2004 Subaru Forester 5MT: Regular Car Reviews

rcr's second car giveaway the 450 horsepower bmw 135i m sport ends this wednesday so click the link in the description to get entered all you have to do is buy a mug and get entered turbocharged mug turbocharged car ends this wednesday click the link in the description but enough about a 450 horsepower bimmer let's talk about what's behind it behind the power behind all the flashy cars that rcr has done behind the boxes and everything else in the background of all of our videos for the past four years or so behind all the speed behind all the classics and behind all the jokes back there out of focus sat a humble little wagon this is her story our camera car is a 2004 subaru forester base model with a cloth interior no heated seats no sunroof stamped steel wheels and unpainted bumpers she has a noisy lifter a weeping valve cover a check engine light throwing evap codes electrical tape over the cel because my county has no emissions regulations i remove the roof rails so i can tell my beige subaru apart from all the other beige subarus now subaru calls this color sierra gold that's why she's called goldie but come on this color is beige jabez station wagon sierra gold but without goldie we couldn't have filmed off-road crashed through the snow in muncie indiana she has the ground clearance to jump curbs in toronto and the mid-range torque to joust with philly traffic she spent nights in long-term economy parking at phl when we escaped to warmer climates she served pennsylvania and fittingly pennsylvania is taking her the rust well this rust my car is returning to the earth i keep her waxed vacuumed and detailed but pennsylvania will take the angel share so should you buy a second generation forester now in 2021 is this a good car that depends who you are are you a gearhead or a normie if you're a gearhead you'll love the engine's enthusiastic growl if you're a normie you'll hate the noise why does it make that noise the engine is annoying it's the idol it sounds like an oil drum full of driveway gravel if you're a gear head you'll love the cheap parts the cheap parts for a simple engine line which spanned multiple platforms if you're a normie you'll hate the power of a four-cylinder with the fuel economy of a v8 if you're a gear head you'll love this basic all-wheel drive system that splits power 50 50 front and rear all the time and if and if you have a manual that's yeah if you have a manual it'll split at 50 50 all the time and then you can do four wheel drifts all day in the snow controlled drifts just red rev up the 5000 dump the clutch and blow white rooster tails all over those jeep wranglers i am a subie and i am a winter god if you're a normie you'll love it it's good in the snow if you're a gear head you'll love that every problem with these cars has been documented there's youtube how-to videos and detailed form threads which explain when you need to perform preventative maintenance and how to do it if you're a normie you're gonna go ah 2 000 for new head gaskets but it only has 99 000 miles i bought it at 80 000 miles an hour 99 000 miles it was practically new love it's what makes a subaru a subaru that line from a marketing standpoint it's brilliant subaru passed on the maintenance costs to its customers dick move but people loved them for it didn't they oh they knew the ej25s had head gasket problems they knew they cheaped out with the graphite coated head gaskets and only the the turbos got multi-layer steel they knew these things will you know they just kind of weep oil after a while they know they know they run rough but love it's what makes a subaru a subaru so you have people complaining that their subarus fall apart and at the same time other people say this thing went for four hundred thousand miles and yes these will go for 400 000 miles if you take care of it now one of the reasons is you can have this engine out and i've two different mechanics have boasted to me that if you give me help you lay out all my tools and you don't bug me and that phone doesn't ring i'll have this engine out in 45 minutes justin kramer from fuel injection sucks uh said that subarus are one of the most ethically designed vehicles for mechanics to work on spark plugs notwithstanding on double overhead cam models but still they don't bury that much you can see what you're doing in here they're a little bit tighter on the newer ones but nothing much has changed but that line though love it what's it's what makes a subaru a subaru they've encouraged people to do preventative maintenance and they built up this brand identity and if vapes and if you know raspberry flavored vapes came along with it well so be it highs in the mid 40s southwest winds 5 to 10 miles an hour sunday night mostly cloudy a chance of rain through 2 a.m a chance of snow between 8 p.m and 2 a.m then a chance of rain and snow showers after 2 a.m little or no snow accumulation rainfall amounts less than 10 years it costs so little to add the weather ban option on modern head units and it is such a thoughtful little piece of tech that subaru wanted you to know or cared about you enough to give you accurate weather information yes you can use your phone yes you can get an app but maybe it's more of an emotional touch to know that there is a mature group of adults that just care about the weather and all they want to tell you is accurate weather information all the time maybe it's me thinking more about my father how he always liked to listen to kyw 10 6 news for philly what is it kyw radio 1060 and he loved the weather on that and this is sort of like that all the time man a weather