I was told a line in my automatic transmission system was leaking a few months ago. In the last few months, I have experienced a problem that only happens twice a day, it always happens in the evening when I get in my car to drive home from work after the car has been sitting (over 4 hours at least). Occasionally, it will do this within a mile from home when i start out in the morning, after I have gotten on the highway and driven at least 35 -40 mph.
What happens is…I get in my car after work, start driving out of the parking lot, which involves two or three stop signs, and within a mile , after I have gotten on the highway and picked up to the speedlimit 35 - 40 mph , when i come to the first stop light or need to come to a complete stop,and I am applying the brake and just before it comes to a complete stop, the engine shakes and all the lights come on and cuts off. I have to put it in park and start it again , which it does and then it never happens again for the rest of my 30 mile commute home. Occasionally, but not everyday, this will happen in the morning when i leave to go to work, but maybe only two times a week in the morning. Again, it only happens at the first stop after driving 35 miles an hour and never again for the rest of the drive.
One day when this happened on my way to work, it happened on the same corner it always happens and I restarted the engine and when i put it in gear, and pressed on the accelerator, it just revved and in a few seconds jerked into gear and I drove in to work with no further problem (thirty miles). So, I took it to the Subaru dealer that afternoon because I thought maybe the automatic trransmission was starting to feel the effects of the leak I was told I have.
Oh, and my check engine light was on (but it has been on for four years, I have had timing belt work, a/c work, new radiator and various major repairs over that time and never has the light gone off and any mention or attempt to find out why was made by any of the service techs) in al 4 years. So I ignore it mostly.
The Subaru service tech replaced all the leaking hoses and harness in the autotransmission and replaced the battery which was checking as a dud and said that should take care of the problem. And that a bad battery could make the car do what it was doing…$1000 dollars.
So, the next morning I drive in to work and its fine , but when I got in the car to drive home, the same thing happened, foot on the brebrake right before complete stop, shakes and shuts down. I start it and go and never happens again. It has not happened at all in the morning for the last week, but still does it consistenly after work.
I took to another mechanic for my usual oil change and I mentioned this problem and they said I would have to leave it there since it only happens once a day after sitting for them to figure it out. I said fine, do the oil change and leave it parked , and when you come to pick me up from work at 5, you will have the experience yourself. Meanwhile, the tech calls and said during a courtesy checkk of systems, he said my ignition coil was faulty and that was probably what was causing the problem and it would be 300 dollars to fix (part $191). so, i said OKay. I could not tell if the problem was there, because, during the day, the car had not sat idle for at least 4 hours. I know it is at least four hours, because sometimes i leave for lunch and this problem does not occur, only after work when it has sat in the lot for 4 hours or more.
the next morning all okay and felt like the car was even running better, not so sluggish on acceleration as before. But, when I left work, it happened again. just once.
so, here I am. The Subaru guy says he cannot check it because he doesnt have the right computer for the older models (is this possible, at the subaru dealership???) I am going to take it back to the other mechanic on monday and leave it there all day so they can drive it and experience it for themselves when they come to pick me up at work.
But I wondered if anyone here has any insight. I waited all week to call car talk because I bet they could tell me what it was right on the spot, but the recording said to ask here and maybe they would answer.
there ya have it. I do not really want to spend much more money, because I really was considering trading if the origninal estimate to fix this was over a coule of thousand. I have had two subarus before this and kept them until they had nearly 290K miles and begrudgingly traded for a younger one when it got to often that everything was a major expense to fix.
thanks for any thoughts on this.