Loscaldazar

Well my story about the 2003 2.5XS starts with my crash of my 1998 Forester L (full story here). The next day (Sunday) I scanned online auto sale sights and Craigslist. I ended up narrowing down my choices to a 2007 with 100,000 miles, a fully loaded 2006 with almost 200,000 miles, and a 2003 with 75,000 miles. Then on Monday I went and looked at the first two and was extremely disappointed with the interiors of both and then while looking at the 2007 they had a different 2003 there that I tried (which was fine and had a good interior but was the same price with more miles and the other 2003 I was going to look at).

So I called up the person who had put up the Craigslist ad for the 2003 I had seen online. I asked when a good time to stop by was, and he responded that someone would be coming to look at it in just a few hours. I ran up there and took a look at the car and drove it. The drive was great (even though the last time I had driven a manual I was 12!). The interior was in good condition, but the leather was dirty and so was the carpeting. There was dirt and things in all the switches and also in the leather shifter and handbrake surround. It was a great find for 2,000 under KBB value. I also got a 5yr/100,000 mile warranty (which payed for itself a few weeks later with a HG repair, and I still have 5 years left!). After I bought it, I spent roughly 10 hours cleaning the interior and restored it to near pristine condition. Now my modding starts!

Here are some pictures with only Hella Twin Superhorns Installed.

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Table of Contents

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

good dog

Reserved for comments on pictures still waiting to appear.

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2008 2.5XS 4EAT

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Hella Supertones Install
Careful with the clips on the grille, they tend to break! Not much to this install, besides when taking out the old horns, it helps to bend them back in order to get to the bolts that hold them on! Also for those wondering, the Horns are positively feed (so use the 1b or 2b wiring diagram that comes with the horns). You need to run 1 wire from the old horn wires (so splice into those) and run it to the relay provided. Then you need a ground from the relay to the Chassis, then a wire to the positive terminal on the battery from the relay, and finally a wire from the relay to the horns, and make sure to ground the horns too! I just bolted the horns onto the metal support that runs down the center of the grille.

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Exhaust Tip-really nothing to this. Slide on and tighten a bolt and your good to go. Gives a nice look to the exhaust and changes the exhaust ever so slightly, making it burble and rumble a bit more. Looks way better than just the exhaust pipe too!

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Another straight forward mod, take out the old and wire in the new. The radio came with a plastic frame that didn't fit, so I threw it out. You have to buy an adapter harness and splice all the wires, but really besides the splicing everything just plugs in. There is a built in ground on the frame that the Head Unit attaches to. I used this to ground.

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

And now for one of favorite mods I have done so far. Rally Armor Mud Flaps! They just look epic! I didn't have time to take any dedicated pictures so I pulled it out a few feet and snapped a few and then parked it and took another (for those wondering why there is a Suburban parked sideways in the back of our garage, we park 5 vehicles in our 3 car garage....).



Count how many Subaru's are in this picture!


Here is the Suburban Sideways.


One thing to note for anyone thinking about doing this is that the bolts holding on your current mudflaps will be rusted badly (especially if you live in a state that uses salt!). All of them snapped off except for one that looked to have been replaced recently. This meant I had to pry off the nut/clip things on the car with a needle nose. Also means I have to run to the dealership to grab two more of these clips and bolts to fully secure my flaps on.


Also there is a lot of dirt behind the old mudflaps that I scraped out (this is from behind just one mudflap).

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

A while ago I upgraded my brake fluid to ATE Superblue which firmed up the pedal and the change in braking feel is excellent.


I Also just today changed out my power steering fluid (which came out a light brown color) and put in new fluid which was a bright red. I just used some Valvoline Dexron.



Now when I did this I just sucked out the old fluid with a hand vac


Then refilled the reservoir, turned the steering wheel from lock to lock 10 times, and repeated several times. Say you take 50% of the old fluid out every time so first refill you are at 50% new, 2nd 75% new, third 87.5% new, 4th 93.75% new, 5th 96.875%, 6th 98.4375%, 7th 99.21875%, 8th 99.609375%, 9th 99.8046875%, 10th 99.9023435%. Overkill on the number of times, but oh well. Steering feels heavier but more precise.

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Wednesday was a huge snow storm, so with school canceled I went out and got some coffee and drove around. Just a few pictures of stuck vehicles.



These were just the ones I got while sitting at one stop light. Saw several other vehicles, a RAV4 way, way into the ditch and swamp area surrounding the highway, A new Jeep Grand Cherokee stuck going out of it's driveway, 2 Nissan Altima's (one of which I stopped and pushed out of the mound of snow at an intersection from the snowplows. I tried some donuts in a parking lot, but the snow proved to be too deep for fun. I ended up getting stuck off video, but thirty seconds of digging allowed me to reverse out just fine. This was all done on all-season tires.

