Used Legacy GT purchase
09-01-2009 | 10:16 PM
#1
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Joined: May 2009
Posts: 487
From: Napa, CA
Car Info: DGM 2011 WRX
Used Legacy GT purchase
A friend of mine on another forum recently bought his first Subaru from a stealership in New York. I couldn't believe the story and I wanted to share it with you guys here. I am sharing this with his knowledge and permission.
Basic summary: Dealer fixes clutch on GT, Guy buys GT, Clutch explodes within 2 days, dealer says NOT OUR PROBLEM.
Originally Posted by Overpriced Balloons
On the night of my 23rd birthday I was involved in an accident and my beloved 1995 Volvo 850 Turbo was totaled.
R.I.P.
Since I live 50 miles from work and happened to have sold my other Volvo about 2 months ago, my first priority after getting out of the hospital was to get some new wheels, ASAP. I've mentioned here a few times that I have been saving up for a Lotus Elise, but sadly this incident has killed that dream for various reasons. On the bright side, I had plenty of money to get a decent car.
My short list was basically: 05+ Legacy GT or Impreza WRX, E46 M3 or E92 328, 08+ MX-5, and the 02-06 S60R.
Sadly there weren't a whole lot of cars on this list available in my area. I ended up with a choice between a Miata with a suspicious amount of pitting on absolutely everything, an M3 that had been modded out, an overpriced WRX, and Legacy GT which I couldn't test drive on day 1 because it apparently needed a new clutch slave cylinder. At the end of the day, with 10 minutes before closing, I drove back to the Mazda dealership and was about to buy the Miata, but when I arrived I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that made me turn around and go home, still without a car.
The next day I went back to test drive the Legacy GT, now with new slave cylinder and apparently a few less scratches than it had before. My dad was nice enough to leave work early and give me a ride to the car lot, so he went with me on the test drive. I pulled out of the car lot and everything seemed ok until I got the fist stop light, at which point the car idled very roughly and seemed like it might stall a few times. I took it on the highway (where it was fine) and then on a back road to get back to the car lot. On the way back I pulled into a parking lot to investigate the weird idling, but it seemed to have gone away.
In the interest of seeing if the clutch was OK I let my dad take the wheel, since he has 40 years of experience driving a manual and I had been in the automatic Volvo for the past 3 years. This time, when we got to a stop sign the car completely shut off and didn't start back up for nearly a minute. We took the car back to the lot and should have just walked away right there, but the salesman told us to give him a few minutes, took the car out briefly, and came back and said that instead of having their mechanic even look at it that he would send it right in to the local Subaru dealership and get them to fix it and have it ready for tomorrow.
I was torn, I liked the car, but I was extremely wary of buying a car that had essentially failed to be drivable for two days in a row. I went over to the dealer who had the WRX and tried to get the price down, but they wouldn't take $1 off the sticker. I don't know how much the used car market is hurting, but this complete lack of dealing seemed to be pretty common and it really stunned me.
So, day 3, we go back to the Legacy and give it one more try. This time everything goes well, it appears to have been fixed, though like an idiot I do not get any documentation about who did the service and what they repaired. I buy the car, cash, and get a 3-year warranty which covers almost everything but the clutch and AC. I drive home pretty happy and things go back to normal for a couple days.
Friday morning, day 5, I plan to work a half-day and then pick up my lady and go to Manhattan for the weekend. 40 of the 50 miles go smoothly, but as soon as I exit the motorway and come to a stop I smell a terrible smell. The first thing that goes through my mind is "It can't be the clutch, I've been cruising along in 5th for 40 miles), but as soon as I try to accelerate from the stop light the problem becomes obvious.
I'm in downtown Harrisburg, just blocks from the State Capitol, at rush hour, with no easy way to get off the road and a clutch that's about to go out completely. I get up to 15mph and spot a State Employee parking lot on the right... but I'm in the left-turn lane. I signal and brake, trying to lose as little momentum as possible as I swing across lanes into the entrance of the lot, but just as the nose of my car brakes the plane of the slightly-uphill parking lot entrance, the clutch goes completely and the car begins rolling backwards into traffic.
I got the brake on in time and flipped on my hazards, getting out of the car in an attempt point the oncoming traffic into the other lane from the sidewalk. I call AAA to get a truck, but they say it will be at least 45 minutes until someone arrives. Fortunately, about 10 minutes later, a couple of guys were nice enough to stop and help me push the car up the hill into the parking lot. AAA eventually arrived and hauled my new car off the local Subaru dealer and I walked the next few blocks to work.
