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Hi guys... first post for me!

I have an 02 MY01 RS, stock standard.

It's been a perfect car apart from the head gasket (replaced in 2008) but now I'm having a few issues with it which are getting worse:
Taking too long to start up/tick over (battery is good).
Stalling or almost stalling when taking off after start up.
3rd gear when the revs drop down and putting accelerator again occasionally gets a shudder/stall thing.
Noticed the other day driving with the aircon on it occasionally felt a bit weird like a drop in power (doing 80-100km/hr)
Using too much oil.
No engine warning lights are on.
(The fuel gauge doesn't work very well... stays on empty most of the time - but not sure this would be any way related.)

Hubby is a mechanic for Hyundai but is not confident diagnosing and recommended we take it to Subaru... they're going to charge an arm and a leg so I thought I would try getting some input first! They did advise that as there are no warning lights coming on computer is not likely to have error codes (which is why we would want to send it to them!)

Hope someone can give us some feedback or ideas on where to start.
Cheers!

Hi and Welcome kokoruby

I'm thinking that the car maybe requiring a can of Subaru Upper Cylinder Clean. This supposed to be used every service and don't want to sound rude but if your hubby is doing the service work, then he might not be using this cleaner. The symptoms you are saying are classic signs of the inlet manifold gumming up with oil breather gum. The issue of the engine using oil (which is going hand in hand with the gum in the manifold) is the oil is not the correct grade for you engine. Subaru oil specs are pretty precise and you shouldn't really use anything other that what Subaru recommend.

Engine check light will only come on if there is issues with the engine sensors that are outside of the normal operating range. Burning oil is not checked by sensors, so you won't get any fault codes. I don't think you need to take it to Subaru unless you feel the need but there are plenty of other Subaru mechanics out there that won't charge you a month's mortgage.