The Car Review: A Subaru Model Under Scrutiny

I put another engine in and even though he grumbled and it took him 80,000 miles to decide that they're going to put another engine in but they did put the engine in 60,000 miles later it doesn't burn any oil it's 30 something miles a gallon the highway so that's fine. Let's take it for a ride now. They have an interesting mode here, the little X-mode when you push it the light comes on. Now they say you can use it off-road but once you get going over like 10 miles an hour it shuts itself off anyway realize this, it can come in handy for normal people because if you're stuck in a big snow you're going slow you'll be able to get out better that's what a normal person's using. Let's face it, this is not an off-road vehicle by any stretch of the imagination.

That is more or less if you're stuck in the snow or maybe you got a friend lives in a country they got a big old dirt road and there's all kinds of dirt puddles you won't get stuck in the puddles just don't go over 10 miles an hour which you're not going to doing a dirt road anyways. They have a tiny backup camera, baby I mean tiny look at that thing it reminds me well let's turn this thing off there that's nice height, it's not outrageously high but we can go over my little water bump here, not gonna drag anything.

Now the transmission, sometimes Subaru has problems with Transmissions but he has the filter and fluid changed and 148,000 miles still the original one, and it's not doing any odd shifting really. You know it's a small engine so it has to downshift quite a bit, but you can see right, it gets up and goes there's no lag there now we come to the road where people are always driving nobody's coming here we go and it is all-wheel drive you notice the wheels did not slip in the rain I said they're good for it's a little engine but hey step on the gas it starts going mind you the engine does make a reasonable amount of noise doing it because it's a boxer engine, and being four-wheel drive, they actually handle quite well when you're cornering. You don't really get any over or under steer, you really feel secure, you're not going to get any slippage.

And he's a smart guy, he doesn't live in the middle of nowhere, he lives in Massachusetts so he's got all season tires, he doesn't bother getting four snow tires spending all that money on rims. Hey all-season tires with all-wheel drive if you're not going anywhere, no man has gone before with eight feet of snow it's perfectly fine listen from him, crumble if you got a problem because if enough people Grumble and it's a big mistake like piston ranks they will have to recall them, they will have to fix them free, they have no way out of that it's federal law.

And he likes the off-season tires so he has all-season tires on all the time even though he lives in Massachusetts because realize this, you have an all-wheel drive vehicle, it's not two wheel and then shifts the four-wheel, it's an all-wheel drive vehicle you got to have the same exact tires on all of the tires if one blows you got to replace all four because it all has to be operated at the same speed or will cause internal work. You're going to buy four snow tires and then when it goes up by another four, stone tires he's smart, he's got all-season tires.

You didn't have to mess around with it, and he works in hospitals during respiratory therapy, it's got to come when there's a problem, he had fun during the coronavirus pandemic, told me that boy, he was working his rear end off, and he's totally happy with it. And I find it kind of interesting, it's just about everybody who's brought me these Subarus here on the East Coast they were either fire EMT, they worked in a hospital, and as long as you stay away from their six-cylinder engines, they're good vehicles plus as I said earlier, stay away from turbos too.

