club.liberty.asn.au

Kormoran wrote:After 3000km flat spot returned. Took it back to JFM and they repeated the cleaning procedure as before (nothing fancy, just UCC in the throttle body after watching) however the same day the flat spot came back (even after resetting it myself it came back almost straight away). The only things thats changed in my driving habits its been pretty hot the last few days so ive had the ac on constntly and Ive done alot of stop/start driving.. Back to the drawing board it seems

that must've hurt! I feel for you man. btw, I've contacted Subaru Australia regarding this problem. I'll keep you all posted.

Please keep us updated.

I had no luck contacting Subaru Nordic (Sweden).

My car is still running well after 500km so far with the fuel treatment, at $17 its a cheap experiment.

Who knows, maybe after 5000km I might exude some more confidence?

I figure if it was going to retard timing, today was a perfect day for it.

Progress Report.

Its been 1200km so far on this fuel treatment. And the car is responding well.

So far I havent had a single issue.

For those who might want to try the same product I have begun to use it is a 'Lucas Oils upper cylinder lubricant'. It comes in a 1 litre container and its supposedly enough to treat 10 tanks of fuel. It cost me $17 at Repco.

Im still hopeful!!

Cheers.

alright, here is the status.

I've contacted subaru australia (from now on only HQ as per headquarter) and they have called me 3 days later. They said they are willing to have a look at it, just need to say what Subaru service I want to go to in order to do the logging and testing. I've said Denlo as it's closest to my office. Couple of minutes later I had a phone call from Denlo Subaru and have made an appointment in a week. Flatspot was clearly present at that time. They have kept the car for nearly 2 days, but not due to some heavy repairs, but what they have done was
- did the standard subaru diagnostics and logging,
- were in touch with HQ technician who told them to soak the engine in the subaru upper engine cleaner (UEC). But what have they done was that they took the whole inlet manifold out (the whole metal body), and sprayed one UEC into one inlet, so 4 UEC's into 4 inlet's. They were told to leave it overnight, and crank it up next day. They've said whole lot of smoke was coming out of the exhaust (bit exaggerating could be there, as I've used the UEC nearly each 3000km!)
- they've said they found 2 vacuum leaks, one at EGR valve gasket and one hose from the manifold was unplugged. Could be both my inconsistency, but I doubt that.. who knows.

I picked up the car, and felt it was driving a bit on a sluggish side, might have been all the cleaners residues in the engine. That improved in following 2-3 days. Last 600km were flatspot free, so so far so good, but I don't keep my hopes high, if any. I've done trips with fully loaded vehicle (3 adults, 2 kids) up and down Sydney-Jervis Bay, in previous cases I wouldn't be even out of Sydney yet and the flatspot would be back.

this whole cleaning might have very similar results as Calais might have done with that Lucas Oil Upper Engine Lubricant or whatever it was, so might be worth a shot. I'm ready to go the ECU update way in case it comes back.

I reckon this is easy to do on your own or your mechanic should do it no problem. give it a shot, might help you.

The good status lasted 2 fuel tanks. Now it's back to shit again.

klam wrote:The good status lasted 2 fuel tanks. Now it's back to shit again.

Sorry to hear Michael, Ive had issues still myself but have decided just to reset it now whenever it plays up until the time comes to upgrade. A lot less stressful

Hello!
I have the same EJ204 engine with hesitations that are gone since 2 days ago. After reading this topic I cleaned the EGR and hoped for the best. Now, 2 days and 300km after, the hesitations are gone and the engine runs very smooth.
Will report on how the problem evolves (or NOT!).

Best of luck.

My problems are still there and the only thing that helps is to reset ECU.
After that engine runs smooth a while but pretty fast goes back to reverting ignition.
I am no mechanic but it seems to be a softwareproblem in ECU.

Have had this problem for almost a year now and authorized Subaru workshop have no clue about the problem.
Contacting Subaru Nordic give me no help at all, they just ignore my problem.
They alway´s try to be polite and helpful when talking with them over telephone but never return to me by phone or mail.
I guess they have no solution to my problem and hoping for me to get tired contacting them.

Very frustrating.

Deep Heat wrote:Use freeSSM to pull 3 degrees of timing. Seems to have solved it for me.

2500k's and hasn't done it since.

Hows this working out for you so far Deep Heat? I may have to fiddle around with the com settings and give it a go myself again (spent days trying last time, gave up)

Kormoran wrote:Hows this working out for you so far Deep Heat? I may have to fiddle around with the com settings and give it a go myself again (spent days trying last time, gave up)

may I add, it worked for me only for the -5/-4 but the car is significantly less responsive (you are pulling the timing )... -3 and the knock appeared within 2days. just saying.

So I recently started having this issue. Used to go away after an ECU reset however it didn't this time.

I just replaced my spark plugs and it seems to have fixed it for me.

I had the NGK Laser Iridiums (ILFR6B) which is what was on the NGK website for our cars and also what Subaru had as a part number. Supposedly meant to last something like 100,000kms? After pulling them out after only 30,000kms they were rooted.

Ended up going for NGK Iridium IX (LFR6AIX-11) which have a slightly higher gapping (1.1mm verse 0.8mm for the ILFR6B). We'll see how these perform for now but the hesitation was gone immediately!

mihai wrote:So I recently started having this issue. Used to go away after an ECU reset however it didn't this time.

I just replaced my spark plugs and it seems to have fixed it for me.

I had the NGK Laser Iridiums (ILFR6B) which is what was on the NGK website for our cars and also what Subaru had as a part number. Supposedly meant to last something like 100,000kms? After pulling them out after only 30,000kms they were rooted.

Ended up going for NGK Iridium IX (LFR6AIX-11) which have a slightly higher gapping (1.1mm verse 0.8mm for the ILFR6B). We'll see how these perform for now but the hesitation was gone immediately!

Makes sense. My plugs were changed right before the issue arose, pulled them out a few week ago they looked slightly more work that I would expect at 20,000kms but they still looked perfectly usable.

My problems are now completely gone.
What I had to do...was selling the car and buy another

After a year of fighting Subaru Nordic I gave up but I KNOW the problem is related to the ECU software.
When speaking to my authorized workshop he told me "between the eyes" that he also know my problem really is because of softwarebugs.

Good Luck with your cars!

Over And Out

Caper wrote:When speaking to my authorized workshop he told me "between the eyes" that he also know my problem really is because ...

funny you mention that, I've had the same said by a Subaru technician here. Unofficially this is a well known issue, officially there is no problem.