Sister's Gen3 Liberty "Basil"

[Subyroo]

Looks like Basil could use a bath under the hood too.

[El_Freddo]

And some panel beating, cable ties replaced with the actual clips they’re substituting and paint touch up all over!

He’s bit of a bucket but he’s solid and everything works as it should… until it doesn’t - which doesn’t happen often so can’t complain.

I forgot to add that he’s run over 484,000km! So close to the golden 500

Cheers

Bennie

[Subyroo]

Crikey! I could only rustle up 224,781kms in 13 years of owning my 2003 XS Forester.

[El_Freddo]

You’ll get there Subyroo! Basil has an extra ten years on your Subaru so “there’s still time”

For a long time now Basil sported some offroad expeditions with my sister, well one actually…

Late last year I tapped out the ding in the rear quarter that made him look way better even though he’s now got all the small little hammer marks from the inside if you really look at the bodywork. A week later I learned about a trick of putting a deflated basketball in the panelwork and inflating it. Bummer.

Anyway while at pick a part late last year I grabbed some parts to replace the story board that made him look like a real beater when viewing the LHS.

Decided to do it on the hottest day of the year so far, peak temp at 39°, under a tree on our street (no shed!) streaming the 2003 hottest 100 on double J that I missed yesterday. That helped the work in the heat! If I didn’t get stuck into it the work would continue to linger and possibly never get done.

I found some rust at the lower guard area behind the front wheel, not sure if this is normal for these models (also 20+ year old vehicle so it’s doing well!) but it turned out to be quite superficial after running the wire wheel over it and giving it several good coats of rust converter.

Here’s the before:



And after:



I had to swap the glass over due to the window tint. This task took ages as I basically had to strip the door to get it out. I swapped the external door handle over as well as it was missing the lock barrel and I didn’t like the look of it.

It’s 90% done now. Hanging the door, setting the door gaps and “tuning in” the stop point of the glass took a while. It all worked out well though.

What’s left to do now is replace a bit of wiring for the tweeter and swap that over to this door with the original door card as the other one was not the same style. The original speaker’s days are numbered too. It’s lost the outer support part that holds the cone to the outer ring. Both speakers were in the same condition. Still sounds ok, it won’t win a sound comp though.

Wiring looms were the same which was good and less work.

That’s it for now. Odometer is nearing the golden 500 with it being over the 494,000km mark now!

Cheers

Bennie

[Subyroo]

Bennie, sadly my Forester will never reach the kilometers anywhere near what "Basil" has achieved.
I swapped my Forester with my daughter, who later onsold it to a girlfriends son, last year he was t-boned and "Casper" was no more, he was written off.

I swapped over to a 2013 Honda CRV after the Forester, then a 2016 CRV and now an MY21 Honda HR-V with 110,000Kms on the clock after 3 years.

[Silverbullet]

Nice work Bennie keeping an older Subie alive. These and the early 2000's Foresters etc are the models turning up in droves recently at wrecking yards near me. At the end of their useful life or just the cost of a few spare parts to fix was more than the car is worth

High k's, a little rough round the edges, these are the cars for me I watch a few mechanics channels on YT and "just rolled in" is a great one for seeing the kind of catastrophic failures brand new cars can suffer for no apparent reason. Don't think I'll ever buy a new car, for myriad of reasons not just what might break. A car that you can fix yourself in the driveway (or in the street!) is a winner in my books.

[El_Freddo]

Subyroo apologies I locked in that your foz was a 2013 model, not a 2003 model with 13 years ownership. Sad ending but kind of good knowing where your car went, what happened to it and that it (I hope) saved its occupants in the T-bone incident that sent it to its grave.

SB, damn straight mate! I love older vehicles - this one has zero chimes etc and I’m yet to drive a vehicle that has so many “safety” features that it would be frustrating to drive. Case in point: my sister who owns Basil swapped her regular company car for another one told me tonight how it tries to correct her lane position and auto brakes in situations when the vehicle seems it necessary. She drives on country roads most of the time and one of our long practices is to hug the middle line or even keep a wheel over the middle line to give a buffer between you and any potential wildlife interaction. Her loan car doesn’t seem to like this!

