HELP! What have I done?

As a bit of a last measure to check for a broken part lodged in the gears. You can get the car up on jack stands a rotate the rear shaft backward with the car in first and clutch in. Could let out a 'nasty' stopping things moving, but it's a long shot.

Thanks, this is all good advice. I've screwed my head on a bit more and my last post was way over the top. Cars are expensive, things go wrong, I need to work more and set aside some money for these things. I'm finishing my study in a few weeks so that will relieve the pressure a bit. Chalk it up to a good life lesson.

Benny I think that diagnoses sounds closer to home - it's too much of a coincidence not to be related to something I did. I don't know anyone who is into cars. I'm a bicycle mechanic so I have some mechanical sense to know that it's more than I can handle though. I'll talk to the mechanic who does the work and tell them to let me know if they find out! I think I will find a dirt cheap second car to tinker with to learn how to avoid blowing things up, something with an EA maybe...

As for pre inspections; my big problem is I bought both cars too far from home and also the nearest mechanic. And then feel obliged to trust the RWC and the seller rather than ask to do a 100k loop to the nearest mechanic. Another good lesson there.

And yep you're right Benny, upper engine cleaner barely let out a puff. Let down!

Cool I've learned a lot about the gearbox, it's great to finally know whats happening. Only thing is the more I learn about the gearbox the more I'm confused about what went wrong. The weird thing to me is that there are no bad sounds. Nearly every failure I can see in the bell housing and clutch mechanism would make a horrible sound under load. So to me it seems that the clutch mechanism is working fine and slipping to take the load of the seized gearbox.

I'm going to drain it tomorrow, see what comes out. I'd be keen to try your suggestion ozzycouch but I don't have jack stands. I could winch the vehicle backwards a cm, I know that that is putting a huge load onto it but it'll be dragged onto a truck anyway. *edit* realise now this is pretty dumb - the car rolls backwards fine in neutral, I figured trans was locked.

Alright, drained the gearbox, oil was clean. But it looked like I hadn't drained the old oil too well - filmy residue on the surface, a bit of swirling. I'm letting it drain for a few hours today. Shifter now goes into first and second, if I roll the car backwards it can go into other gears sometimes too, sometimes none. Don't know what's normal though especially without oil.

So headed to the auto shop to grab some more oil. Spoke to the guy there, he grabbed a bottle of Nulon 75-90, I was shocked to see it was $80 and I asked if he had anything cheaper as it was going in a probably-dead box. He said that putting cheaper oil in an old gearbox can destroy the box... Told him that's exactly what I had probably just done.

FYI what I put in it was fully synth Castrol 80-90W, cost me about $25.

Anyway. He said it's extremely unlikely but sold it to me anyway. Fingers crossed but not expecting anything.

Post oil change update - Nup! Goes into 1st and reverse, second with effort, got stuck in second when I tried to drive in that. Doesn't drive forward in any gears except neutral. I was pretty cautious because I don't want to cause more damage. It's is my final diagnoses.

Could it "only" be a gear linkage problem ?

I'd be trying to line his up to drive it down the street to get oil moving throughout the gearbox. Start with only using first gently down the street, do a U turn avoiding having to do a three pointer (but if you have to you have to...), then try for second as you're nearing your driveway, if it doesn't work you're not far from home, if it works keep going and try for third if appropriate. Do not warm the gearbox up in the driveway before doing this!

Knowing Subaru gearboxes I wouldn't be playing with second gear in the driveway while cold - I don't know how or why but Subaru boxes are notorious for being hard to select second when the box is cold. The phase two box isn't anywhere near as bad!

I'm keen for you to get to the bottom of this! I'd love to pull the box down to have a look at it.

And it's very hard to get all the oil out of the gearbox, even harder when the box is cold and you're doing it in winter! Even with an engine oil change you never get all the oil out, there will be a good 100mL or so still trapped in the bottom of the sump or some other crevices within the engine.

Cheers

Bennie

It's actually very easy to get the oil out of the gearbox. Drain the gearbox overnight. Re-install drain plug. Place gearbox in the boot of the car. Go inside for a bite to eat. Return to car. All oil in the gearbox has now been removed. Clean up the mess in the boot and continue on. This procedure also applies to getting oil out of the engine

:lol:

Hey Bennie, good suggestion about trying to get oil moving, problem is it wont drive forward in first - the clutch slips and engine will just stall if I let it. Only gear it drives forward in is neutral! It won't go into 3rd, 4th or 5th.

I found this on the Forester forum posted in a question about coasting in neutral which I think might be critical:

"If you have ever looked inside of a Subaru transmission, you'll see the reliance on transmission fluid. First gear on the output shaft does not ride on a bearing, but rather a very thin film of fluid. A breakdown of the fluid can actually fuse first gear to the output shaft, effectively locking you in first gear. I've seen this happen. Bad fluid is a major contributing factor to this.

While it may not actually happen, the fact of the matter is that it CAN. Espically if you don't use good transmission fluid, and espically if you don't maintain proper service intervals (Subaru recommends changing trans fluid every 60k. I recommend doing it every 30k. It's cheap insurance).

We have a 55gallon drum full of blown transmission internals. I've seen almost every scenario for a blown transmission. Fluid breakdown has been the result of a few."

- Kinda sounds like what might be going on. Also double tick for bad fluid and a lack of fluid servicing. I'm going to try driving it up and down the driveway in neutral to see if I can break it out of its lock. I don't think it's going to come good even if I manage to do that. But got nothing to lose at this point.

Booking it in locally for the work this week - the mechanic down the road is honest and cheap and works on a lot of Subarus, it'll save me a lot of hassle over having the car trucked to Melbourne.

Update - Car's at the mechanics finally. Lower KM gearbox going in along with a clutch. I've asked to keep the old gearbox as I want to pull it apart and see if I can learn how to work on it, I'd like to put in a 1.447 low range in it one day. I'll just be stoked to have it back, it's getting warm again and I'm keen to go camping!

Thanks for the replies everyone. Appreciate it.

Great to see that it will be back on the road soon!

Great to hear!