Hello, I hope someone can shed some light on this. I have a 1999 Forester-L,
5-speed, 97,000 miles. When I make a tight turn (that is the wheel all the way over) the whole front end wobbles and seems to take power from the engine, that is I need to press the gas to keep from stalling. This seems to only occur when entering parking spaces and is difficult to reproduce on purpose. Any ideas? Thanks
Possible 'torque bind' (search here and
Carl
Well the tires are matched. So that's not it. I'll look into the center differential. I thought the differential might be behind this. Thanks.
My STi doesn't wobble, but it does make a horrible metallic screeching noise when turning in a tight arc if anything but "Auto" or "Full Open" is chosen on the DCCD. No wobble though.
Good luck--please come back and tell us what the issue turned out to be.
for me, that started to happen on my 98 Forester S at right around 130K kms. It turned out that it was indeed "torque bind" and I replaced the parts in the center differential, at a cost of about $600 (Canadian funds). Fixed the problem nicely.
If it's an automatic, you can prove that it's torque bind by removing the fuse that enables the AWD. It's clearly marked in the owner manual. With the fuse gone, it won't make the noise if it's torque bind.
This is a manual. The problem seems to have gone away for the time being, but I'm still going to bring it Thursday to have it looked at. I really don't want to spend $1,000 to replace the center diff. So I'm hoping they find it to be something else. I'll let y'all know what they say.
Here's a new question. This problem has seemed to have stopped on its own (for now anyway.) I prefer not to bring in the car, have them look at it and drop $50, lose the car for a full day and have them to say they couldn't detect a problem. If there isn't a problem, I see no reason to bring the car in right away. Anyone have any thoughts in this?
Well of course the day I canceled the appointment the problem came back with a vengence. I took the car in yesterday and as I had feared. Center differential is going, going just about gone. Repair cost $1,300 plus the cost of new tires ($280) for four new Koumos, which didn't seem like such a bad price. Dealer said cause of the problem was tire wear and that the tires were no longer "in spec." Having been reading the posts here, I understood what he was saying. Asked if work could be done elsewhere for less, he said probably, but that the bulk of the cost is in the price of the part itself, so I might save a few hundred in labor. But what's $200 when you're laying on $1,600 (and I got a coupon from Subaru that will save me $200 anyway.) Figured I might as well let them do the work. He also said they would not do the work without adding the new tires.
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