Judd

yes i saw those, the older car has a not great MOT history, the newer one is a sold as seen vehicle with known faults and will cost you £630 to tax this year. The one i linked to has a good mot history albeit with a short current test and few owners who kept the car a long time (always a good sign), one would hope the owner would put a new ticket on it to aid the sale, failing that some negotiation should be possible.

see my above edited post, as for travelling that is usually the case with rare cars, if you wanted an Insignia there's one on every forecourt in the land, our last 2 Subarus involved a 150 miles train trip for me (bought and driven back) the other a 70 mile drive each way.

Yup, spent its life in Scotland. Agree with MrB, the previous model up to 2003 was a high quality car, think brick outhouse solid, often wish we'd not sold ours but it did another family member a favour who needed a dependable tank for school etc duties. It isn't as pretty as this model arguably but i wouldn't discard the earlier one from your searches. My time would be spent inspecting this one. later shape, ebay 285009551035

The repeated advisories speak to me of a possibly generally neglected car quite apart from the many failures from early in the cars life, personally i'd look elsewhere but you must make up your own mind whether a trip to view is worth it even if for comparison purposes only. Little point in even looking underneath now its had a coating of whatever, Waxoyl? so it will look the dogs danglers if you shove your head under as all you will see is shiny black 'underseal', it probably had a plate or three welded in where the rear subrame rotted through, they all rot there if no one bothers to look after them, anyone's guess what the rest of the subframe or inner sills will be like...if you do go and look open the back doors and look for bubbling appearing where the sills meets the C pillars.

A brief look at the MOT history confirms why its had a coating of goo to the undersides, not to mention the repeated MOT advisories. Rear subframe is the first thing to check on these, wouldn't surprise me to find it spent its early years in Scotland exposed to the road oversalting fetish.

Several of us with Landcruisers bought replacement steel sump guards from a Romanian company, because the OE plates on our 120 series were made of cheese and rotted away. The company make steel sump guards for Foresters and XVs, whether they offer them for Outbacks i don't know, but worth having a poke nose on their site and/or dropping them an email, whether one would cover the cats adequately i don't know, but as the plates are made of 2.5/3mm steel it might be feasable to weld an extra section on to cover the cat. https://www.sump-guard.co.uk/ If you have any joy, note they come pre painted but the paint isn't great in all honesty, i'd advise giving the plate a good coat with some tough paint before fitting. razor wire around the cats would do the job but if some low life pricked a finger attempting to steal them it would probably be you who ended up getting charged in the lunatic asylum that our country has become.

Hmm i wonder if you were to remove and split one of those switches if you'd find one instead of two bulbs inside with maybe a second bulb holder available, if that proves to be slip the bulb in the other holder and see if she lights up with the panel lights? if it does have the second bulb holder you could easily run a wire from the panel circuit to the switches if the feed isn't already there. The switch panel looks identical to the one in my 2008 model, and everything looks cleaner than mine, ahem.

That's a surprise.

You can prise the switches apart carefully with a thin screwdriver, inside each you will find two easily fitted tiny bulbs, one for background illumination and one (not sure if brighter but they look identical) to illuminate the switch once on. I have one background bulb out, it seems odd that all of yours have blown so suspect that power isn't reaching the link for those lower dash panel illumination bulbs, easy enough to check by pulling one switch out and swapping the bulbs over. If you do have blown bulbs and manage to find the correct ones without the hassle of visiting the dealer parts dept, please let us know what the bulb code is. A tip from wifey for finding the right switch, get some small self adhesive decorative embellishments (crafters would use these when card making), and apply to whichever switches you want then when you run your fingers along the panel you feel the bobble and you know its the right one, even when illunimated they're not in an ideal place to start looking when driving along, the Japanese have a habit of this, on our Landcruiser they site the mirror adjusters as well as mirror heaters and fast idle switch and something else i can't recall down in the same place very difficult to see, without checking i don't think any are even wired for illumination, times i hit fast idle instead of mirror heater or adjusted a mirror involuntarily before the self adhesive bobble wheeze.

Agreed. If Subaru had fitted some awful combi rear calipers that also acted as a manual park brake one could maybe forgive them, but the drum inside disc park brake is probably the best park brake design every invented, fixing a system that wasn't broke in the least was the height of idiocy. Thankfully our three current cars all have the brilliant drum inside disc design, sum total of problems over 30+ years owning multiple cars with this design? nil.

Sometimes on full throttle the LPG injectors can't keep up with demand and the LPG engineer programs the system to inject a certain proportion of petrol when full power is demanded to assist smooth running. It might be that your system needs recalibrating or there could be a fault, you'll have to find an LPG workshop with the correct software for the make of your LPG system fitted to your car to get it diagnosed. My Forester XT is set up like this, on full throttle it injects a small amount of petrol, on lower throttle openings no petrol is injected once it switches over to LPG. While its being looked at, if it hasn't already got a working flashlube system fitted i would get one installed, or the engine will almost certainly suffer from valve seat recession at some point.

Worth ringing https://www.mijexhaust.com/ and getting a quote for a custom made while you wait stainless system. I've had two systems made and fitted by them (some pics on the Forester forum if you do a search of my posts) the last one a couple of years ago neither system required any return visits to date, CAT back on both the Forester and Outback before it (single systems) were £299 all inc, probably gone up a bit since then and if yours splits into a twin system at the back that will cost more. Ok you're going to blow £60/70 on fuel getting there and back but if you can get the whole job done for £400/500 incl your travelling for a lifetime guaranteed system...

