Pezimm's 2007 Forester

NachaLuva · Post by **NachaLuva** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:15 pm

BullBar looks very nice Pedro, cant wait to see it on...covered in mud haha

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 4:59 pm

Awesome! Sounds like all the foresters in Vic on the forum are growing up

Can't wait for pics of this bar on the foz!

Cheers

Bennie

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:41 pm

As promised, the bar is on!

Took me a good while to get the job done, but I'm happy with it being finally installed. Here's how it went:

The car as I got the front of it in the garage

And the detail of the headlight washers. The cover just unclips top and bottom. Quite easy actually

And 7 clips later, the entire bumper cover is out. Once again, smooth sailing up to here.

Decided on turfing the headlight washer, rather than cutting the bar to keep them. This is the hose that feeds water to them. Note how it has a nice little clip to disconnect, quite handy!

This is the end of the stripping. It's all up-hill from here...

Wrapped the headlight washer hose in plastic. Disconnected the terminal to the pump and wrapped both ends also.

Bolted the steel mounting bracket and this is trial fitting the bar for alignment. Took a loooong time to align horizontal and get even gaps both sides. When I was satisfied with that, bar was off and bolts on the bracket were tightened.

From then, got the bar mounted with the fog lights, spent about 1 hour trying to align it to close all gaps on headlights, side fender panels and still be able to tighten the bolts. When finished, it was a mater of connecting fog light terminals, re-installing the sump guard (with the SubaXtreme adaptor of the front lip) and out for a ride...

I'm a 100% happy with the bar. I will keep it this colour for a while as I quite like the effect. But I'm only about 80% happy with the install. At some point, when I re-group, I will loosen the bolts again and attempt a better alignment...

Now I gotta put it to good use off-road for the improved approach angles. Just hope I never have to use it for protection, but it's good to know it's there if I need it.

Cheers,
Pedro.

ScubyRoo · Post by **ScubyRoo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:19 am

Lookin shmick pedro! Great find!

What tires are you looking at to go on those 16s?

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:22 pm

Another shot from yesterday that didn't fit the previous post:

Cheers,
Pedro.

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:43 pm

Yeah mate looking awesome! I can't wait to see it colour coded, or to see it in the flesh!

Cheers

Bennie

thunder039 · Post by **thunder039** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 7:49 pm

bull bar looks great mate! hopefully will improve on your approach angles

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 5:20 pm

ScubyRoo wrote:What tires are you looking at to go on those 16s?

Sorry Owen, missed this...

I'm tossing between Cooper Discovery A/T3 and the BFGs A/T.

Not getting anything until later this year, so this might change as we go...

Pedro.

ScubyRoo · Post by **ScubyRoo** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 6:03 pm

Nice choice, did the cooper STT make it onto your short list? Would be a great tire for victoria

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:01 pm

ScubyRoo wrote:Nice choice, did the cooper STT make it onto your short list? Would be a great tire for victoria

It's a matter of size... I'm going with 215/70R16, so top three options at this stage are:

- BFG ATs
- Cooper AT3
- Yoko A/T-S

NachaLuva · Post by **NachaLuva** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 8:14 pm

Bullbar looks great Pedro...good job on fitting it

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 7:27 pm

Happy Easter everyone!

A couple days off added to the weekend and I'm trying to complete a couple things in the car and garage.

First up is my ScanGauge location. I had it blue tacked in front of the gauge cluster for about a year now. I reckon it's the ideal position, but it intrudes just a little on the gauges themselves (Can't see them bottom of the odometer without moving my head up).

A while ago I got a spare plastic surrounding to play with and come up with the best possible location for the ScanGauge. This is what I looked earlier this arvo:

And the plan was to slot the gauge in the middle as per the pencil line:

About a third of the way there...

I was using a little hack-saw and a stanley knife to cut through. It would have been ideal to have a rotary tool to get a nice finish and go nicely around corners - once again, the beauty of having a trial piece!

First trial fitment and it didn't go in. Had to shave a little more out of it.

Realised it wouldn't be possible to keep it in the centre given the trip meter button was in the way, so plan was adjusted to off-set it to the left, where it wouldn't interfere with any gauges

And voilá! Little mounting brackets also in:

And the final product:

Might have to visit Bunnings tomorrow and get a rotary tool and some tips to cut through the definitive plastic surrounding and have it look schmick!

Cheers,
Pedro.

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:50 pm

Bugger about the cut below the trip meter button, it'd look very, very neat without that. I guess if you're happy with it it's all good, but if another surround is easily and cheaply sourced it could be worth the effort

Still a top effort mate! Your foz is certainly coming along well!

Cheers

Bennie

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 12:22 am

El_Freddo wrote:Bugger about the cut below the trip meter button, it'd look very, very neat without that. I guess if you're happy with it it's all good, but if another surround is easily and cheaply sourced it could be worth the effort

Still a top effort mate! Your foz is certainly coming along well!

Cheers

Bennie

Well, I already got another surround on hand! Actually the one I cut was the extra one I got cheap, so the original is still intact and will get done nicely!!

Pedro.

NachaLuva · Post by **NachaLuva** » Mon Apr 09, 2012 1:19 pm

pezimm wrote:Well, I already got another surround on hand! Actually the one I cut was the extra one I got cheap, so the original is still intact and will get done nicely!!

Oh good, it will look great plus be very functional when finished

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Tue May 01, 2012 10:16 pm

A bit of maintenance work, I was getting annoyed with the headlight lenses looking dull like this:

Note the white stains on the lens, no clue where that came from...

Got myself a tube of Turtle Wax Headlight Lens Restorer and here's the results:

ˆStains are gone...

They look brand new again! Not bad...

Pedro.

NachaLuva · Post by **NachaLuva** » Wed May 02, 2012 11:48 pm

Looking good pedro

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 2:57 pm

A while ago I got some 16in Forester steelies to replace my 17in. Well, the time has come to actually get some tyres on the rims.

After a bit of debating and the fact that I probably won't want to be swapping wheels backwards and forwards, I decided to stick to the 215/65R16, which fits nicely and won't look terrible bigger than stock. Also, decided to go back to the Yoko A/T-S, because of my good experiences in the past and the long-life they seem to provide.

But before any rubber goes on, I had to restore 2 of the rims that were a bit rusty, so here's my first endeavour into setting up a "paint-booth":

And the final result on a wheel:

Because the silver was a little different than the original Subaru silver, I ended up re-painting all 6 rims that I will be using (yeah, 2 spares!). So this morning I took them out of the cold garage to cure the paint a bit before tyres go on tomorrow:

I'll post some more later with the tyres fited.

Pedro.

pezimm · Post by **pezimm** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 8:14 pm

Loaded for tomorrow!

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 8:29 pm

Awesome mate! Where's the second spare going to be stored on the trip?

Looking forward to catching up!

Cheers

Bennie