The important of logging maintenance
 

I just wanted to reiterate what's probably been said a million times before on here, but make sure you track any and all maintenance on your car.

I'm at 53,000 miles, bought the car used with around 36,000. I've changed the oil 4 times on the car in the 14 months I've had it. On my commute home just before the holidays, I started hearing it knock and the dealership confirmed it's an engine problem. I suspect I'm hitting a spun rod bearing like a few others on here (sounds just like some youtube videos) however they asked for maintenance records. The best I can provide is a facebook picture I took when I did my first oil change and my most recent receipt because I decided to start buying from Amazon. Unfortunately O'Reilly wasn't able to pull up my purchases so at best I can prove two oil changes 10 months apart.

Currently I'm at the mercy of Subaru corporate to authorize the warranty work :thumbdown:

Keep records! From now on I'm keeping a box in my garage with all receipts and will make note of mileage.

Thank you! Everybody really needs to understand this. The dealers are not joking when they say you must do the required maintenance at the required intervals to keep your warranty coverage. There is nothing wrong with doing it yourself but you must be prepared to PROVE it if something goes wrong.
A good idea is to take a picture of the oil receipt beside the odometer showing the mileage. Still keep the receipt though.

I hope they work with you there Dem!

I keep an Excel sheet of whatever I buy/do to my car. it's good for when you forget when the last time you changed your oil was lol (and you're too lazy to check the trip meter on the car)

I appreciate the hope. I'm trying not to get too optimistic, as it seems like it'd be in the dealership's best interest to replace it since SoA would be paying for it. If they end up not wanting to replace it I doubt I'll want to pay their rate. I also learned from this experience that I should have purchased this car from a Subaru dealership CPO or something for a better warranty. Feels like I just got the car and bringing a car with a blown motor in for your first interaction with a new dealer isn't the greatest way to start the relationship (although my fiance and I did buy a car from them today...).

I'd make sure you keep receipts too. A log won't be good enough.

I buy everything online and can find everything in my email anyways. I guess that's one of the benefits of online shopping (invoices that don't get lost). if anything does happen, I just use the Excel sheet to know where I bought things from then go searching my email for the invoice from the company. I note down what I buy, place I bought it from, price, date and in the maintenance portion I also note down the miles.

a downside of that is that I can see how much I exactly spent and then get depressed about how much money I put into the car... lol

I appreciate the candor and honesty of your post and your concern for telling others. It is a breath of fresh air after reading thousands of posts guys blaming all their problems on everybody but themselves even though they did not do as they knew they should.
Buying another car from them may indeed go a long way in helping them decide which way to go.

When you bought at O'Reily did you buy with a credit card? If so, you might want to pull up the credit card statements.

I did use a credit card. In the store, they told me they couldn't look up receipts by credit card or transaction date. I plan on calling their customer service line tomorrow to see if corporate has more data they can research.

I've also got this old '84 F150 rust bucket I use for crummy winter days and if I need to pick up dirt or dumping in the neighborhood so unfortunately my auto-store trips are plentiful which makes it difficult to track down.

I think you can look up your own credit card transactions and find it that way to show proof of purchase.

I'm doing 10,000 mile intervals, soooooooo... #grandexperiment.

I'll give that a shot today. I didn't think the cc companies had much information about the items on a transaction.

I get oil and filters for all my cars off Amazon for the paper trail specifically; the prices and convenience delivered to the door don't hurt either.

Whatever card used is an additional layer as well as part of organization of taxes for all of the same reasons. Cash is strictly for food trucks, weed and hookers.

I'd suggest recording used oil analysis (blackstone labs, other).

This is the ONLY reason I let the dealer do ALL of my oil changes.


Just had my ~43,000 mile one a couple days ago.
It is worth $75 in my book to have THEM keep the records and then there is no way they can claim I did it wrong.


And when they leave the little sticker in my windshield, I take it off and stick it to my vanity mirror.
Want a record of all my oil changes? Open my vanity mirror.

I've never had to use them, but I've developed a habit of keeping all paper records for all of my vehicles.

So a bit of good news. O'Reilly was able to locate my purchase of 0w-20 Mobil1 oil which is what I put in the car around the time frame I told the dealer I made a change! Now I only have a 6-month gap which is more reasonable given my use of the car.

Currently waiting on them to email me a pdf so I can forward it to the dealer. Still trying not to be optimistic...

Records of 2 oil changes seems like it would be sufficient. I don't see any reason for concern over a 6 month gap.

Excuse my negligence, but how does a spun bearing translate to lack of oil change?

Also here is Aus, good luck with anything warranty related (we didn't get any of the global VW DSG fixes and diesel scam is silent too). Even I provided receipts, the dealer would probably knock it back seeing there is not way they can know I actually did it (my 3 cars run the same oil).

Very little unless completely negligent. OP just doesn't want to give the dealer an easy excuse to deny coverage.

