Which Subaru?

P3PPY said:

I'm awaiting the VIN from Legacy guy, but if I understand correctly, the 2008 Limited was the VDC. People say you can turn it off to allow for wheelspin but cannot turn off stability control -- does this mean I cannot do AWD snow donuts? Also, I understand it's typically a 90/10 torque split, so that's kind of sad for my purposes.

If it's no good for your intended purposes, is it too late to back out of the deal?  There are other fish in the sea.....

I think this thread might be helpful for your VDC question - NOSIAC. It sounds like if the car has a button pushing it will let you have fun on loose surfaces but may still interfere if things get really out of hand.

Pulling the under hood 30 amp ABS fuse is something I have always done for any performance driving (rallyx autox, track) as the system does not keep up with that sort of driving and cuts in before it should. My manual car has the traditional viscous centre diff so it just does it's thing, the auto's with the electronic diff might be a different story with that fuse pulled (I believe there is another fuse that can be pulled for the diff but that results in FWD only, I'm sure with the right DIY signal to that diff you could lock it to 50/50 but not sure if that is a great idea).

I think your test drive should involve some loose gravel, these cars respond very nicely to trail braking to get the back end rotating, sadly they don't have the power to hold it out on gravel but that is what it is (snow won't be a problem to kick the back out with power though). Lots of fun.

In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :

Not too late, no. I intentionally worded my conversation with him that options are still open. I'm talking to someone with a G35x, too, but rear wheel took a hit and doesn't sit quite straight, so there's that. I asked him to run it by Belle Tire for an estimate. For the next month this is our only free weekend to drive as far as Indy, so I'm getting desperate.

Being on the "beggar" end of the cash spectrum makes this difficult. I finally find a decent looking car and then -SURPRISE- nannies!! I don't even really know what to aim for.

Adam525i, thanks for the fuse tip. I'm a little too coddled by ABS to want to fully lose it though.

In reply to P3PPY :

I only pull the fuse for those specific things (rallyx autox, track) leaving it on for street driving, cruise is something I use all the time so not having that for normal driving is not an option and having ABS when you need it is a good thing. 

I think you're making a bigger deal out of the nannies than you should, especially before a test drive. The driving dynamics of these is fundamentally good with nice balance out of the box. Anything in the last 20 years will have these same sort of systems with varying degrees of intrusiveness but reading through that thread I linked it doesn't sound like this one is that bad. 

In reply to adam525i :

Yeah I came back here from the ABS video thread just to say "nevermind, I get it now"

Thanks for the reply and the good info. I'm getting SO antsy to pick it up and do a rallycross in it, there's one nearby mid Oct. Once it's in my hands I'm going to get registered right away. I think my MIL will let me horse around with it on the church acreage beforehand just as long as I stay away from the drainfield.

My ABS fuse is pulled.  

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Subaru ABS in your generation is awful and not worth having on. I had an 04 Legacy before my 07 and that fuse was pulled from fall to spring to avoid ice mode on any sort of snow or slush even with snow tires. Things have improved though.

In reply to adam525i :

It rides in the lil cubby above the fuse box along with my lugnut socket.  It keeps the socket company.  I mostly drive to and from events in the car so I never worry about it.

Well this is SUPER disappointing. We packed up the whole family and drove 4+ hours only to find a clunk in the transmission.  UGH. And the guy with the wagon is out of town. 
SO disappointing. So here I am at a pretty park in Carmel with the kids thinking how I hope they like the park since that's the only reason I just wasted a Saturday. :/

Ugg. Sorry to hear of the disappointment. 

Clunk and you did not buy it or clunk after you bought it?

In reply to GTwannaB :

Did not buy

What did you think of the car otherwise? Still interested in a Subaru or looking in other directions now?

In reply to P3PPY :

This seems appropriate:

In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :

HA. At first I thought the top pic was of a car you'd found in my price range and I was starting to re-think my priorities :)

Adam525i:

it was gorgeous. Very pretty paint color, interior was mostly good, the dash had that chunk missing, but I could see past it. It had a few just like specks of surface rust here and there, like a rock chip or something, but underneath where it matters most it was good looking. FYI there are ZERO gravel roads around Carmel, IN, on which to test low-traction, unless they are on the mansions' estates. KC is comparably sized to Indy but I don't think there are any places in KC comparable to the money around there. Crazy. 
But yes, I'm still thinking Subaru for the things I want to do. My wife was surprisingly patient about the whole thing and we did some talking on the way home. I told her it's hard to jump on a $2-3k deal when it's 4 hours away, especially when I need to look out for "undisclosed factors". She suggested instead spending $1k each year on a local car, which the idea of it thrills me but I need to think it thru. In KC with much less rust that was a dream of mine. In fact, $500 cars were my daily drivers. 
 

