as bad and hardly noticeable. i read one post that a trans ''flush'' at a shop caused this problem in one guys subaru. he corrected it by replacing the ''valve body'' in the trans. it hold all of the solenoids and other complicated stuff that control the trans. i do not know if this would fix mine, but as you said , too much money or work , the problem is not that bad , mine has been doing it for 40k miles , since i bought it, and i just don't care. it is 18 years old after all. good luck with yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerohour Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 Hi everyone, thanks for the input. It is really hard to diagnose issues at the moment. We've finally made it up to 5 degrees in PA today. The auto trans takes forever to get up to temp as well. But it seemed like the 1-2 hard shift was still there even by the time I've put down the 40 miles home or to work. On occasion it will shift nicely. This is why I figured the solenoid/fluid was due. I also don't remember the 1-2 shift being this rough, but it is possible that I did notice until now or think about it until it got this super cold. This is also the first winter I'm driving an automatic since 2010 or 2011. Also adds to some of the confusion lol I don't remember how my last Subaru ran in the super cold. I"ll probably still do a drain and fill to have some peace of mind that some of the fluid is replaced. I've know other 4EAT's that supposedly drive nicer/better after having some fresh fluid. For the cost of 4-5 quarts, I'll wait til we break freezing and do this. As far as I remember, fluid is just standard DexIII fluid. I have dealer out of my way, but on the ride home. Any thoughts on going with the OEM fluid, or just get any DexIII? I've also run royal purple in manual diffs, but I'm pretty sure that might be on the level of crazy for the car at the moment! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunny5280 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 I don't see any harm in replacing the fluid. Just letting you know not have high expectations :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
93ej22 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 the manual I have says dexII/dexIII I just used some Valvoline dex 3 in mine last week when I swapped transmissions but people all have their opinions on what you should and shouldn't put in them and their brand of choice they do say DO NOT use dex IV or any of the higher levels of the dex scale. I don't remember which brand it is but its a blue bottle maybe another Valvoline product? but it is an "import" atf and it has Subaru on the list of approved for cars on the back, I could only find it in 1qt bottles and filling a full 9+ qts that way would have cost me way too much so I got 2 4qt jugs of dex III and a quart of that type Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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