Our ' 99 Forester has been an expensive little beast in terms of
maintenance. Fortunately the Cdn. powertrain warranty is 5 yr., 100,000 km
and so far has covered our adventures. Ours had bad head gaskets which
showed up at about 60,000 km ( roughly 36,000 mi). Next it ate a rear wheel
bearing at about 75,000 km. Shortly after, at about 80k, the normally
slightly noisy engine started to produce a racket in one cylinder that made
a geriatric diesel sound quiet.
After some messing about with dealers we discovered Bay Subaru in Belleville
Ont., who agreed the thing was unacceptibly noisy and got the Suby Canada
tech. rep to come and listen to it. He agreed and promptly had a new
short-block popped in. While they had the car I mentioned it sounded as if
the other rear wheel bearing may be thinking about going on strike, and
they swapped that out at the same time.
We certainly can't complain about the companys' willingness to rectify the
problems under the ordinary warranty, but it sure is a pain in the
fundament having to drive the thing 100 miles to get it serviced properly.
Part of the joys of living in the bush and having a taste for slightly
'off-centre' vehicles I guess.
All these items have been fixed at no charge to us, but if the car had been
out of warranty they would have added up to the price of a reasonable used
car.
This week the power windows all quit, and the following day the power door
locks expired. We're getting quite familiar with the fair city of
Belleville.
KH