ban radio it's brilliant i i don't have the the tray in here so i guess before i give it to corey we have to take this off unless you want to discover how to remove all this stuff and then put the parcel tray back in here just sitting on the shelf vinyl inserts i appreciate the offer that subaru said we're gonna make these seats fancy but don't ever do this if you're going to do cloth seats do the entire seat and cloth because what just happens point the camera down here look at that junk all the butt all the butt moving stuff in and out cracks the seat so i have like glue and stuff holding it together find most old subarus that have the vinyl inserts they're all wrecked right here because the vinyl can't stretch over the years but cloth can that's the dumbest that's one of the dumbest things they did in the interior vinyl inserts on all models this guy brilliant i understand that some people like to remove this entire trim piece and they get their triple gauges to make this car look like it let's get some more light in here does that help not really to make this car look like a forester xt but why give up this sweet little cubby hole here i would put my wallet in here so i wouldn't have to sit on it um during rcr all my notebooks would go in here as well as my mileage log and also if you put your gloves in here your hvac ducts down here run right underneath it so in the winter time whatever gloves or hat you put in here become warm and then you get out of the cold out of the car on a cold and windy day and you put on a warm hat and you put on warm gloves it's very sensuous two sunglasses holders one there one there i would keep my clip-ons up here i would keep my regular sunglasses right here clip-ons for medium light traditional sunglasses for heavy light who's giving you two sunglasses holders because we understand there's a difference between daytime and not quite dusk or the time sometimes you need to wear two pairs of sunglasses because you're driving right into the sun genius hvac simple design how hot do you want it how hard do you want it and where do you want it these are the push-pull wires for the how hot do you want it they crisscross underneath the car so the ones on the left are controlled over here on the right you if you want to put a aftermarket radio you're going to have to remove that metal wire that goes around the loop at the end because that's what ties your dash to the car that's the final thing you have to pop this little plastic pin back here and that removes this sort of bicycle cable that controls how hot you want it and where do you want it on the other side that's the final thing you have to do and it's annoying as crap because those little pins like to break off and in fact the one on the other side the only thing that's the one on the other side the only thing that's holding this on and it does work is friction so uh if you really wanted to secure that thing in there you'd have to like get a needle really hot and then like right through to put a pin in there because they like snap in and i snap that one thing off pulling it off too hard the first time so the only thing that's holding that little loop of metal on the little tong on the end of it is just it's positioned just right lumbar support man standard any manufacturer these days that doesn't do standard lumbar support hates you ben your rental colorado lumbar support uh no thanks general motors yeah come on is it that hard to put a little lever right here and a little freaking pad so my back don't hurt we have an aging population subaru was doing this 20 years ago you have your tools i'm telling you because that's the that fans like they want to know about you i would love to take a photo of you being under the dashboard filming and i just want a photo of you because your body's like are you looking at my ass are you looking at my ass are you looking at my ass are you looking all right so like me and corey like we were i was laughing about making a porno but the porno is just me like some other dude lying on a bed like just on his back and i'm like squatting over him reverse style like no pant like shirt on like maybe a hoodie and like a hat and gloves but no pants and just my ass and his face and the whole thing is just are you looking at my like his face is there and i'm like angrily going are you looking at my ass are you looking at my ass are you looking at my ass stop looking at my ass stop looking at my ass [Applause] no he's awake he's just standing there maybe he has swimming goggles on for no reason are you looking at my yes somebody animate that are you looking at my yes yeah adler go animate that are you looking at my ears um so anyway what was i oh yeah so this other cars do it too but this is a gigantic resistor these are your drls for a forester this is the plug that goes into them they had to put drl's in there probably for canada but all it was is a gigantic resistor on your low beam circuit so when you turn the car on your headlights would always be on but that thing just gets super hot they were just limiting the amount of voltage that goes to your headlight bulbs so what does that do where's your headlight bulbs out faster and if you want decent light you're putting silver stars in here with which run hotter and then they're going to burn out faster and those things are like 40 or 50 of bulbs sometimes so if you're in the united states you don't need drl's and if you're on like when i'm on the highway i'm putting my headlights on anyway because people are idiots but during the day i don't have them on unless i'm in a construction zone so half the time i'm just tooling around town i need