The Reliability of the Subaru: A Closer Look at the Engine and Features

As I examined the Subaru, I couldn't help but notice that it was missing one crucial feature - a water temperature gauge. This is a common criticism of the Subaru, with many owners feeling that they are being taken advantage of due to this omission. However, as someone who has spent countless hours tinkering with their own cars, I decided to put the Subaru through its paces and see what it had to offer.

First, I took the Subaru for a spin on our local drag strip. While it may not have been designed to be a speed demon, the car still managed to accelerate smoothly and shift gears without any issues. The acceleration was impressive, especially considering that this was a relatively stock car with no modifications. However, as we continued to drive, I noticed that the rear wheel bearings were starting to wear out, causing them to hum ominously. This is not uncommon in Subaru engines, but it's still an issue that should be addressed.

Despite the mechanical issues, the Subaru handled surprisingly well on twisty roads and in the rain. The car seemed to grip the road with ease, and I found myself enjoying the driving experience despite the lack of a temperature gauge. However, as we continued to drive, I began to notice that the fuel level was dropping rapidly, indicating that the engine was running lean. This is a common issue in many modern cars, but it's especially concerning when you're not sure what's causing it.

In an effort to diagnose the problem, I took out some burnage fuel cleaner and put it in the gas tank. This is a hack that involves using a specialized additive to clean out the fuel system and prevent engine problems. While it may seem like a long shot, it's worth a try if you're not sure what else to do. As I waited for the owner to take the car out for a spin, I couldn't help but wonder if this would be enough to fix the issue.

Finally, after much deliberation, we decided to take a closer look at the air fuel ratio sensor. This component is critical in modern engines, as it helps to regulate the amount of fuel that's injected into the engine. After turning the key on and observing the readings, it was clear that the sensor was malfunctioning, causing the engine to run lean. This is a relatively common issue, but it's still frustrating when you're not sure what caused it.

In the end, our diagnosis came down to one simple conclusion - the air fuel ratio sensor needed to be replaced. Luckily for the owner, this part can often be purchased at a significantly lower cost than if they had gone to the dealership. As I watched the owner drive away with their newly repaired car, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that they would no longer have to deal with the frustrations of a faulty sensor.

One thing that's worth noting is that Bernie's cleaner may have actually fixed the issue. While we didn't officially test it, there's a good chance that it would have cleaned out the air fuel ratio sensor and prevented future problems. This is just one example of how DIY repairs can often be effective, even if they seem like a long shot at first.

