That buzz/chatter was due to a manufacturing fault in the compressor. Subaru replaced so many under warranty for that noise they issued a bulletin on it. I know I replaced quite a few - probably should have been a recall.

Mine has been making that noise for a few years now, although the AC was still working fine the entire time until recently when it won't turn on in the cold anymore, but it was a good ways out of the engine warranty by then already. As I find more things that should have been recalled on this car but weren't I become less happy with it over time, then again I don't think any other brands are any better about that.

Sounds a lot like low charge, not really a warranty item.

I'm not a great fan of the vane compressor, but after 134K miles, it owed me nothing.

Might be low, but when I give the low pressure valve a quick poke it sounds about appropriate, like air being let out of a tire which coincides with what the pressure should be at this temperature. Of course that's not an accurate measurement but I don't think it's that low. I might go buy that gauge kit from harbor freight and check it out, it's definitely cheaper than a dealer diagnostic fee (I canceled that appointment I made recently)

Low refrigerant or not once it has been making noise for a while it's done for. When I first started seeing them with that noise they would be 2-3 ounces low on refrigerant and I would add some oil as well to see if it helped. Some times it would, but it wouldn't last. The noise is from a broken/split reed valve and no amount of oil or proper charge will resolve the issue short of replacing the compressor.

Well I guess when the AC is finally gone I'm going without AC for a while, I can't be spending $1000 on replacing things that aren't strictly necessary in my life at this time. That takes away a lot of the faith I had in Subaru, knowing that they definitely knew that the AC compressor was an issue but refused to issue a recall. Every year a $1000 replacement gets closer to taking over the value of the car too, I was hoping I was going to keep this another decade but now I'm starting to question that.

This job cost me $627.

I paid $245 for the condenser locally, same day. Rock Auto had it for $70, but I didn't want the car down for another week. Not knowing the accumulator was built in cost me $175.

I also paid an extra $90 for the piston compressor.

If you borrow a manifold and vacuum pump from an Autozone, you could install a new vane compressor for $362 or a piston compressor for $452.

Been running the same wattage since owning the car, 2013. Retrofitted headlights though, never seen them dim.

A noise started in my engine bay the other week and from what I gather it's the alternator. Don't know if I should bother with HO since San Diego has plenty of scrap yards.

Retrofitted meaning HID with a ballast, right? I think that would reduce dimming quite a bit since they're meant to provide a constant current to HID bulbs. My headlights don't dim at all 1 or 2 steps below full (75%) volume but will to some extent at full volume with full amplitude kicks in hardstyle and hard trap and other stuff like that. I think the issue is exacerbated by the "smart" charging circuit taking hundreds of ms to react to load changes, if a song has no bass then suddenly a full volume bass note, it'll dim for like a quarter second, give or take then go back up to full or nearly full brightness.

So do I need to buy an accumulator along with the compressor as well, or were you saying that you bought one but ended up not needing it? Thanks for the advice so far

I was saying the accumulator is part of the condenser, so you'll need to buy a condenser.

My mirror fell off my windshield a while back, got it glued back on with rearview mirror adhesive, so the glass decided to give up the other day and a large chunk of the interior sheet of glass came off with it this time. I have an appointment with safelite for what will hopefully be covered under warranty. I'm a bit concerned about what the cost might be if they determine it's not covered by warranty.

Update here - replaced without any trouble, made an appointment, dropped my car off, and got it back with new glass with almost no words exchanged

I don't really want to go out of my way to make a new account on a car audio forum so hopefully maybe someone here has some insight:

My door speaker amp that I've had for I think 7 or 8 years now has been going into protection mode randomly lately. I've figured out that the voltage supplied to the amp is totally fine on the power cable when it's disconnected, but as soon as I connect it to the amp, the voltage drops significantly. Before it was only dropping to 10-11v which explains protection mode, now it's at like 2.2v and of course the amp won't even power on at that point.

I tried opening up the amp and seeing if maybe say a screw fell across the terminals to some component and caused an internal short, but there's nothing immediately obvious and I don't really have the skills or tools to test stuff like caps or the various chips on the board.

Only thing I can think that would cause this though is a bad component, maybe just one that you can't visually tell is failed. Does anyone have any other ideas that I might try before buying a whole new amp?

I think the power cable might be going bad, I'm going to try replacing that and hope that does it.

Good news updates -

Not only is my air conditioning ice cold once again after refilling with refrigerant (added a partial can of r134a with UV dye and stop leak, will continue to monitor of course), that godawful grinding noise it's been making for like 3 or 4 years now is almost gone. It's still there a bit, but it gets better with every drive and isn't audible from a block away like it used to be. A couple forum posts I read from forester/XV/etc claimed that these compressors make a similar sound to a failed bearing or other compressor issue when the refrigerant is low.

If it ends up going bad again, if it's the condenser I'm just going to replace that since it's cheap and easy with autozone loaner equipment. If it's leaking at the compressor or the compressor otherwise fails of course I'll replace both.

Mirror has been holding solid and the glass seems higher quality this time than they used for my last safelite replacement. Hopefully both of these things stay this way.

Well, as the title mentions, the PCV Connector failed after 10+ years and 236,500 miles. Couldn't find anything online about replacing it. Not even on Youtube.