Our mid-naughties Pajeros only hum at us if you leave the lights on with the ignition off - perfect for me.

The EJ251 is a great engine in my book once it’s got the MLS headgasket treatment sorted. It’s a fun engine in my book and pulls well for what it is. And in this case the factory engine nearing 500,000km is a good run I reckon!
My only gripe is the throttle sensitivity at light throttle in town or when moving through car parks - and when cold, it holds revs for several seconds before dropping back to idle or what you want in the next gear.

Small things, it’s still a good car to drive and I’m looking forward to the golden 500 and beyond, fingers crossed!

Cheers

Bennie

[Subyroo]

Subyroo apologies I locked in that your foz was a 2013 model, not a 2003 model with 13 years ownership. Sad ending but kind of good knowing where your car went, what happened to it and that it (I hope) saved its occupants in the T-bone incident that sent it to its grave.

Cheers

Bennie

Thanks Bennie, the young bloke got out of the T-boned foz with no injuries, the safety aspects of the Subaru were what attracted me above all in the first place.
Our first subie was a 2000 RX 2.5 AWD Liberty Sedan, boy that thing hugged the road, the salesman in Townsville took us out for a test drive and he threw it into a roundabout at 80k/hr and frightened the shitta out of the wife and I. Credit to his skills and the cars handling, there wasn't even the hint of twitch in the Subie, we were sold at that point.
The foz always was a little bit behind in the cornering stats, but still did an admirable job just the same. A lot of other cars (or their drivers) couldn't stay close in the twisties or through roundabouts.

[El_Freddo]

Well I finally got around to replacing the cam belt after leaving it far too long in pieces. Basil went back into service like nothing happened other than the trip meter resetting.

A wash and a refuel after work today had Basil sorted for the “big moment” when the odometer rolled over to this:



And Basil did it crusing like he did across MANY of those kms since our ownership - on the open country roads:



Back at home after surpassing the golden 500, looking good in my opinion for a Liberty that’s been through what this vehicle’s done!



Now to keep adding the kms, and tidy him up a bit more - like replacing the windscreen that’s copped a massive stone smash under the driver’s line of sight. “Little” things like that (and that’s the big one).

That’s all for now.

Cheers

Bennie

[Silverbullet]

Wow! Half a million! Gotta be happy with that. Highway k's really are the best thing for a car. Read about that newspaper delivery fella in NZ? with his 90's corolla wagon...10k km oil change every fortnight since 1996(?) or earlier. Still running like a swiss watch...mind wanders and wonders if a Subie could do that

[El_Freddo]

How the hell is he doing 10k km in a fortnight?? That’s not possible surely. The mind boggles as to how he paid for this and how it’s actually financially sustainable.

Seen the YouTube video about the million km brumby? It’s on my to watch list. I should get on to that actually.

Cheers

Bennie

[Subyroo]

How the hell is he doing 10k km in a fortnight?? That’s not possible surely.
Cheers

Bennie

I just ran those Km's through the calculator, he would need to be doing 712.285 kms per day on each and every trip.
10,000 / 14 = 714.285

Maybe, just maybe, they meant that he does the 10,000km oil change every fortnight, irrespective of km's traveled, the conditions may also dictate why he does it too. That way he ensures his oil and engine is in good condition and won't let him down.

[Silverbullet]

Heh well I just had to look it up again, I was slightly off, it's a 93' rolla he bought in 2000 with 80k km on the clock.

So close Subyroo, Wellington NZ to New Plymouth NZ google clocks at 354km one way, 708km round trip, 6 days a week for a total of 2 million kilometers on the odo

https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-co ... w-zealand/

[El_Freddo]

Well ol’ Basil is doing some weird stuff. Still plugging along with 506,000 km on the clock now.

First weird thing was: he didn’t start after sitting for four or five days - flat battery. No worries, a jump start sorted that out and he drive like normal to work and started like normal after work.

