Tofubaru - Forester II

What a wagon. Great all rounder and looks great.

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 :(

My 06 forester is ULEZ compliant. I would guess yours is too.

I would think that it would be cheaper (overall) to buy a BMW i3 and a turbo EZ36, but that of course is neither here nor there.

Sounds like pump prices are going up every 5 minutes in Ireland right now!

Yeh it’s ridiculous, this is from last Friday (and I live in the sticks), seemed scandalous at the time but now it would be a bargain! Wouldn’t mind if motor tax wasn’t expensive too!

Not looking forward to filling the central heating oil tank!

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When has sense ever been of primary concern around here!
You may not be wrong though, I have looked into getting something more sensible as commuter and I've sort of ended up at the Mazda MX-30 or Honda E as both would be perfect for my 168km round trip commute but I'm beginning to think that if I strip back the immediate scale of the refurbishment on the Forester to just tidying up the shell and getting the engine out and motor and batteries in it might work out to cost about the same?
Sadly there's just no such thing as a cheap car in Ireland at the moment and my cheapest options are either a well used i3 or Nissan Leaf... both will still set me back €20k :(

looks good on the new shocks. I did a bit of touching on my forester at the weekend.
started off by popping out to change a bulb, things escalated...

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Oh excellent! What have you been upto there then?

i was just investigating swapping out a side light bulb in the headlight, but after undoing it i couldn't get the holder back in, so the only sensible option was to take the whole front of the car off...
i needed to do it anyway though as i had a replacement headlight to fit (condensation behind the lens)
it just wasn't really what i'd planned to do when i went outside! :D
my wife looked a bit shocked when she saw what i was doing...

my forester failed the MOT on Friday. ☹️
bad corrosion on the rear subframe mounts plus other assorted rust issues.
it's going to need a fair bit of welding to get it sorted.

Sort of progress in a roundabout way...

I just bought a 2020 Hyundai Kona Electric as a new daily driver which means as of this morning the Forester is off the road. I won't have much time to do anything with it until this winter (home renovations are getting closer to being finished and I honestly just need a break for some surfing and mountain biking once that's done) but I'll be continuing planning and preparations until then and I'll start into the teardown later in the year!

I also need to get in contact with the automotive engineer who will have sign off on the conversion afterwards to discuss what will be acceptable and what won't in terms of modifications to the shell to accommodate the changes so I'll update on that journey as it progresses...

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I just bought a 2020 Hyundai Kona Electric as a donor car

FTFY

Ha I had the same thought!

The thought did cross my mind although I'd like a bit more power for the Forester so the motor probably won't cut it... pretty decent battery though and space wise I reckon the whole pack would damn near fit as is, must park them side by side for a comparison!

I feel like I'm verging on predictable but I've already sussed out the required lowering springs for the Kona and some very cool other manufacturer OEM wheels that should be very cheap indeed... it's definitely not going to turn into a project car but it would be fun to have it looking a bit cool...

Here's a bonkers low (allegedly static but I doubt it, must be on air) one owned by the chap who builds mad electric Porsches and the likes, Bisimoto...

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that does look pretty cool.
how much does it screw up the range changing the wheels and lowering etc?

in other forester news, i got the welding done to get mine through the MOT.
interestingly (or not) on the re-test none of the previous advisories came up either...

So the wheels I'm ogling are exactly the same fitment as the stock ones (4mm difference in offset but that's negligible), shouldn't be much difference at all other than maybe the weight but not much I suspect...
In theory lowering the car should reduce drag by reducing the frontal area of the car but I'm also going to get a Thule roofrack, same as on Forester, for surfing/ mountain biking... obviously this will be hard on range when loaded but all things considered I think range should be unaffected with nothing on the roof hopefully as I don't fancy taking roof bars on and off all the time!

Happy to hear your Forester is healthy and happy though 😊

A small Kona update...

I've bought wheels, they were a bit scruffy so I sprayed them with Wonder Wheels a week ago and then scrubbed with scotchbrite and rinsed just now and this is how they've turned out...
I was thinking about freshening them up with a silver and lacquer rattle can job but they're almost fine as they are even, I'll see how they dry...
The insides are much worse than the outside but the finish is just like a grey/white primer so I might sand off the bad bits and respray. I know I should have them done professionally but really don't have an appetite for big spend on this at all. I've gotten some wish.com Hyundai centre emblems and dustcaps to finish them off.

I've also installed Eibach Pro Kit lowering springs. Ride is improved and it looks much neater. I've ordered spacer/adaptors for the new wheels (same pcd but different hub bore) so once they arrive I'll get some tyres on and they'll be on!

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I have also sadly decided to sell Forester 1 (the good one). I've had a long hard think about it and coming off the back of a year of home renovation and in the busiest time I've ever had in work I don't think I have the energy to get stuck in to it right away, never mind the disposable income. No point having it rot away to nothing and I've a few other things coming up I could spend the value of it on so it's getting a CV boot replaced next week and then NCT the following week and will be advertised.
Happy to bring it to UK if anyone was interested but not sure how messy that is post-brexit.

I will however keep Forester 2 (the aesthetically shitty one) which actually has a much cleaner shell than Forester 1 and has better running gear too. I'll put the running gear to one side on the off chance of a future beach buggy/ Beetle project and get started on the EV business at some point in the future but for the foreseeable I'll be focussing on getting my motorbike license sorted (finally), mountain biking, roadie-ing and surfing as much as possible. I'm sure I'll find a few other things to do with the Kona in the meantime and I might start posting some motorbike bits in this thread too.

ah, shame about the forester project going but I guess houses and shit take priority.
I'll probably get rid of mine after this summer's camping adventures in favour of something smaller / more economical for pootling around town in when required.
hopefully by the end of the summer my vw t3 will be back on the road for future escapades.

Yeah it's a bit heart wrenching, I've never enjoyed owning any car more than it but in its current 2.0 non-turbo guise I just don't have a use for it and the EV conversion is just more time and money than I have to spare at the moment...
That being said the plan is to keep the other one for whenever I do have the time and chanhe to go at it so all is not lost :)

Have you got a build thread on the T3 anywhere? I'd love to see it, I know a chap who's doing an EV VW bus conversion at the moment actually!

yeah, I love my forester as well, it's so practical for holidays and lugging stuff around, just not really that well suited to small local journeys for when cycling isn't an option, and that's the majority of our driving at the moment.
I don't have a build thread for the t3. we've owned it since 2006 and used it loads, but it's been a bit neglected in the last few years. it's been sorned for at least two years.
a pal of mine has set up a restoration business so it's supposed to be going over to his workshop for a bit of a tidy up soon.
it would be a great vehicle for an ev conversion, but that's not really on the cards at the moment.

Yeah gutting. Enjoying the intent here and hope you can get back to it after little break from it. Definitely ride bikes and other shit. I want to say don't waste time with the Kona, but I do appreciate you are spending quite a few miles in it.

I've just dropped the Forester to the garage to get a few small pre-NCT jobs done before selling it and it reminded me within seconds why I love it so much. Actually feeling quite invigorated to get stuck in to Forester 2 and start working towards the conversion, the plan is certainly not dead and buried!

3 spokes FTW. So lucky those Freelanders were 5x114.3. I wanted to get a set if the more rounded 3 spokes they did but couldn't find any local and settled something different in the end.