Topic: Drewfuspx 05 Forester XT Terboes! *SOLD*

[drewfuspx]

Yeah so Subaru's really do Vape...

[drewfuspx]

New headlights required. Sylvania ones lasted just about a year. And as soon as I changed these the bloody driver side foglight burnt out... So I'll have to look into that as well. On the plus side the car isn't blowing smoke anymore or smelling like fuel so things are looking up.

20180116_192123 by Drew Bell, on Flickr
20180116_192018 by Drew Bell, on Flickr
20180116_211444 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

They are the 'long lite' versions that Napa sells. They have 3 versions the super whites which look almost HID white, these ones which have a longer throw, and then the 'tri-lights' which are better for out of town as they throw into the ditches better. That's what I'll be putting on my truck is a pair of the tri-lights for low beam and these for high beam. But the Forester doesn't leave the city at night too often so these will do.

Diamondedge and I will compare at some point these vs. Osram.

[kijho]

How are you liking these headlight bulbs? My GF has a '16 Impreza Hatch which has Halogen's DRL / Hi-Beams, no projector. She drives out of town back-country roads for work in the dark and the OEM lights just aren't very good in these settings. Not sure what might actually be a good upgrade for her? New / brighter bulbs? I don't think LED's would be good whatsoever.

Do you know what makes a halogen bulb like this "maximum distance"? I'm not sure how that works?

[drewfuspx]

How are you liking these headlight bulbs? My GF has a '16 Impreza Hatch which has Halogen's DRL / Hi-Beams, no projector. She drives out of town back-country roads for work in the dark and the OEM lights just aren't very good in these settings. Not sure what might actually be a good upgrade for her? New / brighter bulbs? I don't think LED's would be good whatsoever.

Do you know what makes a halogen bulb like this "maximum distance"? I'm not sure how that works?

My understanding it would just be about light output, filament position, and bulb coating. This is my second set of Napa bulbs and I'm pretty dang impressed with them, plus they've got the warranty. if she's doing a lot of backcountry/offroad stuff you might consider their 'trilight' that they sell. Before these Long Lite's I had Sylvania superstar's and I find these to be as good, and if the set I have in my motorbike are an indication they'll last longer as well.

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/LMABP9003SL2

Guy in the store explained their 'gold' line to me like this.
Long Lite = best highway bulb because it has the longest throw
TriLight = best rural bulb because it has a wider light illuminating ditches a little better.
Super White = good bulb with a focus on a clean white light to look fancy. (Put this on my motorbike VStrom 650 and I haven't had a single complaint so far)

I'm going to be putting the Trilights into my company truck when one of my current bulbs burns out.

[kijho]

My understanding it would just be about light output, filament position, and bulb coating. This is my second set of Napa bulbs and I'm pretty dang impressed with them, plus they've got the warranty. if she's doing a lot of backcountry/offroad stuff you might consider their 'trilight' that they sell. Before these Long Lite's I had Sylvania superstar's and I find these to be as good, and if the set I have in my motorbike are an indication they'll last longer as well.

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/LMABP9003SL2

Guy in the store explained their 'gold' line to me like this.
Long Lite = best highway bulb because it has the longest throw
TriLight = best rural bulb because it has a wider light illuminating ditches a little better.
Super White = good bulb with a focus on a clean white light to look fancy. (Put this on my motorbike VStrom 650 and I haven't had a single complaint so far)

I'm going to be putting the Trilights into my company truck when one of my current bulbs burns out.

Thanks Drew I am going to look into those and give it a try!  Might add some small light bars too who knows haha nowhere to really mount them on her car unlike mine hidding behind the grill

[drewfuspx]

So this happened:
20180221_174357 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Which is the second occurrence the first of which RTP helped me clear and was a code w/ only momentary engine hesitation. This time around the Fozz was obviously missing the entire time. So it needed to be dealt with ASAP. Most of you know as well that my wife is the primary driver of the Forester so it can't be down for too many days w/o causing frustration so no options... If you've seen my other thread you'll know that my garage options are... not quite ready for automotive work so:

20180221_180157 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

First get the washer reservoirs out of the way:
20180221_182530 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Then I could see the targets:
20180221_182356 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

The plan was to swap the coil from 2 onto 4 to see if the misfire moved with the coil. If so I could be confident it was a new coil. ($140 at SOC, $50 on Rockauto for Denso) So I set to work.

