How stock to keep my Subaru?

[John-Erik]

Sorry if this is a bit of a rambling post.

For a bit of background, I have a 2001 Forester L (the lower model in the US) with 4EAT, and at 17 years old it’s in a curious place for parts – high end performance parts such as they are as it’s basically a lifted Impreza, are now dirt cheap. And there are a lot of little things that now need doing – all of the rubber parts (which I’m mostly done with), it’ll need a new exhaust system soon, and so on. It’s my daily driver, has 158k on it and I’ve now moved so I’m putting 20,000-ish miles/year on it.

Oh, and it’s a one owner car – I still have all of the original paperwork from its purchase. It has no rust on the body or frame, only on removable parts such as axels, exhaust and the like. Every replacement I’ve made up until now – a bunch of axel and power steering boots, rear bearings, wiper arms (spring was warn out) and so on, has been genuine Subaru.

So far, it’s had the short block replaced at 106k after a head gasket and ring failure, and since then it’s gotten 3,000 miles “Severe duty” oil changes, with full synthetic, and it doesn’t burn a drop of oil or leak at all. I’ve put steel braided brake lines on it, and upped the front rotors and pads to something a bit more beefy to help its merely adequate stopping performance (Hawk HPS/Sector 27), and it’s now quite good. I’ve also found a lot of genuine Subaru upgrade parts, as it comes from an era when to make more options available, they shipped boxes of parts to dealers to upsell – wood grain trim, leather steering wheel and gear selector, upgraded speakers, and so on, which I can now pick up for a song online. The major exception to the 100% Subaru is the head unit, which I upgraded to get Bluetooth and the like, though I still have the old one in a box in my garage and it can swap back in with a #2 Philips.

Now, as I’m driving it significantly more than I used to – it got very few miles for years as I had a company car, and I moved much farther away from work earlier this year, and finally have a garage to do it in, I’m looking to make more changes to make it nicer to drive. So far, they’ve been mostly repair related – lots of door bumper replacement, a few trim pieces and fasteners, and have gotten rid of all of the rattles and squeaks – after my last tune up, it runs like a dream. I also plan on keeping it for at least 5 years until my wife gets her next new car and I can take hers.

So the question becomes, how stock do I keep it? It’s not exactly a super desirable car, nor is it overly modded in the aftermarket, and Subaru’s price on OEM parts is wallet-destroying, so that performance parts are cheaper. When it needs new springs, do I go with Subaru, or pick up King Rally springs (stock height). Exhaust – stock or get a freer flowing aftermarket? And the list goes on … do I get all of those original option parts for my car to make it a bit nicer? That at least seems attractive to me – make it a very unique combination of base model and higher-end trim.

Your thoughts?

Topic

[David]

If your goal is increased power (sounds like that is not the case here) there really isn’t much to gain on the older NA subaru engines (or more modern NA engines, for that matter – the exception being the H6 engines – either the 3 liter or current 3.6 liter) – if you are trying to just keep costs down, then I’d just get aftermarket equivalents – you can get pretty much everything (springs, struts, bushings, engine components, etc.) from rockauto, typically with a number of options for manufacturers. If you are looking for stiffer springs/bushings, then aftermarket performance oriented parts are the way to go, but if you are looking to make it perform as it originally did without spending OEM-part like dollars, then OEM equivalent parts from rockauto or similar warehouse like stores is the way to go.

[Author]

Replies