QB89Dragon Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 2000 Legacy Wagon, 2.5 EJ252 with 5MT, close to 400,000kms. I'm currently experiencing two unrelated transmission / driveline problems. I'll go through each separately. First issue - present since I bought the car 60,000km / 2 years ago: At highway speeds, turning to the right on windy mountain-pass type roads causes a dangerous loss of handling characteristics accompanied with a persistent low whine noise. For reference, turning to the left under these conditions the car grips fine and no noise is heard. It acts as if the car is not stable or planted on the roadway or isn't receiving torque to the passenger front axle. As a side note it has also always made some clunking sounds when in reverse and turning the wheel which I assumed was a bad CV axle (but without any confirmation). I should also note that this issue is not noticeable in city driving conditions (lower speeds than 100km/h), only at highway speeds. The car has brand new tires, new shocks, and good bushings / ball joints with a dealership alignment performed recently. Second issue - appeared over the course of two days about a week ago: Experiencing 'resistance' at the gate of each gear when going to shift. Acting as if the syncros are working 100% despite rev-matching the gears. I'm a very fast shifter and drive the car hard so I've been used to smooth gear changes and this is a marked departure from this transmission's usual feel. The issue developed gradually over about two days with fast shifts from third to fourth missing and catching the gear teeth at first. This quickly progressed to being quite stiff / hard to shift into any gear when attempting to shift. Double-clutch shifting allows the car to be reasonably drivable in city traffic. Troubleshooting the second issue, I at first thought the syncros may be on their way out, however this would not affect all 5 gears simultaneously in a short period of time. So I checked the transmission oil level, and it was on the full mark and looking otherwise good. This led me to believe that perhaps there was some kind of clutch drag, perhaps a warped flywheel or bent / shattered shift fork. The clutch hydraulics also check out as ok. So at this point I pulled the motor out and inspected the clutch / bell housing. The shift fork, as measured with a dial indicator are more or less identical to an OEM replacement and there was no fatigue or damage to it. The clutch still has 90% or so friction material left and the flywheel appears good. In addition, the throwout bearing rotated and actuated freely. At this point I start speculating other tertiary issues or causative factors such as the first issue (possibly being differential related) having caused some other problems in the transmission. However there are no new noises from the transmission and the car pulls smooth and powerfully in the gear selected, only issue being changing between gears and how the shifter feels. To this end, I pulled the axles out and checked for bearing wear at the wheel bearings, which seemed fine. I also checked the axle stubs coming out of the transmission to the front wheels which have no lateral or in / out play, indicating that this isn't a differential pre-load issue on the bearings. Playing with the input shaft and the left / right front axle stubs, there is no observable play and the front diff appears to be doing its job when rotated by hand. This leads me to believe that the shift issue may be something more obscure. Given that no 'event' suddenly created this issue, I don't believe any mechanical damage such as road debris or adverse user input create this condition. I think it is an internal mechanical issue with the transmission of some sort. However given the first issue, I haven't ruled out the two being connected in some way, and now i've bitten the bullet and pulled the motor / trans I would be grateful to hear some thoughts as to how I could further track this down. That or, if this is a common problem with Subarus of this age / mileage based on the symptoms. I don't feel throwing money / parts at this will yield any positive results, as all junkyard or salvage transmissions will have similar wear on their components and will shortly fail. I am also confident enough that I can open the transmission myself and possibly set up the differential correctly in the event of a rebuild. I'd like to do this myself to keep this project within budget as this is the cheap winter driver and second vehicle - that and the more I learn working on a $500 car, the more it helps me come time to work on the STI! I've read every differential post on this site and have not found anything that matches my experiences troubleshooting this car, which is why I'm posting. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QB89Dragon Posted July 26, 2016 Author Share Posted July 26, 2016 Update: I checked the front driver's side wheel bearing (opposite to the noisy side) and it was pretty bad. I would imagine this could have contributed significantly to the first and possibly second issue written above. Hear me out on this one - If at highway speeds the bearing on one side of the car starts to seize or increase in resistance, it would then cause the front diff to spin up, in turn (in theory at least) spinning the transmission output shaft, thus causing the difficulty in shifting. This is assuming the front drivers side bearing got bad quite recently after being in a bad way for a while now. I'm fairly confident that the bearing replacement is gonna fix the first issue. But if anyone can confirm or not my theory on the difficult shifting maybe being caused by the bearing's resistance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QB89Dragon Posted August 3, 2016 Author Share Posted August 3, 2016 Engine is back in the car, I can confirm that the wheel bearing fixed the first issue. The head-gaskets were also done while it was out of the car, and that should fix the oil leaks. However the resistance when shifting into gear persists. Any troubleshooting steps would be appreciated. Thinking of checking transmission mounts and shift linkages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBisson Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 Do you have the same resistance in the shifter while the engine is off and you are stationary? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QB89Dragon Posted August 4, 2016 Author Share Posted August 4, 2016 Do you have the same resistance in the shifter while the engine is off and you are stationary? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk No, with the engine off it seems much easier to put into gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.