Foenix Forester
This is my son's first car. A 2006 Subaru Forester X Luxury. He bought it when he was just about to get his licence a couple of years ago and has driven it on excursions, often fishing related, around Victoria. I have driven it more than a few times and found it to be quite suitable.
Unfortunately, in early February, some miscreants decided to blitz our small seaside village and steal cars. It is somewhat unusual for them to take such an old car, but they did in broad daylight. It was recovered a few days later, but the engine had been thrashed.
Joshua is naturally somewhat disaffected by all of this and has since replaced the car with a Nissan Navarra.
I have taken this on, because I do not want the end of the story to be that the car was destroyed by these people. Over the years, I have often thought about restoring a car but have been discouraged by my lack of mechanical knowledge or ability and more recently, after the crash I was in last year, by a reluctance to drive anything pre-2000 on a public road.
In an effort to turn a negative into a positive, Samuel and I have sourced another Forester of a similar vintage, but with a less well appointed body, and are going to perform a transplant. Given the donor car is manual, which is our preference, we are going to basically remove the engine, overhaul it and then transplant all the running gear into this one, thereby resurrecting it as a manual, off road camping vehicle.
No idea how long it will take, but Samuel has done a couple of engine swaps in other cars, so hopefully we will be done by spring.
I will document the project at my blog, msavageesq.blogspot.com
Foenix Forester
This is my son's first car. A 2006 Subaru Forester X Luxury. He bought it when he was just about to get his licence a couple of years ago and has driven it on excursions, often fishing related, around Victoria. I have driven it more than a few times and found it to be quite suitable.
Unfortunately, in early February, some miscreants decided to blitz our small seaside village and steal cars. It is somewhat unusual for them to take such an old car, but they did in broad daylight. It was recovered a few days later, but the engine had been thrashed.
Joshua is naturally somewhat disaffected by all of this and has since replaced the car with a Nissan Navarra.
I have taken this on, because I do not want the end of the story to be that the car was destroyed by these people. Over the years, I have often thought about restoring a car but have been discouraged by my lack of mechanical knowledge or ability and more recently, after the crash I was in last year, by a reluctance to drive anything pre-2000 on a public road.
In an effort to turn a negative into a positive, Samuel and I have sourced another Forester of a similar vintage, but with a less well appointed body, and are going to perform a transplant. Given the donor car is manual, which is our preference, we are going to basically remove the engine, overhaul it and then transplant all the running gear into this one, thereby resurrecting it as a manual, off road camping vehicle.
No idea how long it will take, but Samuel has done a couple of engine swaps in other cars, so hopefully we will be done by spring.
I will document the project at my blog, msavageesq.blogspot.com