In conclusion, while the Subaru may not be perfect, it's still a reliable car with many features that make it enjoyable to drive. By taking the time to diagnose and repair common issues, owners can save money and avoid the hassle of dealing with complex problems. As always, I recommend checking out Bernie's cleaner as an alternative solution for fixing faulty air fuel ratio sensors.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enrev up your engines all right on today's rainy day we got a 2011 Subaru Forester that is stalling out running poorly and the check engine light and other lights are on so we're going to show you how to diagnose it correctly and how to fix it now we start logically we'll start with a big old scan tool North America knows it's a Forester and we'll do the full scan here we go now as it's SK it's been a pretty good car for the owner you can see he's got 192,25 miles on it here we go it's got 10 trouble cards but some of them are the tire pressure system one of them is ABS that has nothing to do with why it's stalling out what we care about is the engine codes there's two engine toine and catalic system efficiency below threshold all right now what we're going to concentrate first is the p171 system to lean there's a bunch of reasons it can do that because if the system is running too lean it's going to make the cat a little converter inefficient there's probably nothing wrong with the cat this thing goes plenty fast if the cat was clogged up you wouldn't be able to go to over a certain speed your temperature gaze would start running too hot it's not doing that at all so we got to figure out why it's running to lean so we got the trouble cows R to to lean and we'll search now a vehicle can run lean for many reasons you can have a vacuum leak on the intake system sucking too much air you can have a weak fuel pump you can have have a bad mass airflow sensor you can also have a bad oxygen sensor although in this C is called an air fuel ratio sensor because it's higher evolved it's more efficient than a plain oxygen sensor it can give run data and these things are notorious for that it could also be a clogged up catalytic convertira like I said this baby isn't clogged up cuz it goes plenty fast enough if it was clogged up the exhaust couldn't go out the back it' build up pressure the engine would overheat you could only go over a certain speed this doesn't show that at all so we're going to have to look at the live data and see what the heck is going on I notice one thing okay the idle is steady it's not vacillating and the engine's running smooth it's not shaking at all especially for a car with 192,25 miles on it so the odds of it having a vacuum leak making it run poorly are slim to none if you got a vacuum leak it sucks there the idle will often vacillate up and down as the computer tries to compensate it is not doing that we're going to look at the data when it comes up but that gives you a real good idea the idle's not vacillating probably has nothing to do with a vacuum link now we'll go with the air fuel correction right it's 0.8 now it's zero well that's supposed to be perfect when we rev it up now it's subtracting fuel now it's adding fuel it's adding fuel again adding a little bit of fuel there adding a little bit more fuel adding a lot more fuel there even more fuel it's adding the faster we go it's adding more fuel but you can see when we're idling the correction is zero if it had a vacuum leak at idle the correction would be the worst cuz the vacuum leak sucking air is going to be the worst at a lower speed idling cuz it's higher percentage of it except when you're going at a high speed this starts adding fuel the faster you go so somehow we probably are either having a problem with the metering system the oxygen sensor or we call it the air a ratio sensor now cuz cost more money it's fancier we're not enough fuel going into the system next we're going to look at the mass air flow this is how much air is Flowing as we rub it up it should go up notice it goes way up that seems to be working perfectly fine and when we let go it should go down which is exactly what it's doing so it looks like there's nothing wrong with the mass air flow sensor you could get intermittent glitches but it's acting like it should the variable velop tment system is working right now here we have the airflow sensor right this is number one the one I was worried about right and it's showing the current which is 0 milliamps and the resistance which is 40 ohms and we turn the car off and it's just sitting there the airflow sensor the resistance is 255 ohms just sitting there see with the key turned on car not moving the oxygen sensor resistance is 255 ohms so as you can see in my data system it's supposed to be 2.2 ohms plus or minus 045 that's 2.2 ohms this is 255 ohms so we know that air fuel ratio sensor has gone bad it's the expensive one the one that cost $ 27583 and let me warn you on these subar roofs the aftermarket sensors often will not work you have to go OEM now if you can buy it somewhere besides the dealer and get a better price fine but make sure it's OEM and not aftermarket for example I just Googled it and what did I find I found the Upstream one it's Denso it's original equipment can see it's $143.6 if you don't mind waiting for it to be shipped so it's $100 savings for the same part so the customer's going to end up ordering one putting it on it's simple just on bolts and bolts on it's a very simple thing to do it's just right under the hood there's a picture it right here this is the number one oxygen sensor on the front of the car right on the exhaust we'll zoom in you can see front oxygen sensor number one which is right here just on screws but as long as I'm here we might as well look at the rest of the data see the air fuel correction it's adding 3% well the sensor is just doing wrong data it screws the whole thing up and you can see as we rev it up it starts correcting even more fuel cuz it's squirly just to make sure it's no fluke we shot it off and then the resistance goes right back up to 255 and it's supposed to be 2.5 you see it's four cylinders there's no