I was looking at buying a 1998 Subaru Outback with 263,000 miles on it. The owner said the timing belt was serviced about a year ago and the oil was changed at 258,000 miles. Is that too much of a risk to bother purchasing? The car in general is in good condition, i'm just worried about how many miles the engine has on it.
It depends what you would use it for, as a daily driver, you should be looking for 120000 miles at most, as a project car, you should be looking for 150000 at most. A decent price for a 263000 mile car like that should be about £1000-2000, any more and it would be a bit too much. For that sort of car, you should be looking at a 2.0L. Any less than a 2.0L is not enough for a big car like that. In my opinion, buying it would be quite risky. I would recommend a 2007 Kia Carens as an alternative, I've recently found this one on the AA used car website. https://www.theaa.com/used-cars/cardetails/73-489314
Unless you can get service records that show that it was rigorously maintained, then don’t. I wouldn’t recommend anything with that high miles that didn’t have a regular oil change schedule and had it’s fair share of preventative maintenance done. The EJ25 is a somewhat problematic engine, and it was what almost every Outback here in the states got; they have a propensity to blow head gaskets, leak oil, and consume a lot of it. Transmissions in them love to break. Since I’m assuming this is Washington State, not D.C., they rust, too. Subies do have their upsides. They have AWD on everything they sold (I’m pretty sure) and they do well in snow. They just can be unreliable and expensive to maintain. I would say look for something more reliable unless the Subaru is less than $1750. Just my two cents. Do your own thing.
Don’t be afraid of it at the right price, but if you can find something more reliable for the price, your interests might be better served by it.
was it long distance driven and after how many miles did the owner service it example: every 10.000km;every 15.000km ect.
no, subaru head gaskets blow up at 100k if that has 260 miles its gonna be more of a head gasket blow up speedrun lol