It's located under the A/C compressor and you can only see one of the three bolts, the one closest to the oil filter. After looking everything over, I came to the conclusion the A/C compressor has to be moved. It would be a major P.I.T.A trying to do it with it still there.
Got it back together and it's all good now.

What I did:
Disconnected the negative on the battery
Removed the shield and bracket over the belt
Took the belt off the compressor
Disconnect the alternator cables
Remove the bracket on top of the compressor
Remove 5 bolts and lifted the compressor out of the way

This is the full view with the compressor out of the way:


Old part / New part ($38 + tax)


WARNING: I didn't drain the coolant. I used my oil extractor to remove as much as I could from the top. I removed the upper radiator hose and extracted some more from the metal opening going to the block. In hindsight, I should have drained the coolant. A bunch more came out when I took the big hose off the PCV Connector.

Is there anything you can do to get rid of the annoying semi-limp mode that happens sometimes when you use the block heater? Where the temperature lights flash alternately and all the VDC stuff + cruise control is disabled? Other than letting the car sit for hours or hard resetting the ECU?

No CEL? Maybe the coolant temperature sensor has gone bad. There's a way to test it with a multimeter and dipping it in hot/cold water. My oil level sensor has been acting crazy for years. The light will come on and the dipstick shows it's full.

It seems to be fine any time except sometimes on cool-but-not-cold nights when I use the block heater. Somewhere above freezing and below 50f is when it seems to happen. I swear I read a post here or another forum for another subaru model that this is a known (but uncommon) problem when using the block heater. Something about one temperature sensor disagreeing with another, and the car thinks a sensor has gone bad when it hasn't. Never seen a CEL. Sometimes it even requires an ECU reset no matter how long I let the car sit though, it's very weird. Sometimes just letting it sit for a few hours or overnight makes the "semi-limp" mode go away.

Edit - I found a new OBDII scanner app on my phone, ActiveOBD disabled support for all but a few OBDII devices and my cheap ELM327 never connected again, but the new app shows there is indeed an archived DTC. It sounds like this DTC goes off when the car is sitting for a certain amount of time and the coolant sensor is a certain amount off of the IAT sensor when the car is started https://www.carbon-cleaning-europe.c...s/p0116-subaru

I get the intended point, but did they not think for a second about the engine block heater when they were coming up with that DTC?

Finally discovered a leak on the AC system. The bottom of the accumulator/dryer has UV dye on it, it took multiple weeks for it to appear so it must be the tiniest of leaks, but it's there. Also heard that was a TSB (not a recall... classy, Subaru) for this being a known issue on some more recent Foresters, which probably use the same or very similar design.

Now to decide whether I should just replace the compressor too while I'm at it.

Clear the code.

The threshold for tripping it seems to be an initial coolant temp of 120F two starts in a row.

You can avoid that by running the block heater for shorter periods in warmer weather.


If the leak is slow, just keep charging the system periodically until the compressor breaks, then replace both.

Yeah, still have pretty good pressure and cooling performance now more than a month after refilling it, I suppose refilling until the compressor dies makes more sense economically. Thanks for the suggestion

New to forum. New owner of 2012 Impreza with 133k miles. Anything that i should know, or look out for? What needs to be replaced or repaired. Car is in decent shape just never owned a Subaru before, hoping to drive this car until wheels fall off.

If it's a manual, you'll have the throwout bearing sieze up/come apart at some point....

.... before you get to drive the wheels off it, you'll most likely go through a set of wheel bearings.

not much else to worry about, keep an eye on the oil level, just do regular maintenance i guess

Looking back through all the AC system discussion in this thread because I'm hoping to have a new, decent-paying job soon so I might be able to finally replace the condenser and compressor, and at this point probably the expansion valve just to be safe as long as it doesn't require disassembly of the entire dashboard or anything.

What made you choose the piston compressor? Rockauto refers to it as an "upgraded design" in some cases, it's a tiny bit more expensive than the rotary compressors, but from all the discussion I can see on other forums and informational websites about AC compressors, the rotary vane ones are better. Supposedly - lower friction/more efficient, fewer moving parts to fail, lower operating temperature, etc. I'm curious what made you go with the piston style compressor because I want to make sure I'm going with the best option here whenever I get around to replacing it.

I started hearing a rattling a while back, and figured it was just a heat shield, but didn't have time to lift the car to look under, just poked around and hammered on the engine with a rubber mallet and couldn't reproduce it. Then it got louder and louder and started to sound really bad. I finally drove it up on ramps and found what looks like a clamp dangling around the front of the exhaust section that includes the secondary cat (part # 44110E). But it's weird - the diameter of the clamp is much larger than the exhaust pipe, so I'm not sure where it came from. I think maybe it's supposed to so around the exhaust pipe and the head shield, but I'm not sure how it ended up BETWEEN them. When I tried pulling it closer to the front, I noticed it was bolted together on one side, and the other side was not connected at all. Maybe it broke off the heat shield? The parts fiches only shows drawings, so they're not much help. Oh, and now that it's removed, I thought that would solve some of the rattling, but it didn't, so next step is to buy a stainless hose clamp to go around the heat shield and pipe.

I think I found it - part number 44135D in this diagram, but still don't know where it's supposed to go: