Having your car inspected prior to the warranty expiring is a very important and often overlooked step on the way to obtaining real value for your Subaru purchasing dollar.
Let’s face it new Subaru’s are pretty expensive these days and are often financed for 7 years or longer. The last thing you want to have deal with when your warranty expires is an expensive repair.

A thorough inspection can go a long way to ensuring you will get what you paid for when the warranty expires and can help give you piece of mind that you have a good car. The dealership really isn’t the best choice when having this inspection done, you need a great independent repair shop like All Wheel Drive Auto on your side providing you with an unbiased expert opinion about the overall health of your car and documentation of any needed warranty repairs, so if in the event you do have to return to the Dealer for warranty repair, you do so as an informed customer. Don’t let your warranty expire hoping all is well. You spent a lot of money on your car and you deserve to get as much value out of it as possible.

One of the best times to have this done is at the 30k service interval, done prior to the 3 year 36,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty expiring and again at the 60k service interval done prior to 60,000 miles or 5 years of service.  One of the reasons for the timing is that a complete inspection is part of the service, so you will not be spending any extra money to have your Subaru inspected during time of service.  This is also a great time to have a shop like ours advise you about any possible service campaigns (which are not the same as recalls) that may apply to your Subaru.

If you are the original owner of a Subaru the factory will use the “in service date” as the start date of your warranty, but if you bought your Subaru used, it’s the production date that is the start date for any warranty from Subaru.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, unless the splash pan is removed from your Subaru you just don’t know if there are any engine leaks developing.  Through the years we have had to help with many warranty situations and sometimes worse, we are the ones to inform that at 60,120 there is a Headgasket leak that may not qualify for coverage.  This is yet another reason to use a good independent for all or at least a portion of your maintenance.

Due to how the service department and factory relationship is established, most if not all Technicians will not voluntarily take the time to inspect things that could be covered under warranty as their pay will suffer greatly and the profit levels at the service department will suffer as well, as the factory does not pay the same amount of labor you do to make repairs.  If you complain about a leak they will have to take care of it if it’s a covered component, but in many cases it’s up to you to inform them of the troubles you are having as you just can’t rely on most Dealers to always do the right thing by you until pressed.

Your experience with your Subaru is only going to be as good as the team of professionals there to take care of you!

Thanks for reading

Justin