Slow-speed tight turn wobble

R

Rob1066

Hello,
I hope someone can shed some light on this. I have a 1999 Forester-L,
5-speed, 97,000 miles. When I make a tight turn (that is the wheel all
the way over) the whole front end wobbles and seems to take power from
the engine, that is I need to press the gas to keep from stalling. This
seems to only occur when entering parking spaces and is difficult to
reproduce on purpose. Any ideas? Thanks
 
Rob1066 said:
Hello,
I hope someone can shed some light on this. I have a 1999 Forester-L,
5-speed, 97,000 miles. When I make a tight turn (that is the wheel all
the way over) the whole front end wobbles and seems to take power from
the engine, that is I need to press the gas to keep from stalling. This
seems to only occur when entering parking spaces and is difficult to
reproduce on purpose. Any ideas? Thanks

Possible 'torque bind' (search here and www.usmb.net forums) caused by
unequal diameter tires or bad center differential.

Carl
 
Well the tires are matched. So that's not it. I'll look into the center
differential. I thought the differential might be behind this. Thanks.
 
Rob1066 said:
Well the tires are matched. So that's not it. I'll look into the center
differential. I thought the differential might be behind this. Thanks.

My STi doesn't wobble, but it does make a horrible metallic screeching noise
when turning in a tight arc if anything but "Auto" or "Full Open" is chosen
on the DCCD. No wobble though.

Good luck--please come back and tell us what the issue turned out to be.
 
for me, that started to happen on my 98 Forester S at right around 130K
kms. It turned out that it was indeed "torque bind" and I replaced the
parts in the center differential, at a cost of about $600 (Canadian
funds). Fixed the problem nicely.

If it's an automatic, you can prove that it's torque bind by removing
the fuse that enables the AWD. It's clearly marked in the owner
manual. With the fuse gone, it won't make the noise if it's torque
bind.
 
This is a manual. The problem seems to have gone away for the time
being, but I'm still going to bring it Thursday to have it looked at. I
really don't want to spend $1,000 to replace the center diff. So I'm
hoping they find it to be something else. I'll let y'all know what they
say.
 
Here's a new question. This problem has seemed to have stopped on its
own (for now anyway.) I prefer not to bring in the car, have them look
at it and drop $50, lose the car for a full day and have them to say
they couldn't detect a problem. If there isn't a problem, I see no
reason to bring the car in right away. Anyone have any thoughts in this?
 
Well of course the day I canceled the appointment the problem came back
with a vengence. I took the car in yesterday and as I had feared.
Center differential is going, going just about gone. Repair cost $1,300
plus the cost of new tires ($280) for four new Koumos, which didn't
seem like such a bad price. Dealer said cause of the problem was tire
wear and that the tires were no longer "in spec." Having been reading
the posts here, I understood what he was saying. Asked if work could be
done elsewhere for less, he said probably, but that the bulk of the
cost is in the price of the part itself, so I might save a few hundred
in labor. But what's $200 when you're laying on $1,600 (and I got a
coupon from Subaru that will save me $200 anyway.) Figured I might as
well let them do the work. He also said they would not do the work
without adding the new tires.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
13,889
Messages
67,365
Members
7,364
Latest member
Cimarron49

Latest Threads

Back
Top