LameRandomName

Switch over at the 12 or 15 thousand mile oil change.

I don't think the WR's are as good as the NRW's were. I also have a set of Hakk 10's in 235/75-15 that I have run on both a Trooper I used to own, and my Carice. For the Forester, I think I'm going to go to a mud tire in the smallest size I can get. I think the BFG 215/70-15 will fit.

Miles - My Forester is for transportation. The only mod IT gets is an aftermarket oil filtration system. I have a real car for my hotrod antics. :-p

Drew - Personally, I like the Anco winter blades. They DO have a tendancy to try to lift at high speeds, although for reasons I don't fully understand, that lessens as they age. But most importantly, you live in NY and winter is coming.

Well, if I got an outback, I would definitely get the H6. Frankly, that would be my main motivation for going to outback. I don't really like the outback on looks because it's too "stationwagony" and I have a tendency to smack my head on the roofline while getting in. To tell the truth, I might decide I'm better off with a volvo xc90, but the problem with that is that repair costs tend to go up. Not because they're unreliable, but because european parts and labor tend to be higher than on japanese and american vehicles.

Tell me about what the H6 is like to live with. Drivability, performance, how it compares to the H4, etc... All information is appreciated and anything you can throw in about the 4wd system on those cars and/or about VDC is appreciated as well.

I was back at the dealership today and i was talaking with the mechanics about this. They confirmed that when those cars first arrive they are not "set up" properly and they have to go through a process that includes an adjustment to the computer program that lets the car make proper power. I gather they keep it in a "limp home" mode of some type. Why? I don't know. I could speculate, but so can everyone else so I wont bother. So it's NOT the automatic transimission. And miles... I know you THINK that what you posted is some sort of conclusive proof of something, but all it proves is that you're likely to go through parts quickly. And the auto was an afterthought? Puhleeez. NUFF SAID

Does it really? Well, learn something new every day. The only thing I know for sure is that when a friend and I tested our Foresters on a snowy day last winter, after switching back and forth between cars we both agreed that the auto did much better in the snow and that the stick car (mine) was much more prone to swinging out.

Next year, when I'm ready to buy one, I'm going to do another test drive, of both. Thing is, if the auto in a properly tuned car is still slow like that (although I don't expect it to be) I wont buy one. I have discovered that the manual version does NOT do as well in the snow as the auto. The 50/50 split that you have with a stick is inferior to the variable split the auto has and tends to make the rear end want to come around for a visit, especially in fresh snow. And since I'm a skier....

The point i am trying to make is the gearing diffrences between the auto and manule which is a big diffrence will affect the feel of the car and how fast it is. Do you understand that I am talking about a two and one half second difference? Dragsterauto trannies, which arnt alaways used are super built trannies that share little with a typical auto. There are a number of different transmissions used in drag racing because there are dozens of different classes. The most common transmissions in drag racing are in the Bracket classes, and THOSE actually are regular street transmissions modified for higher horsepower applications. F1 uses autos, but there not like the one in my moms legacy. This has nothing to do with F1, or for that matter the NHRA. This is about a car that is SUPPOSED to run in the high 13's but actually drove like a 16 second car, and there is no way in HELL that an auto tranny is going to acount for that much difference. I am perfectly willing to believe that there was a problem with THIS PARTICULAR car, but the notion that "it felt slow because it was an automatic" is really just too stupid for words. I've been drag racing since the Reagan administration and i was running a 9 second camaro back when you could still buy a new Brat off the showroom floor. I'm TELLING you that this car was SLOW. Period.

Two things... * The auto doesn't lose boost during shifts. However, I'm not going to argue that point more than I already have. * The car I drive didn't "feel" slow, it WAS slow and it wasn't because of the automatic tranny. Folks, you really have to get past your blind worship of manual transmissions. And the worst automatic in the world won't knock 2.5 seconds off the time of a stick car.

Back pressure AFTER the turbo is a bad thing. You want to have just enough pressure to keep the gases moving, because if you dump them into too big a plenum (exhaust pipe) they'll use up all their energy expanding to fill the volume instead of moving down the pipe and out. Which is why it's best to decrease the pipe diameter as you get closer to the tail pipe. (Another application of the same principle can be seen in one of those buildings done in the style where the air conditioning ducts are exposed, like at the mall. Next time you're there, look up and you'll see the pipe necking down as it gets further away from the main junction.)

