Treecrusher

Don't think you can get nolathane ones. When I did mine I went to repco and they looked up the nolathane supplier and said they didn't make them (although that could have been the repco boy no tknowing what he was doing). I just got genuine ones, they were pretty cheap from memory.

I think if you were seriously looking at this you would try to punt him when he wasn't braking, braking the bulbs and theoretically destroying the evidence of his "inoperative" brake lights. But in the real world would you take that chance? If it was me I would just indicate left for 3 seconds and start moving over, then it basically becomes a game of chicken and if you end up side swiping him you would have a pretty good defence. (he was doing 60, you passed, checked your mirror and blind spot to confirm you were passed him, indicated left and started moving back then all of a sudden he was just there.....almost like he was trying to stop me coming back over....like he was trying to cause some serious accident or something.) Would be hard for him to defend without lying through his teeth and no doubt there would be witnesses to back you up. Down in Chch we have a lot of drivers who don't understand a zipper merge and try to forcibly stop you from moving into your spot in the line by planting their front bumper as close to the next cars rear bumper as they dare. I just indicate for 3 seconds then start slowly moving over. They get the message pretty damn quick.

The redundancy thing sucks mate. I got made redundant about about three months ago, one week before going away for six weeks to get married. In the end though I got another job and ended up with a 15% pay rise .

I wouldn't worry mate, and I certainly wouldn't change the rego like that as you don't own the car and could get yourself in some grief. Ownership and Registration of ownership are two different things. The only hassle you have really is having to explain/prove you no longer own it every time he does something illegal in it. If you are worried just fill out a new "sell or dispose" form or write to NZTA explaining the situation.

Some pics of my old fostie (our nick name for the forester) One the best Subaru's I've owned.

Yip that is the type of thing. It won't give you the really deep raspy subaru sound, but that sound won't get you a warrant either. Best to talk to whoever you are getting to do the work and let them know what you want. As taking one of these on the end of a factory system will give you a different note compared to installing a full 2.5" system with one or two mid system resonators and one of these on the end.

yip resonators won't do what you're wanting. Unless you just put one big one one the end. A coby (brand name) is basically just a smaller version of the straight through "cannons" people put on their cars to make them louder. But they generally won't get a warrant these days. Better going for a good high flow triple or double pass through muffler as suggested, then extra resonators can be installed down the exhaust to fine tune the volume if needed.

I bet that guy knows he can take down STi's and loves when one lines him up. I wonder how much they are here? I could only find a USD price of $44k which converts to around $60k NZD. Given the $67k - $73k price tag for a new STi they are likely to be in the same price band as well. The fact the STi has 50 or 60kw on the BMW adds to the saying "You talk power but drive torque"

I'm not sure really, the receptionist dude said it was the cam angle sensor but I guess I would need to talk to the technician directly to know for sure.

Ok, so on the way to work yesterday I thought bugger it and I ended up dropping it off at Armstrong's (Christcurch Subaru dealer). Asked them to diagnose the problem as give me a quote. About 2pm yesterday I got a call saying it was all fixed. WTF! But turns out they a bunch of good buggers. they took it for a drive with their computer plugged in and noticed there was an intermittent issue on a sensor. They checked the sensor and confirmed it was ok, then traced the problem to a bad connection at the computer. All fixed for a hours labour.

Why don't you sell the surround to me ;D Well thats another option to follow, try and find a surround like yours.

TBH I haven't looked under the bonnet of this car that much. More just a get in and turn the key sort of car. I think from memory though it is coil over plug. I'll go out and have a look.

Hey all, My 2003 BP5 2.0R Legacy has developed a bit of a problem. For a while (a month or so) it has had a bit of hesitation down around 1,500rpm and has been more pronounced when the engine is cold. If you let the clutch out in that range it would almost stall. Above that range it is fine. This morning, after the engine had warmed up, it developed a miss when idling, as if it was running on three cylinders. Give it a squirt of gas it it would come right. tonight coming home it had the hesitation but the miss had gone away. What do you guys think it might be? I'm more than capable of fixing the problem, what ever it is. But diagnosing it could cost me more than taking it to a mechanic if I just start replacing things. Cheers.

If we are all still talking about B*5 Legacies then I don't see how these will work. the factory system has buttons along the bottom of the screen that are surrounded by a piece of the dash plastic. The only solution I could think of for a standard 2 din screen is to buy a non-screen "pocket" type dash piece to go where the screen is, then buy the new air-conditioning plastic and double din insert to put the screen where the stereo goes. But then that sort of defeats the purpose. Check this out:http://www.cars101.com/subaru/navigation.html You can get the unit in english, just need to find a wrecker in either Aussie or USA who will sell you one. Personally I think this would be the easiest and cheapest option.

Maybe run it for a few months, with full boost gear changes regularly then whip your pistons out and check the ring landings. They will tell a different story. For the most part you probably wouldn't notice massive differences, but your car will definitely detonate more when under load which will put stress on pretty much all of your engine, but mostly your pistons and bottom end. If you drive your car like a nana you'll be fine, but lets face it, who has a turbo and drives like a nana all the time.

Think you will find if it is a whisker over 95 you will get a big fat fail. You might get some lenience if it is a competition car (rally/track etc) that is obviously not going to be driven much on the road. But if it's a "street" vehicle I would imagine most testers will be pretty strict. Although there are things you could do. You could check out the actual testing procedures and make sure the tester is following them properly (there is a percentage of redline, distance from walls etc). Other than that just put another resonator in there to take it down a couple of notches. Just be happy all the recommendations haven't been implemented (yet). A car caught exceeding the 95 limit would from then on have to meet 90.