And at the end of the day, My Fozzie


Overall a great day

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

A while ago I ordered some weather tech mats, and put them in. I have absolutely loved them, because as you can see, they are rubber buckets that hold everything the gets in them. They digitally scan the inside of the vehicle and then make mats to fit in, so you get excellent protection! I have ones in the rear too, but didn't get the cargo area mat as I already had the factory one. These mats fit tightly but still leave a gap around the edge of the mat and the raised sides of the floor.


This has helped keep the forester way cleaner! I haven't had any problems with the pedals catching on the mat either .

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Now onto what I was doing on my Friday night! Installing a Subwoofer. I decided to go for the Kenwood KSC-SW10 unit. This has a built in amplifier so this make life much easier. First off this kit comes with way too much wire, as in enough to plug this into the front of a Suburban and put this sub in the trunk with plenty of wire to spare (and it's an under the seat sub). Needless to say I trimmed off a lot of the wire and cut off all but 8in of the Gray and white wires (they are supposed to be wired into your speakers, that is if you don't have an RCA input on your headunit!).

Extra wire left over, doesn't seem like much here.

But now stretched out... (that is a 4runner for reference).

I ended up cutting all of these wires to make them shorter, and ended up re-splicing together many the wires underneath the trim panel by the handbrake.

If you don't have RCA inputs, the gray and white wires are nicely split into 4 inputs already to make life easier. The blue with white strip wire also is split into two (so you can hook it up to the power antennae cable and then hook another sub or amp without having to splice a second time. If you do have a RCA input, just cut most of these wires off.


Ok the actual install now. First I ran the yellow power cord through a grommet that also has, I think, the accelerator cable

I ran it under the edge of the carpet until I reached the center dash and pushed it up there.

I then trimmed it and spliced it back together with the wire coming from the sub. Easy enough.

Second I grounded the sub using the black wire. I didn't have to trim this one since it way shorter than the other wires. There is a nice clip on the end of the ground wire that fits perfectly around a small stud, however I cut this off and spliced the Sub ground into my ground for my Head unit and it worked excellently.

Next came the Blue with white wire. This attaches to the blue and white wire from my Head unit. The wire from the head unit is for a power antennae or amp, so just like when you turn your radio on and the power antennae goes up, when your radio turns on the sub starts drawing power from the battery. The nice thing about this wire is that it has two places that you can splice into the wire from the Head unit. That is so you can easily plug in another sub or amp with the blank plug that will be left over. Much like how the gray and white speaker tap wires looked above.

Last, the easiest wire of them all, the RCA cable. Plug the RCA cables that came with the sub into the sub, grab yourself some male to male RCA cable (2ft is plenty) and plug the RCA cable into the back of your Head unit. The nice thing about the Head unit I have (JVC KWHDR720, very nice HU) is that it has RCA ports for two sub woofers. I could easily plug in another sub (and I would have to do power, ground and power antennae cable, plus there is the pre-wired plug for the factory sub, hehe 3 subs with no problem). I'll stick to one for now though .

Here is the actual Sub

It is quite small as you can tell by this picture.

Wiring in the back of the Sub.

Under the seat.


Now there are some metal pieces that screw onto the sub that lift in a few millimeters off the ground that, according the manual, help cool the amp by allowing a little air underneath it. So I put em on whether or not it actually does anything.

Last thing is the remote that allows you to control the sub. I mounted it by my heated seat buttons with some velcro.
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I didn't trim this cord either, but it also is really long. It reaches to my trunk with room to spare, which means combined with the remote for my Head unit I can have fun in the trunk and still control my music.....
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How about sound? Well at low volume (ie 9-10 out of 50 on my Head unit) the bass sounds slightly flat when the sub is cranked up all the way with the remote, so you might want to adjust using the remote at low volumes. At slightly louder volumes (15+) the sound is dead on when the sub is full blast. For the size of this thing, the sub is incredibly powerful, loud enough to hurt your ears if you want! This is an excellent sub and recommend it to all who want an under the seat sub! It's incredible! Jammin' in my car time!

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Well I did this mod a while ago, but never had the time to write it up until now. So here we go!

I installed three Prosport Gauges- Water Temperature, Oil Temperature, and Oil Pressure. I also ordered with them the oil filter ring (with room for up to 4 gauges, attaches above oil filter) and the coolant hose housing.