When CV joints run dry you often hear some clicking noises on a tight turn as the balls in the joint move but without grease to lube their movements, doesn't necessarily mean they are worn out, might just be running a dryer than they should, more noticeable after a run i find when things warm up. Try repacking all 4 front CV joints with the correct moly grease. You might find it easiest to break the small end clip and using an adaptor which Sealey make (looks like small pen refill, about 6" long, hollow, fits onto the end of your gun and can be slid right up inside the boot to the joint itself, pump till your heart's content) repack the joints, for temporary you can use really good cable ties on those small ends, and if it cures the problem buy the correct clips to finish the job off, course if you have proper boot clips anyway by all means snip the large ends so you can see the joint closely when you peel back the boots. I've been doing this for some 40 years on my own and other's cars and am yet to need to change a drive shaft, another poster here with a Foz followed this advice and it sorted his rattling CV joints out. Note, not sure if Forester of your model has this issue, but on some Outbacks the inner CV joints are right above the CATs, hence they get lots of heat all their life and those inner boots can perish and split so have a quick poke nose first make sure you don't have a split boot or two. Also don't forget to service the brakes correctly, strip inspect clean lube and reassemble, sticking sliders and caliper pistons can cause all sorts of issues, sadly not many dealers or technicians service brakes correctly, squirting brake cleeaner in the general direction of the calipers and discs only serves to further dry out any remaining lube form when the last mechanic (home or workshop) serviced them properly.

Had mine removed (40k ish miles also) and programmed out, never heard from them since.

Have a day out at Walsall and do some shopping or go to the cinema or similar whilst being done, get MIJ exhausts to custom make and fit a stainless system. If you search on the Forester forum you'll find a thread incl pics of the one they made for me, they also made and fitted one to the previous gen Outback to yours which we had. Worth a phone call for a quote, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

No one can know if its good until they inspect it thoroughly for themselves and not rely on a salesman telling one what they want to hear, as for pricing things are all over the place and it all depends on that inspection and what it reveals. No idea about specialists in your area, they're thin enough on the ground everywhere.

That MOT history has some interesting things, mainly corrosion issues to front and rear subframe mounts, plus rear shockers leaking and various mentions of sticking calipers and submitted for MOT with a split CV boot, calipers sticking over several MOTs would lead me to wonder about how good the servicing actually was and i think overall that the car that has seen a lot of winter salt. The true condition of the underside will only be apparent when you get under yourself and examine, shockers should be self levellers which are very expensive, assuming the shockers have been replaced and are now typical aftermarket items they also need new stronger springs fitting too (along with many cars with self levelling rear shocks the OE springs are as stiff as cars without self levellers, idea being the OE shockers provide some lift too), from the looks of how its sitting in the pics it looks low at the back so i suspect new springs are not in place and the new shocks (assuming they are new) are standard aftermarket jobbies, lots of info on this very forum about this, mostly supplied by the ever helpful MrB. Remember if this car is registered after March 23rd 2006 it's subject to the highest rate of VED which will be over £600 this year, i have a standard XT myself of 2008 vintage so am in the same boat, just don't want you to realise about the VED implications too late.

Don't chuck the old unit away, someone is going to start what will prove to be a gold mine of a cottage (not cottaging, that's something entirely different 😈) industry fixing these things. Thankfully so far my cars are too old to have any of this LED stuff, and i'm hoping and praying and overmaintaining/rustproofing like billio so that happy state of affairs continues for many years to come.

Just slipped its spring engine oil change in, just over 3000 miles since the last change, that's probably the highest mileage between oil changes any of our cars have seen in our ownership, slapped my own wrist. Fuchs 5w40 full synth again if anyone's interested. The front drop link (MOT advisory for split rubber boot) was a doddle to change, came undone without issue, can't say the same for the rear one which i had to cut off with the angle grinder.

Had one similar issue with the SG9 Foz recently. When i checked it over the catch appeared to be sticking, fed some spary grease into the mechanism and it hasn't happened since.

Could well be tyre noise, but you won't confirm one way or another till you slip another set of tyres on and see if the noise changes. Our Foz is on its winter set at the moment and it sounds like a wheel bearing or diff is on the way out, open the window on on a smooth road in a built up area for best effect, but when the summer set go back on next month that noise will vanish completely same as every year, unfortunately the ride quality will go down because the summer set are 17" 55 aspect as against 16" 60 aspect, can't have everything. Seeing how easy these are to work on, in the meantime it wouldn't hurt to check the oil levels throughout the transmission and if necessary top up or even replace the oils.

On my 2008 SG9 Forester with similar hedalight arrangement the levelling sensor and associated lever is attached to one of the rear suspension legs (can't recall which side), the pivots of the link which looks like a very small drop link can seize up which then leads to the bracket snapping, i'm guessing your car has a similar system. If you find the link hanging off then you could temporarily cable tie or wire it in an approximate position that gives you an acceptable beam setting whilst you sort out a permanent fix.

Could i pop a question onto this thread. Would the part numbers and links listed above by the ever helpful Mr B be the same for my standard 2008 SG9 XT. No signs of deterioration yet but always handy to have parts pencilled in just in case.

Blimey you didn't waste any time. Yes, they're ok at MIJ and being Walsall/West Mids plenty of decent little cafes around to stuff your face at while the jobs being done.

Not worth the time or trouble, discs/rotors are so cheap and quick to replace you might as well do so, quality branded aftermarket parts are every bit as good as OE.