Bark's Bites: Subaru, We Hardly Knew Ye

Those of you who regularly read Bark’s Bites (Hi, Mom!) may remember my tale of acquiring a friend’s 1996 Subaru Legacy Wagon. I posted that article on August 29th, 2014.

On March 9th, 2015, the SuBaruth, as it came to be known, died.

Here is her story.

Over the course of seven months, I put nearly seven thousand miles on her. She occasionally refused to start, but most days, she turned over with a bit of a struggle and let me pilot her wherever I wanted to go. She took trips as far away as Myrtle Beach, SC, about a nine hour drive from my Old Kentucky Home, with nary a complaint. Sure, she made a few weird noises every now and then, but everything worked pretty well.

Until it didn’t.

I took her on a drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana, a few weeks ago. She was performing her regular duties without complaint, making a 480-mile roundtrip without dissent, when we encountered a patch of black ice at about sixty miles per hour. All of a sudden, we were sideways on Interstate 69, sliding without much hope of stopping. Against all natural instincts, I stayed off of the brakes and countersteered slightly, feathering the accelerator and silently praying. Miraculously, she caught grip and I was able to right her again. Over the next mile of highway, I saw no fewer than a dozen cars in the ditch. Our little slide probably lasted five seconds at the most, but it felt like an eternity. I patted her on the dashboard and told her, “Thanks, SuBaruth. I think you just saved our lives.”

That night, however, on the trip back, she started making a mechanical grinding sound. It was coming from the driver’s side front wheel. The car started pulling fairly hard to the right, as well. I pulled off at the next exit, got out of the car in the pouring rain, and did a visual inspection of the car. Everything looked to be okay—the tires were fine, the tie rods seemed to be straight from what I could tell—so I got back in the car and cautiously continued on. For some reason, the sound stopped and the car started tracking normally again. Weird. Then again, this is the magical self-fixing Subaru.

After I got home, I parked her in the driveway for a few days until my trip to the airport the following Monday. When I drove her out of that same driveway, I immediately knew that something was wrong. The grinding sound was much, much worse, and it increased greatly under acceleration. I had made it about a mile when I decided to turn around and go home.

Unfortunately, the last left turn onto my street proved to be too much for the old girl. With a loud bang that was all too familiar from my days of autocrossing S2000s, the car just stopped. I got out and looked at the front left wheel—the tire had blown, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t all that was wrong. I called my insurance company and had them tow it to my local garage. Since the SuBaruth is car number four in the fleet, I called them up and told them that there was no urgency in repairing it.

I received the autopsy call yesterday morning. I felt bad for the lady on the phone—she was clearly under the impression that the little wagon was my only means of transportation, and she was calling with horrific news. First of all, the timing belt was bad—they couldn’t even get the car to start. Secondly, as I feared, the axle had broken. But it hadn’t just broken; it had snapped with such amazing force that it had sent a seven-inch piece of itself spinning into the left front rim, ripping a tremendous hole in it in the process which is what caused the tire to blow. It had also damaged the right front wheel. Both tie rods were destroyed, too. Total repair estimate: at least $1200, including labor.

See that massive black hole? Yeah, that’s my front left rim. In the words of the garage tech, “I have NEVER, EVER, seen that before.”

I weighed my options carefully. I could:

1. Junk the car and be done with it.
2. Pay the garage more than twice what I had originally paid for the car, and still have a nineteen-year old Subaru that was likely to have some other things break in the near future.
3. Do what all TTAC commenters would have done, which is break out my impressive array of tools, put the car up on the lift in my garage, and spend thirty minutes repairing all of the issues myself.

Guess which one I did?

Number one, obviously.

The garage offered to junk it for me, saving me the hassle of draining all of the fluids, etc. I probably could have sold it as a parts car for a couple of hundred bucks, but time is money and all that. I donated the car to the garage as a favor for doing all of the diagnostic work for me—hopefully they’ll be able to get some money out of it. I went to the garage and retrieved my personal items from the car (including three dollars in change, a saxophone stand, a folder of CDs, and a yoga mat) and said goodbye to the old girl. Maybe she’ll be featured in one of Murilee’s junkyard finds in the near future. I hope CrabSpirits is able to spin an eloquent yarn about her. She deserves one.

So, what would I have done differently, if given the chance to do it all over again?

• I would have done a more thorough mechanical review of the car upon purchase. I had the garage look at it when it wouldn’t start regularly that first week, but in hindsight I would have asked them to put it up on the lift and give it a once over. I’m not sure if that would have prevented this axle issue, but it might have.
• I would have driven it directly to the garage rather than taking it home. Assuming that they would have just had to fix the axle and the timing issue, that might have only been a $500 repair.
• That’s about it.

Was buying the Subaru a good financial decision after all was said and done? Let’s see:

• The car cost me $600
• The total registration property taxes on it were $86
• It cost me $38 a month to insure it
• I drove it about 7,000 miles and averaged 26 MPG on 87 octane fuel. At $2.20 a gallon, that’s about $593 in fuel costs.

What if I had put those seven thousand winter miles on the Boss 302 instead?

• KBB Very Good value on a Boss with 30,000 miles is $35,969. Changing that value to 37,000 miles makes it worth $35,002
• The Boss averages about 18 MPG combined on 93 octane fuel. Those 7,000 miles would have cost me about $972 in premium fuel, assuming $2.50 a gallon.
• I wouldn’t have had any additional insurance costs
• However, I would have needed to buy winter rims and tires for the Boss. The cheapest winter wheel/tire combo available at Tire Rack is $1,528 plus shipping. Divide that by four, assuming that the wheels and tires would last about four seasons (or that I would sell the car in four years or less) and it comes up to $382.

In total, the Subaru cost me $1,545 to operate for seven months. However, operating the Boss over the same time period would have cost me $2,321. That’s a savings of $776. I call that a win. Repairing the Subaru at a cost of $1200 would have meant that I would have needed to operate the Subaru for another year with no additional repair costs just to come out even, which seems unlikely. Now that I have the Fiesta ST, as well, it’s doubtful that I would have driven it as much as I did. It’s more likely that I’ll just throw a set of snows on the Fiesta next winter and avoid the additional insurance, maintenance, and acquisition cost of another beater.

Because, after all of this, my number one takeaway is that I’m really not cut out for the Beater Life. I don’t want to have to spend time fixing (or, in my case learning how to fix) cars. I don’t really enjoy driving old cars. I loved the Subaru, but she would have been better off in the hands of somebody who would have taken better care of her, in all honesty. A little bit of preemptive care and she’d likely still be on the road today.

All in all, a valuable lesson about who I am and what I expect out of a car. Your mileage may and likely will vary. God speed, SuBaruth.