El Andrew

I agree - those new factory runs are awful. I reckon go black or charcoal for the new ones. 17/18 inch wheels on any 4WD with big tyre sidewalls looks way better. Can you do a switcheroo on the wheels with the old car?

Haha the warranty company Pickles use just rang to sell me a third party warranty for the Subaru. Yeah, nah.

Hopefully! Actually I was having a similar conversation with someone at work the other day - VW Australia were saying talk to the dealer, the dealer was saying talk to VW. Under Australian Consumer Law, the consumer can choose whether to seek a remedy through either the seller or the manufacturer, and neither can tell them to go to the other

Doesn't seem like too many ways to do that wrong. And you took the precautions to tighten it up at normal ride height, so you'd have to think it was a manufacturing issue? Sucks because they aren't that cheap!

255 is plenty for 400 horsepower. Remember too that the fuel pressure regulator controls fuel pressure, not the pump, assuming the pump is up to the task. Therefore it shouldn't need a retune after a new pump. The exception is that a 460 might have been overwhelming the factory FPR at idle so it might have been tuned around higher fuel pressures. I doubt the pump change will cause you issues, but you can always get the car run up on a dyno for $100 or so to check actual power and AFRs.

Actually the insurance company is being stupidly slow - they towed it almost two weeks ago and still haven't assessed it. Is sitting at a salvage auction yard collecting dust. Car market is always tight in Canberra and can't travel to Sydney or Melbourne at the moment, so when I found the right car I took the risk. In the unlikely event they fix the Kluger, we will just sell it - is probably worth more than the insurance value at the moment anyway.

Thanks! Yep some of the features are pretty impressive. Have to love Shannon's - the guy setting up the policy was trying to talk me into putting a turbo kit on it.

Bought the replacement for the Kluger - 2015 Subaru Outback. Always had a soft spot for these, so nice to get one. Got the 3.6 engine for MOAR poweh, which means absolutely every available option as part of the package. Is fantastic to drive so far. Full dealer service history, near new Bridgestones and condition wise it is hard to tell it's not brand new. I'll probably fall out of love with it the first time I need to change spark plugs on a boxer engine...

Pull the heat shielding off and check the bolts and nuts for engine to exhaust manifold and manifold to turbo. Sounds like a big exhaust leak. You may have even had a bolt back all the way out. If so, all of you exhaust gases are escaping out rather than going through the turbine wheel and spinning up the turbo properly, which explains the loss of power

Nice. I'm a big Pixel fan - 3XL still going strong. Is interesting to compare to my work iPhone - first iPhone I've used properly for any length of time. Lots of things I like better about the Pixel which are just personal preference, but the keyboard is light years ahead of the iPhone in terms of prediction, accuracy and speed in my experience.

My FG rocker was bubbling, and then paint came off when Ford cleaned the engine to replace timing cover seal. I just bought high temp paint and repainted it in the car. Not as good as doing it properly, but looks heaps better and will get me through to whenever I next need the cover off and can paint it properly.

Insurance value is $14k so would be tough to fix for that I think. Plus the engine and front panels are intact so would have good wreck value for them.

Not sure what he was doing - some sort of lapse in concentration I guess. Is/was a Kluger. Am hoping it gets written off but will see. The mounting points for the main crash member in the rear are damaged and the door hinges up top aren't level. The rear quarter panel has weird spots of paint missing where is has obviously flexed and bounced back. You can see how close the young fella was to the action by where the rear headrests is.

Pretty thankful for modern day crash structures. We had just stopped at a red light last night and got rear ended by a LandCruiser with a tandem axle trailer full of tools. Youngest was sitting in the third row with the dog. We got pushed about 6 metres forward. Pretty confident the car is rooted but main thing is everyone walked away.

Just reading your older posts. Ford do something weird with their temperature info. I'm using an UltraGauge and have the same problem with it switching between actual temp and -40 and have had an auto electrician comment on the same with a scan tool. For gauges or scanners without the specific Ford calculations in them, there is something programmable you can do with a custom PID. I need to do it to the UltraGauge but haven't gotten around to it.

I just laid bamboo floors - does that count?

I've recently updated my stuff to Bosch Professional. No real reason other than I had some Bosch green stuff that took a hell of a beating without complaint, so I was already impressed with their entry level stuff. I doubt you can go wrong with any of the major brands. Actually Bunnings just had a Bosch impact wrench with 5.0 battery and charger for $199 so I jumped on that to add to my kit. Catching up on all the sock chat - wearing these for the first time today. Kids ordered them for my birthday but took weeks to arrive - sock fit is terrible, but I have a Vixen FG on my socks so can't complain. Was some Chinese site where you could upload photos and get custom printed designs.

Tryme has a good point though - sometimes the heat exchangers fail quickly, sometimes slowly - but when they do, your ZF is stuffed. Much better to put in an aftermarket air-to-oil cooler and cut the coolant out if the transmission loop altogether.

It's all in the tune mate. PCMTec allows for custom OS to be written to the PCM so that it takes certain cues from certain inputs. There's literally no wiring or anything - you just need a good tuner who uses PCMTec and knows how to do this. Will be pricier than a "normal" tune though and I still reckon you could have a normal tune written to suit your needs and style without needing to worry about a button. But understand the cool factor of having a button!

Ah there you go. Neat.

Sounds like you are saying you want a NOS style button, not actual NOS? Doesn't the accelerator pedal already do this? You modulate it based on how much power you want in the situation. If you wanted it more subdued at light throttle and all the hectics at higher throttle, your tuner can easily map it that way in the tune. PCMTec can do boost by gear, so you could have it tuned for different boost targets depending what gear you are in. Can also have the tune switchable from the cruise buttons, but not quite suited to actually changing it during a lap, between corners, etc. For an actual button or switch to immediately change the tune you'd probably need to look at going to a Haltech ECU.

I got an Antz and quality of everything seems really good. I was nervous about the Antz branded filter though, so got a K&N. That's not science though, just my own piece of mind! Is hectic loud so I made the exhaust louder to balance it out [emoji16] Absolute best thing about it though is no more removing the crossover pipe to do every second job on the car - was worth it just for that!

There's usually only a flange in front of the IRS so still need to hook through the rear section and have trouble with heat shielding etc. Haha yeah on my old BA I just took an angle grinder to the old exhaust, install the middle section then drove it to a hoist for the rear section.

Just remember to fit a cat back like that you will probably need access to a hoist due to the angle you need to approach the car to clear the rear suspension. I recently had the middle muffler deleted on my FG sedan and it sounded horrible, so now have a resonator in there and it sounds perfect. I have an aftermarket dump and cat though, so if you are doing a delete with everything else stock, it might not be so bad. On both occasions the exhaust place only needed the car for an hour, so I just had breakfast and did some work at a nearby cafe.

Exactly this. I reckon I'm going to flash in the factory tune every now and then and force myself to live with it for a couple of weeks. Then put the proper tune back in and it might feel fast again!