Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums and been a Forester owner for 2 years now and have loved every minute of it. I bought a used 2004 2.5X with 79,891 miles on it and have had ZERO problems in the 50,000 miles since then. This is the newest vehicle I've ever owned, previously only maintaining and repairing 1970's era Fords and Chevys. A lot of the newest technology escapes me from a lack of intimate knowledge but the basics I get.
So a couple weeks ago when it was sub-zero here my battery died while I was trying to start the car with a frozen fuel line. It sat for 5 days before I could get someone to come help me jump it. I initially tried one of my officemate’s Black and Decker Smart Start battery boosters (plugs into the cigarette lighter) and that didn’t work but I suspect actually might have fried some of my electric, more on that in a sec.
The guy that finally came to assist was my brother’s ex’s new boyfriend (that’s how far down the friend chain I had to go to get help). Anyhow, we had to push the car into the street to get the cables to reach so I put the key in, turned to ON and pressed the brake to shift to neutral and it didn’t go (not enough battery to get the interlock working I assess) so I went inside to grab a screwdriver to pop the little release switch, well, when I came back out, the dude had just pulled the shifter from P into N forcibly.
We push the car into the street and get to jumping and while I am sitting inside the car waiting for the battery to charge, he keeps moving the ground cable all over the frame and got himself a pretty big spark closer to the firewall side of the engine compartment on the driver’s side. Despite that we finally got it started.
Result:
*My gauges and trip meter died, which I fixed with a disconnect of the red battery cable to reset my computer.
*My shifter will not go into P anymore and will only go into R with a little bit of force on the shifter. N and the D selections all work smoothly and of course I can’t remove the key from the ignition since it won’t go into Park.
*I am getting unusually-loud (louder than before) relay sounds (or what I think to be relay sounds) whenever I turn on my headlights (from the glove box area), rear window defrost (behind the coin holder on the driver’s side where the interior fuses are) and the blower for my Heat/AC is no longer blowing (I can still feel heat radiating from the vents and still hear a slight click by the interior fuse box when I switch it from 0 to 1 fan speed) and I am getting some whining noise from one of the rear autolocks when I lock the doors. I checked all my interior and engine compartment fuses and they are intact.
I’m thinking that maybe the shift-lock solenoid was damaged when the shifter got forced into N but I’ve never worked on a car with that kind of safety in the shifting so not sure what else could be wrong to look for other that buying and installing a new solenoid and seeing if that works.
I also assess that the Blower Resistor probably needs to be replaced to get the heater working again but as far as the rest of the electrical weirdness…not even sure to start looking at that stuff or if it's just my imagination.
I’ll also leave out the massive body damage this dude managed to engineer while rocking the car out of the driveway while pushing on the front fender panel instead of the upright between doors like I was doing…ugh.
Anyway, there’s my novel…any ideas? I’ve got a complete teardown manual I can reference to get things done, just don't want to go out and buy a bunch of parts to 'try out' to see if they fix the problem based on my guesswork if someone out there has a better idea where to start.
So a couple weeks ago when it was sub-zero here my battery died while I was trying to start the car with a frozen fuel line. It sat for 5 days before I could get someone to come help me jump it. I initially tried one of my officemate’s Black and Decker Smart Start battery boosters (plugs into the cigarette lighter) and that didn’t work but I suspect actually might have fried some of my electric, more on that in a sec.
The guy that finally came to assist was my brother’s ex’s new boyfriend (that’s how far down the friend chain I had to go to get help). Anyhow, we had to push the car into the street to get the cables to reach so I put the key in, turned to ON and pressed the brake to shift to neutral and it didn’t go (not enough battery to get the interlock working I assess) so I went inside to grab a screwdriver to pop the little release switch, well, when I came back out, the dude had just pulled the shifter from P into N forcibly.
We push the car into the street and get to jumping and while I am sitting inside the car waiting for the battery to charge, he keeps moving the ground cable all over the frame and got himself a pretty big spark closer to the firewall side of the engine compartment on the driver’s side. Despite that we finally got it started.
Result:
*My gauges and trip meter died, which I fixed with a disconnect of the red battery cable to reset my computer.
*My shifter will not go into P anymore and will only go into R with a little bit of force on the shifter. N and the D selections all work smoothly and of course I can’t remove the key from the ignition since it won’t go into Park.
*I am getting unusually-loud (louder than before) relay sounds (or what I think to be relay sounds) whenever I turn on my headlights (from the glove box area), rear window defrost (behind the coin holder on the driver’s side where the interior fuses are) and the blower for my Heat/AC is no longer blowing (I can still feel heat radiating from the vents and still hear a slight click by the interior fuse box when I switch it from 0 to 1 fan speed) and I am getting some whining noise from one of the rear autolocks when I lock the doors. I checked all my interior and engine compartment fuses and they are intact.
I’m thinking that maybe the shift-lock solenoid was damaged when the shifter got forced into N but I’ve never worked on a car with that kind of safety in the shifting so not sure what else could be wrong to look for other that buying and installing a new solenoid and seeing if that works.
I also assess that the Blower Resistor probably needs to be replaced to get the heater working again but as far as the rest of the electrical weirdness…not even sure to start looking at that stuff or if it's just my imagination.
I’ll also leave out the massive body damage this dude managed to engineer while rocking the car out of the driveway while pushing on the front fender panel instead of the upright between doors like I was doing…ugh.
Anyway, there’s my novel…any ideas? I’ve got a complete teardown manual I can reference to get things done, just don't want to go out and buy a bunch of parts to 'try out' to see if they fix the problem based on my guesswork if someone out there has a better idea where to start.
