SchwarzeEwigkt

I get sound if I want it every time I drive the car now, so I'm ready to call this one solved.

I did my last drain/refill cycle like four years and about 25k ago now. I have a Bavarian Autosport (RIP!) vacuum fluid extractor that I used to drain out as much fluid as I could via the dipstick. I seem to recall getting out something like 6L. I put the same amount of fluid — Idemitsu ATF HP, the OE stuff — back in, spot checked that it wasn't horrifically off, started the car and let it idle for a few, checked the level again, shifted through all the gear positions a few times, let it idle until it was warm, checked the level again, adjusted it, then drove about 10mi, checked it, and adjusted again. At the time — being in the Before Times, when some of us still drove to the office rather than firing up the ol' VPN — I was putting on about 300mi/wk. I think I waited two weeks and then repeated my drain and refill process. I think calculated that I got like 80% of the fluid that way. My observation was that the car immediately and still does shift more smoothly than it did with the fluid it had in it (may have been original at 90k, no records of it being changed and the PO had no memory of having done it), and it much less frequently bangs into 1st when braking to a stop. That is, it did it often enough before that I was mildly concerned and now it's done it maybe three times that I've noticed in the last five years, and each time much less violently than before. Think "thump" rather than "bang." I think I've got a sticky solenoid that's now much less so. It went well for me and definitely justified my $70 spent on that vacuum extractor, though I've used it for a ton of other things since then. If you've got space to store one, I'd suggest u git u one.

I went for a couple of “cycles” today. First trip was about 20min, followed by about ten minutes of sitting off; then a roughly ten minute trip and about 40min of sitting off; then another ten minute trip followed by half an hour of sitting with it on accessory and playing sound and then ten minutes being off; finally 20min back home. It worked the whole time. I think it’s good!

Couple updates. First, I ran without the old amp in the car for a few days and my parasitic drain issue seems to have at least improved. My theory right now is that the old amp would sometimes not initialize when the radio commanded it to power on and have some kind of seizure. I'm pretty sure the amp gets its main power supply from a line not switched by the ignition (the wiring diagrams seem to indicate that there's a battery powered feed to the amp) and, when stuck in whatever loop mine is stuck, just draws a small but meaningful amount of current until the whole car goes into sleep mode after several hours or whatever later. I think that explains why the amp seemed to work sometimes if I tried to use it after the car sat like overnight after it not working. Second, given that today was the first nice weather since the replacement eBay amp arrived, I put it in just now. It seems to be working; I get audio and was able to turn it on and off a few times. That is, I ran it on accessory and turned it off a few times, each times getting audio. I don't have time right now to go for a typical "cycle" — where I drive to someplace at least ten minutes away, park the car, do a thing, then come back say 20min later to start the car and find the audio doesn't work — so I'm not entirely sure. We'll see over the next few days. Suffice it to say, the eBay replacement amp is looking like the solution.

I took the amp apart while I was waiting for the grill to heat up. Interestingly, while there are some corroded spots on the galvanized cover plate by the connectors, there’s nothing on the board itself. There’s no telltale shit stains or obviously blown up components, either. Other than some dead bugs on the board, it looks perfectly fine. In fact, it looks like they dipped the whole thing in resin or something after they fabricated the board, so one would think it’d have at least a little bit of water resistance anyway. I guess I’ll see what happens when the eBay amp shows up.

I realize that I'm late to the party on this one, but I had squeal coming from the accessory belt system and was scandalized by the cost of simple pulleys. I bought new Timken bearings for both the idler and tensioner pulleys and drove them in with a bolt, washers, nuts, and a combination of aluminum seal driver plates and cast steel plates from a FWD bearing press kit I have laying around. It did not, however, solve the issue for long. Turns out that while the bearings were a little chewy and definitely should have been replaced, the issue ended up being my alternator being on its way out. I've not had any weird noises since I replaced the later dead alternator. That said, those bearings absolutely can be replaced for a couple bucks and a bit of your time, assuming your pulleys are still in good shape and you're willing to fabricobble something together to drive them in.

I realize that it's been nearly a year about this. Clearly, I blew off replacing the amplifier until now. Seems like every time I got it in my head that I was going to pull it out and deal with it, something else went wrong. This car has been a steady stream of moderate annoyance in the last two or three years. Besides, I don't drive it much, so the radio not making any noise isn't really that big a deal. Anyway, I had a quick break at work and the weather is really nice out right now, so I pulled the amp from under the seat. I've got a parasitic draw now that keeps draining my battery that seems to correspond with my having tried to use the radio on the off chance that the amp will initialize and I can drive with tunage. The amp is misbehaving, so it seems a likely culprit. Worth a try. I can't see much into the amp itself, but I can see a couple spots where some sort of liquid contacted the outer casing and spots where it's rusted. There's also what looks like a dried up chai tea drink on the carpet next to and somewhat under where the amp was, so I'm thinking the poor thing is probably toast. I plan to take it apart and take some pictures later today. I ordered a used one off ebay that should show up in a few days. I'll post more updates as I go. Probably. Not that my track record indicates that'll be true...