It's almost more like Subaru of America doesn't want to fix anything. The dealer mentioned they have to upload a bunch of information about my ECU and any proof of oil changes to SoA. I'm hoping SoA has replaced enough short blocks that they'll acknowledge some kind of problem and authorize the dealer to do the work.

At this point, the dealer is just waiting to hear back from SoA before they tear into the engine.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out. Unfortunately you're not the first one around here to have engine failure, and knowing Subaru I bet they ask you for oil change records before you even owned the car before they agree to cover anything. But lets hope not.

sorry to hear this. yeah keep all receipts. i record on Google's Excel spread sheet for all my vehicles as well as mycarfax.com. i just scan and put hyperlink on record.

Because a spun bearing is usually the result of a lubrication problem.

I agree that simply skipping or delaying an oil change is not likely to cause any major damage, but the mfg'r does require the owner to follow the maintenance schedule if they are going to honor the warranty.

I thought the bearings run their own isolated lubrication separate to engine oil? Or are you saying lack of lubrication in the piston rings puts extra load on it?

Uhh...no. The rod bearing are lubricated with crankcase oil, provided by the oil pump.

Ah k, totally thought it was another bearing we were talking about here. Sorry for the disruption haha.

Can't you also print out the orders you made on Amazon to show proof of purchase?

Fight them on this. There have been multiple reports of this failure happening to people with perfect maintenance records. Heck, you might even want to start pulling up that documentation as well.

Why??





Also bump for resolution for the OP

I'll let my blog post do the talking:


I racked up just shy of 10,000 miles since my last oil change over 6 months ago, which meant it was time to do it all over again. The timing worked out perfectly to allow me to change all of my fluids before the weather got cold enough to make it an annoying task. For those who haven’t been following along with my previous oil change posts, I use AMSOIL fluids in the engine, transmission, and differential. I also follow a modified service interval. For the transmission and differential, Subaru suggests a 30,000 mile oil change interval, but I dropped that to 20,000 because of my severe use, and because I think AMSOIL fluids are a bit thinner than the OEM fluid. The transmission and differential fluids looked fine when I changed them (though I assume the transmission fluid was changed when I had the throwout bearing replaced recently). Also, there were no more metal shavings on the magnetic drain plug for the differential than one might expect after 20,000 miles. So no issues there.

Subaru dictates a 6,000 mile oil change interval for the engine, but AMSOIL claims 25,000 miles, or 15,000 under “severe use.” Since I fall well within the severe use category, and didn’t want to push my luck, I’m doing 10,000 mile intervals, which is still significantly higher than what Subaru suggests. I’m also sending samples at each oil change to Blackstone Labs for analysis. Before we get to those results, though, let’s consider the past 10,000 miles:

[Read the rest of my blog post here]

A few aussies (mostly boosted but some na) are running into the spun bearing now and some of these cars are out of warranty. I hope you get it fixed through warranty, but if not let us know what the quoted cost to fix is. I suspect it can't be too far from a HKS 2.1L stroker kit - which would make it a little more bearable.

Will do--apparently they sent the info over to Subaru Friday afternoon. I'm not sure what the expected wait period is, but my hope is they'll at least give approval to tear into it to see what the issue is soon. I'm pretty certain it's the spun rod bearing issue since there are example of that happening on the forums and I was getting the same sound that I heard in other youtube videos.

In the end my only maintenance proof I have is:
1. FB picture dated with car on ramps and the oil draining on 9/2015
2. Receipt from O'Reily showing purchase of mobil1 0w-20 oil in 3/2016
3. Receipt on Amazon showing royal purple 0w-20 and OEM filter in 10/2016

So to them, you changed your oil once in 2015 and twice in 2016 lol.

Oh Dude you screwed yourself if you sent them this! They don't care what the AMSOIL claims are they say 6000 miles or six months.


"I racked up just shy of 10,000 miles since my last oil change over 6 months ago"


"Subaru dictates a 6,000 mile oil change interval for the engine, but AMSOIL claims 25,000 miles, or 15,000 under “severe use.” Since I fall well within the severe use category, and didn’t want to push my luck, I’m doing 10,000 mile intervals, which is still significantly higher than what Subaru suggests. I’m also sending samples at each oil change to Blackstone Labs for analysis. Before we get to those results, though, let’s consider the past 10,000 miles"

Well not entirely--I bought the car used in September 2015. The dealership pulled a carfax and records from the other Subaru dealership in town.

Currently right at 53k miles. The more I'm reading the more I regret buying a 2013.

I used the Scion customer portal and had all my maintenance history there. Now it's all gone. Wish they would've told me it's being deleted.

Yeah, at that point the theory is that if I ever have an issue, and Subaru claims it was an oil-related failure, AMSOIL is supposed to pay the repair. That's what AMSOIL says, anyway. That's why I said it's a grand experiment. It's really AMSOIL's "warranty" that I'd be testing.

Its on Toyota's website now

That's what I thought, even with my vin I can't find my car.

Didn't even know this was a thing. How do you get to it? I am lazy and don't want to wander the labyrinth that is Toyota's website.