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).