When I had calmed down enough to sit still, I called the salesman who sold me the car and he seemed genuinely surprised. I confirmed with him that it was SomeDealer Subaru that had done the repairs and he told me he would go speak to his manager and see what they could do to help me. The call ended politely, but as he was hanging up he must have missed the receiver because immediately I heard 'GOD DAMMIT HOW THE ****...' and his voice trailed off as he left the room, still cursing.
I called the Subaru dealer who had supposedly done the work and was surprised to find that they had no record of ever having worked on the car. Shortly after that, the manager of the lot where I bought the car called me back and told me that since the clutch isn't covered under warranty that there's nothing they could do for me. When I started ranting about how there's no way it could have been repaired properly and that I knew they didn't get it fixed at the local Subaru, he told me that he had personally driven the car and he was sure the clutch was perfect and that I must have ruined it in 2 days by being incompetent...
Over the next few hours I had several more conversations with all the various people involved in selling and repairing the car and after each call I became more and more furious. The Subaru dealer who was fixing the clutch now told me that this definitely looked like something had been done improperly when they replaced the slave cylinder and that the clutch had basically exploded, taking the flywheel with it, making it extremely unlikely that it had been caused by driver error. When I confronted the manager of the lot with this information he told me that if I brought the car back to them they would fix it and cover $200 worth of the labor. I told them to shove it. There was no way I was going to let them work on it anymore and the $200 figure I found completely insulting.
Unfortunately the parts needed to repair my car had to be ordered so I didn't hear back from Subaru for a couple days. When they did get everything replaced, however, they found another, disturbing problem: The system would not bleed. The mechanic who told me this said he wasn't comfortable doing any more work on the car until he talked to whoever worked on it before and found out exactly what they did. So, I contacted the lot and got the salesman, the manager, and their "Subaru guy" in the room, then conferenced in the mechanic from the Subaru dealership.
When everything had been explained by the mechanic currently working on the car, the other mechanic said that he had also been unable to get the system to bleed after replacing the slave cylinder, but then (after a long pause) he added that he had called Subaru and they told him just to do a "gravity bleed". The Subaru mechanic then asked if he had adjusted "the rod" and the previous mechanic said that he had and that everything seemed fine after that. This made the Subaru mechanic a bit upset and we ended the conference call.
With the group of *******s from the car lot off the line, the Subaru mechanic told me what he thought had probably happened: When they bought the car it had a bad clutch master cylinder. They (either knowingly or unknowingly) replaced the slave cylinder (which is cheaper) and then adjusted "the rod" to make the car drive, but they did so in such a way that the clutch was never fully engaging or disengaging. That meant that the whole time I was cruising down the highway at 3200 RPM I was chewing up the clutch. He told me he would save all the parts as evidence and write up his theory so that I would have something to go on, but of course he couldn't actually prove anything.
A few days later I got the car back, a new master cylinder having been ordered and installed, and it was worlds different. The car now seems pretty much perfect, but it cost me an extra $2,000 and I'm going to have to start a legal battle to get any of it back. I'll be contacting the state Attorney General to see if they can help me and if not I guess I'll be talking to a private attorney. I'm not looking forward to this at all.
On the bright side, I now have a very nice car that I think I'll be pretty happy with, even if it's not a Lotus Elise. It goes very nicely and the AWD makes me look forward to getting a bit of snow on the ground. I plan to pick up a Cobb Tuning AccessPort and doing the up and down pipes in the next couple months, so it should be fun, and pushing 320HP pretty soon.
And of course, pictures of the New Ride:
R.I.P.
Since I live 50 miles from work and happened to have sold my other Volvo about 2 months ago, my first priority after getting out of the hospital was to get some new wheels, ASAP. I've mentioned here a few times that I have been saving up for a Lotus Elise, but sadly this incident has killed that dream for various reasons. On the bright side, I had plenty of money to get a decent car.
My short list was basically: 05+ Legacy GT or Impreza WRX, E46 M3 or E92 328, 08+ MX-5, and the 02-06 S60R.
Sadly there weren't a whole lot of cars on this list available in my area. I ended up with a choice between a Miata with a suspicious amount of pitting on absolutely everything, an M3 that had been modded out, an overpriced WRX, and Legacy GT which I couldn't test drive on day 1 because it apparently needed a new clutch slave cylinder. At the end of the day, with 10 minutes before closing, I drove back to the Mazda dealership and was about to buy the Miata, but when I arrived I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that made me turn around and go home, still without a car.
