CEL and Cruise are flashing

Hello,

 

I occasionally have an issue and was hoping someone could help me out. Sometimes my CEL and cruise control lights come on and flash. The car also sputters and will sometimes shut off if the gas peddle is not pressed.

 

I took the car to a Subaru mechanic last year and he spent 2-3 hours checking the car and couldn't find anything wrong with it. He did the moving stuff around to see if the problem followed and it didn't.

 

Finally, the mechanic put some fuel injector cleaner through and told me to run a bottle through every now and then. As long as I remember to run a bottle through every couple of fill ups I don't have an issue. However, if I forget or don't drive the car for awhile the issue comes back. When the issue comes back it always goes away after I put a bottle of fuel injector cleaner in and run the engine.

 

Any ideas what this might be? It would be nice if I could fix this and not have to mess around with fuel injector cleaner.

 

Thanks

What's the code being thrown?

 

Miles/year/condition

135k, you should have had the plugs changed at 120k, was that done ?

 

The common thing to do is swap the coil packs to other plugs and see if the CEL follows.

 

Oh, CC light alway's flashes when you have CEL.

135k, you should have had the plugs changed at 120k, was that done ?

 

 

 

The common thing to do is swap the coil packs to other plugs and see if the CEL follows.

 

 

 

Oh, CC light alway's flashes when you have CEL.

 

 

+1 swap the coil packs from 1 and 3 to 2 and 4, this happened on my STI and it was a bad coilpack on cylinder 3.

The spark plugs were changed at 100k miles so they should still be good.

 

The dealership did the swapping coil packs think and the issue did not follow from 1 and 3 to 2 and 4 so they ruled that out.

 

I'll try the seafoam and see what happens.

 

Does anyone have an idea on why the fuel injector cleaner is able to temporarily solve the problem?

use more injector cleaner.

 

Do you take the car on long drives or just short ones ?

 

Knock on wood, in 164,000 miles never had this issue. I do lots of highway miles.

The spark plugs were changed at 100k miles so they should still be good.

 

The dealership did the swapping coil packs think and the issue did not follow from 1 and 3 to 2 and 4 so they ruled that out.

 

I'll try the seafoam and see what happens.

 

Does anyone have an idea on why the fuel injector cleaner is able to temporarily solve the problem?

 

fuel injector cleaner gives the failing fuel injector temp fix because it's more susceptible to build up and is on it ways to complete failure

what kind of fuel are you using? if the car sits for a long time, or poor quality fuel is used, the filter in the tank may be clogged up. the injector cleaner dissolves the gunk, which is sucked through the fuel system and might have clogged an injector. at over 100k miles, its a good idea to at least check the filter. if you can obtain the spec for fuel pressure, and perform a pressure test you might be able to eliminate injector failure and focus on fuel delivery. let me know how it goes!