Thread: The Kayak Trailer

After giving up on using the roof racks on the hunting wagon, where the racks are 2m above the road, I decided a kayak trailer would be the go. So I costed up the materials to build a trailer and when out and bought an old '97 Subaru Forester which worked out cheaper. Also a hell of a lot more manoeuvrable and useful.

I went and had a look. The thing had over 341,000km on the clock and wasn't going that well, with an engine warning light that came on on the dash at regular intervals and reduced ferformance, but I bought it anyway after negotiating a discount. Jumped online and found the fault codes and hooked up the test wires under the dash to get the fault code. "Knock Sensor" error. Jump back online and find out the main error is due to a faulty sensor, NZ new $200-$300, China new $14. New sensor installed on top of the engine block and back to full power and better fuel economy.

The clutch was very heavy to operate too so I grabbed a new slave cylinder from the parts store on my way past during the week. I replaced the one on the hunting wagon a couple of years ago and it made a huge difference to that. So this afternoon I jacked the front up and crawled underneath, bugger, looks like they forgot to put one on the side of the gearbox like the Toyotas and Isuzus I've done. Grab the headlamp and start shining it around, not on this side, all I could see on this side was a couple of sensors. It wasn't on the other side if the gearbox, all I could see there was bugger all.

All right it was a favourite story of mine as a little tacker and one if the first I bought when TR was on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poky_Little_Puppy

So I eventually spotted the tell-tale rubber bellows/boot from underneath sitting on top. Typical, got to have a quirky difference. Note it's position relative to a few other components and head topside. Found Ya. That's the hard part done.



Drop the front back down, remove the air box, swap parts, clean up and grease the contact point, drain hydraulic fluid, hook up banjo, refill with and a bit of assistance from a gadgette to work the pedal bleed the system. Now probably 1/3 the force to work the pedal so the gadgettes can probably drive it too.