The next day I went back to test drive the Legacy GT, now with new slave cylinder and apparently a few less scratches than it had before. My dad was nice enough to leave work early and give me a ride to the car lot, so he went with me on the test drive. I pulled out of the car lot and everything seemed ok until I got the fist stop light, at which point the car idled very roughly and seemed like it might stall a few times. I took it on the highway (where it was fine) and then on a back road to get back to the car lot. On the way back I pulled into a parking lot to investigate the weird idling, but it seemed to have gone away.
In the interest of seeing if the clutch was OK I let my dad take the wheel, since he has 40 years of experience driving a manual and I had been in the automatic Volvo for the past 3 years. This time, when we got to a stop sign the car completely shut off and didn't start back up for nearly a minute. We took the car back to the lot and should have just walked away right there, but the salesman told us to give him a few minutes, took the car out briefly, and came back and said that instead of having their mechanic even look at it that he would send it right in to the local Subaru dealership and get them to fix it and have it ready for tomorrow.
I was torn, I liked the car, but I was extremely wary of buying a car that had essentially failed to be drivable for two days in a row. I went over to the dealer who had the WRX and tried to get the price down, but they wouldn't take $1 off the sticker. I don't know how much the used car market is hurting, but this complete lack of dealing seemed to be pretty common and it really stunned me.
So, day 3, we go back to the Legacy and give it one more try. This time everything goes well, it appears to have been fixed, though like an idiot I do not get any documentation about who did the service and what they repaired. I buy the car, cash, and get a 3-year warranty which covers almost everything but the clutch and AC. I drive home pretty happy and things go back to normal for a couple days.
Friday morning, day 5, I plan to work a half-day and then pick up my lady and go to Manhattan for the weekend. 40 of the 50 miles go smoothly, but as soon as I exit the motorway and come to a stop I smell a terrible smell. The first thing that goes through my mind is "It can't be the clutch, I've been cruising along in 5th for 40 miles), but as soon as I try to accelerate from the stop light the problem becomes obvious.
I'm in downtown Harrisburg, just blocks from the State Capitol, at rush hour, with no easy way to get off the road and a clutch that's about to go out completely. I get up to 15mph and spot a State Employee parking lot on the right... but I'm in the left-turn lane. I signal and brake, trying to lose as little momentum as possible as I swing across lanes into the entrance of the lot, but just as the nose of my car brakes the plane of the slightly-uphill parking lot entrance, the clutch goes completely and the car begins rolling backwards into traffic.
I got the brake on in time and flipped on my hazards, getting out of the car in an attempt point the oncoming traffic into the other lane from the sidewalk. I call AAA to get a truck, but they say it will be at least 45 minutes until someone arrives. Fortunately, about 10 minutes later, a couple of guys were nice enough to stop and help me push the car up the hill into the parking lot. AAA eventually arrived and hauled my new car off the local Subaru dealer and I walked the next few blocks to work.
When I had calmed down enough to sit still, I called the salesman who sold me the car and he seemed genuinely surprised. I confirmed with him that it was SomeDealer Subaru that had done the repairs and he told me he would go speak to his manager and see what they could do to help me. The call ended politely, but as he was hanging up he must have missed the receiver because immediately I heard 'GOD DAMMIT HOW THE ****...' and his voice trailed off as he left the room, still cursing.
I called the Subaru dealer who had supposedly done the work and was surprised to find that they had no record of ever having worked on the car. Shortly after that, the manager of the lot where I bought the car called me back and told me that since the clutch isn't covered under warranty that there's nothing they could do for me. When I started ranting about how there's no way it could have been repaired properly and that I knew they didn't get it fixed at the local Subaru, he told me that he had personally driven the car and he was sure the clutch was perfect and that I must have ruined it in 2 days by being incompetent...
Over the next few hours I had several more conversations with all the various people involved in selling and repairing the car and after each call I became more and more furious. The Subaru dealer who was fixing the clutch now told me that this definitely looked like something had been done improperly when they replaced the slave cylinder and that the clutch had basically exploded, taking the flywheel with it, making it extremely unlikely that it had been caused by driver error. When I confronted the manager of the lot with this information he told me that if I brought the car back to them they would fix it and cover $200 worth of the labor. I told them to shove it. There was no way I was going to let them work on it anymore and the $200 figure I found completely insulting.