Next day, cold morning, flat battery. Jump start preorganised so I wasn’t late for work - I had to drop off at a store before work but didn’t think anything of that - the battery would be charged after a 30 min drive at crusing speed, no lights on, just the stez and the heater fan. Pulled up at the store, jumped out, store closed, jumped back in… flat battery. Ended up getting a jumpstart from another bloke that got me sorted.

End of the day, starts as normal. Ever since, not an issue. Got me baffled.

Yesterday halfway home and my indicators stopped working. Hazards flashed on the dashboard but without pulling over I had no way of knowing if they were working at the exterior lights. At home the no indicators but hazards worked. Tried indicators again, they worked for a little bit then didn’t. Put the hazards on for a minute, then tried indicators - they worked again!

Next day I drove the Brumby to let the Liberty think about itself. And today, Basil didn’t fault at any point! Started normally (hit the key for a turn or two, stop, hit it again and he fires up - if you don’t do this he cranks for a good 10 seconds before starting! EJ251 lyfe from what I’ve heard).

I haven’t done anything to the car other than park it up for a day.

Go figure. Hopefully these gremlins bugger off. I could be up for a new battery - it’s to be expected. But I wouldn’t think a lazy battery would take out the indicators like that while maintaining hazards.

That’s it for now. He just keeps going which is not surprising.

Cheers

Bennie

[Silverbullet]

That sounds like a frustrating saga, intermittent electrical gremlins are the worst!

Couple of questions;
Does Basil still have his factory original alternator? 500k km is a lot! And the brushes can and do wear out as I found out this year. Which leads into;
Have you measured the battery voltage with a multimeter at all during this saga? Engine running and not running? My worn out brushes showed up as low/no charging voltage with engine running regardless of revs. I keep a ciga-socket voltmeter plugged in at all times, very handy for situations like this.
I'm sure you already know but, a car battery is "flat" at 12.0v. Full is 12.6v. Engine running should be more than 13v, ideally around 14.5v with a healthy alternator. This reading should also be stable with different engine revs. If it changes then the voltage reg is probably bad.

Next I would be checking for parasitic draw (multimeter again, engine off) dunno if that gen of Liberty still uses separate flasher cans but if one/both of them causes a random drain, battery voltage then goes too low to start. Also they could be playing up because of the low voltage. Old fasioned flashers depend on amps/current for the flasher mechanism to work. Low volts can make cars do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Below 12v all bets are off!

You'd hate to spend the coin on a new battery, only for the alternator to be bad and damage the new battery. While they still work at 12.0v and below, the batteries life is shortened if you keep using it below this.

[El_Freddo]

Sorry for the delay in reply Silverbullet.

You are correct in your assumptions of the alternator. I suspected this could be the issue. Earlier this week I had to grab some grey silicone before school - and installed Basil in the middle of the carpark when trying to reverse park him so I could maybe do a push start if the battery wasn’t up for it like the previous time. Well he wouldn’t start.

So my single item purchase ballooned out with the addition of a new battery. That got me going really well. I’m not convinced the old battery is dead-dead yet.

Move forward a couple of days and all was running well - until jumping in and firing up ol’ Basil - he started awesome as he does now with the new battery, but the battery light and brake warning lights were still on. About 200m up the road they were gone but came back anbout 2km later and stayed on for the rest of the 35 minute/40km drive home.

So that’s on the to-do list this weekend - replace the alternator with one on the shelf in the shed. Hopefully that’ll sort the alternator issue out. I’ll probably drop the old battery back in and see what happens. I’ll carry the new one with me just incase I get stuck again.

I reckon 500,000km from what I think is the factory alternator is pretty good!

That’ll be it for a while now I hope. I need to decide if I sink some coin in a replacement windscreen, new rear tyres and reseating the cam covers to prepare Basil for a RWC and sale. I can’t bring myself to just sell him for cheap, he’s a solid and reliable vehicle with many kms left in him.

Cheers

Bennie

[El_Freddo]

Replaced the Alternator for another one I had in the shed.

No more battery light. Winning.

*waits for what’s next*

Cheers

Bennie