GavM

Hi Rusty, Your troubles sound all too similar to my own experiences. My Outback diesel was of a similar age, a 2010 model. Much as I enjoyed the car and its amazing fuel consumption - I like yourself had grave concerns about future on-going troubles with glow plugs in these motors. I also took on board Dogkonker's comments that the problem was only resolved by Subaru with more recent Euro5 engines. I made the decision to trade my Outback in - this time on a normally aspirated petrol engined 2.5l Subaru Forester, with which- touch wood - I am extremely happy with. I believe Subaru's strength and reliability lies in its significant experience with petrol engined boxers. The Subaru Euro4 diesel motor is clearly early pioneering for Subaru. My Subaru diesel, like your own was one of the unfortunate casualties in their learning era. What I find unforgivable is that Subaru have not acknowledged nor provided any long term solution towards addressing what is clearly an inherent fault with these engines. So yes - I've dumped the diesel for a petrol Subi GavM

Picked up the car from the dealership - after settling a bill for $1,300. Two glow-plugs had allegedly failed (fused blown) and a third had snapped in the socket and had had to be drilled out. All good I thought - until 5 minutes from home when all three of the dreaded dash lights came back on again! Took it straight back the next morning to be told that they would put it back on the machine to diagnose what's causing it this time, quote "it could quite easily be something different". You've got to be joking... Watch this space - I'm waiting for their phone call. Assuming they do get some resolution on this - I still have concerns about long term damage from any metal filings that may have entered the cylinder when they drilled out the 'snapped' glow plug. Am I being pedantic or should I be trading this car in now? The Service Advisor was understandably non committal.

Seems to me that Subaru Glow Plug failure is quite a common but expensive catastrophe? I have run into exactly the same issue with my 2010 Outback Diesel, at 104,000 KMS. Bling, 3 warning lights came on, engine management, traction control and parking brake - cruise control & hill stop not functioning. The car is currently in the Subaru dealership workshops, and diagnosed with one or more failed glow plugs. I too had a similar phone call from the service manager to tell me that they couldn't tell which glow plug was faulty, so all had to come out for testing - & that they were very brittle and sometimes snapped when trying to remove them so might have to be drilled out! At $165 a pop - I was warned that I could be up for a bill over $1000. :( What doesn't make sense is that there was absolutely no change in the starting pattern - a couple of turns and she fired. No smoke when cold, no indication of roughness- nothing out of the ordinary that I would expect on a cold start with <4 glow plugs operating.