Subaru Forester Owners Forum banner

2015 - Loses power as if transmission goes into neutral? (merged thread)

('14-'18) 
16K views 47 replies 23 participants last post by  liston611 
#1 ·
While doing 70 on the highway. I lose power, i have to coast off to the side, i try putting in park. then in Drive, nothing. the car is running. turn the car back off. and then its works fine on start up. its done this a few times. i dont know whats going on.
 
#3 ·
I would hit the pedal. the RPM would go up and rev up to redline if i held it.

. but its as if the engine isnt connected to anything.

then, it seemed to top off at 3K RPM, hitting the pedal would go up to 3 and no more.

I pulled over. and put it in park. nuetral. then back to Drive. and i noticed the engine had stalled.

Upon restarting the car. i could shift into drive again.

this isnt the first time.
 
#7 ·
Took it to the dealer,

they gave me a loaner, and they looked at it. they could not recreate the problem, its occured twice, they contacted subaru of america and have a case number, car will be returned to me as is.

has around 10,000 miles.

Now what?
 
#8 ·
Problem.

The only way, I think, is to confront them with a video of this.
This is really dangerous, of course unless you have a passenger taking it.
Else you may have to wait for it to become frequent or constant, if it ever does.

Additionally, there's another thread here discussing issues with torque converter, which is possibly what is acting up in your case.
 
#10 ·
Hoping someone here has some ideas on what I can do moving forward. Subaru is now wanting us to take the car back and return the loaner.

Here is the what I submitted to the NHTSA and the attorney general in Iowa yesterday.

On five different occurrences while the cruise control was on and we were driving at around 70 miles an hour on an interstate, our car would electronically put itself in neutral, the automatic gear shifter would physically remain in drive, the RPM's would go up to about 5500 RPMs, because the car was slowing down and the cruise control was on. We would pull over to the side of the interstate and the engine will shut off after about 30 seconds.

Three of the five times, the car would start after sitting for about 15 minutes. The third time the battery died after trying to start it a few times while it was cold out. The fifth time the car left us stranded on the interstate for two hours while we waited for a tow truck.

We have notified Subaru every time that the car would do this. On the third time it happened, Subaru had us remove the remote starter we had purchased and installed at Best Buy. After having Best Buy remove the remote starter, I installed a dashcam behind the driver to record the driver, dashboard and the shifter because Subaru could not find any evidence of this issue happening.

The fourth and fifth time happened while we were on a family vacation out of state. The car was left at a dealership out of state and four weeks after the incident they determined it was a faulty fuel pump. I was told on the phone that they were unable to test if the fuel pump they removed was in fact faulty.

Subaru told me they had a technician drive it for 500 miles and they didn't experience the same issue.

Incidents were at the following mileages - dates:
31190 - May 27th, 2017
34383 - August 27th, 2017
approximately 42300 - February 2nd, 2018
51778 - August 9th, 2018
52129 - August 14th, 2018


I didn't say in the story, but I do have a video from the dashcam of it happening once to my wife and once to me while we were driving. I have shared that video with Subaru and it didn't really help at all, other than they are now throwing parts at the problem. I have uploaded the video where it happened to me. I trimmed the original video down from 8 minutes to about 50 seconds.

youtube.com/watch?v=omnp_VKes-k (had to edit the link because of just signing up and not having enough posts to this forum)

Any advice or opinions would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.
 
#13 ·
I have talked to both the service manager and a salesperson about them buying it back, but they seem to think it is an opportunity to sell me a new car and I fear that mine will just end up back on the sales lot with some poor unknowing soul buying it and then having to deal with this experience.

I have had this to two different dealers now, one in my hometown and one in Colorado. I forgot to add I did purchase the Gold Plan extended warranty when we bought the car, so I don't understand how that isn't helping me to get this situation fixed as well.

Thanks for the responses.
 
#14 ·
Can't figure out how to edit my response, but wanted to add that the remote starter was installed within the first month of us owning the car, around the first several hundred miles. Knowing that the remote start could be a potential issue, I drove down the highway with the eyesight/cruise control on and pushed the buttons on the remote starter, held them down, pushed multiple buttons at once and was unable to get the car to go into neutral. I told Subaru about this "trouble shooting" before having Best Buy remove it, but we still did was what requested of us and had Best Buy take out the remote starter.
 
#17 ·
@Jack2018. No luck. We recently got a lawyer involved. Our car is still in Colorado. I have been insisting that they have a mechanic drive the car back with a computer plugged in to diagnose the problem, but they continually refuse and want to simply tow it back to Iowa.

It is really disappointing that a company like Subaru which prides itself on safety is completely disregarding an obviously dangerous situation. I am also a little surprised at the lack of a response from the NHTSA. From the reports that I pulled back in October, about 10% of the complaints for Forester model years 2014-2017 were related to stalling, I would imagine this should be something they would put more attention towards.
 
