jwg

Interesting. In my browser that completely overwrote your user icon, and I had to hit "post comment" to see whose post it was. :)

Oops, it was due to missing /tr's at the end of each row - now fixed.

It's called "insurance". Now that we have heated seats, it'll never be really cold here again.

I'm very fond of Subarus even though I've never owned one. I think you're '04 looks *fabu*. Do I get to drive it when I come to town?

As a prospective hippie on the way to Dance Camp!

My '86 Subaru wagon was a real lemon of a car, a sinkhole of repair
bills from the day I drove it off the lot (the ECS light went on ten
feet from the dealer, and for 12 years it continued to go on at random
times and no repairman ever could figure out why). I had problems
with the car that the Subaru mechanics had never otherwise seen
(including rusted out fuel liines). I kept the car far too long,
under the stupid logic that every repair was presumably
the last one, and besides, except for the constant repairs
I did actually like the car a whole lot (in terms of size and feel and
utility). Oddly enough, after 10 years (when I decided that the next
major repair bill was it for the car), there were no major repairs
for the next two years -- I think I had finally replaced every
original part. What finally ended things was when the ignition
lock wore out(!), and the key would sometimes work and something not.
Again, a problem the repairmen had never seen (and couldn't even
diagnose -- it was the Saturn dealership that figured this out for
me.)

I was under the impression that it was that model year in particular
that was so awful -- I knew three people who had this model, and all of
them sent their cars to rest years and years before I finally gave
up. (It looks as if you did as well with your '86). The most frustrating
part for the first five years was that nothing, ever, was covered under
the scam of a long-term warranty. For my Saturn (now in its 6th
year) pretty much everything has been covered (after a deductible),
which astounds and amazes me every time it comes up.

Anyway, my clutch gave out every 40,000 miles, like clockwork.I find
it interesting that you had a similar sitatuation. (Actually it was
my whole trasmission that wore out the first two times. 75000 miles
on the Saturn and no transmission problems whatsoever. Both cars
are standard transmission.)

My recollection is that the only major thing that went wrong with the '86 was that its timing belt gave out at 30,000 miles, but there were enough minor annoyances that it wasn't worth hanging on to.