I bought my car new. It began having a whining sound with acceleration recently (at 98+ thousand miles). A garage replaced the power steering pump, THEN told me I needed a turbo. No problem to drive it to dealership, waving bye-bye all the while. By now, the car is no whining, it is chugging along making strange metal sounds. Dealership confirms that I need a turbo, and also by the way, an engine. There is metal in the oil pan. I have now seen many blogs, complaints, etc. on line about a defect in the turbo on this car that causes oil starvation to the engine. Question: With metal in the oil pan, is there any hope in flushing the engine, replacing the turbo, and getting some mileage out of it? It has 99,000 miles. Has Subaru given any “good will” compensation for this? There were service bulletins about it.
The mileage you would get by simply flushing the pan and installing another turbo would likely be measured in two or three digits, not four. I wouldn’t waste the money.
If you have followed the maintenance schedule religiously you may have a shot at some help from Subaru, but since the car is WAY out of warranty I wouldn’t count on it.
I’d be thinking “used engine,” and “sell the car,” not necessarily in that order.
These are good questions for one of the Subaru forums.
I thought that’s what this place is,
Sure seems that way .
Search ‘Subaru’ on the link above and you get 3645 hits.
From the sound of it the engine is toast and keep in mind that in the majority of cases those complaints you read are not mechanically justified. What you’re hearing there are people who are not happy with a serious problem that has surfaced and as per human nature want to point the finger at someone or something.
This applies to every other car made and every problem that surfaces. A few are justified, some are not.
You could ask Subaru corporate for a Good Will warranty but keep 2 things in mind.
One is that the odds of this on a near 100k miles engine at 7 years of age are slim to none.
Two is that you had better be able to produce documentation proving you were diligent with maintenance. Changing the oil at 9k mile intervals or whenever won’t cut it.
Also keep in mind that Subaru does not produce bad turbochargers. Subaru does not even manufacture those turbos. They’re produced by Garrett who also manufactures them for many other car manufacturers and most turbo problems related to engine oil are caused by a clogged mesh screen.
My gut feeling is that what you have here is a sludged engine with the turbo and engine problems being unrelated but both caused by the same thing. If this is the case you can probably forget about any Good Will warranty help.
So how often (miles and time wise) do you change the engine oil?
The major problem was the knuckleheads at your garage completely missed the diagnosis by a mile. A turbo failure is nothing too bad. However yours led to the turbo self destructing due to prolonged use and introduced metal bits into the engine.
Maybe Subaru will help, but mentioning the “garage” won’t.
Also how often an oil change? Subaru reverted to every 4months/3750 miles on all turbo’s in a letter sent out.