Tofubaru - Forester II

On one hand, because I drive it so infrequently, I could do whatever with no practical considerations to fuel use or 'off roading' - bigger exhaust, up boost, remap it, lower it, mags, tint the windows, stereo - all the usual shit a 20yo would do. On the other hand, I drive it so infrequently, I just think what's the point? Spend money on bikes.

Very rad. Do a second one for me while you are at it.

I know very little about car mechanics so I'm probably chatting shit here but thinking aloud:
I know new EV cars have one gear as the electric motors are insta torque, but I've seen people do EV swaps on MX5s etc where they maintain stock gearboxes etc.
Could you swap the power plant but maintain the stock drivetrain, gearbox and diffs to keep the AWD without the need for two motors or whatever?

I'd imagine the torque that a Tesla motor puts out would make a mess of the diff and stuff in a forester wouldn't it?
I've read about some people doing conversions with a lexus gs450h hybrid system which sounds quite interesting.
the electric motor is built into the transmission, so no need for mating a motor to the existing trans.

Of course, no bother at all :)

@PhilDAS / @bigshape

I reckon the way I'd like to go is to do away with the existing drivetrain and go direct to the wheels. I know the torque of the 1UR was going to be too much for the existing Subaru drivetrain and realistically any plug and play Subaru alternative would also struggle with those sort of torque figures so from a reliability standpoint it would make a lot of sense to go direct.

There is also a bit of hilarious performance craic involved with using two motors...

Tesla Base LDU - 450hp - 450Nm
Tesla Performance LDU - 536hp / 600Nm
Tesla Ludicrous LDU - 645hp / 650Nm
Tesla SDU - 300hp/ 330Nm

As far as I understand it you can sort of pick and mix to suit and then it's up to the electronic controls afterwards to keep it right although obviously two motors is a fair bit of additional cost you can see how you could rack up some pretty comical performance figures...

this just reminded me of a friend of a friend who rebuilt a wrecked tesla...
then sued them because they wouldn't support software updates or supercharging.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/02/tesla-new-zealand-sued-claims-rebuilt-car-not-supported
not sure what came of it all in the end.

That's a shit situation :(

I'm hoping to not run into issues like that as I don't think I'll be using any Tesla software or controllers most likely, just the hardware...

For the control side of things; came across a company called ev-controls today. Pretty cool controller. Plugs into the Tesla *du’s so you don’t have to open them and replace inverter parts. Supports dual motor as well. And you get a slider control to make it a bit tamer on normal drives.

That sounds absolutely ideal! I quite like the idea of keeping the UI in the car relatively analogue if possible and my end goal would be to have a car that when finished will just look like an extremely clean and well cared for Forester that a car nerd might look at and say "I never realised Subaru did a Forester with such a nice level of interior trim and nice wheels" but for it to be believably factory finished...

Slow news but I did the timing belt and waterpump at the weekend and got some new wheels for Forester 1 so I can donate the original ones to Forester 2.

Timing belt/ waterpump swap was pretty straightforward and it really highlights what a pleasant car this is to work on although I did erroneously order a waterpump for a turbo model and I had to bodge a blank with some hose, clamps and an M16 bolt but it got the job done.

The wheels are from a 2000 Impreza Turbo UK Spec and have lived at the bottom of someone's garden for about a decade, I might get them refurbished in future but they're in pretty OK condition considering...

Tyres are 215/65r16 (as opposed to the stock 215/60r16) Nankang FT4, they seem pretty OK so far.

I also used some Japan Racing JN1 wheel nuts in black just because...

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I drove the Forester to the Netherlands yesterday... 1100km in a day and it didn't skip a beat (touch wood, I've to drive back yet of course), if anything it feels better than ever on a tank of that good UK 99 octane.

It did make me conscious of charge times though and whatever EV solution I come up with it will have to have the capacity for fast charging as that drive would have been a nightmare if it had involved slow charge times... just something I need to look into.

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nice work! that's certainly a lot of ground covered...
how many times did you have to fill up?
fingers crossed for a similarly pain free return trip.

Would you believe I filled up before I got on the boat, filled up again when I got to half a tank and got a top up before the tunnel which took a quarter tank and I've still got half a tank left now! Quite acceptable fuel consumption I reckon!

683miles, 90 litres (1.5 tanks)
so about 34.5mpg

not too shabby!

Appreciate the assistance with the maths, I'm definitely too tired to compute 😂

That's actually a little bit better than I usually get at home!

i wouldn't count on my calcs being super accurate - but i think it's a fair estimate

Cool idea to ev swap a car, but I’d love to know what Irish insurer would touch something like that, and what nightmare you’d have with revenue and motor tax!

Probably easier to wait til it’s a classic car where that sort of swap wouldn’t matter?

plenty of ev conversions have already been carried out, not only to classics, and it's only going to get more common and cheaper to do as time goes on.
this companyare doing great stuff -
https://www.irishevs.com/how-electric-car-conversion-works

Oh of course I’m aware there are loads around, that Damien Maguire chap on YouTube has been converting BMWs to ev for years, but the way Irish insurers are I just can’t understand how you’d get insurance with them?

I did find one insurer who was open to the idea of the Lexus engine swap so I suspect I would actually fare better with an EV swap but I do need to look into that!

1100km in a day

Fuck that.

Made it back in one piece at least! The Forester played a blinder!

I can't concentrate driving for that long. I think I'd gouge my own eyes out just to get out of the car.

I actually weirdly enjoy it as I do a fair enough amount of long drives for work. Lots of time to listen to all those audiobooks, podcasts and new music you haven't gotten around to yet and equal opportunity to sample new and exciting soft drinks and canned coffee from far flung places :)

Nothing wildly exciting to report at present although Forester did fail NCT (National Car Test) on rear suspension which meant I was faced with a necessity to either replace the rear suspension with OEM parts or dig deep on man maths to upgrade to some Tein Street Basis Z coilovers... needless to say man maths prevailed and I picked up a set from Balance Motorsport in Henfield on a work trip to UK last week. They were easy enough to install too, about 5hrs all in however this included the Allen head stripping on the shaft of the last stock shock when I was trying to disassemble it (Tein Street Basis Z remain affordable by reusing stock top mounts so you have to disassemble the factory suspension and swap some bits over to the new ones when you install). I attempted to weld an M6 bolt on to give me something to hold on to but after that bolt snapped I decided to just drill it out. A bit of a pain but got the job done in the end!

I've ordered new headlights for it too to go with the pre-facelift swap so as soon as they arrive I'll get that done and take some more photos!

This has just reminded me that Forester had its first visit into London's famous ULEZ zone and I have forgotten to pay the charge... excellent, presumably a fine is in the post :(

Another bumper trip of 2500km in ten days and the Forester handled it with ease!
I have however become increasingly aware of the cost of fuelling my beloved (as I'm sure we all are at the moment) so I'm going to really knuckle down and work out the maths on getting the EV conversion sorted as it might be a better suggestion than financing an EV runaround to just get this over and done with...

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