Matt's Foz Recovery and Improvement!

Hey everyone,

So this is my first post in almost six months I think. The last any of you would have heard of my Foz was after tackling the Gentle Annie track in Bunyip, which was a fairly extreme day that resulted in horrendous exhaust damage to the car, the front grill was ripped off and I also sustained some pretty serious panel damage.

Upon returning to the forum I thought a good thread would be to start a journal of both my Forester's recovery from it's injuries and it's coming improvements. I am planning to do a fairly major trip in July/August, so hopefully I can have it running 110% by then.

The exhaust has now been repaired. The diagnosis from the good people at Combined Servicing in Clayton was that the centre section of the exhaust was pretty much non-existent. It was beaten up and corroded and more or less destroyed. So that was replaced, and now the whole street doesn't hear it when I return home. In the lead up to getting the exhaust fixed, the car was also misfiring fairly badly, costing me a lot of power and eventually getting to the point where I had to use low range to take off at steep intersections. Very scary and not in any way safe. So with a new set of spark plugs and one of the leads replaced, the car is now running significantly better but is still not in the shape I would like it to be. I am going to investigate replacing the rest of the leads because it is still misfiring, and it has a bit of a cough when I first turn the key in the ignition. I'm not sure if that's a related problem or if it's something else entirely (does anyone have any ideas)?

It is due for a service in 3000 kilometres so I will get the mechanic to go over the whole car fairly thoroughly then and see what else might need to get fixed up to get it running perfectly. In addition to all this, I am planning to add several mods between now and July, the main ones I have in mind being:

- Roof storage system
- Snorkel
- Rear spare wheel and jerry can holder
- New tyres
- New driving lights

I would also like to consider turbo-charging it at some stage, but I don't know a whole lot about that and how much it costs, so if anyone has any info please shoot it my way.

I'll get some photos of the car up soon too. Anyway, it is good to be back on ORS, and I look forward to getting offroad with some of you again soon, once my Foz is back in shape!
 
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Ok. Some people who run sf struts have rubbing, while others don't. If you run the the sg struts then there would be no rubing. I would imagine if they were rubbing there would be big slices in the tyre and you could hear it.
 
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Hmmm ok... Well I'm gonna pop down to my local mechanic and see what he thinks. If I need the new struts in it's probably not a bad thing to do anyway.
 
The Kumho's are bigger than a normal 215/75R15, about .5 inch bigger overall. Probably from the extra tread depth. What did you end up paying for them?
 
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Ended up paying $225 a wheel + $70 for wheel alignment, so was pretty happy with that.

That would explain the rubbing, which apparently is occuring. The mechanic said I need about a "poofteenth" more clearance, so the options are either get hold of a longer strut (waiting on a call back from a wrecker at the moment) or just wait until the offending poofteenth gets worn away and the rubbing stops, in the meantime hoping that it's not going to push the saddle on my strut too far out of shape.
 
Ok so just a bit of clarification about SG struts... I called up mordy auto and they've got them, so if I pick them up can they be fitted without modification? And I'm guessing the advantage is that they're longer than the SF struts?
 
They have a higher spring perch which will solve your problem.
 
Alright I'm gonna head to the wreckers tomorrow to pick them up, hopefully I can have them fitted and the rubbing stopped by the weekend!
 
When I was running 215 75 15s, I used the SG struts with SF springs and top hat.

That said,if you are buying a complete strut, spring and tophat, as taken off in one unit, then these should just bolt straight on. I would have thought you will see about a 10mm clearance with the tyre after that and may even gain a small lift too.

Hope it all goes smoothly when you swap them over!
 
thunder039 said:
I believe you have to use the top hats from the SF struts, can some one confirm? Also make sure you don't get self levelling struts if your using raised springs
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I confirm for both, top hats and self leveling struts :iconwink:
 
So I had a look at the struts at the wreckers, and they actually didn't seem to be any different. I don't know if there was a small number of SG Foresters made with similar struts, but I decided not to risk spending the money and just seeing if it worked.

I hit some tracks at Mt Cole this weekend, and it would appear the appropriate "poofteenth" has worn away. Not how I wanted to fix the problem, and I def want to look into the correct struts because I will use this size tyre again, but at least it's not rubbing anymore.

And let me tell you, the difference offroad was staggering. They actually blew the performance of the Coopers when they had most of their tread out of the water. First thing I noticed was that driving on gravel was like driving on bitumen, and even though it was dry so there was no mud, they pulled me up along the rocks and loose dirt like they were nothing. As one of my companions put it, it was more like they "ate the ground" than anything else.

NachaLuva said:
Awesome set of tyres. Bet you cant wait for some Bunyip mud :lildevil:
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Hells yeah - it'll be time to really bend Gentle Annie over soon :rotfl:
 
FozzyMatt said:
And let me tell you, the difference offroad was staggering. They actually blew the performance of the Coopers when they had most of their tread out of the water. First thing I noticed was that driving on gravel was like driving on bitumen, and even though it was dry so there was no mud, they pulled me up along the rocks and loose dirt like they were nothing. As one of my companions put it, it was more like they "ate the ground" than anything else.
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They look awesome, interesting to hear they made such a difference :monkeydance:

Hells yeah - it'll be time to really bend Gentle Annie over soon :rotfl:
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Alas, Gentle Annie is graded now...steep but easy...
 
Alright, been a while since I've been on here, but I'm starting to think seriously about doing some more work on the Foz. I've recently gotten a new job that has resulted in spending a lot of time around folks in larger 4wd's, and after a long toss-up between whether to "upgrade" myself or just continue building up the Forester, I've decided to stick with my beloved Foz and just do some more work on it.

Hydrowill - I think we've actually met. If you're at the next Subaru 4wd Club of Victoria meeting I'll introduce you.

I have some plans for a body lift, but something I seriously want to look into is increasing the power of the car, most likely by replacing the 2.0L block with a 2.5L. A question, should anyone know the answer, is can I use the 2.5L out of an SG Forester? I believe there are 2.5L SF's out there but there are certainly fewer and far between than the SG's. Is there much of a difference, or can I just get one out of an SG?
 
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