otis

Doesn't that seem bizzarre or at least poor design? by nature a fuse is designed to protect a system. either subaru should have spec'd a lower amp fuse or beefed up that wire behind the socket if they want to let people run hi-watt stuff.

I agree... check out this link for a "Jeep commercial." http://www.autospies.com/article/index.asp?articleId=6523&categoryId=1

Ain't competition great?? I always wished our forester was a "little" bigger. Something like the new rav4 would have been perfect for us. I even like the "joke" 3rd row seat. you don't know how many times we've had a guest where we needed to take an extra car to get somewhere because the 2 car seats wouldn't allow room for the 5th or 6th passenger. we won't be buying one simply because our next car will probably end up being a minivan. but if this rav4 was available 3 years ago- I probably wouldn't have know this forum existed. I always thought between the forester, crv and rav4, the rav4 was the worst. now honda and subaru have something to think about. But seeing how this is a subaru forum, I'll say this.... BAD Toyota!! Bad toyota!! how dare you show us why you are the leader in the automotive world. go back to having at least 1 bad apple in your stable of cars.

No- I live in columbia. slim pickings here for subaru work, so I go to the dealer. There aren't too many subarus here and after a couple of bad experiences at a couple of other places I just went back to the dealer. There's nothing special about the dealer here. In fact I really don't like the SA's there. But what can I do- it's a monopoly here when it comes to servicing imports other than toyota and honda because it's a small town. Luckily i haven't needed much work done.

I'm not sure what you mean by swing away vs swing out, but we have a bike rack that mounts to the hitch. There's a latch on the bike rack so that the rack swings DOWN so you can open the rear hatch. Last year we went on a trip and brought our bikes so obviously we had the bike rack and bikes mounted the whole time. it wasn't too cumbersome to open the rear hatch on our forester to load and unload our car. the only awkward part is the rack gets a little heavy with a few bikes on it so swinging the rack up and down is a little tough. also I installed the hitch myself. I woudn't call myself mechanically inclined, but it wasn't too bad. honestly the only hard part was taking off one of the bolts that was kinda stuck. The other hard part was laying down underneath the car while it was jacked up with that little jack that comes with the car. (ok, I'm kidding about that part. I used ramps, but it still felt eerie)

did you mean a) the tire won't change shape regardless of air pressure. or... the tire wont significantly change shape with a 4 psi difference in air pressure lets just take an extreme example- fill 1 tire at 32 psi and the other at 10 psi. i can take my glasses off and still see a difference in shape and size. but if you meant to say , then I agree with you.

I think the perimeter or circumference changes with air pressure. just to oversimplify think of a balloon as you blow more air into it. the perimeter grows. with that said, I don't know how siginificant 4 psi of tire pressure will make on a tire. I had a flat and replaced the tire with a used tire i thought had the same tread depth. it turns out the rolling circumference was 1/2" larger. so I lowered the pressure some and the circumference differnce is about .4" now. (keep in mind the error is about +/- .2" . I cant find a flat parking lot long enough to make a more precise measurement ) after driving like this for over a year, I've given up trying to equalize tire circumference via tire pressure and now I just roll with it .

This may not help you, but our 2000 forester doesn't have LATCH (although it does have the upper tether anchor). So if you assume subaru would put (or not put) latch across the board in all models of the impreza line, then the 2000 impreza probably doesn't have latch. I think starting in 2001, just about every car had to have LATCH. we rented a minivan for a recent trip and it had latch. while it was kinda convenient, I didn't think it was that big a deal (especially since we're not removing/installing the car seat repeatedly) Speaking of saving gas... the nissan quest we rented had a gas mileage penalty of ONE WHOLE MPG on the highway (24 vs 25 for the quest vs forester). You don't know how glad we are that we got a small cramped wagon over the large spacious minivan to save ONE WHOLE MPG. (sorry, just venting a little)

Ok, so a few years ago (i think), you could buy a ford explorer with either 4wd or awd. Seeing as there were 2 different systems for the same car, it would no longer be a semantics issue. So why SHOULD one particular customer buy an awd over a 4wd (or vice versa) if they were to buy this suv?

