BEHIND THE WHEEL: There is no need of getting yourself a Subaru if it is not turbocharged

Subaru Forester. I want to buy a Subaru Forester. Which one should I go for, the turbo or non-turbo. How good is the Forester in your honest opinion. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • With the Forester, you might as well just buy a RAV4,it is more spacious; or a CRV, it is smoother and fancier; or an X-Trail, if you like Nissans and CVTs.
  • If you want a Subaru, go turbo; leave the meatless, asinine naturally aspirated diet for brands with no rally pedigree.

Dear Baraza,

I want to buy a Subaru Forester. Which one should I go for, the turbo or non-turbo. How good is the Forester in your honest opinion. Should I go for it?

Tarig 

 

Hello Tari,

I have said it before and I will say it again: there is no need to buy a Subaru if it is not turbocharged. With the Forester, you might as well just buy a RAV4, it is more spacious; or a CRV, it is smoother and fancier; or an X-Trail, if you like Nissans and CVTs. If you want a Subaru, go turbo; leave the meatless, asinine, naturally aspirated diet for brands with no rally pedigree.

 

Hello Baraza,

This might not sit well with you and with the traffic authorities. It’s a paradox, like discouraging your teenage son from sports betting when you know it could lift your household out of poverty. Coasting, driving in neutral over a long slope, does it save fuel? I know it’s unsafe, blah blah blah, but, when the car is in gear, foot off the gas pedal, 100km/h, rpm is 1800. When coasting, it is half that. Is low rpm not fuel saved? Donald Mutinda

 

Hi Donald,

The advice I give here and the recommendations made by the authorities are not for our own good but yours. Whether or not your counterpoint sits well with us is largely irrelevant, and it cannot be compared to the slippery hit-and-miss slope that is gambling, unless we both concede that choosing to disregard the advice proffered amounts to gambling with your welfare.

So now I guess from your description that you must have read one of my early articles in which I outlined the pitfalls of relying solely on gravity rather than torque for motion like a runaway wheelbarrow, and I briefly brought up the issue of engine management in support of my assertive treatise that coasting saves no more fuel than rolling downhill in gear; if anything, staying in gear saves more fuel. This is how:

Most modern engines come with complex electronic management systems working in conjunction with an array of sensors to optimise performance and economy in the best possible ratio, given the circumstances. There are load sensors that can tell whether the engine is working or not, and these sensors feed data to the ECU in real time, allowing it to adjust air-fuel ratios and valve/cam operations (where so equipped) depending on demand.

When going downhill in gear with the throttle closed, the load sensors can tell that there is reverse load, i.e the car is driving the engine, rather than the engine driving the car. To maximize economy, the ECU then temporarily shuts off the injectors to provide engine braking without grinding the vehicle to a halt. How much engine braking is available depends on the gear you are in: the higher the gear, the higher the speed at which the compression resistance will cap forward motion. But remember that the injectors are offline, so no fuel is going into the engine in the zero/reverse load situation. You are using zero fuel, so your instantaneous miles per gallon are infinite. Compare this to coasting downhill in neutral, where the engine is idling. The engine is using a bit of fuel to stay on.

With EFI systems, engine rpm plays second fiddle as far as consumption is concerned since the air:fuel ratios are determined by the load sensors anyway, unlike old carburetor systems where the AFRs were mostly stoichiometric, with only small wiggle room for high-speed circuits which shot consumption figures skywards. This means that coasting as a technique in miserliness only works for outdated engines.

*Question: which vehicle is this that does 100km/h at only 1800rpm? Is it a diesel engine? It must have one hell of an overdrive ratio in its transmission/driveline...

 

Hello Baraza,

Always grateful for your enlightening information on motoring.

Three years ago, I asked you whether I could  maintain a car on  a salary of Sh16,000 p/m. You roasted me alive but I heeded your advice and decided to be patient. My patience finally paid off: I bought a 2004 Mazda Demio, 1300cc from its first owner about a year ago. Its mileage has just hit 90,000km. I acquired it at 64,000km. It has never had any mechanical issues, I just do normal service (always on time) and fuelling.

However, I am very concerned about its high fuel consumption (Average 11km/l), which is way  above the ideal figures of  about 17 to 20km/l. It’s engine is exceptionally powerful, though. Is this consumption normal?

I do 50km daily upcountry (uphill to, downhill fro).

Josey

 

Hi Josey,

Well, the rotisserie treatment etched my advice into your psyche, did it not? You are less likely to forget if the lesson is memorable. Anyway...

You say the car is fine but it is a 1300cc engine doing only 11km/l, which is far from impressive. In fact, it is downright poor. But then again, you go ahead and say this same 1.3 litre engine is “exceptionally powerful”, which begs a question that might or might not be an answer in itself: How hard are you pressing the accelerator pedal?

Greetings,

Most CVT gear boxes now common in most cars have an option for engine braking.

I have one on my 2006 Toyota Allion 2.0 with a first-generation CVT gear box. It is fast for a naturally aspirated engine and boy, the engine braking is fun!

The actual gear box designated positions are P, R,N,D,S, and B, the B being for engine braking. I have tried reading up on this —  though not much — but suspect the engine braking is accomplished by delaying the opening of the exhaust valves (I stand to be corrected). When the vehicle is in S for sport mode, it automatically engages the engine brake when you let go the accelerator. In normal drive mode D, the engine brake is engaged when the vehicle detects the drive shaft speed to be faster than the engine (such as when you are going own hill)

Being an ardent reader of Car Clinic (with a collection to boot) I just thought  of contributing to the debate.

