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tidester, host
-Frank P.
Of course, it's a lot cheaper than changing the wheels/tires. So why not give it a try. If you do the job yourself it will cost a little more than $100. Get the STi swaybar "package", not just the bar itself (new mounts, bushings, etc.). I did mine myself and can report that it is an easy job (except for one bolt that is hard to get to unless you have more than a very basic set of tools).
Cheers,
Bob
PS: Reading about all the great mpg's you guys are getting makes me sad -- I live in the San Francisco area, where gas prices are probably highest in the USA. I'm convinced my roof rack and accessories are costing me 10 - 20% fuel loss. I might just switch to a set of Yakima Forester Mounts (they make rack mounts specially for Forester which, I believe, have a standard lock provision rather than the Torx screw) so I can easily take the whole thing off if I'm not going to use it much....
Granted my highway time is at approx 75 mph most of the time. That's mainly to avoid getting rear-ended or forced off the road. For anyone who makes the Boston - Maine run up 95 to the Maine 'pike you know what I mean.
Although for a trip this coming weekend I think I'll strip off the roof racks and try 65 mph (for as long as I can stand it).
It seems like most of the folks reporting better mileage are driving the MT's.
Larry
I just got back from a 540 mile trip. 600 pounds of people dogs and stuff (don't ask for a more specific breakdown), 80 - 85 miles per hour (I know writing about speeding is not condoned, but this is keeping with the flow of traffic in Georgia), temperatures in the low 80s, requiring 100% usage of the AC, one tank where I accidently put in regular unleaded (Doh!)and I got 23 mpg. Kind of makes you wonder what the heck the EPA does on their highway cycle.
BTW, not that I intend to make a practice of it, but the car ran fine on regular. There was no knocking and any difference in engine performance was not perceptible in normal driving, and both tanks (one regular and one premium) had the same mpg.
I was also unsatisfied with the rack options for my FXT. I heard of a poster that got the Subaru cross bar square set to retrofit a Thule rack, but realized from his post that it required the usual Torx screws for installation/removal (a pain). The other bad thing about it was that the rack itself was not lockable--all someone needed to remove the whole rack (+ whatever was attached to it) was a torx driver. (I think the other poster put some black putty over the torx screw heads, but that made it a "permanent" install.
I instead opted to call up Thule and get some secure feet for my rack. Now I drive around with the funny little Thule rack mounts attached to my roof (they don't look that bad. The Thule bar/feet clip on to these and are completely lockable and secure. They attach through a new (to me) mechanism that resembles a ski binding or Time ATAC MTB clip pedals. Once you have the mounting brackets in place, it's incredibly easy to pop your racks on and off. Since I had a Thule rack on the old Legacy before upgrading to a FXT, all I needed to do was buy the new mounts and feet. My bars & bike mounts already fit the square bars.
--dcdouglas
-Frank P.
Earn Subaru bucks with the credit card, I'm sure you'd get it free in no time.
-juice
I'm not surprised that FXT runs fine on regular. The knock sensor adjuster computer thingy is doing its thing well. The question is whether you want to rely on that, and during the warranty period in particular. I'm not. But after my warranty expires I may very well switch to regular, especially after I've heard there are no dire consequences from the "early experimenters".
I just did a timing advance on my Miata last weekend. I've known about this for 10 years but never bothered with it. Mazda shipped the Miata with the timing retarded so people wouldn't hear knock and/or ruin their engines where they have lousy gas, high altitude, hot weather, towing (well, maybe not towing with a Miata
Cheers,
Bob
PS: I was the one who suggested "hiding" the torx heads. It isn't "permanent". You just put some silly putty in there and smoot it flush and then "paint" it with a black magic marker. You won't even know there's anything under there and you can always get at the bolt if you need to. But, as you say, this is not a solution for someone who wants to take their rack on and off all the time....
PPS: I'm thinking of playing around with making a wind guard for the rack -- besides the mpg loss it is god awful NOISY with the rack and the enormous roof open. I've already got the Subaru Wind Guard for the roof. I'm thinking of playing with shapes for a wind rack guard like the ones Yakima, etc. sell. Anyone have any experience with how these might effect the noise/mpg's issue????
The big advantage however, is that you'll never have any roof rack cross-bar noise with 2x4's.
On my current Yak rack with round bars (that whistled badly), I went up scale and bolted stained 1x4's to them. Luckily there's no home owners association around here to give me grief about that. :-)
The other nice thing about wood cross-bars is that it's easy to put eyebolts or other tie-down gizmos up there - I leave ropes attached to my eyebolts so I always have rope handy to use as a tie down.
I don't leave my racks on all the time though; just for those times I think I may be hauling something. Usually they live hanging on the garage wall.
Steve, Host
Since I've since switched cars and don't have a sunroof anymore, I gave the WindJAmmer to my friend who was complaining about wind noise over the bars on his 325 wagon...he seems happy with the noise reduction with the wing in place. Give it a shot, it might work!
Brian
Mark
Skip the complications. My XT's diet has been almost exclusively mid-grade 89-octane for the last several thousand miles. No perceptible reduction in performance or MPG, but usefully cheaper than 91-octane.
I bought the Forester mounts the first week I owned my XT...and they have no locking mechanism whatsoever! It is the only weak part of the design! They are easy to mount and remove, but I'm not sure I'd trust my bike up there overnight.
