Torque converter failure on the 2011 Subaru Outback
3 fires 3 of the 111 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When torque converter failure gets reported
Owners of the 2011 Subaru Outback report torque converter failure at a median of 107,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 92,500 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles, from 86 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 96,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 75,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 150,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 74,854 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
3% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 74,646 miles | 93,000 miles | 108,250 miles | 125,000 miles | 149,500 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 3 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $1,100–$3,200 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2011, at a median of 107,500 miles, and latest on the 2010 at 115,000 miles.
By volume the 2011 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
The engine shuts down whenever you brake suddenly or use any pressure to brake (not coast to a stop). The car shakes and then dies and you have to restart the car. This happens almost daily and after taking it to several shops it was determined that the torque converter is bad and needs to be replaced. There is a service bulletin out about fixing this so it appears to be a common problem. Even a quick search online produces hundreds of similar complaints for this make & model. Given that this can stall out at any speed with any pressure in applying the brakes with the torque converter, this should be an immediate recall for safety concerns!!! It's a faulty part on the car, not a wear & tear item. *tr
The engine shuts down whenever you brake suddenly or use any pressure to brake (not coast to a stop). The car shakes and then dies and you have to restart the car. This happens almost daily and after taking it to several shops it was determined that the torque converter is bad and needs to be replaced. There is a service bulletin out about fixing this so it appears to be a common problem. Even a quick search online produces hundreds of similar complaints for this make & model. Given that this can stall out at any speed with any pressure in applying the brakes with the torque converter, this should be an immediate recall for safety concerns!!! It's a faulty part on the car, not a wear & tear item. *tr
Service bulletin # 16-90-13 design change to lock-up type torque converter when I have to come to a stop or if I go up a hill slow, or if I have to stop quick my vehicle will stall. This is dangerous, especially in traffic. I have checked every other possible problem and they all check out fine. I do not feel that the consumer should have to pay for a defective part. If I had to stop quick in traffic it would be very dangerous. I have already had this problem where the vehicle stalled with traffic behind me. I feel this is a "recall" and not a routine maintenance problem. *tr
Also reported on the 2011 Subaru Outback
Headlight failure or clouding
Other powertrain problem
CVT failure
Other engine problem
Other lighting problem
Airbag inflator rupture
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 111 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does torque converter failure happen on the 2011 Subaru Outback?
Across 86 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 107,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 92,500 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is torque converter failure on the 2011 Subaru Outback?
111 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.9 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed