Rough Idle, Hesitation, stalling.

[Uncamitzi]

I'm seeing a lot of threads about these things now... I think the best advice I can give to our newer members and those that are not as mechanically inclined as others is that #1 Our cars are 20 years old...or approaching that age quickly. Rubber, plastic and metal components of our engines breathing system are, for the most part, brittle and susceptible to disintegration. I know this from first hand examination and replacement of these parts... I also recommend cleaning and checking the MAF. I was having almost all of the stalling, hesitation and missing problems that I'm seeing NewGuy and others asking about. While changing the water pump and timing belt I also looked at the hoses and ducting of the intake system. I found a number of cracked and brittle hoses on the vacuum system. I replaced what I found and my car is now running smoothly, evenly and I'm getting better gas mileage than I have in years. Yes...there can be other problems...the ECU...the TCU... bad ignitors bad fuel injectors... 20 years of running... It's going to take a toll. We can decide that we've put enough effort in our cars and quit on them or take care of them the best we can. I've now got an agenda of making the commitment of a car payment a month to maintenance of my SVX. In my opinion, if I'm going to keep this car running as long as I want I'm going to have to treat it like a new car financially. My payment for this car when I bought it in 2005 was 250.00 a month... that should be enough... for now...

What do you think?

[Tapani]

Mitch,

Everything you said makes perfect sense. Most issues anybody has will probably turn out to be "old car faults" and only few SVX specific quirks :-).

I myself am fortunate, my Toy has been maintained by a small family based business - still an authorised Subaru shop - since 1998 and practically with unlimited financial resources from the owner. So it is in fairly good nick in all respects - of course the 20 years age can be seen and it still needs normal maintenance attention here and there.

I've had mine since July this summer and even though it is a #3 car I have done most of driving with it and not the newer everyday transports. Still - no faults so far, 100% reliability - only minor things which I didn't notice when I bought it and some small further modifications....

But yes, if you buy 20 years old a bit neglected car for 2 grand you will end up spending another 2 grand to get it reliable - and there are no larger repairs or component overhauls included.

Good luck to all, let's enjoy our rather unique and challenging vehicles !

Tapani