First thing I did was wire in the wiring harness except for one wire. Note I did use black wire for all of my wiring, and just labeled which wire was which. I also spliced all the red, orange, white and blacks wires to each respective wire (so all three grounds together, and one wire going away from them to ground, one wire spliced into 12V ACC in the socket, with all three red wires spliced into it etc) except for the green wires because they hook up to their respective information senders.
Red- ACC 12v power, hooked to the 12v socket by the ash tray (red wire going into the outlet)
White- ACC 12v power, hooked into an unconnected power source (shown in pictures below)
Orange-spliced into violet wire behind foglight button (turns the gauge a different color when headlights are turned on/off)
Black-Ground
Green-To Information Sender

For the white and orange, I had to take apart the plastic piece that surrounds the fog light/wiper defrost/cruise control button. 2 Screws on the bottom, and it pops right out.

White Wire spliced into an unused 12v ACC power cord.


Orange wire spliced into Violet wire behind fog light switch.


Overview of both.


The ground is pretty self explanatory, I hooked it into the ground for my radio, and the red wire I spliced into the red wire of the 12v outlet next to the ashtray.

Next thing I did was the physical installation of the senders. Really nothing to this. For the oil pressure/temperature senders, the oil filter adapter from Prosport just screws in, and you screw in the temperature sender and the pressure sender, and 2 bolts that come with it into the open blanks. Install the senders and bolts before putting in on your car! It take a lot of force to get them in till they don't leak anymore and use teflon tape (both unlike me). I did manage to get all of them tightened enough, except for one, to stop leaking. The one that does leak has leaked roughly 3-4 drops (I'm being dead serious) over 800 miles. Not bad, but still preventable and next oil change I will be redoing this part of the install.

Here is the adapter.


Adapter installed and wired in.


Wiring was simple. Two grounds (one for the temp sender and one for the pressure sender) and two separate wires to go back to their respective green wire in the cabin and gauge to send information.

Next was the water temperature. First take the adapter, and put Teflon tape on the temp sensor (don't get any on the end of it, only the threads). This one I had learned on and used Teflon tape, and installed it on tightly before putting it in the car. No looks at all. Take off the upper radiator hose (and if you don't want to drain the entire radiator to do this, place plastic shopping bags under the hose to catch the coolant contained in the hose), and find the longest, straightest part of it you can find. Don't try to cut the hose in the car, it will only make life more difficult for you. Make some marks with a sharpie and cut it using a power saw (I used a table saw). Then put the water hose adapter in and use tighten the circular metal bands (forgot what they are actually called ) and make sure that they are tight (use a socket wrench, not a screw driver) and that the bands are place in the middle of the metal that goes inside the hose. Reinstall the hose!

Adapter

Installed and wired in. Wiring for this was ground the radiator hose adapter, and ground the temperature sensor, then one wire to the respective green wire in the cabin to send info.


I routed all these wires into the cabin by poking a whole through a rubber grommet behind the air intake (specifically behind the torque box).


Now all of these gauges were going to be mounted in the center console, in the OEM factory gauge pod housing (same one used for the GPS system that came in these early models). The current storage unit and clock (06+ people must leave the clock plugged in for their airbags to work properly, so leave it plugged in but you can leave it back in the dark recesses) are easy enough to remove, with 2 clips in the front that release easily enough with a dash removal tool. Then it just pulls out and all the other clips will let go.


Gauges installed!

And video!

Of course, now I went back and covered up all the wires with split loom and made sure to secure the wires in places where they would not melt. Also makes the engine bay look a lot cleaner using the split loom vs. random wires all over.



Looks so much better than just plain wires down there! And I ran out of black electrical tape and had to use green in two spots... that will be changed to all black as soon as I get some....





And done!

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Tweeters were extremely easy to install, the old corner pieces just pull out, they have 3 plug type clips to hold them in.


Pulled them out and


Now these cars are prewired for tweeter and you can see the electrical wire and plugs in that last picture.

Side by side of old covers vs. tweeter covers.


The actual tweeter.


You plug the tweeter into the wires, push it into the holes left by the old cover, and the new speaker covers attaches to the tweeter. Dreadfully simple and takes 5 minutes.

Tweeters installed.


And Done!

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal

Loscaldazar

Thread Starter

Now for a month or so I have had an exhaust rattle that makes itself known every time I start the car, and then sometimes even at idle I could hear it rattling. So today I jacked up the rear, and put it on jack stands, and took a look. This is what I found.


The heat shield had rusted itself and the nut punched through it and let it flap around and hit my exhaust, very irritating . So I got another nut, and the biggest washer I had on hand that wouldn't slip over the nut, and tightened it up till it stopped rattling. Blessed silence!


Only a temporary fix till the rust hole expands, but enough time for me to decide what to do.

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2003 Forester 2.5XS Mod Journal