Impreza Transverse Link Failure

[evenflow]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum,

and was hoping for a bit of advice or inspiration from existing members.

 

I own a 2004 Impreza 2.0 GX Wagon.

 

Two days ago I pulled up outside my house, and was about to reverse into my drive when a few juddering bangs told me something had suddenly gone seriously wrong.

 

When I walked round the front of the car, I found that the nearside front wheel was pressed up hard against the rear of the wheel arch.

A quick look underneath revealed that the transverse link had snapped clean in half, broken the torsion rod(?), and pulled the drive shaft out of the gearbox. The car was now leaking gearbox oil all over the road, and was completely immobilised on the spot.

(I only moved in a week ago -bet the neighbours are well impressed).

 

First thing this morning I rung my nearest Subaru Dealer.

They looked the car up on their database, and told me that it had been taken back for the recall to do with the transverse link. (I presume by the previous owner).

The impact test had been performed, and that if no action had been taken, then it must have been considered safe and sound.

They told me that If I wanted it fixed, it was now fully chargeable.

 

Still, i'm not convinced and certainly not happy.

My feeling is that this is an unacceptable failure to occur to a 10yr old car,

that has only done 90,000 miles, and is never used in off road situations, or driven with any form of aggression.

 

In my opinion this is a failure of a component that was known to be faulty.

 

I want to take this higher, and was wondering if and members had any advice on how to do so, from possible previous experience in dealing with Subaru.

They certainly don't seem interested in having an email address on their main UK website!

 

If nothing else, I thought this was a good opportunity to warn other members that even if their car has been checked, these failures can still occur totally unexpectedly. I'm just grateful that it didn't happen even 1 minute earlier, when I was still doing between 50 and 60mph with my wife beside me.

 

Any thoughts people have would be gratefully received.

 

Thanks a lot.

[savage bulldogs]

Far as I'm aware subarus "test" was to hit it with a dot punch in several places , if it didn't punch a hole it passed and if it did they replaced it free of charge

I had a similar reply from my local Toyota dealers with my mum's car taken in for a steering recall and passed , month later the steering column fell of it's mountings whilst she was driving [emoji33]

I kicked up a fuss about the potential injury or even fatality if she'd had been driving on the carriageway to no avail [emoji35]

Threatened them with watchdog and probably due to another ongoing Toyota recall at the time, they repaired it for free