my headlights on so i just pulled this cable you're you're good no drls so you see all this brown fuzz right here on top of the ac condenser that's the ac condenser eating itself because there's a little electromagnetic and this is just how ac condensers work there's a little electromagnetic electromagnet and a clutch in there just like a clutch on your car when you press that button it energizes the electromagnet pulls your clutch in and then starts this thing spinning now of course it needs that because your belt is going around your compressor all the time so mine started wearing out and the uh the ac was clicking on and off and that's usually the sign that the clutch material in there is getting thin did i replace a 200 ac compressor nope i just drank a beer and then cut the beer can up into little strips shove them inside the forks that hold the uh that sort of space the clutch and i just spaced the clutch closer to the magnet so now it works but now we're getting to the point where i think i wore away most of the clutch material and it's metal on metal in there but it still works it's going to go anytime yeah and then it like it doesn't like that so the second gen fuzzies have a hill hold feature and they're down here which is disabled the hill hold feature is purely mechanical and there it is uh i need a pointy stick something long and pointy like a screwdriver use your finger use your finger thank you this is your hill hold cable it goes to this pivot right here and there's a break line that goes where is it where is it where is it it goes down there around there i knew where it was it was like an inline cylinder it wasn't a master cylinder this down here is subaru's hill hold feature it is a second brake cylinder almost like a second master cylinder hooked to this cable and then there's this pivot it adds brake pressure and hold your wheels on hills but it isn't intelligent it doesn't know if the car is on the flat or on a hill or on a slight hill or on a big hill it will hold your car in as long as it's in first gear on a hill actually i'm wrong as long as it's in first gear it there will always be a click and a pull it's very nice except when it fails and usually if you're ever in a situation where my brakes are locked up and i don't know why give this cable a wiggle and your car should break free i didn't know this and uh i called moyer's car care and they sent the roll back out and they had to put trays they have special trays under each wheel to drag this thing thank goodness i was on a dirt lot and they could drag it up on the roll back like all the wheels are locked up and then once we got it up there we started messing around like wait a minute because i looked on the forums i pulled this and the car just broke loose like nothing was wrong i'm like that's not going to happen again so i'm going to open this all the way with a zip tie and then just unhook this completely and now it's just a traditional uh manual car and you have to hold the car with your e-brake like you do like you should be doing anyway i like what they were doing they were trying to help you but just like with the drl's kind of primitive tech but thankfully all you need is a screwdriver unhook that zip tie that thing open so it can never close again and you're golden you want your uh single jingle ej25 to sound like a 2.5 rs there you go now now you're going to hear all the induction noises and everything your air filter's there nothing's going to happen you sound like you have a tuned car now if you do that just so you know as ben pointed out toyota toyota subaru did these these wood pieces aren't standard it's just when we had a tripod ratchet it strapped down the back for filming uh we needed some more support so there's wood there you get storage inside your spare tire subaru thought well we're not letting this plug we're not letting this extra space go to waste we'll give you a little organizer that fits in here for your extra things like a nice airbag when you when someone else locks their keys in the car like this that i have to put back in this is the parcel shelf that goes in under your head unit and then your tool kit fits in there there's a poncho and there's other stuff that rattles around and when you get rid of your car yup tom oh four subaru hill hold jam nuts oh yeah they were the jam nuts for my hill hold then i just kept in there why that opens so how do you say goodbye to something you've you feel you've had forever we gave our last camera car to a college student who really needed a ride remember that the honda fit and we hope silicon sally has served him well but as for goldie well we can't in good conscience sell her it's simply a matter of principle the pinch welds are all gone it's so rust eaten underneath that you can't jack it up by its body anymore you can only jack it up from its suspension and that rust like the coal veins and centralia are getting pretty close to the ashland suspension joints even if any potential new owners signed up for the risks willingly it's hard enough out there in these beefaroni streets without stacking the deck against a well-meaning stranger it's hard not to get at least a little sentimental about a car i've owned for a little over a presidential cycle even as the stress is piled up with each new sound that i discover there you are listening to a podcast skipping past the zip recruiter ad and you hear a rattle that's different from the other rattles in an unknown place and you're already balancing the balancing ledger in your mind the money sneaking out of your bank account like teenagers breaking curfew and you realize this car is no longer worth the