NHTSA Complaint #11533570 — 2008 SUBARU LEGACY

The issue occurred on a 08 Subaru Legacy GT Limited while the driver was driving the car with their family on a local street around 35-40mph. Initially, while the car was stopped at a traffic light, the driver noticed that the brake pedal seems off where it seems to be depressed much deeper than usual. While coming up on a second red traffic light, the driver noticed that the pedal has to be depressed all the way down to the floor before bringing the car close to a stop while using the emergency brake to complete the stop. The driver knows that this is a major issue given the symptoms and drove to a safe spot to stop the car and inspect the issue. At this time, the brake light has also came on in the dashboard. Upon the driver's preliminary inspection, there was brake fluid leakage coming from the rear passenger wheel area and the brake fluid in the reservoir has reached the minimum line which would confirm why the brake light came on. Given the situation, the vehicle was then brought to the Subaru official dealer immediately to be dropped off for a diagnostic on the next Monday since the dealer was closed when the driver arrived. After the diagnostic by the Subaru mechanic, they confirmed with the driver's suspicious where the brake line has been broken due to corrosion to a bare metal area of the rear brake line that was supposed to be addressed by the brake line corrosion recall, WQK-047. The line was broken at one of the clip point where the brake line has no sleeve over it to protect the line from corrosion. Subaru issued a recall on this area as they know that this was a design flaw where salt used on the road from the winter might get in accelerating the corrosion of the line causing it to leak or break. This is an serious issue since the car could have crashed if the brake fails completely without any brake fluid anymore. NHTSA should intervene on this as many owners have this issue and SOA, who boast about safety, did not address the issue with the recall.