My brother has a 1996 Outback wagon with automatic transmission. It is due for a 60,000 mile service and is running fine. A service shop recommends replacing the spark plug wires as preventative maintenance at 60k miles at a cost of about $90. Seems unnecessary to me. Anyone have any experience with how long the wires normally last?
Al in NJ
You can probably get plug wires cheaper than that if you go aftermarket rather than subaru direct. I would recommend replacing them around that time though. Actually, on other vehicles I have changed them as early as
Mine still look fine at 100k miles. On the other hand, I have a '99 so mine are 3 years younger than his. I was thinking of pulling mine off, cleaning them and checking for cracks and arcing then putting them back on if they look good. He might want to do that.
My 1997 Legacy Outback has 262,000 km (about 163,000 mi) on it and the original spark plug wires are working fine. You'll know when and if you need new spark plug wires.
David
I replaced my wires on my Y2K Outback at 80,000 miles and it was definitely time. I tested them with an ohm meter and they were shot. When I went to replace them finding after market wires was extremely difficult and about twice the price of the Subaru wires. The wires from Subaru were around $35.
If you have any mechanical aptitude at all, replacing the wires is easy. The replacement wires are marked 1-4, pull off one wire at a time and replace that wire before moving to the next.
good luck
jb
How do you know that they were bad? I suspect they are resistance wires.
A simple resistance measurement with a cheap digital volt meter should tell the condition of the wires internally. You may not be able to find a spec. in ohms easily, but you can always compare to a new set or just make sure they are all fairly close. I would not worry about the wires until 100K unless you are experiencing any problems.
Jim
I would agree that they probably are resistance wires. When I checked the resistence of the wires I would have expected them to all read about the same if they were OK. Three of the four wires did read about the same. The fourth wire was way off.
Before I changed them I had a very noticable miss in the engine under load, after changing them the engine ran smoother and my mileage jumped about 2 mpg.
Not totally scientific, but it seems right.
jb
They are cheap enough that, since you are replacing your plugs anyway, you may as well do them. DON'T get aftermarket parts though, stick with the Subaru parts. They are the least expensive and are of good quality.
-Kurt
Al and Renee wrote:
Agreed.
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