~Todd
I just found that out yesterday
I'm going to play with some cardboard templates to see if I can find something to make out of plexiglas that will work suitably to get the db's down/mpg's up. If I'm unable I may just use that Torx bit in my electric drill to mount/dismount the rack. I have another car for "everyday" carrying of bikes that I could use. I'd only put the rack on FXT for "trips" if I found the noise disappeared and the mpg's went up dramatically. That would certainly ELIMINATE the noise the rack/bike mounts makes!!! It would also save $150 a year if the racks were losing 15% of mpg's and you were buying 20mpg gas for 10,000 miles a year @$2/gallon. Over, say, 10 years, $1,500 to hear a bunch of noise all the time and not have to bother putting it on a few times a year is something I might not want to do!
Considering all the stuff about the environment (yesterday was Earth Day wasn't it???) and cars and gasoline and all the vehicles one sees riding around with racks it seems surprising that there aren't some definitive studies about at least the mpg losses of these things, if not the noise issue. I did some net research on it before I put my rack on and couldn't find much more than vague estimates and no studies or reports cited....
Cheers,
Bob
Im going to measure the height of the Forester with the rack and a large Thule pod on top and see if it will fit under my garage door opening. If so, I can install some pulleys and "hang" the pod/racks from the garage ceiling and then simply drive under the pulleys then lower (or raise) the pod and crossbeams as a unit onto the tracks for the roof rack. That would be a lot easier than trying to hoist the pod up onto the roof of the car each time, and I would only need to separate the pod from the cross beams when I was loading a boat on top....I prefer a hitch -mounted bike rack.
-juice
tidester, host
So just get a canoe instead of a cartop carrier and enjoy paddling the carrier around at your destination :-)
Steve, Host
-Frank P.
It never hurts to take it easy in vacation mode with a load of people and gear and avoid driving like a commuting banshee.
Steve, Host
Take heart, a major problem like yours should be easily tracked and repaired.
John
Availabiliy of crystal gray for FXT is based on my assumption, and ongoing speculation at nabisco. The dealer couldnt find the 05 order sheet which would have given us the info we need. I dont think 05 Forester colors have been "confirmed" on the web yet.
Crystal gray is not quite dark enough IMO but will be OK. My wife wanted yellow, orange or purple (or probably a combo of all three), it was quite a releif to find these are N/A for 05. I now have to persuade her gold is not for us.
-Frank P.
Bob
Seriously though, that's a great article. At least from an FXT owner's perspective ;-) Too bad it wasn't in a car mag like Motor Trend.
-Frank P.
-Brian
-Frank P.
Also, I'm skeptical of C&D's figure of 5.3 seconds. Motorweek got a 0-60 time of 6.2 seconds for the manual, which is about the same as the Australian spec. You can watch the Motorweek video to see how it did the acceleration test. We don't know how C&D got its figure. Maybe Subaru gave C&D a specially tuned car, or maybe C&D burned out the clutch.
Take the WRX for comparison. Here are some 0-60 mph figures that have been reported:
Edmunds 6.3 seconds
Consumer Reports 6.2
Motorweek 5.6
Car & Driver 5.4 and 5.9
What figure do you use? C&D again has the lowest figure. The average is 5.9 seconds, which is what C&D got in another test.
To compare the XT with other cars that I am considering, I use an 0-60 figure of about 6 seconds or slighly higher for the manual and about 6.5 seconds or slightly higher for the auto.
While the 5.3 seconds does seem quite a bit low, I'm also inclined to believe that Motoroweek's numbers are fairly conservative. I don't recall what the C&D WRX numbers are exactly, but they're only a few tenths of a second off from the FXT so I think it's probably accurate enough.
Also, Subaru typically has posted conservative numbers until a car magazine posts lower numbers and then they will use those figures. We've seen Subaru do that with the WRX.
Ken
I've seen one XT 0-60 quote of 5.25 seconds, but that probably involves a clutch drop.
Nice to hear that electrical problem was solved. And BTW, wdb did have a rodent messing with his throttle cable, so it can and does happen!
-juice
The C+D article mentions the Porche Cayenne Turbo being 0.2 seconds faster than FXT MT. I brought this up in another discussion, elsewhere, and was chastised for comparing apples and "pomegranetes". I didn't think the comparison I made was TOTALLY unfare, so I actually went to test drive the PCT. I wasn't impressed (except for the build quality and plush factor and "mass" of the thing -- 6,790lb!!!). I liked the way my AT FXT handled better, actually. When I took the dealers literature home I actually saw Porche listed the 0-60 as 5.6 seconds, 0.3 SLOWER than FXT !!!!
But, frankly, I could care less about this stuff. I'm not a racer. The FXT is DAMN FAST, and that's all I care about.
As to the dif between FXT MT and AT the numbers people are getting, elsewhere, are on tracks that only measure 1/4 mile and not 0-60. MT FXT is high 13 seconds and AT is high 14 seconds (these are UNMODED VEHICLES). The numbers are going to be a whole lot lower when these guys chip mod their cars, etc.
So, I'll say AT is "less than a second" slower then MT if someone asks me. Probably between that and the 1/2 second listed in the .au Suby .pdf manual.
Cheers,
Bob
PS: I do think there is some correlation between the amplituded of the racket you hear on the roof rack and the loss of mpg's. How noisy are those canoes ??? The Yakima Basket case is "mesh" tubing so you'd think that would be somewhat aerodynamic, letting the air pass thru. But it DOES make a god awful lot of noise (the "whistling" is especially bad).
Bob
PS: That FXT failure on the alternator was actually a "good" thing. The car recognized an electrical short and shut down. If it didn't do that you would have blown a lot more devices in the car and probably burned circuits. Especially with something like the alternator.
RPM
PS. On my XT A/T w/5000 miles on it, I have yet to break the 20 MPG mark, all this with 93 Octane Gas.
-Frank P.
-Brian
Cheers,
Bob
Therefore, my best guess would be in the mid six second range for the FXT AT.