Rear end chattering
 

Hi. I'm a new SVX owner - my wife and I really love the car. Of course all things that seem perfect seldom are - which brings me to my question. Recently the rear end started chattering after the car warms up some (about three or four minutes on a cold Wisconsin day) but only when simultaneously accelerating and turning. Straight line driving is fine. I unplugged the "front wheel drive fuse" to disable the rear wheel drive and the chattering is completely gone. I've been driving with it like that ever since. Of course, with Wisconsin winters it would be nice to have AWD. Any ideas? Thanks!

Idea #1: Take the fuse back out before you burn up your transmission. It's not meant to be continually driven with the fuse in place. Oil path is routed differently and the tranny can be damaged when the fuse is in place.

Idea #2: Check the rear cv axles, more than likely you have a bad joint.

Beav

Chris,

Welcome to the Club. What part of Milwaukee are you in? I'm in Brewers Hill, just North of downtown.

My chattering turned out to be a clogged transmission cooler. When I installed a new cooler and replaced the external filter, my chattering went away completely.

You could take a 2 foot piece of cooler hose and connect the inlet to the outlet bypassing the filter and stock cooler and drive it for a few miles to see if that diagnoses the problem.

Regardless if that solves the problem or not, you should replace the filter anyway. Its about 10 bucks and is mounted to the frame rail under the battery.

I can point you to a few service shops that are good with the SVX. Unfortunatly, we've tried all the dealers between here and Racine and none of them are good with the SVX.

Doug

Thanks for the good leads. When I get time I'll try the cooler bypass...as soon as I figure out where to get the hardware. By the way I live in Oak Creek, most of the time.

I would never let a dealer shop butcher my car - I would appreciate knowing some of your other shops.

Unlike other Subaru's the FWD fuse is "out" on the SVX for AWD.

On other Subaru's the FWD fuse is "in" for AWD.