This is going to wear out faster, you don't need it, they go fast enough, and let's face it what are these made for, all-wheel drive in the snow how fast do you win a drive in the snow, it doesn't matter how good the system is you're still going to slide ages ago we took over Nation out in Colorado we went on an icy lake covered with snow with these all-wheel, they slid all over the place when you're really punching it you know it's for a slower speed so hey kudos to Subaru with the exception of they had to replace the engine kind of a big deal there. So if you never want to miss another one of my new car reviews, just subscribe to my channel and follow me on social media.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enrev up your engines here's a Subaru Forester they sell a reasonable amount on them I'm going to show you today why complaining and complaining a lot can really save you money in the long run out of your wall because this thing's got 140 000 miles it's still running pretty good but it had to have the engine replaced it's a 2014. from the day he got it it burnt oil so he took it in and it did a test and of course what did they say oh it's within specifications we're not going to replace the engine so he kept driving and then driving it and it was all burning oil but he started to hear things and a matter of fact a guy worked at the dealership said I see a lot of these have problems you know you should complain you should look into this this is why anybody with a problem like this should always complain because enough people complain to the National Highway Traffic Safety dot gov website when they get so many thousands of complaints they launch an investigation then what happens if they're seeing off of them they force the companies to fix the problem now this is a 2014 four-cylinder Subaru with a four-cylinder box hinges now decades ago they had a problem blowing head gaskets but they figured that out and that's not a problem the reason this baby was burning oil is because it turns out that Subaru was buying piston rings from a crappy manufacturer they didn't make them themselves they bought them from somebody just like Toyota bought the fuel pumps from Densel and they had to recall those millions of Toyotas same thing only there's a bit of a difference between pulling a little pop on the back seat off getting to the fuel pump put into the fuel pump and replacing the engine there's a big difference between those two he persisted at 80 000 miles he went in and talked to the Master Mechanic and they did the test where they seal it with tape so you can't change anything and you drive it up to 1200 miles well he figured now heck with this I'm going to drive as close to 1200 as I can so he pulled it in with 1100 something on it right then they said yes and according to them at least they replaced the entire block because okay if the piston rings are worn then there's too much space they burn oil and they're worn and they will also wear guess what the black and on these things that's what the Box made out of aluminum do you know how soft aluminum is you can actually take an aluminum engine and put it in a stove like you could pull that aluminum hat off and you can heat it up not all that hot you could easily get it done you get a hammer and hit it and it will bend aluminum is a relatively soft thing so they replaced the whole bottom end the block piston rings everything they use the ads over that was at 80 000 miles what do we see we'll turn the key on it's now guys 148 000 miles okay that's 60 000 miles since he had the engine block replaced band voila it doesn't burn oil anymore they fixed it and they fixed it free because he persisted now if you would have listen to the first guy he said nah that's normal eventually it would have too many miles on it and they wouldn't be fixing it for free anymore the same thing with Toyota those 2.4 liter engines that they had that bird oil and the Camrys if they get too many miles on them they say oh too many miles we're not going to replace your Pistons or rebuild the engine anymore so you got to complain and complain often if they're not going to do what you want because almost every time I get customers coming I had a guy if you remember last year came with one of those stinking little Ram ProMaster little delivery van right it's really a Fiat piece of crap it's made in Italy engines Italian had like 1500 miles on the engines rattling burning oil they said oh no no no there's two no it's not burning too much on just leave it right so they want to fix it at first but he persisted in complaining had them fix the engine yes they fixed it correctly it doesn't burn any oil 60 000 miles later he can get 30 something miles a gallon on the highway when he's driving a normal rate all-wheel drive vehicle it's great in Massachusetts where it snows as I said a lot of times people don't understand here's something bad and they think it's always that way yeah decades ago these had engines that blue head gaskets these didn't black guys because they put bad piston rings in it now since this one in 2014 I don't see any problems with the newer ones burning them still and I stand by this don't buy a turbocharged boxer engine it's going to make it burn out faster that's just how it is these aren't race cars but they go plenty fast enough going down a highway you really don't need a Turbocharger and if there's one thing you listen to me about Subarus listen to this other than these that had bad piston rings are extremely Dependable they get decent gas mods but do not and I mean do not buy a six cylinder box or Subaru engine historically have nothing but problems of course they're trying to compete you put out more horsepower but all my customers they have a lot of them ticking away now some of those which is even worse some of the six cylinder boxer engines they admitted they put bad valves in them and they actually had to replace a bunch of the valves in those six cylinder engines but unlike his that they put a new Block in the four cylinder and it fixed it I had customers of those six cylinder Subarus and they fixed the engines I know they recall for the valves I see some of them 10 15 20 000 miles that the engines would blow up because they just didn't build them right understand one thing these days there's very few mechanics out there that actually have the experience the technical wherewithal and the tools to correctly rebuild engines so if they're rebuilding them they don't know what they're doing half the time they also seeing the same thing with Kias they had all kinds of engine problems with their four-cylinder engines in the past burning oil and then