otis

While I don't like the grill of the tribeca (and believe me, I've REALLY tried to learn to like it), I do like the tribeca and more importantly, I do like the direction Subaru is moving in terms of attracting this "perceived yuppie" crowd. Truthfully, it's not a yuppie or rich crowd subaru is going after. What do families with 2-3 kids do, who don't need/want the bulk of a minivan, but want AWD? sure they can buy an outback or forester, but having 2 growing kids, my forester is starting to get *tight*. And by going after this market segment, is Subaru "abandoning" their core consumer base (whatever that is)? Last I checked, Subaru still sells impreza's, legacies, foresters, and outbacks. And if you want to talk about the move to market to yuppies- this is not new for subaru. How long have the LL Bean editions' been selling? I would say that is more of a yuppie move than selling a tribeca.

Most thieves are not known for their high IQ. you never know, you may suddenly see your stuff on ebay. Anyway, sorry you had to go through this whole mess.

You gotto be careful when you drive with all those hail dents. Sure you may get some "lift" and improve you overall gas mileage. But you risk the dreaded "slice" causing you to vere off-road burning all kinds of gas tearing through the back country.

It sounds like you enjoy tooling around with your cars... but have you considered just trading your brighton for a GT or Outback model? Just about every modification you mention is addressed in the Outback (higher ground clearance, tachometer, cruise control, more power, stiffer suspension, bigger wheels, etc....) and for the price (and convenience), I'm not sure you could beat just trading rather than spend all your money (and time) on spare parts. I realize that neither the outback nor gt model are track cars, but you yourself admitted that this is a family car and you just want a little more "oompf" to get a more secure feeling while driving. I'd rather take a turn slower than clean up all the vomit on the seats from my kid when I take a corner like its on rails. anyway, just a thought.

That was a movie???!!! I feel pretty stupid now. Somebody I used to work with told me that EXACT story and how they did that to another co-worker blah blah blah.... and I believed him and was so impressed that he came up with such a good idea. grr.... btw congrats on the gas mileage-- still waiting to break 30 myself

can you tell me if I'm translating correctly... "I'm having a blown head gasket repaired by the dealer which is costing me a lot of money. Ohh my poor 98 subaru outback with 99k miles. I found bluetooth? I question the mistake of not doing bottom end? There is of course the money issue."

Have you considered a wagon? drives like a car and has the cargo room of an SUV. say something like the legacy... I really don't know what to tell you about your comparison because I usually don't see those 2 cars compared. to tell you the truth, I'm not sure which car you're talking about, lexus rx300 or infiniti qx4. I'm surprised you picked the qx4, since i think that cars built on a body on frame platform and has all the characteristics of a traditional suv that you don't seem to like. If you like the "nice interior," why not look at some of the unibody suv's like the bmw x5, acura mdx, lexus rx, or dare I say, the subaru tribeca (you did say you only cared about the interior right? )

You should try to "add to cart"

foreman grill in your subaru? who says you can't be healthy and drive a subaru at the same time. and yes, as most of you suspected, I decided to take advantage of yesterday's date for my post. so anyone see any good 4/1 jokes? my best was a few years ago. I bought a bunch of dog treats and placed them in the copier/break room in our dept. I even told one friend I was going to do it. imagine my surprise when I see him walk around the corner with these crumbs in his beard.

I've had this problem where I bought a bluetooth headset, so when I'm in my car I can talk hands free. the problem was that it only came with a AC charger so I'd have to bring it inside my house and charge it. the problem is, when I bring it in, I forget to put it back in my car. (or sometimes I drop a call because the charge runs out unexpectedly). so I bought this wireless extension cord that transmits power through microwave frequencies without a cord. I plugged one end into my garage. the other end is under my seat where I plug in my charger. the charging cradle is attached on my dash. This way when I come home, the car is within range to charge my headset. this way every morning, i have a fully charged headset when I leave my house. link below if anyone's interested. It only cost me $42 with shipping. http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/wec.shtml?cpg=cj

I don't know if this as a fact- so this is just speculation on my part. but I would think that if you're driving 65 mph in 5th gear at 2000 rpm vs 65 in 4th going 4000 rpm (I'm just making up numbers here), i'd think you'd be burning TWICE the gas in 4th gear for going the same speed. so take OP's original thought-- if he was driving at 70 mph at 3300 rpm then he's buring 27% more gas than if he were at 2600 rpm which could translate to an increase of 5-10 mpg (assuming linear relation to rpm and fuel consumption). I have no idea if this is right or wrong, but it makes sense intuitively to me.

