Hello group:
For those of you interested, and especially Todd, my fellow reliability martyr.. :)
When we last left off my saga, I had just picked up my Subie after $2100.00 of head gaskets, only to return with the car still having serious driveability issues. Returning to the dealership produced a diagnosis of ignition coil problems. $450.00. Picking up the car after this repair, it hadn't improved at all, and I did a U-Turn back to the dealership full of frustration. I decided to wait until all was resolved before reporting back...
Obviously, I was beginning to despair. The dealership kept the car over the weekend and for one or two days. Eventually I received a phone call. The final diagnosis was that it *wasn't* the ignition coil after all, but a faulty oxygen sensor which was causing intermittent problems. Apparently they spent hours trying to diagnose it. The repair cost with diagnosis was to be another $450.00. Bad news!! But wait!...
The service manager was apologetic about the misdiagnosis, so he refunded the cost of the ignition coil, and didn't charge me for the diagnosis or repair of the oxygen sensor. So I was only left with an hour or so of service cost. I was pleased with that - given that I might have been charged $800.00 or more, I finished up with only $150.00 or so in my cost. Obviously it wasn't a great situation, given the time wasted and frustration, etc., but I was satisfied with the final resolution.
SO....since then (2 weeks or so), the car has not exhibited the problems again, so it looks like it has been fixed. After all this I still feel like I am driving a carton of fragile eggs, however, worrying every second that the *&*& thing might suddenly die on me again. It does have a somewhat rough idle, but it hasn't stalled, backfired or anything like that.
BUT... I was still unhappy about having to pay for two complete head gasket jobs within 60,000k, and opened a case with Subaru. After several weeks of phone calls, requests for service information, etc. I was informed that Subaru was not willing to pay for any of it. "Out of warranty"..."hadn't performed all service at Subaru dealership"... incomplete service records... blah blah. Everything very polite and professional, but no $$ for you!
I responded with a spreadsheet listing service and repairs and emails to Subaru and Dealership and phoned both complaining in person. I was offered a 50/50 split on the head gasket repair. I took that deal. Perhaps the figure of $4700.00 in maintenance/repair costs in 2007 in the spreadsheet helped, who knows? (BTW...think I got you beat there, Todd!). Or, their plan all along was to say no to soften me up for a
50/50 split...Ok, perhaps I might have continued with a long fight and gotten a better deal, but I also have a life, so, meh, it's over for me. Here's hoping against hope that with all the problems and repairs I've had that maybe I'll get a few years of reasonable reliability.
Happy Holidays!
Fred
P.S. Power steering is still an issue I am working on with local garage. New PS pump was installed without improving the situation (That was under warranty). This saga is still ongoing...