#18 ·
This happened to me as well last weekend. I live in Iowa, driving on I35 w/cruise set around 78. What you're describing and what I saw in your youtube video is spot on to my symptoms. I will add a few things I noticed:

I was pretty low on gas, probably a little less than an 8th of a tank when it happened (gas light came on about 10 miles later). I had just gone over a small bump. Not even a bump really, but more like where the start of a bridge isn't level with the road and there's a dip down and then back up. As soon as I hit that, it kicked itself into neutral. I pulled off and physically put the car in neutral to keep the rpms down.

Now here's where it gets fuzzy. I don't remember if I shut the car off as soon as I stopped, or if it died. My dash lit up like a christmas tree, but again I could have turned the car off and that's why the lights came on.

I tried starting it a few times with no luck. Let it sit for a few minutes and it fired right up. I keep an ODB reader plugged in and scanned a few times expecting multiple faults...but there was nothing. Since then it's been fine, although I'm definitely not confident driving it long distances now.

I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with the fuel system?? Being low on gas and hitting that bump maybe sucked air in and freaked the system out? I really have no idea, never experienced anything like this in a car before. I'm debating whether to contact Ramsey Subaru but it sounds like the dealership will not be much help.

For reference, I have a 2014 XT with no engine mods, no remote starter (unless previous owner had one and removed it) with ~75k miles. No other engine problems up to this point.
 
#19 ·
38311 miles on my 2016 forester with eye sight.

4 hours into a 5.5 hour drive. On cruise control at 80 mph. On an up hill. Started overtaking a car, heard the cruise control beep indicating it was locked onto the car. Left lane was clear, so I signaled and moved left. Heard another beep indicating it had lost lock. Then the RPMs shot up and I started losing speed. Tapped the gas, no change. Tapped the brakes, RPMs dropped. Tried the gas again, RPMs go up, but no power. Pull over, put it in park, shut off cruise control, put it back in drive, seems fine, finished drive home.

What do I do now? Take it in for a checkup? Does it record any history they can pull? It’s been driven 90 minutes since the incident.

Is it safe to drive?
 
#20 ·
How did it seem during those 90 minutes. Do you think you could make the drive to your local dealership? Have you called Suby's corporate number and told them of this issue? Were you towing? Driving in Death Valley on the Summer solstice?

Seems like a strange issue, to be sure..

Incidentally, the next time you are on a long straight where you can maintain a given speed, note the rpms as you maintain that speed with(and without) cruise control.

In my experience,without CC, the engine will run at a LOWER rpm than with CC. My cruise control is my right foot.
FWIW
 
#22 ·
This has also happened to me twice since purchasing my Subaru in December 2018 (2015 Forester, ~50k miles). The first time it happened I brought it into a dealership, they said they saw now problems, and went back on the road. I then drove it relatively problem free for 6 months, until last weekend when it happened again.

I was low on gas this time, though I can't remember if I was the first time. I was using cruise control this time, but I wasn't when it happened nine months ago.

Have you had any updates? I'm about to bring my car into a dealership again in Rhode Island, because at this point it feel irresponsible to drive on the road (what if I was merging on the highway, somewhere without a slowlane/shoulder, etc...).

Thanks and I hope it's been sorted out!
 
#23 ·
It happened again. On cruise control at 75 about 3 hours into a drive. Basically it shifted into neutral so the RPMS shot up until I tapped the brakes. I pulled over, shifted to neutral and back into drive and it was fine all the way home (90 minutes).

The freaky part is, I must have been very near the location where it happened the first time!

I should get your case number so I can add my info

https://www.subaruforester.org/threads/under-cruise-control-lost-power.804205/

This ID at gmail.com
 
#24 ·
Basically it shifted into neutral so the RPMS shot up until I tapped the brakes.
Some type of programming gremlin maybe. These glitches can be really hard to diagnose as they may only occur under a specific set of circumstances. Was there a code recorded the first time?

Report it to SoA if you haven't already. The CVT dropping into neutral is a real concern. That should never happen except maybe to prevent imminent catastrophic failure.

The freaky part is, I must have been very near the location where it happened the first time!
Anywhere near Area 51, perhaps?
 
#29 ·
This has happened to me as well, twice since I bought the car (used) a year ago. Both times brought it to my dealership, they couldn't find any problems and couldn't recreate the issue, and after testing gave it back to me. I've also been in touch with corporate, they haven't been able to help at all.

I understand it's tough issue to address (given that it happens to sporadically), but given the danger it would but a driver in if it happened at the wrong time, it's really shameful that Subaru hasn't been more helpful.

If anyone would like to talk more about these issues, please privately message me. I'd love hear more from folks with similar issues.

Thanks,
Dan
 
#30 ·
It seems like alot of you guys are experiencing it while cruise control is on. I have a 16 xt and I rarely use cruise control and when I do use it its maybe for an hour at most when I travel from ny to maryland before I end up with traffic. Could the cruise control have something to do with it?
 
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top