As I have discovered through experience, the guys at Toyota Kenya are only familiar with the vehicles that are sold locally as new and those with related engines and gear boxes. I would not be surprised if they do not know about engine braking on small cars which are mostly imported.

Happy hunting for the exhaust noise!

Moses

 

Hello Moses,

Interesting input. About the Toyota Kenya folks... they know what they are trained for, and they are trained to sell and maintain a particular list of vehicles. JDM hardware is not part of that list, because as far as they are concerned, they are impertinent to our market and just because they share a logo with their own inventory doesn’t mean they will necessarily give them the time of day.” If we don’t sell it, we don’t want to know about it” is a good mantra to live by; it helps one stay focused.

 

Dear Baraza,

You mentioned in an earlier article that the preferable choice for rough road usage is the Outback due to its hardy nature.

I recently bought a Legacy Wagon 2008 and you have firmly placed several doubts in my mind about the longevity of my vehicle.

1. Please clarify differences between the suspension setups of the two vehicles as at my last visit to the garage I peeked under the skirt of an Outback and seems the only difference is the raised ride height.

2. Secondly, should I cut my losses early and trade it  in for an Outback?

I ask because I live on “Mutua Lane” (Syokimau) and drive daily on what I will call “alternate roads” (more like cattle tracks).

Nyaga

 

Hello Syokimau Dweller,

1. Yes, the difference in suspension is in the ride height only. That’s it.

2. Do the maths. How much for the trade in? How often will you change the suspension on your Leggy, courtesy of “Mutua Lane”? Will that road be fixed soon, in which case your trade in will be rendered moot? Some decisions are best made at personal level. Only you know the answer to your own question

 

Hi Baraza,

I am one of the “wearers of sack-cloth, renders of hair, gnashers of teeth and smearers of ash, drowning with issues like shocks, mountings, steering motor, suspension arms and bushes, tie rods, exhaust system, front lighting computer ..... despite a good looking Blue 2009 Nissan Wingroad. I’m Done for!

I need a vehicle with a similar fuel tank capacity as well as boot space, just more hardy and trouble-free. Please advice?

Wainaina Caroline

 

Hi Caroline,

I’m not one to gloat at another person’s misfortune, but this is an I-told-you-so moment. Besides smearing ash on your teeth and wearing sack-cloth in your hair, you damn near bought a whole other car in spares. Glossing quickly over that (we can all agree Wingroads are junk, in summary), on to the very interesting thing about your question: in the entire seven-year history of Car Clinic (yes, this column turns seven in a fortnight) not one person has used fuel tank capacity as a criterion in motor vehicle selection as they look askance my way for direction. Not one. You are the first.

This has forced me to reach for the Internet to find out just exactly what size of fuel tank the Wingroad has, and the answer is 45 litres, which is frankly underwhelming. It is also difficult to find another car with such a puny repository for liquid fossils: my first accused was the Mitsubishi Lancer longroof owing to the fact that its fire-breathing Evolution alter-ego has long been accused of having a soda bottle for a fuel tank and running the F-to-E gamut in record time, but no. More Internet reveals that the tank size here varies from 50 litres to 59 litres. Clearly, that is too big by between 11 per cent and 31per cent. And the Lancer is not exactly a paragon of reliability; you might again buy spares by the truckload like you did with the Wingroad.

The next closest rival is the Toyota Fielder. Reliable to a fault. Tank size? 50 litres. You don’t mind an extra jerry-can of go-juice at your disposal, do you? Get the Fielder.

 

Mr Baraza,

Your articles are so good. I have been reading  them for a long time. Please tell me something about Honda cars, especially Airwave and Fit. I want a car for the family, especially for my wife and children. Personally, I am working on getting  a pick up because  I will  be going  up and down.  

I need a car that mama car use, but one which I can borrow for officials functions where trucks ouwl db out of place. Toyotas are the talk in Kenya and and it’s easy to exaggerate even the price.

A friend recommended that Hondas are equally good. Please advise me because I am ready. Honda Airwave vs Fit.

Juma 

 

Hello,

Yes, Hondas are very good cars, but I recently had a chat with someone who once worked for the company and he laid waste to my assertative treatise that getting spares should not be difficult in this age of the Internet. Honda spares are apparently not that easy to come by, unless you have a Honda factory in your country. This difficulty arises from the fact that Honda famously eschews platform sharing, making each car unique. Given how clustered Honda populations tend to be, should you happen to live in a low population density area like Kenya (Honda-wise), getting a shop that stocks unique parts for unique vehicles might not be easy.

This is at odds with the fact that I distinctly recall there being a dedicated Honda shop along Nairobi’s infamous Kirinyaga Road (can’t name names, that would be advertising); a shop where I paradoxically bought Peugeot spares for the 405 that made my life difficult several years back.

So spares are a hit-or-miss affair. These spares are also quite pricey given that the lack of platform-sharing at their point of origin pushes production costs upwards; a tremor that is felt throughout the entire supply line right up to the end user’s pockets. The end user is you. Consider also the fact that the Fit uses Honda’s L series of engines, which feature i-DSI: intelligent dual and sequential ignition. That fancy word salad simply means it has two spark plugs per cylinder. This in turn means come replacement time, you will be looking at bills not entirely dissimilar to those of a rich man slinging a V8- powered monster. Some of these plugs can cost as much Sh2,500 apiece...

That said: Hondas are basically unbreakable. Apart from the copious tears that will accompany the copious shekels you will fork out when the plugs die, running the car should be relatively painless.

 

Having car trouble? Send your questions to [email protected].