I have a base model 1998 Forester, 5 speed manual and little in the way of creature comforts and I’ve taken it through pretty much the same stuff with no issues. Totally would not mind the extra 25 hp over what’s in mine (And being a 1998 it’s got the dual cam EJ25D instead of the later single cam EJ251)... Soon to be…

When I toured Wyotech in 2004, the tour guide said that when we moved there (Laramie, Wyoming) that it got so cold in the winter that we’d have to run pure antifreeze in our cars because any water in the system would freeze, and if we had a diesel we’d have to keep it inside a heated garage or the fuel would freeze...…

Back in the early 2000s or thereabouts I had a 1987 Subaru GL turbo wagon, which would go ~38 miles on the low fuel light. I knew this because I decided knowing this information would be important, so I strapped a 5 gallon gas can to the roof and drove it until it ran out of gas and noted the mileage. Normally I tried…

When I worked at a dealership occasionally the parts runner from AutoZone would come in with a basket of free stuff that was in unsaleable condition (damaged packaging etc..) One day in the box was one of these fuel shark things. I took it apart and it was nothing more than an LED and a resistor. 

David your next task is to find one of the manual 4WD Mazda MPVs, this would be a total unicorn, rumor has it they had proper dual range 4WD versus the pushbutton single range that the automatic ones had. I’ve seen a manual MPV in the wild (actually in the junkyard, and it was before I knew it was a unicorn, but it…

hey if you are still in Washington, if you head down to Exit 36 off I5 you could easily get a pic of the Land Cruiser in front of the building that used to be the Jeep dealer where your Golden Eagle was originally sold :-P And it may be slow and boring, but sometimes it’s a good thing to have at least one slow,…

you’ll only be a few hours from Longview, which is where your Golden Eagle came from originally. The dealer is long gone but the building is still there (Actually, the dealer is still around but they’re at a new location) 

Friend’s mom was looking at Subarus back in 2002 or 2003 or so, and the salesperson told her that since Subaru had so many problems with the timing belts on the EA82 in the 80s that all the newer ones were chain driven and didn’t have a timing belt to worry about... (Back then the only chain driven engine was the EZ30…

I like how the 3rd row folds to the side instead of up against the back of the 2nd row like it does in my Suburban... In order to get my daughter’s crib in the back of it I had to take the third row out and ratchet strap it to the side of the cargo area. 

I used to work at a Subaru dealer, if you overtorqued, undertorqued, or at any point used an impact gun (even a 3/8" butterfly gun) on a drain plug your punishment was you had to torque the plugs to the specified 31 ft/lb using a torque wrench AND have it double checked by the shop foreman. 

I really want one of these but I’d have to manual swap it :-P I also wonder what it would take to swap it to 4Motion while I was at it... 4Motion TDI 6 speed wagon? Just needs brown spraypaint! 

If the doors are like the doors in my Mk5 Jetta, the outer skin unbolts from the door. You might be able to just swap the outer skin if you can’t find a whole door. 

This is WAY AWESOME! Congrats and welcome! I still want a smart... Wish the cabriolets were safer! 

Looks like a Bosch VE injector pump, they’re pretty simple to rebuild. If the mechanicals are good and it just needs seals it’s pretty straightforward, I replaced nearly all the seals in the pump in my Dodge Ram after it puked a seal on a particularly cold morning. I can’t find the site I used, but I’d stumbled across…

I think we need to start a “Get David’s van to the states” fund...

Trick I learned with my Prius that works pretty well (It also works on our Outbacks although not quite as well, and it probably works on just about any hatchback/wagon) is I open the driver’s door, lower the two front windows, and then I open the hatch and it sucks all the hot air out.
And it works almost as well if I…

That Golden Eagle came from Longview, I haven’t quite figured out what building on Vandercook used to be the Jeep dealer, but I’ll be willing to put a few beers on you being able to go to newspapers.com and dig in the archives of The Longview Daily News from 1979 and you might just find your Jeep in one of the ads :-) 

Probably because the green was applied after manufacturing where the white was factory fleet white, and we all know how great those 80s-90s domestic factory paint jobs were...

I learned the art of the manual transmission in my grandpa’s 86 Bronco II, root beer brown and coffee two-tone, it’s still rolling the dusty streets of Salome, Arizona (My grandma gave it to a family friend after my grandpa passed away)
did a midnight poker run with it a few years ago, the ignition switch was fiddly…

Crack pipe. I’ll stick with my non-bro-dozered first gen.