Impreza Sport Start Up Problem

Aug 26, 2003 5 Replies

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Dena Leiter 22 years ago

I have a 2002 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. When I start up in the morning the car bucks when I engage the clutch. It feels like the underside of the car will shake loose. This behavior continues thru each gear change for the about five minutes then it stops. It happens again in the afternoon when the car has sat for 8 hours.

This only happens when the car is dead cold. It doesn't matter what the weather is, or if the car is in the garage or not. It happens to me and my partner. We've each driven manual transmission cars (Honda, Toyota, Miata, Datsun) for over 20 years so it's not lack of experience.

It's been to 2 dealers and 1 independent mechanic, they cannot reproduce the problem.

Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

Thanks.

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Edward Hayes 22 years ago

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Dena Leiter 22 years ago

I did, with all of them.

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dn 22 years ago

It's possible that you have the "Dreaded Subaru Clutch Shudder", also known as judder.

If you go to google, and run a search on:

subaru impreza clutch shudder

you should see a whole lot of results which describe a similar common complaint. If you browse through the results and think that this is you problem, you may want to take a look at a huge thread regarding this problem on the North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club forum:

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This thread contains a TSB which lists the parts required to fix the problem. Sounds like dealers have to be pushed to apply the fix, and it's only free if your clutch is still under warranty (or you're very persuasive).

Good Luck, dn.

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Napalm 22 years ago

Clutch-shudder. This is a well known issue. Do some searches through google and you should find quite a bit of info.

Cheers, N

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Dena Leiter 22 years ago

THANK YOU! This is just what I needed, the dealer was making me feel like a nut.

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