they claimed some of them are made in Alabama well our machine didn't work right there so they didn't make these parts right and the metal fragments came up then the engines blew up and I've had people have those engines either placed or repaired only within a year year and a half they blow up again people are not that good at rebuilding engines anymore they're so complex the parts cost so much and when they're doing something like rebuilding an engine under a warranty you know they're going to cut Corners they're not going to replace all the parts like in the case of this they did it right they did the block but they used the Hat over who's to say whether the heads were worn in this case it wasn't but if you got so many rebuilding an engine and it's under warranty believe me they're not going to go buy all new parts well we can use this one over we can use that one over it's not something you want you don't want to get a vehicle that's got a bad engine that's just number one so just remember stay away from six cylinder Subarus now with 140 something thousand miles on it he's happy with us let's start her up sounds like a Subaru get a little bit of noise it's got 146 000 miles on it realize one thing boxer engines are relatively noisy engines now turn the AC off you can hear a clanging noise but that's not the engine that's a stupid heat shield and he says when it finally goes he'll wire it up with some mechanics wire or just take it off throw it away that's just that rattling it doesn't mean anything sounds bad but it doesn't mean anything plenty of leg room and of course it's Subaru so it's all-wheel drive and look it's got a fancy self opening tailgate and as you can see he's got a lot of stuff in here you can fit a lot of stuff they got the great security top so nobody sees what you got in there and it's a partially zero emissions vehicle Subaru is made by Fuji heavy industry it's a big company and in this case he didn't know himself but it is made in Japan oh do you have the industries all you can tell is there's a VIN number J J means it's made in Japan I want a Japanese car believe me your brother office one made in Japan it was just a crying shame that they bought their piston rings from a company that did a crappy job but they owned up and they put another engine and even though he grumbled and it took him 80 000 miles to decide that they're going to put another engine in but they did put the engine in 60 000 miles later it doesn't burn any oil it's 30 something miles a gallon the highway so that's fine let's take it for a ride now they have an interesting mode here the little xmo when you push it the light comes on now they say you can use it off-road but once you get going over like 10 miles an hour it shuts itself off anyway realize this it can come in handy for normal people because if you're stuck in a big snow you're going slow you'll be able to get out better that's what a normal person's using let's face it this is not an off-road vehicle by any stretch of the imagination that is more or if you're stuck in the snow or maybe you got a friend lives in a country they got a big old dirt road and there's all kinds of dirt puddles you won't get stuck in the puddles just don't go over 10 miles an hour which you're not going to doing a dirt road anyways they have a tiny backup camera and baby I mean tiny look at that thing it reminds me well let's turn this thing off there that's nice height it's not outrageously high but we can go over my little water bump here not gonna drag anything now the transmission sometimes Subarus have problems with Transmissions but he has the filter and fluid changed and 148 000 miles still the original one and it's not doing any odd shifting really you know it's a small engine so it has to downshift quite a bit but you can see right it gets up and goes there's no lag there now we come to the road where people are always driving nobody's coming here we go and it is all-wheel drive you notice the wheels did not slip in the rain I said they're good for it's a little engine but hey step on the gas it starts going mind you the engine does make a reasonable amount of noise doing it because it's a boxer engine and being four-wheel drive they actually handle quite well when you're cornering you don't really get any over or under steer you really feel secure you're not going to get any slippage and he's a smart guy he doesn't live in the middle of nowhere he lives in Massachusetts so he's got all season tires he doesn't bothering getting four snow tires spending all that money in rims hey all season tires with all-wheel drive if you're not going anywhere no man has gone before with eight feet of snow it's perfectly fine listen from him crumble if you got a problem because if enough people Grumble and it's a big mistake like piston ranks they will have to recall them they will have to fix them free they have no way out of that it's federal law and he likes the off-season tires so he has all season tires on all the time even though he lives in Massachusetts because realize this you have an all-wheel drive vehicle it's not two wheel and then shifts the four-wheel it's an all-wheel drive vehicle you got to have the same same exact tires on all of the tires if one blows you got to replace all four because it all has to be operated at the same speed or will cause internal work you're going to buy four snow tires and then when it goes up by another four stone tires he's smart he's got all season tires you didn't have to mess around with it and he works in hospitals during respiratory therapy it's got to come when there's a problem he's got to drive in he had fun during the coronavirus pandemic told me that boy he was working his rear end off and he's totally happy with it and I find it kind of interesting it's just about everybody who's brought me these Subarus here on the East Coast they were either fire EMT they worked in a hospital and as long as you stay away from their six-cylinder engines they're good vehicles plus as I said earlier stay away from turbos too this is going to wear out faster you don't need it they go fast enough and let's face it what are these made for all-wheel drive in the snow how fast do you win a drive in the snow it doesn't matter how good the system is you're still going to slide ages ago we took over Nation out in Colorado we went on an icy lake covered with snow with these all-wheel they slid all over the place when you're really punching it you know it's for a slower speed so hey kudos to Subaru with the exception of they had to replace the engine kind of a big deal there so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell foreign\n"