2018 SUBARU FORESTER — Complaint #1798524
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about VISIBILITY:REAR WINDOW WIPER/WASHER filed February 28, 2022
NHTSA complaint #1798524 (ODI reference 11454436) concerns a 2018 SUBARU FORESTER and was filed on February 28, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 7, 2022. The vehicle had 27,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Massachusetts based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as visibility:rear window wiper/washer, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. No VIN was supplied by the filer, so this complaint contributes to model-year trend data but cannot be tied to a specific vehicle.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same SUBARU FORESTER cohort independently describe similar visibility:rear window wiper/washer failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2018 SUBARU FORESTER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2018 Subaru Forester. The contact stated that while attempting to start the vehicle, the vehicle failed to start-up. The vehicle was towed to the local dealer who diagnosed that rodents had eaten through the engine wiring harness. The contact was informed that the wiring harness was made of a soy-based material that was attractive to rodents. The vehicle was not yet repaired. The contact indicated that 2 weeks prior the windshield wiper fluid spray mechanism was inoperable due to a similar failure with rodents eating the soy-based tubing. The manufacturer was not yet notified. The VIN was not available. The failure mileage was 27,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1798524 |
| ODI Number | 11454436 |
| Date Filed | February 28, 2022 |
| Failure Date | February 7, 2022 |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.