I am not asking for money here really, as I just about have money enough to fix all three of these now thanks exclusively to my commenters! Yay!
I am running this more because many men take a strong interest in cars and car repairs, so posts like this are just for men to discuss cars, car repairs and especially relating to my situation. I know it sounds dumb, but many men take to these posts like bees to honey.
Car is a 2001 6 cylinder Subaru Outback, one of the limited models. Most of these were four cylinders; the six cylinders were more of a one-off and in the one-off six cylinders in largely four cylinder models can be hit or miss. This one was supposed to be good. It has high mileage – 228,000. I bought it for $800, but then had to put a $1,100 rebuilt transmission in the thing. Even the $1,900 price was misleading though as it needed another $$2,100 just to get it going at all, and then another several hundred $ soon after. I ended up spending $4,500 on the thing. It was pretty beat up when I got it, but I have it fixed up halfway decently.
I have three more car repairs –
- Leaking oil cooler.
- Broken drive belt.
- Fix air conditioning (air conditioning service).
Thanks to you all, I can fix at least two of those for sure.
The leak is pretty bad.
There was a leaking valve cover gasket that had to be replaced that set me back $550! It seems like a lot, but it is murder to change one of those gaskets on a Subaru. You almost have to take the engine apart. Four hours labor.
The oil cooler O ring is leaking behind the oil filter. That is the other half of the oil leak. $185.
Cracking weathered drive belt, if it goes out, I would lose my power steering. Also I would lose most lights on my dash. Not the end of the world, but the car would switch to the battery to run the dash, and I would have to drive home on the battery. I figure 30-50 mile drive might run down the battery. $85.
Fix air conditioning. Well, at times it is 97 degrees here even right now, and 97 degrees with no air conditioning is a great big drag. $90.
There’s other stuff to do of course, but this is the stuff that needs immediate attention. It’s always risky to let oil leaks go and just add oil. Too easy to slack off on the oil adding. And your car goes too low on oil and you blow up the engine. That belt goes and I have 30-50 miles to get home before my battery dies and replacing batteries is expensive. No air conditioning in hot weather is slow murder.