Actually, I'm not sure anymore since it's been months since I've seen it. It may be a loyale and I just got confused (see how confusing this whole issue is???), but it's too cold to run over to the parking garage to check.

The secretary in our dept said she was going to look at a used outback wagon and she was so happy about it. I told her that was a great choice considering all the things she was looking for. But then she started saying things that didn't make sense like how she liked the fact that it had 4wd instead of Awd. I told her I thought all outbacks had awd, but she corrected me and said this car had a 4wd button- further confusing me. Finally I saw the car and her "outback" ended up being an early 90's legacy wagon. HOnestly after reading all these posts, I still don't understand what the "practical" difference is between the modern awd and 4wd is.

Are you trying to rehash the debate on what is acceptable in terms of tire tread difference? As I'm sure you've read in the old posts, opinions vary on what is acceptable. Although if you listen to the logic of why replacing only 1 tire is bad, then the natural progression would be that replacing 2 tires (on the same axle) is twice as bad. I always thought that 205/55/16 were fairly common sized tires- especially for sedans and these are about as narrow as 16" tires get. If you change tire sizes- to 225/50/16 as someone mentions, then you'll probably be paying more for your tires. I suppose you could change wheels and go with a 195/65/15- those tend to run a little cheaper.

You can name just about any brand with a good reputation for quality and find a dud in the bunch- just as you can find a brand with a poor reputation and find a star. If you base your decision on one sample point of a population, then you are assuming that your case is representative of all cars in that population. so by this logic, you should be able to buy a new cougar (or at least a slightly used one) and have few/no problems. I've even heard odd statements like, "I've bought 5 BRAND X cars in the past 20 years. But this last one was a piece of junk. I'll never buy a brand X car again!!" THe question I have is this- Does 1 data point equal a trend? If you want to buy a different car, go ahead. I guarantee you'll think the next car you buy will be superior because a) cars today are quite reliable with notable exceptions. Odds are heavily in your favor that you'll buy a car with reasonably good reliablity (even if you buy another forester!). pychologically you have to justify your decision so you'll have a tendency to overlook some problems when they arise in your new purchase. "my new taurus is PERFECT compared to that peice of junk subaru I had before.... leak... what leak... oh that, that's nothing...."

this is a common problem... if you did a search, you would have come up with: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=14124&highlight=forester+clock

This is such a tough issue to get a handle on. I've read all the posts about O2 sensors, tire pressure, winter gas, on and on and on. I've done some of my own unscientific testing comparing octane (reg vs mid), tire pressure (32 vs 36), and highway speed (65 vs 75) and the only thing that made a statistically significant change in mpg was the highway speed for my 00 forester auto (23-27ish for 75 vs 65 mph) Now I've read through quite a few posts on this topic here. ultimately I would like to trade cars for a week with someone who claims they get 30 mpg to see if it comes down to driving style. I think if you normally get in the low 20's for mileage, then doing all the suggestions listed here, may only improve your mileage slightly (maybe 1-2 mpg) but not the 5-7 mpg claims that some people have UNLESS you change your driving style. [this is my opinion only- I'm NOT one of those "people in the know." I'm just basing this on my own observations so take what I say with a grain of salt.] it just seems like there are MANY more posts where people report 20-25 mpg vs 25+ mpg. so I'm thinking the 20-25 is the "norm" whereas people who are achieving higher mpg must be easier on the gas pedal. YMMV:grin:

ok 2 things ring some bells here for me. 1. you said you added transmission fluid. you could have overfilled and the excess is spilling out and hitting something hot. sometimes the transmission fluid level is hard to read and you may have been fine and inadvertantly added more. was the level low? 2. you also said you had the oil changed before that. I don't know if you did it or someone else did, but the mechanic could have mistaken the tranny filter for the oil filter. maybe he didn't screw it on right or maybe he damaged the filter and you've been leaking transmission fluid- causing the low level you may or may not have seen in #1. also the trans fluid could be spilling from the damaged filter and hitting the exhaust giving off the smell you describe. i take it that since you have to warm up your car, you must be parking outside so it may be difficult to spot a leak.