Oh yeah speaking of Subarus, as we had just filled up to head back north a silver 2008 Impreza with dealer tags pulled up to the pump. I was like "no way!! WOOHOO!" Butttt they wanted $8k and I was just about $5k shy. And there was the most gorgeous Ferrari F430(ish) at the Mexican place we went to for dinner. Oh and I did a parking lot repair for a lady beside me whose Equinox had popped the plastic linkage off the trans shift knob. So there were some nice parts to the trip :)

EDIT: I just checked and there aren't running Subarus for $1k in any condition around here. Hmm

P3PPY said:

I told her it's hard to jump on a $2-3k deal when it's 4 hours away, especially when I need to look out for "undisclosed factors". She suggested instead spending $1k each year on a local car, which the idea of it thrills me but I need to think it thru. In KC with much less rust that was a dream of mine. In fact, $500 cars were my daily drivers. 

But the market has changed too ala-covid.  
I am a firm believer that $5k has become the new $3k.  That is to say that $3k used to buy you a good-enough DD.  That is hard to do now for less than $5k.  Those are retail prices.  GRM wisdom can reduce those prices some but will require effort or knowledge.  

Sure, I just recently bought a $500 Prius but it needed what amounts to $300 worth of tires and $200 worth of 12v battery.  Sure, I was lucky enough to have these parts from another Prius but that $500 became $500 more or $1k net.  That was for a car with 225k miles.

In retrospect, pre-covid, for $800 I bought this Ford Focus w/ 128k miles for just $800 and it needed nothing more.

My point being that even at the lowest end of the market there are still deals but those deals cost more now (for less car) than they did before.  

Pre-covid I bought my perfectly running ole Montero and had it running on the road for less than $2k.  Four years later and 17k miles later, I sold it with a minor trans issue, worse tires, worse suspension, and worse body for slightly more than what I paid for it.  

Hang in there, but, you might need to up your budget.  
Heading into snowy weather makes Subarus premium priced in your area.  But, even with that issue, act now because Feb and tax return pricing will only drive this crazy market even higher.  

I think what you do find will need some wrenching.  That southern-ish Subaru with a problem that could be fixed with wrenches may have been a better value than the rust that you will find up north that can't be fixed with wrenches.  

$2k Legacy in South Bend, IN.  Slight body damage and some kid/grime.  I'll bet there is control arm damage to the passenger side but you've done that before.

The earlier generation cars are solid and dynamics wise are pretty much identical between the two generations (suspension design is the same). The drive by wire in the 05+ cars can be annoying compared to the earlier cars but the improvement in the interior feels like a major step up. The 04 and earlier cars feel like they could be a mid 90's car (and were in Japan) and the 05 up feel reasonably modern and are a much nicer place to be in. Obviously if the $1k price point is where you are at then the older cars will be what you are looking at. A stcik makes all of these cars better if you can find it (and seemed to hurt the 05 up cars pricewise in the past unless it was a GT/XT/Spec. B).

P3PPY said:

Well this is SUPER disappointing. We packed up the whole family and drove 4+ hours only to find a clunk in the transmission.  UGH. And the guy with the wagon is out of town. 
SO disappointing. So here I am at a pretty park in Carmel with the kids thinking how I hope they like the park since that's the only reason I just wasted a Saturday. :/

Look at it less that you wasted a Saturday and more that you didn't waste 3k. We all have went and looked at what we thought was a great deal only to find it was garbage

Also if your budget is 1k now, should I mention 2nd gen AWD explorers again?

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

Also if your budget is 1k now, should I mention 2nd gen AWD explorers again?

adam525i said: The drive by wire in the 05+ cars can be annoying compared to the earlier cars but the improvement in the interior feels like a major step up. The 04 and earlier cars feel like they could be a mid 90's car (and were in Japan) and the 05 up feel reasonably modern and are a much nicer place to be in. Obviously if the $1k price point is where you are at then the older cars will be what you are looking at. A stcik makes all of these cars better if you can find it (and seemed to hurt the 05 up cars pricewise in the past unless it was a GT/XT/Spec. B).

15 years , still driving my 05 manual Legacy and the DBW still drives me a bit nuts. But this car rides really well on a twisty road and the interior is still a nice place to spend time. 

I don't mind the DBW so much (I was actually concerned about it prior to buying my '08 Legacy based on the throttle tip-in and other quirks in the DBW in our '07 Forester.) The only thing that's annoying is that when lifting throttle while in gear, it takes a couple beats before engine braking begins. I guess that's kind of a variant of rev-hang.

A plus for the '05+ generation is that you get curtain air bags. I'm going to disagree with Adam 525i about the supension being the same between the generations- my '07 Legacy SE feels much more firmly sprung than the '02 Legacy GT I drove a few times. 

'04 Forester in Detroit area for $3,300.  Manual trans too.  I have slight concern that the car is wearing a temp tag.  Did he buy it only to find problems and then unload?  Or, maybe he bought it with bad HG and fixed.  The ad doesn't really elude to problems or repairs.

Another, generally the same car but 140+k more miles asking the same.

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

Also if your budget is 1k now, should I mention 2nd gen AWD explorers again?

Find a 2 door and do a super cheap drop! The rear springs will probably sag, so you just crank the torsion bars down a bit in front to lower the CoG.