We are going to start a new regular Friday post called Bud's Car of the Week! To kick off our new string of posts we are going to start with one of our favorite vehicles. Our techs love to work on Subaru’s. Maybe it's because most everyone here owns their own; or maybe it's because both of our current techs have over 30 years’ experience servicing and repairing them them combined.
This is a 2005 Subaru Legacy. It came in for diagnosis because it was overheating. After talking with the customer about its symptoms we learned that it had also been leaking coolant and power steering fluid. The loss of power steering fluid was probably the reason the customer was also mentioning a noise with the power steering. Our Subaru tech did our full 29 point inspection and then over another hour on top of that to check out every little area of the cooling system and power steering system to look into the specific complaint. He found that to be safe the legacy would need 4 new tires. We would never send a customer out in a vehicle that wouldn’t be safe for our family or theirs. During inspection our tech found that the head gaskets were defective (also known as “blown”). This causes the fluid from the engine and the cooling system to mix and disrupts the operation of the engine and cooling system. He also found the power steering pump to be malfunctioning; this prevents the fluid from being pumped evenly through the system. Luckily the customer is able to follow through with these repairs and has allowed us to service and repair these very important components. There are a few other recommended services that we suggested to the customer. If they heed our recommendations they will have the best running vehicle at the lowest long term cost. At Bud’s we believe that keeping up on your preventative maintenance is the best way to keep your vehicle safe, reliable and dependable!
