1. Home
  2. Subaru Cars Forum
  3. '01 Impreza RS - am I just having bad luck?

'01 Impreza RS - am I just having bad luck?

I'm curious about something. My '01 2.5RS has 90k miles on it now. Most of it highway miles, and while I drive a bit aggressively, it's a very smooth aggressive. No off-roading, no racing, no high-rev clutch drops.

I switched out to amsoil at the earliest opportunity. I do my oil changes and preventive maintenance according to schedule.

So far, I've had to replace a knock sensor, my cat, and my flywheel (all under warranty), but also the clutch (at the same time as flywheel -- SOA wouldn't cover that) and I just had to replace the rear oil seal in my tranny, which added about $500 to the 90k service.

Also, the lights burned out behind the fuel and oil guages, and that requires removing the entire dash to replace. Not gonna happen.

Don't get me wrong - I love my car. It's the first car I've had that really feels like an extension of me when I drive. But based on what I read here before I bought, I certainly didn't expect these kind of mechanical failures. I know we didn't have these kind of repair bills on my wife's 94 Civic before we traded it in on an Insight, and it had

150,000 miles on it.

Am I just having a streak of bad luck? Or are the really high-mileage Scoobys the more pedestrian ones? Does my car have a higher failure rate because of the performance factor?

I've learned to accept the really soft windshield and the extremely thin paint job. Not happy about it, since I had to spend $700 so far to get stone chips and minor dings repainted, something I never had to do with my Probe LX.

However, I read the stories here of 200,000 miles with no major problems and I'm jealous. I'd like to think in 4 years I'll replace her with the current WRX-ish model, but I'd also like to know I can count on slightly better reliability that I'm getting so far.

Any thoughts from the group?

Paul

Reply to
Paul Braun
Loading thread data ...

was the cat replaced under emmissions warranty? It does seem you're having a few more issuse than normal. But you didn't mention headgaskets and I THINK the '01 may be vulnerable. No, it doesn't seem like it's any high performance issues. probably bad luck to have the cat, flywheel and seal probelms.

Carl

Reply to
Carl 1 Lucky Texan

As Carl said, make d*%@ sure you're bleeding *all* the air when you change the coolant, assuming the 2.5 is the DOHC "EJ25" version. Failure by our service folk to spend 5 minutes doing it properly just cost me over $3k in repairs due to gasket failure caused by local overheating.

Better yet, drill and tap a small bleed tube into the coolant cross- over pipe on top of the engine, and feed it into the radiator return. That way you can easily be pretty sure you've got all the air out. Any gurgling when you turn off the hot engine is an indication of potential trouble.

Clifford Heath

Reply to
Clifford Heath

I'm suspicious about the cat and rear oil seal, often misdiagnosed in Subaru's...why were they replaced? Tracy

Reply to
TG

Cat was replaced under warranty because it was throwing a CEL code that wouldn't go away. New cat - no more code.

Changed to midgrade gas, and it hasn't come back.

Rear oil seal was seeping... I saw it myself last time they had her up on the lift for an oil change. He thought it was either the baffle plate or rear seal... fortunately, it was the rear seal. My trans (5-spd) was, in fact, leaking oil and I had started to get downshift mismatches (usually 3-2) with a bit of grinding from time to time. New seal, fresh load of gearbox goo, and it shifts like new.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Braun

Head gasket appears to be fine... they checked everything over and the only thing wrong was the tranny seal.

My mechanic said if I popped over when he was there, he'd show me the proper way to bleed it to make sure I didn't get any air in. Yes, it's the EJ25.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Braun

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.