Cooling fan recall question

[Dragoeth]

2006 Legacy GT 5mt 130,000 miles second owner bought in August 2011

 

So my cooling fan is stuck on even on a cold start. I took it to the only subaru dealership in town and they told me the ECM is broke and needs to be replaced and gave me an estimate of 1100 dollars. I pulled out the recall bulletin and handed it to the guy and said this should be covering it. He tells me "yes its the same issue however the recall has already been performed according to our records back in 09 (bought the car last august) and we replaced both the cooling fan and the ECM so we can't do that again under the recall".

 

Now is he full of crap or is that true? I mean if the issue is still there doesn't it need to be fixed?

[iNVAR]

When I bought my car in late 2007, the same thing happened to me... the fans stayed on. I brought it to my local dealership (not where I got the car) and as per the dealership, their records showed it had already been done and that it wasn't covered under the warranty.

 

Fortunately for me, it was covered under the remainder of the powertrain warranty so I didn't bother arguing with them about it. Clearly whoever performed the recall service did it WRONG or did it the lazy way and ONLY replaced the relay, which is only half the fix.

 

You can try to replace the relay yourself and see if that works, or take the relay out and test it somehow, but if that doesn't fix the problem, the ECU needs to be replaced, and that's expensive... I think your ECU is fried and should've been replaced under the recall properly.

 

I would suggest contacting SOA and complaining to them if the dealership can't do anything for you.

 

P.S. To anyone else, Bill Kolb Jr. dealership SUCKS. So does Star Subaru in Jamaica, Queens. Both crappy dealerships.