I put some cheap $1.99 5w30 oil in my 07 Outback after I discovered it was low on oil. I changed the oil about a thousand miles later. About two weeks after I changed the oil, on my way home today my car threw the P0026 code. The engine idled fine and didn't seem to run rough or anything. I took the solenoid out of the passenger side bank and saw that it was spotless, but the little hole at the bottom was plugged up. I cleaned out the solenoid and made sure it moved freely and also took a look inside the mounting hole to see if there was any crud build up. It looked clean to me. I also cleaned the PCV valve since it was stuck open (found my oil consumption issue lol). So just to be safe I cleaned the other bank and sure enough the solenoid was dirty to. Never in the 6 years of owning my Outback have I ever run into this issue, I've also never run crappy oil through my car. I've always used name brand synthetic oil or conventional oil, the one time I was in a pinch to get to work and it bit me. It seems like this is a common issue with newer cars since the internet is littered with complaints regarding this code.

That sure was burnt oil. I'm changing the oil in the Jetta this week. almost 7 quarts of 0-40 European spec. Thanks for the video which I enjoyed watching during my lunch in the work van. Have a super day.

Excellent Video! Great example of just drive it til it won't go. I have had suburu's go for 300k, but always with regular oil changes, hope they learned from this...Thanks Ivan.

As a former Subaru tech, I can tell you without reservation that these VVT solonoids will not take dirty oil for very long ! I tell people to use high quality synthetic oil and a high end oil filter that is designed for synthetic oil. I've seen people come to the shop and drop 1200 bucks on a VVT problem :( Change the oil every 5000 miles to be safe !

I wish people would do just a little PM! Nice video Ivan.

Preventive Maintenance , What is that? The salesman told me the vehicle is maintenance free. Gas and go is the way to go.

Proper maintenance alleviates so many problems especially on VVT emgines. Low dirty oil wreaks havoc on them causing premature wear on crank & cam bearings & pumps reducing oil pressure, clogging VVT screens and causing premature VVT component failures. I put only Mobil 1 in my customer engines & use Mobil 1 Extended Performance in all my vehicles. Hopefully she'll be a new customer and she'll have an outstanding mech/tech caring for her vehicle.

Yes you are absolutely correct I just did it on my wife’s car which is a 2010 Subaru Forrester she went to work call me telling me that the car stopped on her multiple times but she was able to drive 20+ miles an hour she came home and I took it for a test drive , and I noticed the RPM was so low and that’s why I was killing the car my wife’s car is a five speed manual just like the one in the video it was due for an oil change did that and the car runs fine 👍

ran into that issue with a Nissan. cam and crank codes and the fix was a fresh oil change!

Boggles me mind about Subaru neglecting to put a temp sensor in the dash.

I run my 5.7 litre Chevrolet LS1 V8 powered Holden Commodore with Nulon 10W40 multigrade fulll synthetic oil & I change it every 10,000 kilometres or 6 months whichever comes first,it runs cleaner than the semi synthetic oil.

In hight school I worked at Q-Lube. It's crazy just how many people neglect the the most basic of things. I'd say about 10-20% of the cars I'd drain would have sludge in them. And most of the cars had less than 70k miles.

Upgrade to a 908 man. I LOVE mine. The vid scope is awesome. The lab scope needs help but it works.

Good grief. That's kind of sad but my mom was the same way. She went though a few engines in her day because she never check the coolant level. I enjoyed the video because sometimes it can be just that easy.

Id change the oil again after 1000 or so miles to get the rest of that old nasty oil out.

Good vid. That thing will prob take a few oil changes to get it all worked out.

That Subaru thanks you..

Excellent educational videos

Hey Ivan, great video. I see this all the time. Pretty common Subaru problem. More often on the turbo models. 5K is the maximum OCI I go with on the cars with AVCS. The solenoids are easy enough to get to to (only the STI/new WRX has them on the exhaust side) for a quick pull and clean. I've had very good luck pulling them out and hitting them with some of Eric O's favorite brake cleaner to degunk them on neglected cars. Sometimes an oil change won't get all the crud out. Watch out for the screen in the feed lines on the older turbo models too. There's a TSB on removing those. They get plugged/crushed easily. Newer than 07/08 doesn't have them.

Air/Fuel ratio sensors. I had this same problem. Idle dip, rough idle.. took a long time to store a code even with the engine running rough. Changed primary and secondary o2 sensors.. problem solved.