Legacy

Hello Everyone,

I've been a Honda enthusiast for the past 10 years. I haven't
been happy that the Accord is now larger than some SUVs and the Civic
which would be my ideal size is too ugly with the two tiered dash to
try to like it.
Yesterday I was at the autoshow and jumped into a Legacy. I
was really impressed by the design inside and out. Since I've never
owned a Subaru in the past, can anyone comment on how easy it is to
work on? I have repaired everything on my Honda/Acuras with the
exception of the timing belt so I need a car that I can easily work
on. Anything to look out for long term, also any special tools? I
drive my cars to the ground so any information would be appreciated.
I'll be test driving one in the near future.

Thanks in advance
Nick

On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:50:20 -0500, nick.RemoveThis@nowhere.com <nick.RemoveThis@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I've been a Honda enthusiast for the past 10 years. I haven't
> been happy that the Accord is now larger than some SUVs and the Civic
> which would be my ideal size is too ugly with the two tiered dash to
> try to like it.
> Yesterday I was at the autoshow and jumped into a Legacy. I
> was really impressed by the design inside and out. Since I've never
> owned a Subaru in the past, can anyone comment on how easy it is to
> work on? I have repaired everything on my Honda/Acuras with the
> exception of the timing belt so I need a car that I can easily work
> on. Anything to look out for long term, also any special tools? I
> drive my cars to the ground so any information would be appreciated.
> I'll be test driving one in the near future.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Nick

I've driven a Legacy for about twelve years now, and I do a lot of the
maintenance myself. The parts run a little expensive, but the good
news is that these cars are pretty much indestructable.

The one thing you might have to look out for -- and things may be
different on more recent models -- is that the CV joints seem to wear
out pretty fast. I found myself having to replace my driver's side
ball joint about every two or three years. I've heard that it may
have something to do with the position of the catalytic converter
causing the rubber boot to get too hot and wear quickly, so if you can
do the maintenance to just replace the boot when it wears out, you can
probab ly just do that instead of replacing the whole joint (It's more
work than I'm up to myself. The labor cost makes it about the same
price to replace the boot as to replace the entire joint when you're
having a mechanic do it), and, like I said, more recent models may not
suffer from this problem.