misfires there's nothing wrong with the engine so this basically showed you how a machine like this man does it beat having to take all the car part measure the sensors and stuff the computer is doing it all you can find out what's wrong in a snap without guessing with very expensive pieces somebody told this guy needed a mass airflow sensor no he doesn't it's working perfectly fine the catalytic converter quotes as being inefficient but if the air fuel ratio sensor is bad that's what gives data to the computer to see if the Cadillac converter is bad or not and of course if it's bad it's going to get bad data then it's going to flag the converter the converter is not bad as you can see it's not overheating we'll take it for a spin I'm to reset the computer but as you can see as I try to reset it quick erase it's trying to clear the ECM but it won't because they're hard codes well the computer knows that that sensor has got too much resistance that's one of the checks the computer does when you do a test when you start your car test though system and that's why it comes on so fast because that thing obviously has an internal short too much resistance means it's shorted out inside and the electricity doesn't flow correctly right there just I'll show you the sensor there it is right down there see it right down there that black wire goes that black connector that screws on to the exhaust manifold that's the sensor number one that you need to change so close the hood take it for road test it's not really running all that bad it's a subu it's all-wheel drive so I don't have to worry about sliding in the rain it's got decent acceleration take it out to the back of road see how it accelerates now in the back I can hear a roaring wheel bearing at some point in time it's going to need rear wheel bearings well it does have 192,000 miles on it now interestingly enough if you look there's no water temperature gauge that's a Cheesy thing they do make the Subaru is a little bit too cheap if it were my car i' put a temperature gauge probably mounted up here or over here you want to know know the temperature of the engine they just gone too cheap on these and all they do is give you an idiot warning light looking around nobody's coming nobody's coming get down to back of road here we'll go to our little drag strip and this isn't a race horse doesn't have that much horsepower but we're going to see how it accelerates and now it operates at higher speeds so we'll come to a stop here and here we go like I say no race horse but it accelerates shifts still smoothly no problem it's going you know it's going 60 M hour it's not hesitating it's pulling fuel pump's pumping enough fuel but I can really hear the rear wheel bearings they're going out I hear them huming so you want to accelerate it's accelerating fine so more or less this is a minor glitch that a new air fuel ratio sensor will fix but like I said they're going to wait wait till they can get one at least a 100 bucks cheaper than what the dealer wants for them and they'll have to order it but yeah runs good enough for now until they put one on and we'll just ignore the tire pressure monitoring system a bunch of the sensors are just worn out I do have to say hey this thing handles pretty good in the rain on twisty roads look I'm accelerating it's not slipping at all I mean I can see why s fans like them great driving in the rain 192,000 Mi still shifts like a dream the still runs pretty good just needs a new air fuel ratio sensor now driving around a check engine hasn't come on back yet so I'm going to try something it might save even more money I going put some burnage fuel cleaner in a gas tank and have them drive it around and you never know maybe the sensor will be cleaned out by that it'll stop running lean it also clean the fuel injectors and maybe you won't even have to buy that stupid part so we'll get a little burnage fuel cleaner put in the gas tank I never know maybe you won't need to buy those parts it's running lean lots of things can cause it but look at all fuel fuel trims if you have a vacuum leak at lower speeds it's going to add the most fuel because that vacuum leak is a higher percentage of the fuel going to the engine cuz it's just idling but if you rev the engine up and it needs more fuel the fuel trims would actually go down if you had a vacuum leak because it would have to trim less because of all the extra fuel that's being sent in to counteract the vacuum leak that occurs more at a lower speed so we knew this wasn't a vacuum link because when we reved the engine up it added more and fuel with the machine that I had ha all I had to do is okay maybe it's the air fuel ratio sensor we looked at the sensor turned the key on 25 ohms is supposed to be 2.5 obviously it's broken that's the problem that caused this now the owner thought it might have been a mass airfall sensor well I watched the data it was low I revved it up it went High I let down it went down it was working pretty good and the catalytic inverter if it was clogged up it can make it run lean too but this one's not clogged it went 60 70 no problem right I wish it would had a temperature gauge then we could watch that cuz if your cat's going bad and it's clogged the temperature gauges start reading higher and higher cuz the hot gas can't exit makes the engine run hotter we're only going to find this out with time but we might also have learned that Bernie's cleaner might be able to clean that air fuel ratio sensor it'll also clean the fuel injectors so if it stops running lean and his light doesn't come on and it doesn't stall for him anymore hey Bernie's cleaner might have fixed it that we'll find out over time I'm going to drive around all day see if anything happens later but if it does I'll talk about it if you've got a problem hey contact me this guy did now he's getting his car fixed maybe for nothing but if not nothing he can buy that part for hundred something dollars cheaper then I'm able to get it here and I'd have to special order it anyways so maybe Bernie's cleaner will work and he won't have to do anything so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell o\n"