Brady
I'm sorry to tell you that the symptoms you describe spell Bad News for your climate control. This is the Kiss of Death, it means your logic circuits have gone AWOL.
It's a known fault and I've had similar problems. In some cases the temp goes all the way up the scale to 32, in other cases the temp drives itself down to 18, no matter what you do. In conjunction to this the outside temp indicator blinks on occasion without any button having been pressed. As it gets worse, this outside temp button will not respond to pushing at all.
The USA guys can't help on this, theirs is a different model of controller, SFAIK.
When this was outlined before the word from Japan is that it is an age related problem. Most people replace the dash unit with one from a scrapped car. Buying a new unit from Subaru is serious dollars.
Recently I dismantled one of my units and I noticed a burnt out component, a capacitor. I've just had a friend replace this bad capacitor with a similar but better component, and received the repaired circuit boards back this weekend. There is no way to know if this repair will fix the problem until the unit is re-assembled and installed in the car. I hope to get this done when I am off a few days over Christmas time.
If the replaced capacitor does not fix the logic circuits, it is a case of "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." If by chance it DOES make the panel good, I will post up a photographic How To so that owners can get the repair done themselves.
I'll get back to you as soon as I have had a chance to do the install.
Fingers crossed
Joe