I don't know about that-- I find saturn owners are almost cult like with their cars. they praise them up and down and try to recruit others into their cult. when my sister in law got one, she freaked me out a little. but subaru owner are a close 2nd

The local subaru market will affect the price, but I can't beleive subaru's are SOOOO valuable there that they have that kind of premium. also look at it from the dealer's POV-- he's got this hi mileage car. who's going to buy it? he probably sees you as a christmas blessing sent to him. I think he'd be LUCKY to get $4500. the fact that he's asking so much probably means he expects a lot so you may have a difficult time haggling him down. if you can't get it between $3500-4500 depending on the condition of the car, then I'd just walk. I agree with the other poster, I'd rather buy a $3000 car off ebay and use the money I save as my "insurance" money for repairs.

I think almost all cars do that (fogs turn off when you turn on hi-beams). I know that hi-beams are worthless in the fog- even detrimental. what puzzles me is that instead of turning off the fogs when you turn on the hi-beams, it should be the other way around- the car should disable the hi-beams when you turn on the fog lights. right?

So coming back from thanksgiving weekend, another car tried to move into my lane while I was still in it. apparently he was driving with his eyes closed because his front left hit my rear right causing me to momentarily lose control- fishtailing like crazy on the highway. luckily no one was hurt and when I checked the damage, it just looks like I scuffed the rear bumper on the passenger side (not what I expected to see- it felt like he rammed me and thought it would look worse). here's my 2 questions/concerns: 1) could there be more "damage" beneath the skin that I can't see? I'm waiting for the police report to see if the other driver was cited, to see which insurance company to file a claim with. (the other driver claims it was my fault) we drove the car home and everything seemed ok. do I just have to take the car to an adjuster to see if there's more damage? 2) when I got home, i noticed that RR tire was low. I don't know if it was due to the accident or not. but if it was, can I get all 4 tires replaced if it is shown that the accident caused damage to the tire? (all 4 tires because I've read that you need 4 tires to match) it would suck to get 1 tire replaced, but then I have to pay for 3 more tires because of this nitwit. thanks for any help.

I know this is a subaru forum, but nice car on the m. I had a friend who had an m coupe. i thought it was ugly, but that was a great car.

I don't know what kind of bmw you have, but there's a BIG difference between my 323i and my forester. just because there's a performance difference in the bmw switching between tires, that doesn't mean there will be a difference with a legacy 2.5i. Even without the sports pkg on the bmw, it can probably drive circles around a legacy 2.5i with 17" wheels (at least on dry pavement). I bet you can get into a legacy and not tell the difference between 16 and 17 wheels. STrakes saw a performance increase going from 16 to 17 because he did suspension upgrades. bottom line- on the 06 legacy, you will see NO advantages going to a 17" wheel. and imho, the disadvantages are insignificant. so in the end, it's just a wash.

I wouldn't do it even if the dealer offered to do it for $50. I used to work for a company that made coatings to resist corrosion. while we didn't work specifically with cars, I do know that spraying a coating underneath the car won't do anything. as far as not waxing the car, that won't make a difference in terms of rust (it will make a difference in terms of how good your car looks) do you want to know how to keep your car from rusting? after every rain or snow storm, take off all the panels in your car. wash off any dirt or salt and make sure you dry thoroughly. Next clean any weld points and and crevices. apply your favorite protective coating. Re-assemble your car and repeat every time you hit a puddle. there's no "set it and forget" method out there that will prevent your car from rusting. no one-time application of a coating (beyond what's done at the factory) can compete against the elements. the easiest way to keep your car nice for a long time is to take it to a drive through brushless car wash (with the undercarraige spray) from time to time.