Unfortunately the parts needed to repair my car had to be ordered so I didn't hear back from Subaru for a couple days. When they did get everything replaced, however, they found another, disturbing problem: The system would not bleed. The mechanic who told me this said he wasn't comfortable doing any more work on the car until he talked to whoever worked on it before and found out exactly what they did. So, I contacted the lot and got the salesman, the manager, and their "Subaru guy" in the room, then conferenced in the mechanic from the Subaru dealership.
When everything had been explained by the mechanic currently working on the car, the other mechanic said that he had also been unable to get the system to bleed after replacing the slave cylinder, but then (after a long pause) he added that he had called Subaru and they told him just to do a "gravity bleed". The Subaru mechanic then asked if he had adjusted "the rod" and the previous mechanic said that he had and that everything seemed fine after that. This made the Subaru mechanic a bit upset and we ended the conference call.
With the group of *******s from the car lot off the line, the Subaru mechanic told me what he thought had probably happened: When they bought the car it had a bad clutch master cylinder. They (either knowingly or unknowingly) replaced the slave cylinder (which is cheaper) and then adjusted "the rod" to make the car drive, but they did so in such a way that the clutch was never fully engaging or disengaging. That meant that the whole time I was cruising down the highway at 3200 RPM I was chewing up the clutch. He told me he would save all the parts as evidence and write up his theory so that I would have something to go on, but of course he couldn't actually prove anything.
A few days later I got the car back, a new master cylinder having been ordered and installed, and it was worlds different. The car now seems pretty much perfect, but it cost me an extra $2,000 and I'm going to have to start a legal battle to get any of it back. I'll be contacting the state Attorney General to see if they can help me and if not I guess I'll be talking to a private attorney. I'm not looking forward to this at all.
On the bright side, I now have a very nice car that I think I'll be pretty happy with, even if it's not a Lotus Elise. It goes very nicely and the AWD makes me look forward to getting a bit of snow on the ground. I plan to pick up a Cobb Tuning AccessPort and doing the up and down pipes in the next couple months, so it should be fun, and pushing 320HP pretty soon.
And of course, pictures of the New Ride:
Last edited by manhands; 09-01-2009 at 10:31 PM.
09-02-2009 | 02:44 PM
#8
General Pimpin'
iTrader: (7)
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 23,019
From: Knee deep in beer. subabrew crew, ca.
Car Info: MY04 aspen wrx wagon.
That's weak sauce. Never buy a car off a lot without a warranty. In my opinion there is no reason to buy a car off a lot that is not certified. Man that really sucks. They should cover the damages.
Read the consumer bill of rights and see if you can find something to support a claim against them.
http://www.consumer-action.org/engli...ights#Topic_03
Read the consumer bill of rights and see if you can find something to support a claim against them.
http://www.consumer-action.org/engli...ights#Topic_03
09-03-2009 | 01:35 AM
#10
Thread Starter
Registered User
iTrader: (3)
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 487
From: Napa, CA
Car Info: DGM 2011 WRX
That's weak sauce. Never buy a car off a lot without a warranty. In my opinion there is no reason to buy a car off a lot that is not certified. Man that really sucks. They should cover the damages.
Read the consumer bill of rights and see if you can find something to support a claim against them.
http://www.consumer-action.org/engli...ights#Topic_03
Read the consumer bill of rights and see if you can find something to support a claim against them.
http://www.consumer-action.org/engli...ights#Topic_03
09-03-2009 | 01:47 AM
#11
Well if the dealer had their hands on the clutch, obviously that would be something THEY should really have a warranty for. In any case, car looks nice, sucks he had to go through the trouble, and let this be a lesson that if you think there is something wrong from a used car auto shop... you best bet there is probably something wrong and not walk off without a FULL warranty.
09-03-2009 | 08:52 AM
#12
Hindsight is always 20/20... This is NOT an unusual scenario and is why it is in your best interest, if you are not capable of inspecting a car, to have someone who is take a look at it. Even if it costs $100 to take it to a good shop for an inspection - this has saved me THOUSANDS.
Also... Just because a dealership says their car is "certified" doesn't mean crap. Haha..
If you are going to spend thousands of dollars on an investment that you know nothing about and are not able to discern problems with, why why why would you NOT have someone capable take a look at it first????????
Also... Just because a dealership says their car is "certified" doesn't mean crap. Haha..
If you are going to spend thousands of dollars on an investment that you know nothing about and are not able to discern problems with, why why why would you NOT have someone capable take a look at it first????????
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