Isn't that why you downshift? I also have a forester and I was thinking about getting tires with a higher aspect ratio to "gear up." I know the current tires has a smaller rolling circumference since my actual speed is a few mph off compared to the speedo.

sorry, I have no advice for you, but I'm impressed (or scared) that you were able to do all that while driving.

Sorry about the tranny... good luck with it.

the easiest way? replace your stock system with the system you want sans WB. then go out and buy a portable WB radio and plug it into you cig lighter when you want to hear the weather. want the clever way? same as above but take advantage of your double din radio slot and keep your factory HU in its original slot and add the new HU in the 2nd slot. wire the new HU to the power and speakers. but wire the old HU to a separate power tap. buy 1 speaker and mount it under your seat and wire it to your old HU. when you buy your new HU with all the toys, make your you get one of those "disapearing" faces that flips itself around and all you see is a black rectangle. that way when potential thieves look in your car, all they see is a crappy old stock HU.

wow, talk about information overload. OP, what is it about the stock sound do you not like? Not enough bass, not enough clarity? too much distortion? maybe once you put your finger on that, others can help you zero in on what to fix first. I saw the listing for the ebay auction for the speaker you're interested in. most people want to change the rear speakers first. I think the only thing that does is MARGINALLY improve your low end (if at all- especially if you don't add an amp or change the HU). if you want to spend the LEAST amount of money and get the most improvement, i suggest you buy a pair of cheap separates and mount the tweeters inside your rear view mirrors. This way you get an element of "dimension" and the music is aimed directly at you rather than getting lost in the bowels of your cabin. But if youre like most ricers, then you rate the quality of your stereo on its "BOOM" factor. In that case, get a powered sub and go annoy your neighbors. watch out for the slippery slope. you buy new speakers, but the HU stinks. so you buy a new HU but now you need low end, so you buy a sub and amp. but then you need new wiring to run the sub. suddenly you have a $2000 stereo in your car so you need to buy a $500 alarm system.... who knows where it ends. I find my biggest problem is that I can't hear the music well with all the road noise coming from highway. I think the only way to cure that is to buy a lexus. just consider the BEST speakers will still sound like crap in a noisy car.

This is just my opinion. but if you swapped in a 2.2 engine for a 2.5, i think you'll get fewer bites and lower offers. I know among this board, the 2.2 is the favorite engine, but among the general public, I'm not so sure people will realize the benefits. It's like someone said earlier, we're obsessed with numbers and higher HP has always been seen as an "improvement" even though the net gain is negligible (especially considering the potential problems). But then again, it's about finding the right buyer. I had an impreza brighton coupe I was trying to sell with essentially no options and most people were turned off by it. after a month, I was about to give up and drop the asking price when a guy called and said that was EXACTLY what he was looking for and paid my price. I just got lucky because I found the 1 buyer in my area to buy the car. your situation may be similar. Most people won't see why you "downgraded" the engine, but there will be a few out there that will appreciate it and be WILLING to PAY for it (that's the key). If you have a long time horizon, then no problem.

why do you want to run regular gas? is it only the cost? when i first read your posts, I thought you didn't care about performance. now it sounds like you do. here's what I suggest you do: run premium for a while, then run regular for a while. see what you think about the performance difference. Then take a look at how much $ youre saving each month by using regular instead of premium. if the $$ amt is negligible or the performance penalty is too great, just use premium. I did that for my BMW and could not take the sluggish response and the $5 savings was not worth it to me to use regular gas. OTOH, if the savings was $20 and performance was negligible, I would have switched to regular gas in a heartbeat. From MY experience (and a few others), I have seen NO change in MPG due to change of octane (either putting in prem in place of regular or vice versa). In fact, my average mpg went UP when I used regular (instead of the recomended premium) only because with the sluggish performance of my car, I felt like an old ninny and drove like one, and my BEHAVIOR increased my gas mileage. Like I said before- just do what you want to do.

