Consumer Complaint Detail

SUBARU / OUTBACK / 1998

Recalls
0 Injured
Investigations
0 Death
Complaints
No Fire
Components - Details
NHTSA Complaint Number: 005030943 Incident Date: Apr, 14 2005
Consumer's City: Consumer's State: NY
Vehicle Transmission Type: AUTO Manufacturers Name: Subaru of America, Inc.
Model Name: OUTBACK Model Year: 1998
Vehicle Involved in a Crash: No Component's Description: Engine and engine cooling:engine
Vehicle Involved in a Fire: No Persons Injured: 0
Vehicle's VIN#: 4S3BG6856W7 Date added to File: May, 23 2021
Date Complaint Received: Jul, 27 2005 Complaint Type: IVOQ
Incident Reported To Police: No Purchase Date: Jan, 14 1999
Was Original Owner: Yes Anti-lock Brakes: Yes
Number of Cylinders: 4 Date of Manufacturer: -
Was Vehicle Towed: - Description of the Complaints: Cylinder #4 exhaust vale failure in july of 2004. subaru dealer prestige imports pulled head and replaced valve. they insisted the cause was "bad gasoline." april 2005 car is found to have high level of co2 in cooling system. subaru dealer prestige imports refuses to do a leak down test to determine which head gasket has failed. pulls both heads at a cost of close to $3,000. refused to acknowledge that they removed the head in july 2004 to replace the valve and refuse to acknowledge that this may have been the cause of the july 2005 failure. told me "we've seen this before." refused to call subaru usa because "they would just laugh at us." in a meeting with prestige imports gm jim borreli he indicated that this is a common problem and promised to contact subaru usa he never did and would not return my phone calls. subaru usa has been extremely unhelpful and claims that they have nothing to do with authorized dealer repairs or issues with head gaskets on 2.5 l type 1 engines. this is an very common problem apparently. almost every auto mechanic in america is familiar with it. on the nhtsa complain site i counted at least 18 head gasket related complaints. a search of the web brings up hundreds if not thousands more., why has the nhtsa ignored these problems and not acted in the best interest of costumers? *nm