trouble that for as much as i might want to keep this car on the road i also don't i want to move on to something different because a car without problems is its own excitement subaru forester bust out the sunscreen and the trekking poles we're going hiking up in jim thorpe now is this one of the greatest cars of all time and the pinnacle of automotive manufacturing no but is this one of the best cars we've ever driven in the history of rcr also no this is a little billy goat that does everything kind of okay and nothing really great well apart from being a tough little son of a because a subaru forester was put on this earth to govern the ungovernable we knock on the impreza fanboys while acknowledging that this shares a platform with its blow-off valve brother subaru forester for people who deny themselves post-nut clarity for an entire month the world got its first look at the forester in 1995 at the tokyo motor show by 1997 these were taking north america by storm busting into the crossover suv market if even the cross term crossover was invented back in 1997 i don't think so i think these are just wagons yeah look at this this is not a crossover suv that comes later this is a station wagon while not as big as the legacy platform this is still a great alternative and for the second generation which is what this is we got things like more cargo room fold the rear seats and you could get up to 64 cubic feet and in 2004 you also had turbocharged options yeah the turbocharged engine could get you as much as 224 horsepower and it drank like a truck what you're looking at here is a pre-face lift second gen forester and when they went to the post facelift one the post-face lift one had some problems with the main headlights uh the fir the pre-facelift ones these ones the headlights don't let water in the second the the post facelift second gen foresters did while most farsters are automatics you can find them in manual and of course i looked for one they shift kind of like trucks the gears are kind of long and and i don't know if they're exactly the best option for learning stick shift because this is an all-wheel drive car that's locked in all-wheel drive all the time so if you stall an all-wheel drive these things jerk and stutter it's riotous it's violent when these things stall when foresters were new they were marketed as a car for the young adventurous types who needed something that could engage their sense of adventure and wanderlust but it ended up in the hands of older patrons seeking to recapture that sense of lost youth it look at it it still looks sporty the types who unironically say youth is why stood on the yong as if the young donut deserve their youth but why would that youth be any better used by the old it's a weirdly judgmental phrase as if to evaluate the merit of what young people do with their lives there's nothing invalid about doing frivolous things in your youth hell i wasted most of my twenties no i wasted all of my twenties so if in your if you if you're in your twenties right now and you feel lost well so did i the twenties are your wandering years at what age do most human brains finish forming you know at what age do the at what age does your prefrontal cortex the average age when it finishes forming 25 when do you think mine finished forming probably 30. so if in your so if you're in your 20s you're allowed to do things and own things that serve no other function than your own happiness a subaru forester is a car that reminds us of work because you can put this car to work just like we did but it also allowed us to engage in things whose primary utility was our own wellness yes picking up appalachian trail through hikers was helping them out but it also helped me to get out from behind a computer desk for roman it was a place to catch up on the happiness of each other's week as the caffeine kicked in on long drives to some remote shooting location the feeling of a long journey ahead a long journey behind an adventure to canada or a trip taking us below the mason-dixon line yes there is work in the dna of all those experiences but what the bloodstream of those trips carry is the reality that it couldn't have happened without a car as consistently reliable as goldie so to you 2004 subaru forester five-speed manual thank you you've done more than anybody could have asked for we'll miss you a breezy and chilly mid-november day is in store across pennsylvania scattered lake effect snow showers will continue to impact portions of northern and western pennsylvania with partial clearing expected farther to the southeast high temperatures will range from the mid 30s and lower highlands to the upper 40s across the southeastern piedmont lingering snow showers over northern and western pennsylvania will gradually diminish tonight with clearing skies elsewhere will generally be in the 25 to 30 degree range although the city of philadelphia and the immediate lake erie shoreline could remain just above the freezing mark building high pressure will bring fair weather and lighter winds for tuesday with highs ranging from the upper 30s across the northern mountains to the upper 40s across far southwestern pennsylvania and the southeastern piedmont

Channel: Regular Car Reviews

Views: 205,607

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Regular Car Reveiws, Car Review, Car Satire, Mr Regular, RCR, Forester, Subaru Forester, Manual Forester, Manual forster power, Goldie, RCR camera car, RCR filming, Stick forester, 2nd gen forester, Forester X, Base model, Forester resale

Id: E9styc-_aYg

Length: 27min 41sec (1661 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021