Questions and Answers
Subaru Doesn't Like The Cold
Q. Today is the 4th trip to the dealer for this 2000 Subaru Impreza Sport Wagon, 2.2 liter, auto trans, 3,600 miles on it. This car would not start when the outside temperature got above 90F. They could not find anything wrong with it after 2 trips! Next time it wouldn't start at 18F. They replaced the temp sensor switch and then the weather warmed up. Now it is cold again, 17F this morning and the stupid thing wouldn't start again!!! After many minutes of grinding away with the pedal to the floor it barely caught and after some nifty backfiring we managed to get it to the dealer again. I told them not to call me with this car until someone can get it to fire up at 6:30 a.m. like I have to. Any clues on this one?
Really frustrated in Montana!
A. No clues, but an educated guess. When you said they replaced the temp sensor, I'm assuming you mean the coolant temp sensor. It's very possible the air temp sensor is no good. The computer can detect if it is good or bad by the fact that when it goes bad, it stops sending information. But the computer doesn't know if the information that it is sending is any good. If it were me, I would do a check on the air temp sensor and make sure it is within specs.