Who's "they?" Here's my answer- put whatever gas you want in it. I think today's cars are sophisticated enough to run on lesser octane- you just wont see the performance. I have a car that uses 91 octane. when gas was >$3/gal, I thought I would use 87 octane to save money. the car worked fine, but when I "stomped" on the pedal- there was a noticable lack of power. The kicker came when I realized I was saving less than $5 a month. I figure the $5 is worth the small amount of pleasure I get.

ok I'll play the contrarian. I disagree with everyone. well not really- everything that's been said certainly has some truth behind it. But I don't think you should exclude a certain car just because of the head gasket issue. what if it has been fixed in the car you're looking at? also buying a 2.2L engine is fine. but these tend to be in cars that are older. Some subaru diehards won't let go of these cars- severely limiting the supply. so if you look at the remaining supply of cars that were available in the mid to late 90's, how many miles are going to be on those cars? you may alleviate the HG issue (assuming there is one), but trade it for other issues that naturally come with any car with age. Sure if I could find a 97-98 w/ 2.2 engine and <75k miles, I'd jump on it- too bad there's only 10 cars in the US with those specs. also it's been said before- but when there's a problem with a car and you look on any internet forum- the problem looks like some kind of epidemic that will wipe out the entire car line because the problems tend to be amplified. I guess I should disclose that my 00 forester had the HG leak at around 60k miles- so it sounds a bit hipocritical for me to say what I'm saying. But mine is just 1 instance out of 100's of thousands of cars out there and once fixed, I've been happy with it.

I have heard on other cars (and it may or may not hold true to subarus) that if the climate control and radio are on the same fuse and you have some hack installer adding more load than that line was designed for or splicing a wire he shouldn't, then you could run into some problems. I have no idea is this is the problem, but you could at least check to see if the radio and climate control are sharing the same fuse to rule it out.

I agree with that 100%. I often find the reviews on tirerack useless "THESE ARE THE BEST/WORST TIRES EVER!!!!" and just plain overwhelming. Getting back to OP... It looks like you have your choices narrowed down based on the criteria that's improtant to you. chances are you won't find a person who's driven all 4 sets of tires with the same car, same driving pattern, same terrain, etc to give a detailed review. but in a way it probably doesn't make a difference. one tire may be a hair better in one attribute compared to the others. In the end it won't make a difference. people have driven with "lesser" tires and go on with life not knowing any better. as a kind of analagous story... I was once buying stereo speakers. I spent over an hour obsessing trying to decide between 3 or 4 speakers i had narrowed down to. While I could "hear" a subtle difference between them, I realized later, had I taken any of them home, I would have been happy.

well here's my $0.02. don't get the comfortred. I have them on another car. a couple of years ago, I meant to get the tripletreds and misread the ad (i thought they were the same tire- who knew? ). the comfortred is a very quiet and comfortable tire probably meant for people who drive lexus or buick. as far as snow/wet traction, let's just say I've had "performance" tires that offer the same in that catagory (meaning traditional all-season performance tires don't do a "great" job in wet/snow, just an "ok" job) nothing wrong with comfortred- it's a great tire for what it was designed for, just not what I wanted in a tire, and probably not what your'e looking for either.

no offense, but the problems you state don't seem that inconsistent with a car that over 10 y/o with 250 Mm (is that even a term?) what do you think will happen with that focus or esteem down the road a little? it seems like you (and everyone else) is in a quandry of whether to buy an older car and pay for more repairs or buy a newer car, pay less for repairs, but more for depreciation. In some cases the lucky few get to buy an older car and not pay much for repairs or depreciation. I'm not saying you should keep your old subie. for me, I look at a new or newer car and compare the depreciation costs to what I anticipate the repair and maintenance costs are going to be. Once the repair costs or hassle factor exceeds the new car depreciation less that intangible feeling of buying a new car, I go for the new(er) car. BTW for me that "intangible" feeling is quite high and my threshold for dealing with repair hassles is quite low so in the end I make "poor" financial decisions- but at least I feel good about it.

Help the farmers!!! buy the "cheap" 10% ethanol gas that's been subsidized with tax money. (wait- how much does it cost to convert corn to ethanol per gallon???) Basically if you ain't buying 10% EtOH gas, then you're paying part of someone else's gas bill. But this is a good thing because we could cut our demand for the evil "foreign oil" by 10% if we used ethanol gas. too bad we have to burn 10% more gas to get the same amount of miles per tank.