#2 coil was a huge PIA to get to but with some finagling got it out. Coil #4 was MUCH easier as I was able to get the ratchet on there... of course I ended up loosening it too far with the ratchet and getting it wedged... angry yanking got it out eventually:
20180221_191123 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Speaking of Angry:
20180221_190540 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Finally got them both out anyway:
20180221_190621 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Of course you have to label the one you suspect is bad:
20180221_192746 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

For Reinstallation I took the battery out to save myself some time and aggravation. The -23 was starting to get into my bones and even though I put down cardboard the toes were getting chilly as well. I also loosened up the clamp for the wiring for a little more flexibility and space:
20180221_201337 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Oh also when I removed the coil from #4 I noticed that the clip had been stripped, thinking it might have been from the last shop I had the car at unfortunately. So when I reinstalled onto #2 of course I zip tied:
20180221_203247 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

This is a bit weird though. #4 wasn't the one that was misfiring so to see that it had a broken clip was surprising.

Then got coil from #2 onto #4:
20180221_203538 by Drew Bell, on Flickr

Reinstalled everything after this and started it up expecting to have a miss on #4 aaaaaaannnnnnd... it runs like a top. No miss, smooth as a tickety old Subaru can be. In fact felt better than it has in a while... huh.

So plan is to leave it for now and during the spring tune-up when I've had time to place an order at rock auto I'll be getting new plugs, at least 1 coil to have on-hand as a backup. Having never done this on the Subaru I think it went pretty smooth for doing it with a headlamp and standing in the snow outside my shed haha. But does give me a little fire under the backside to figure out whether I can make this shed into something where the car can fit.

[jellynuts]

-23 solo outdoor night wrenching.   

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

If you weren't down in Medicine Hat, I would've offered my garage for this. That being said, if you're making a rock auto order, and based on the mileage of the car, I'd almost be tempted to replace all 4 coil packs just as a maintenance item.

[drewfuspx]

If you weren't down in Medicine Hat, I would've offered my garage for this. That being said, if you're making a rock auto order, and based on the mileage of the car, I'd almost be tempted to replace all 4 coil packs just as a maintenance item.

Medecine Hat? I think you mean Lethbridge.... Yeah I had offers from a few guys to snag some garage space, but I didn't relish the idea of driving the thing 30 minutes on 3 cylinders. I hear what your saying re: swapping all the coil packs as preventative. I've got a compression test lined up for spring and depending on engine health it's going to determine how much I put into the thing. There isn't anything that indicates to me that there are any issues, but with about 224,000 km's on the clock it's worth getting it checked out.

Spring mod plans include:
1. get rid of the awful wind noise from the driver side door.
2. new transmission mounts and pitch stop
3. new shifter bushings
4. new spark plugs, possibly coils as mentioned above.
5. find the clunk... likely some poly bushings into suspension components.
6. possibly turbo side valve cover gasket - the seep is becoming a bit more pronounced.

[drewfuspx]

FURGING Hell.

Unfortunately today the issue returned when my wife was on the highway car begin to shake and threw a CEL again though she managed to limp it home. Read the code when I got home and it was missfire Cyl 2 again. O.k. so that means it's not the coils causing the issues because I swapped those. So I thought it's likely injectors because I didn't think that a bad spark plug would be so intermittent, when I went to check the injectors I found that the
friggen clip on Cyl 2 injector was not fully reinstalled, rather it was loosely sitting on the injector so as to look like it was connected and slide under the radar... I was able to reach in there with a long screwdriver and push it back on all the way and now the car appears to be running back to normal. I guess time will tell but this seems likely to have been the issue.

So I've written to the owner of the shop that did my work recently as this non-re-connected-connector along with the stripped clip on my coil are in addition to the giant coolant leak, missing bolts, overfilled oil, incorrectly mounted intercooler, AND 3 visits I've had to make to the shop. (Only thing done right was to get rid of the fuel smell which is I suppose why I brought it there to save myself some work...) Shop owner apologized, said if any other issues come up to bring it in and he'll look it over... o.k. sure.

But yes I suppose this is better than where it could have gone chasing down a bunch of other expensive options.

On the plus side I did discover a new trick. You can take a screw driver (Or a drumstick, like not a meat drumstick but an actual stick you hit drums with that I had laying in my garage since it was long and skinny) and touch one end to an injector and put your ear up against it and you'll clearly hear the ticking of the injector. This is how I discovered when it was misfiring that the injector on 2 wasn't firing, and then from there checked the clip which ended up being the issue.

[jellynuts]

Nice. I'll hit up cmyles, aka xxxdrummer69 if I ever need to check.

[drewfuspx]

Sold! Always a bit bitter sweet, I had such plans for this Fozzy and I really didn't get to do any of them. But such is life. Sold it to a friend who was very keen on it despite the hail damage and my wife and I picked up a 2010 Legacy 3.6R Limited w/Nav for not too bad a differential. Needed something with larger back seats than the Forester, and she was getting tired of having to dump Premium into it. Man I can't believe how smooth and quiet this thing is, and that 3.6 is real real nice.

[jellynuts]

Ooh, very nice.  Congrats on the new car!