Learning the Hard Way
I collected it without arranging a tow, which tells you how well I had thought this through. It made it out of the yard and then started pouring thick white smoke, and the plan changed on the spot.
White smoke means oil or coolant is getting somewhere it should not be and burning. In this case the turbocharger had failed. A turbo spins on a film of pressurised oil at speeds that do not bear thinking about, and when it goes, it takes its own lubrication with it.
I had it towed to a friend's apartment car park, because at that point I did not have anywhere to put a broken car. That is where I fitted the replacement turbo, on concrete, with whatever tools I had and rather more patience than skill. Then I made the expensive mistake: I did not prime the oil system properly before the first start, and the new turbo spun up dry. It destroyed itself within seconds.
There is a category of error you only ever make once, and that is where this one lives.
Meanwhile life kept moving. I changed houses mid repair and drove the car across town in the middle of the night to finish the job at the new place.
Once it was right, it was excellent. Genuinely good to drive, endlessly practical, and its value went up sharply during lockdown, when I had fitted a towbar just in time to spend weeks shifting furniture with it. Eventually I sold it because I needed a MacBook.
It has one more claim though. It was the car Ryo first learned to drive in, which is why another Forester joined the family later.
It was the least convenient car I have owned and comfortably the one that taught me the most, and I suspect those two facts are the same fact.