I looked at doing this in a BH legacy (myself from a wrecked car). Needless to say it is possible but there are a lot of parts that need to be changed. Including the main loom which means it's a dash out job. I had all the parts lined up for $150 (I had to remove them) and after a good long look and think decided there was just too much work involved. If you get a good price I wouldn't mind doing it on my BP5 so let me know.....But I doubt it. There are after market options available but from what I found you are looking over a grand for a decent one.

Thats assuming it would make it up the hill ..............Withdrawn. Wouldn't something in a 4wd variant make a better base?

Don't take any of this personally mate. It is not directed at you at all. I think though we will have to agree to disagree. My feelings on the situation are only reaffirmed by your comments. Back in the day (i'm 28 so about 10-12 years ago) the fastest car one of my mates had was a DOCH GT corolla. We all did our cars up and re-built the engines (I had a fully worked 4k with twin side draught webbers in a DX, KE30 and SR coupe) but even the fastest car out of all my friends was very slow by today's standards (I mean cars financially available to the average teenager). The main difference between these cars is the speed at which things happen. Yes we got our cars sideways, yes we dragged each other from lights, but even with a lot of engine work my Corolla's would have been lucky to do a 16 or 17 second quarter mile. Whereas turbo subaru's would eat that factory. As you said we can't prevent kids from driving these cars, so we need to teach them what happens at speed and how hard a vehicle is to control. I am not an experienced driver. But I am 28, had my first paddock basher when I was 12, had owned, driven and crashed many cars on private roads before I was 15, have probably driven 5 or 6 hundred thousand k's in several countries. Including hundreds of assents and descents on snowy and icy ski access roads. Have completed many driving courses, practical and theory, have raced Rotax karts for several years and hold a B class competition license. I still listen to see what I can pick up from experienced drivers and would happily pay for further tuition from experienced teachers.

Sorry mate, but listening to the sentiment of what you were writing I think you are pretty much the type of person we need to get a lot more training into and prevent from having a full un-restricted license until you're about 20 (I'm guessing you're about 17/18?). You might be fine, notwithstanding the considerable experience you have obtained (tell me was that self directed, or did you have the ability to draw on decades of experience from a professional?). There are a lot kids out there who think 180 hp isn't a lot of power. Well it is and is more than enough power to easily propel a car to 180 kph and beyond if they are smart enough to remove the speed limiter. My first three cars had about 70 hp each and you would struggle to get them going 120 down hill with your foot on the clutch. Especially when a lot of us only had 4 gears. The problem with 180 hp cars it is to easy for a testosterone filled lad to get it going well over 100 kph in a relatively short amount of time. When this is combined with built up areas the results are to often deadly. Making a license cost a lot more and take a significant amount of time to get will make kids respect it a lot more and hopefully make them think twice before hitting 80+ in that 50 zone.

Unfortunately, I believe, our graduated driver licensing system is driven by (or at least intense lobbying to prevent improvement) by the rural sector. Who believe kids have the right to drive on the road at 15 with minimal to no training. Because they "learn to drive" on the farm from a young age, and need to drive on the road un-supervised early to enable them to get places/help out with farm duties. That may be ok for the rural sector, but unfortunately it is hard for a city teenager who has never been aloud near a car until they were 15 and who's parents probably couldn't pass through driver licensing system themselves. How it is paid for is perhaps a different debate. 16 is probably a good compromise for beginning learning to drive. But they should make professional instruction compulsory (I did the prodrive course as well, it was really good) and modify the current system to prevent a full, final license being issued until 19/20. Maybe introduce more steps to the system with greater restrictions on earlier steps such as power, capacity limits and something close to a full license in the later stages.

Works for Germany. By making a license expensive it makes people appreciate more. Why should the license to drive a car cost any less than the car itself. Until we force a much higher level of professional training a large percentage of drivers in New Zealand will be muppets behind the wheel.

IMO the worst thing about New Zealands system is the fact that anyone with a full drivers license for 2 years (is it 2 or a bit more?) can teach someone how to drive a car. Now when we have such poor drivers anyway should we be using these people to teach our young ones how to drive. I think the system should be changed to require a few hundred hours of professional training (throughout the graduated programme, so basically you would have had a lot of training before you got your full). And if you lost your license for anything (demerits as well) you should have to do it again. This would have two fold benefits; One, we would have a highly skilled driving population. Two, it would make people really appreciate their licenses because it cost 2 or 3 grand and would make them think twice about breaking the law if they knew it would cost another 2 or 3 grand to get it back again........Boy racer problem would be sorted in a few years.

In New Zealand you don't "press charges". every charge is placed by the police. It's not like America where the cop asks "would you like to press charges sir?". The cops may ask if you would like them to take it further, or in this case sort it out amongst yourselves. this is for criminal charges though, probably something like willful damage. Other than the statute of limitations (I think 7 years) the cops could still charge your mate, but probably wouldn't especially if the other party has already said don't worry. BUT, they could still take your friend to the disputes tribunal and claim for the cost to repair. (this is what I would do). The police wouldn't usually get involved in something trivial like this unless it escalated, especially a month or two down the track.

*goes to get measuring tape for mock up* Are you certain they will look? They will. And if you put "for sale" and your phone number on the back window they'll call you too..........So I've been told :