So, I’ve noticed lately that I haven’t been seeing the oil pressure light turn on when I set the ignition to “ON” but haven’t yet started the engine. I’ll definitely see it every once in a while when I power the car up, but most of the time it doesn’t light. It’s probably got plenty of pressure as it sounds and drives fine. I’m not particularly worried about low pressure, but I just thought it weird that light wouldn’t light up. I vaguely remember there being some dance you could do to make the cluster do a self test or something where all the lights would come on and the gauges would sweep. That would tell me if the physical light in the cluster was working. I can’t for the life of me find the instructions anymore, though. I assume that the oil pressure switch, given that it only has one terminal, closes when enough pressure is sensed and grounds the connector out to through the threads to the block. One would think that would mean if the wire was damaged, the light would stay on all the time rather than off. That seems to leave the oil pressure switch sticking closed or the cluster light only working intermittently. Both seem fairly unlikely. Have you guys ever run across this sort of thing? ’13 Legacy 3.6R, by the way.

Update: Life got in the way of fixing this. Wife's car needed a whole new set of brakes and tires before a vacation, so I had to put those in, and then my car's alternator failed. It's been a rough few weeks. Plus, my car's up for inspection soon, so I've gotta get the important things taken care of. I was hoping the alternator was offending the amp. I did get audio when I started and ran the car for the first time after putting in the alternator, but not tonight when I took the car on a 25mi test drive to make sure the alternator was working properly and to (hopefully) get all the readiness monitors in the ECU set so I'll pass emissions inspection. I didn't take the amp out since it's dark out, but I did roll the seat all way forward when I got home and shined a flashlight under there. There's a bunch of crap on the carpet next to it and three of the mounting screws are rusty. I suspect my mother-in-law spilled something down there before I bought the car from her and it just now succumbed to it. There's precedent; I still haven't gotten all the sticky chai residue out of the steering wheel buttons and the climate control panel buttons from something she spilled all over the dashboard. I swear, some people shouldn't be allowed in cars. Either well, rust hardware doesn't bode well. I might pull the amp out tomorrow if the weather holds.

It might! Thanks!

I guess I’ll want to check the remote turn on line if I have an opportunity to. I haven’t been able to figure out which pin it is, though. These wiring diagrams aren’t easy to read… I think I ran across a diagram on Crutchfield in or about the instructions for wiring up an aftermarket head unit, though. I think all the wires and their functions were labeled so you could get get everything adapted properly. I’ll bet that wire is clearly labeled in there. I should probably just pull the amp out and have a look at it too. There’s a nonzero chance my kid spilled something down there…

Hey! My 2013 Legacy 3.6R has recently started having issues where there's no audio from the speakers at all, intermittently. Usually, I'll fire the car up after not having driven it for a while and everything will be fine. I'll have sweet tunage (usually via BlueTooth to my phone) the whole trip and think nothing of it. Then, I'll get back in the car after doing whatever thing I was going to do at my destination, fire it up, and realize there's no audio. Initially, I thought it botched the connection to the head unit or something — despite that it was reporting on the screen the correct audio metadata and position in the song — and tried switching to another source. It wouldn't play anything from the radio either. The first time it did it, I turned the car off and started it again to "reboot" the radio. It seemed to fix it that time. Today, it happened again. It worked fine on my drive from home to the bank and then to the barber. When I finished getting my hair cut (about two hours later...Bob was busy today!), I got no audio again. I tried turning the radio on and off a few times, though I'm not sure that's "off" so much as muted and the screen blank. Whacked the top of the dash in case it was a loose connection or something. No dice. When I got home, I turned the car off and on again a few times to "reboot" it like I had before. This time, it didn't come back. My wife came over and asked why I looked puzzled. I told her the radio might have packed up, as it wasn't playing any audio. She mentioned that she had trouble getting sound from her phone (via the "iPod" input over a cable plugged into the USB port in the center console box, as pairing to this head unit suuuuuucks) when she borrowed my car the other day. I went about the rest of my day and now, say five or six hours later, I just went out to the car, turned it to accessory, and the radio works fine again. I don't get it. I did some googling and got nowhere. The head unit gets power, so it's not that fuse. I didn't check the amp fuse yet, but fuses tend to be all or nothing, so I think that's a wild goose chase. This evening when it was working again, I even reached under the seat, tapped on the amp, and wiggled the cables around in case it was a bad connection. It just kept playing fine. My first guess was that it was temperature related, as it was pretty warm today (maybe got up to 82), but it was probably much hotter parked in the sun in a parking lot while I was out. Thing is, the first day it happened, it wasn't as hot out and it rained quite a bit while I was out and about. I suck at car audio stuff. I'm more a mechanical/engine guy. I'm leaning toward the amp being the problem since the head unit appears to be running fine. My vacation pics don't give me much to go on. I guess there's a diagnostic mode for the radio. I'll have to try that out next time it acts stupid. What do you fine folks think?

Yeah, that’s a situation where I agree it’s prudent. Your situation is a recipe for melted piston crowns and burnt valves. Fresh ignition components is a safe thing to have, even if it just checks off a box on the list of stuff that could be going wrong. In my case, I risk catalyst damage from unburnt fuel from one cylinder, but only if I continue to drive it for a while. Also, my dash lights up like the Vegas strip and half the car’s functions are disabled.

Maybe, but coils are still $70 apiece. Keeping $420 worth of coils around just in case doesn’t really work for the budget. Besides, my car has since COVID more or less become the village bicycle; other people in my family who need wheels because theirs are down for whatever reason put more miles on my car than I do at this point. Factor in that the coils are stocked in a warehouse only about 100mi away from me and show up in a couple days, I think it makes the most sense for me to just order one when it fails. It seems likely that I’ll be ordering a couple in the medium term, but I’m treating that as a bridge-crossed-as-it’s-encountered kind of situation.

Probably not without taking them out. They’re in recesses in the valve cover and the cables run around them.