Subie Scoop - August 24

[00:00:06] Hello and welcome to another edition of the Subie & YOU!. I hope you had a great weekend. For those of you that went to Overland Expo Mountain West in Loveland, Colorado, I hope you all had a really great weekend. I saw some posts from people, stories and reels, and it looks like it was a really good time. And I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it. I wish I could have, but that's okay.

[00:00:33] Because I'm thankful that I was able to go to West and P&W. And I'm happy for those people that were able to go. So everybody deserves a chance to experience Overland Expo. So we had a good weekend, and we had a weekend where we did some car repairs. My son Luke's Outback had a...

[00:00:55] We were told that his wheel hub was a little bit loose, and it felt a little bit loose. So we wanted to make sure and get that replaced. So I went to my cousin's house where he has a covered driveway, which is really nice. He also has a really nice jack. He has basically all the tools that we would need. The only thing that he doesn't... He has all these tools, and the only thing he doesn't have is he doesn't have a torque wrench. So I ended up going to get a torque wrench, and he split it with me, which was really nice.

[00:01:24] And I'm just going to leave it at his house, because I have one at home. I just forgot to bring it with me. But anyway, he also has an impact wrench, which came in very, very handy. So that was very helpful. But I did some of the work, but Luke did the majority of the work himself. I think it's really cool that he is learning how to work on his car. Of course, it's nice if you have a car that you don't have to work on.

[00:01:51] But even though he's had some issues with it, I've told him, like, if he didn't ever have any issues with his car, he wouldn't learn how to do anything. So we've replaced his axle on the passenger side because the boot got messed up, and it was slinging oil everywhere. So we replaced that. We've replaced the AC discharge hose. We put a skid plate on, which, of course, that's not a big deal, but as far as, like, repairs.

[00:02:18] And then we... So this time, we were doing the hub on the passenger side front. And technically, it's not really that hard. Like, it's not a difficult thing to do. It's just trying to move stuff out of the way, get the axle out. And, like, it's a lot of just physical, hard physical work sometimes. Just getting stuff to move where it needs to move. That's the hardest part.

[00:02:44] And when I bought my car, there's no way I would have ever thought, even for the first few years, it wasn't until, like, the last couple of years that I would have thought that I would be doing work like that myself. Of course, I never thought that I would have to do anything like that. But it's much better if you can do it yourself because you save a lot of money on labor. And if you feel confident that you can do it, take everything apart and put everything back together properly,

[00:03:12] of course, that's the important part. I've heard people having to, like, take a hammer and having a really hard time getting their wheel hub off. And I think it's mostly, maybe it's people that live, like, in the northeast where you have a lot of snow and rust and everything like that. Thankfully, his hub came off pretty easily. So we were able to get it off, get the other one back on, get everything put back together, took it for a test drive, and everything was good.

[00:03:41] And he was able to make it home. So it's nice, again, to be able to work on your own car if you can and then save a lot of money in labor costs because it's not easy and it's not fun to pay for labor sometimes. Now, if I just had the money to have somebody else do it, of course I would because it's a lot easier. But again, doing this work ourselves, we're learning stuff about his car and just kind of cars in general

[00:04:09] and doing things we didn't think that we would be doing. I've seen people do a lot of stuff on their own on their cars, you know, posting stuff that they're doing on Instagram, changing their axles, changing their lower control arm, changing out their whole engine or their transmission. And just mad respect for everybody and anybody that can do their own work like that. My car just recently rolled over 149,000 miles and I'm still on the OEM clutch.

[00:04:36] And I need to start looking into getting the parts for that. And because I don't want it to like go out and not be prepared already. That is something that I would love to do myself. I just I don't have a place to do it. So I'm going to have to take it to a shop and have a shop do it, unfortunately. Unfortunate in the sense that I'm going to have to pay quite a bit of money to have that done.

[00:05:02] But also fortunately that, you know, I'll have it done by Subaru technicians who know what they're doing. And I will trust that everything will be put back together properly and that it'll be good. So that's the fortunate part. So we're nearing the end of August. September is coming up, which means that Boxer Fest is coming up near the end of September. And if you want to show up with some new Subaru gear, you can go to SubaruGear.com.

[00:05:31] Get a new hat, get a new shirt, maybe a backpack, maybe a, you know, crossbody bag or something for Boxer Fest. And right now is the perfect time to order that stuff because it should be able to get shipped to you in plenty of time before the event. You don't want to wait too long. And you can save money on Subaru gear. You can use the code SUBINU2026 to get 20% off your purchase. You can purchase a single item and save 20% or you can fill up your cart and save 20% off your whole cart.

[00:06:00] And if your total is over $50 after the 20% discount, then you'll get free shipping as well. So it's a really, really great deal. So be sure to take advantage of that. Thank you so much, Subaru Gear, for sponsoring the SUBINU podcast. That's about all I have this week for the SUBINU Scoop. I have another episode, another guest episode scheduled to record this week so that next Monday you will have a guest episode to listen to.

[00:06:27] So be sure to tune in next Monday for another guest episode. And it is somebody, again, that I have met in person. And I've actually seen this person twice, which is really cool because they don't live anywhere near me. It was on a trip that I've been to twice that I was able to meet this person. And now I'm going to have them on the podcast. So I'm excited for that. Thank you so much for tuning in to another edition of the SUBINU Scoop.

[00:06:53] I hope you have a wonderful week and get out there and do Subaru things. Much SUBINU love. Raph.