Hi, Some advice please.

My 2008 GB270 (27k) - owned by me for 3 months, suddenly had the "check engine light" not go out on start up, it just glowed steadily at me. Took the car to a subaru "specialist" and they hooked it up to the diagnostics and said it was one of the "secondary air suction valves" sticking open. It was explained to me in some detail what these were for - only put on cars due to EU emmission regs. and only function at start up anyway and apparently basically are pretty useless and unnecessary. The bad news was that to replace one would cost £450 - to replace both plus associated pump was about£1500 and if I replaced one nothing to stop the other one failing soon after.

Their recommended solution was to remove them completely at a cost of £650 and have the resulting holes blanked off. Assured me the car would still pass MOT etc.

As the car was still going fine with no noticeable difference I asked whether I was doing any damage by driving car with the fault light showing. I was told no but that fuel consumption would be worse and performance would be affected.

I thought I would mull over what to do but it is now 4 weeks that I have been driving the car with this light on and over that period average fuel consumption has been between 22.7mpg and 24.7mpg which seems pretty normal for a 2.5 WRX with Prodrive and the car still goes like a rocket.

I'm left thinking should I be paying £650 to put a light out or am I missing something here!

Any views or advice is very welcome.

Cheers

Bob

 

ive sent u a pm mate

Secondary air pump is only there to pump air in on start up to keep emissions down,once car is at temp it shuts down when working correctly,

U can either remove the complete set up and fit blanking plates approx £60/70 for plates then car would need mapped to remove it from ecu approx£250 for open source mapping,

Or buy parts second hand which i have the full set up thats no longer needed,

Pics in pm to you

 

The relay for the Air pump can stick 'on' and cause the air pump to run all the time and eventually burn it out - quite a common problem.
As Tomwrx said above, get a blanking kit for the back of the cylinder heads and have it mapped out - problem solved and a lot cheaper.

Mick

 

I got this on mine about a year ago and took it to a mate to diagnose and was the same fault as yours. He switched the light off and it has not come on since

 

As above / easy fix & a lot cheaper than £650 OP

 

What happens if you disconnect the secondary air pump electrical feed before it fails? Will the valves remained closed? And i assume itll throw a cel?