Questions and Answers

Subaru Impreza Hard Starting At Times Q. Dear Vincent, About a year ago while gaining speed to get on the interstate, my car starting losing speed and the Check Engine Light started flickering and once I let off the gas, it smoothed out, the Check Engine Light stayed on, and the car ran normal. The light stayed on for a couple of days and finally went off.

After about a month after that happened, I was at a store, nor more then five minutes from my home and was in the store for about 30 minutes and returned to the car and the car wouldn’t start and the check engine light came on.

I smoked a cigarette and tried starting the car again and it started and drove fine. I can drive the car for a month without this happening, sometimes it happens twice within a week. It's very unpredictable and of course every time I take it into the shop they can’t make it do it and the check engine light is off.

Since that initial car losing speed while trying to get on the interstate, that’s only happen one other time and it was the same situation. The car not starting seems to happen only when I drive it short distances and turn the car off and then try to restart it after about 10 minutes to 1 hour, anything before that or after that it seems to start fine.

• 1996 Subaru Impreza Outback AWD
• 2.2 liter engine
• Automatic transmission
• 100,625 miles

Hopeless in Huntsville

A. Thus will be a difficult problem to locate. However, if the Check Engine Light (CEL) came on, it stored a DTC in memory. So even if the CEL goes out, the DTC will remain in memory. If the malfunction that caused the DTC to be set does nor reoccur within 50 key starts, it will be erased.

So the best I can offer at this time is to have the computer scanned for codes and see what was set. Then we will be able to figure out how to fix it.