Excuse me? I'M getting closer? :-\ Look... I don't need to click on a link to understand how turbochargers work, and I'm not going to sit here and mince semantics with you. Nothing personal, I'm just too old to be playing with my blood pressure like that. FLOW does not make boost, PRESSURE does, and the more intake pressure you want to make the more exhaust pressure you have to build. TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The rate at which pressure builds at any given RPM (Lag) is directly related to the total area between the exhaust manifold and the face of the impeller, which is why small turbos make boost faster and big turbos boost slower. FLOW is a function of PRESSURE. The higher the pressure in any given plenum, the more flow though that plenum. A garden hose at 10psi will flow more water than the same hose at 5psi. Don't believe me? Put a pressure meter on the engine side of your turbo and watch the pressure in the exhaust maniold increase in lock step with the pressure in your intake manifold.

You're confusing manifold back-pressure with exhaust back-pressure. When the exhaust leaves the head and enters the manifold, it travels to the face of the exhaust side impeller. If the pressure inside that area isn't high enough it will just flow through the face of the impeller without imparting any meaningful energy to it. Once the back-pressure in the exhaust manifold has built up high enough, it will overcome the inertia of the impeller and make it start to spin. On the other side of the turbo, the other impeller is trying to compress the air in the intake manifold. Now, while you can play with impeller sizes, there is still no such thing as a free lunch, and the higher you want the intake manifold pressure to be, the higher the back pressure in the exhaust manifold has to be. If we did as you suggested and stuck a cork in the tailpipe, the engine wouldn't run because while the turbo is driven by pressure, not flow, the gasses still have to go somewhere after they pass through the exhaust impeller.

Let me try to rephrase this so that you can better understand what I'm saying: Assuming you had two turbocharged cars, one with a stick and one with an auto, and all the gears in the transmission AND the rear end were the same, then the car with an automatic would acellerate faster than the car with the stick., because the car with the automatic would conserve manifold pressure while the car with the stick would not AND the extra torque multiplication of the automatic would make up for the pumping losses.

A turbocharger works on exhaust back-pressure, not exhaust flow. The smaller a turbo is, the faster backpressure builds up enough to spin the impeller. The bigger the turbo, the higher the engine has to rev before it if pushing out enough exhaust to create backpressure. When I use the word "spinning" in this context, I don't mean any spinning, I mean spinning fast enough to create pressure in the intake that is higher than normal atmospheric pressure. Once a turbo begins spinning it creates it creates pressure in the intake tract. If the exhaust pressure suddenly drops, as during shifts with a manual transmission, the intake pressure acts as a brake on the impeller, dragging it's speed down very rapidly. With an automatic transmission the exhaust backpressure is preserved and you don't create "mini-lags" with each shift. Now, you could abuse your car by shifting without using the clutch, but unless you have a race type tranny with dog teeth, you're likely to start breaking things very quickly, and you're not even guaranteed that you will be able to get it into the next gear without an appreciable delay. Since a human being cannot shift as fast as a manual transmission (although many people are incorrectly convinced they can), than all things being equal, a turbocharged car with an auto tranny should always accellerate more rapidly than one with a standard. Of course, in the real world, things are never really equal. HOWEVER... An automatic transmission won't add 2.5 seconds to your quarter mile time. It won't even add 2.5 tenths. Auto transmissions, even power hogs like a THM400, simply don't eat that much horsepower. And as far as a standard tranny being able to get into the so called "fat spot", automatic transmission ALWAYS make for better, more controlled launch. With an auto, you rev the engine against the brakes until you reach the stall point, then you "flash" it to a higher RPM by slamming down the gas pedal an instant before you release the brake pedal. That means that the entire powetrain and chassis is already pre-loaded, which is what gives you a better, more controlled launch.

OK, quicker. A turbocharged engine should be quicker with an auto than with a stick.

99 - The salesman was trying to tell me that the car might not be as fast as it should be because it hasn't been tuned yet. Honestly, I don't know. The only thing I'm certain of is that the XT that I drove would probably run in the 16's.

I'm trying to decide how I want to answer this question. You do know how a turbocharger works, right?

Yes. And actually, a turbocharged motor should be FASTER with an auto.

Auto. But, taking a guess at what you may be getting at, it wasn't slow because of the auto.

The check engine light was flashing rapidly and the salesman said that the car hadn't been through some sort of preparation process yet. I dunno about all that. But I'll tell you this... The power increase was noticable, especially at highway speeds, and the cruise control wasn't practically useless the way it is in my 2000 Forester, but that ain't no 13.8 second 1/4 mile car. I doubt it's even in the 15's.

Seems to me that the DL I owned 20 years ago had round headlights. At least I think it did...

What heated seat kit? Are you implying that I could buy the factory heated seat hardware and install it myself? I'd like to know about that too.

The rear end likes to come around for a visit on the manual transmission models, especially in fresh snow. I suspect the 50/50 TQ split that you have with the manual tranny is mostly to blame.