Hi Guys,

Had to pay £426 yesterday for  120K service, MOT and rear Wheel bearing.  The MOT advisory notes says there is some play in the front and rear suspension bushes though my own mechanic thinks they are fine and has thoroughly tested them.  Can anyone advise if this is an expensive repair job?

Cheers

Well all depends which ones and how many. Generally not common see that many bushes bad  on a 2008 fozzy unless on stupid mileage or doing lot of time on dirt tracks, farm drives etc.

Generally 2 or 4 bushings would be quite low cost (if don't go main dealers), Blueprint & firstline cover few of the bushes, oem bushes can be had online from likes of esubaru or ICP at lowish costs, droplinks etc covered by huge range of makes, Blueprint, Meyle being 2 good options .
If not even been added as MOT advisory I would assume the tester just being overly verbal on it, maybe just had a training update on it lol .

Cheers Mr B, sound advice as always.  I take it these companies you mention are go to sites for all parts Forester?

ICP and esubaru are useful at times and handy for saving cost and getting odd parts fast .

Lot of the basic parts are pretty easy source via good local motorfactors or online motorfactors.
eBay motorfactor sellers have some parts cheaper than we can get on trade accounts and decent brand quality parts too .
We actually invested about 6K in stocked parts from large factor specialists and esubaru as enables us give lower quotes but maintain quality parts thus get the work and no hassles of cheaper part range, plus it far easier and faster for us have parts at hand as can do lot of jobs almost instantly without hassle of part delivery downtime/wrong parts supplied etc .

Lot of subaru parts can be found at sensible cost whether oem or pattern part, always worth stepping back and researching all options before jump into big expense .

Enoy another year of reasonably cheap and trouble free motoring I hope, good luck with the old oil burner :-)