legacycentral bbs

ok, i've never seen or heard of this before...please help

i've got a 90 legacy, AT AWD. when you crank the engine over to start, all the dash lights come on just as they should, but when it fires up, all of them stay on EXCEPT the check engine light, which turns off like it should. basically the opposite of what i would expect. so, for clarification, the following red dash lights remain on while the car is running:

battery
AT temp light
oil warning light
stop lamp light

the green power light comes on and goes off (doesn't blink) just like it should, so there doesen't seem to be any error codes.

oh, and yes, i did check all the fluids, tail lights etc just to make sure i didn't have a quadruple failure, and everything checked out.

what the heck is going on here? i can't find anything in the owners or chilton manual about this. fuses all look good. maybe some kind of short? i checked all the wiring, and after 15 minutes of following 500 miles of wiring, everything looked good.

as a last ditch effort, i unplugged the battery and am going to let it sit overnight, in hopes resetting the ECU will magically fix it (wishful thinking)

any suggestions would be great. thanks so much.

I'd suspect a failing alternator......if you can take it out and have it tested, I'd recommend it.

i know what you're going thru..
i recently had my alt replaced (few months ago) and the lights you described have been coming on ever since..

have you installed any new electrical equipment? in my case, it was two new 6x9s that drained it.. next fog lights, etc. but check your alt, power steering, etc.. try a new battery and see if that helps, if yours is old. but your car will be drivable for quite a distance, i'll tell you that. Does your 'brake' light come on underneath the 'stop lamp' as well, (like you've got the e-brake on, but you don't)? those will flash in unison in this case mine's a manual, so i don't get the AT temp, but as of now, my auto seatbelts refuse to move and the seatbelt indicator light is either beeping or flashing at me while all the belts are connected (i don't touch 'em.).. What happens when you turn corners? This will be a good indicator of an alt problem, as your powersteering will drain your power around corners..
does your stereo quit?
lights flash?
anything?

good luck.

-=TRSTNj

i replaced the alternator and that fixed it. i called around a few subie shops in town and they all said check your charging system. sure enough, that's what it was.

probably the most frustrating part of this was the fact that some engineer designed this response into the system, except neither subaru or chilton included it in the manuals. why the hell not? such a simple thing.

anyways, thanks for everyone's help. pass along this info to all our fellow subie owners...

Well, the light that looks like a battery means "charging system failure." Left unchecked, a charging system failure will cause the other warning lights to come on.

Is it possible that the charge light started to come on before the others? Maybe just 15 minutes before or anything?

For future reference:
Every warning light comes on if your electrical connector to the alternator is a little loose. This happens to me all the time, and a little jiggle fixes it.

I have another post going on this as well - except I did replace the alt and it is still doing it.

The connection at the alt looks good - it's even soldered. Does this wire go directly to the battery - mine looks like it goes under the fuse box - it was too cold to trace though so I left it for tomorrow and figured I get ideas from here first

Any other connections I could check?

Thanks,

Rabin