why i hated subaru but like a little now

i use to play a little with subaru's back in the early 80's and they left a real bad tastes in my mouth because of rot. in the rust belt those cars would have heavy rot after three years. so i have stayed away from them.

a week ago i put a bid in on a 2002 Forester this was a silent auction for charity. you could not drive the car and they dont start them. i gave it a quick look over and placed a $1000.00 bid to my surprise i won it.

my nephrew picked the car up and told him to drop it off at a friends shop to have him look it over for Pa inspection and the list i got back for it to pass inspection was pretty long.....front brakes and rotors, both inner front cv joints, both front strut springs broke, power steering rack leaking so bad the fuild was running out of it. and now the best part the rear suspension crossmember rotted out.

the front end didnt scare me but the rear crossmember did. i talked to a couple of subie guys and they told me they were a real pain to do and one guy quoted me $1500.00 to do it.

so my nephew and myself decided to take the this project on. Mike at All Foreign in Pittsburgh hooked us up with all the parts for $250.00 including the crossmember.

three days it was done. this car is not showing rot anywhere but on all the suspension parts the unibody shows nothing, i can deal with rot when its on bolted on items.

i will be looking at more foresters

wow....wonder how long the thing was sitting in a field?

My brother has a 2002 forester that I happened to be under doing some minor work on a couple months ago. He lives on the coast and deals with sea-air. I didn't notice any significant rust on any of his suspension components, and I know his car gets beat-up (he's a construction engineer, so it's always in mud or dirt).

My 09 WRX suspension still looks great after 70k miles, including heavy winter use on salted roads.

btw, good pickup for $1k on your part.

irish44j wrote: wow....wonder how long the thing was sitting in a field? My brother has a 2002 forester that I happened to be under doing some minor work on a couple months ago. He lives on the coast and deals with sea-air. I didn't notice any significant rust on any of his suspension components, and I know his car gets beat-up (he's a construction engineer, so it's always in mud or dirt). My 09 WRX suspension still looks great after 70k miles, including heavy winter use on salted roads. btw, good pickup for $1k on your part.

i would have your brother really check the crossmember i am being told this is really comman with them.

i talked to the PO and it was a one owner car driven up to last month. he took it to have it inspected and when they gave him the list he donated it. he had the timing belt done 10k ago the car has 103k on it

Wait till it loses a tire, I hate AWD in general for that reason, blow a tire? You have to find a guy who can do shaving, or you're buying a set of 4.

if the car has been sitting you might also want to clean out the drains by pulling back the fender liners at the rear of the front wheel well. The little pocket where the bottom of the door meets the bottom of the wheel well collects muck.

And wow, I have never seen a rear subframe that rotted without the front control arms being rusted to bits.

EDIT: ah.. I see it wasn't sitting, sounds even better!

Did you need a lift to do the crossmember?

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Wait till it loses a tire, I hate AWD in general for that reason, blow a tire? You have to find a guy who can do shaving, or you're buying a set of 4.

Get a full size spare and use it as part of your tire rotation. You'll get to wait 20% longer before buying new tires and if you destroy one, the other four still match in diameter.

Woody wrote: Did you need a lift to do the crossmember?

we did it without the lift. all you have to do is get it up on four jackstands. disconnect the exhaust at the intermidiate pipe and drop the muffler and then remove the heat shield that connects to subframe. disconnect the driveshaft at the rearend take out the six bolts out of the rear diff lower it down then disconnect the four inner link arm bolts that connect to the subframe and then the four bolts that hold the subframe in. you dont even have to pull the wheels and tires if you dont want to.

it took us about 4 hours to do it

Keith Tanner wrote:

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Wait till it loses a tire, I hate AWD in general for that reason, blow a tire? You have to find a guy who can do shaving, or you're buying a set of 4.

Get a full size spare and use it as part of your tire rotation. You'll get to wait 20% longer before buying new tires and if you destroy one, the other four still match in diameter.

this is what I do on my wrx. Though the fullsize eats even more into my tiny trunk space :)