2015 Subaru Forester - New horn for $500

Excessive oil consumption leading to engine failure is a known 2015 Forester ailment and one for which there is a class-action suit settlement that extends your warranty. There is also an extended warranty on your CVT transmission (unless you got one of the rare manuals). You would be wise to check your oil weekly and carry a couple of quarts in the vehicle just in case you find that it has dropped below the minimum level on the dipstick. If you are planning to keep the vehicle past 100K miles, the limit of those two extended warranties, you may want to consider your options. Here is some background on the oil consumption defect.

Making a new horn button is doable and cheap, but the problem is it’s not where the real horn is, and hitting it quickly enough is very tricky. Sometimes you don’t need it fast, but when you do, and it’s not where you expect, it’s not good.

And Maxwell became Chrysler.

@geoffhazel. My in-laws had a 1981 Ford Thunderbird and to honk the horn, one pressed the end of the turning signal stalk. This was how Ford designed the car. I got used to the horn button I rigged up on the side of the steering column and I didn’t have a problem sounding the horn in an emergency. However, IMHO, the horn ring of the cars of the 1940s and 1950s was easiest to find in an emergency.

@old_mopar_guy. And the horn on the Maxwell didn’t require wiring harness repair. You just squeezed the rubber bulb.

Doesn’t @George_San_Jose1 have a horn like that on his car?

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Is this George’s horn . . . ?!

image

:smiling_imp:

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That’s either George’s or the one @Triedaq plays in his band.

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@old_mopar_guy. I wish I had that horn to play on our fall concert. We combined with a choral group, and performed “Oedipus Tex” by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schikely), I had to play the first part of the work on a funnel. I then had to couple two of the tuning slides together to play the next section of the piece. In order to couple the tuning slides together, I made a trip to Autozone and bought a foot of emission hose. I then had to play on the second valve with the tuning slide removed. I then assembled the horn for the finale. I would have gladly used the horn pictured in the response above where all I had to do was squeeze the bulb.

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Omg,it sounds like it would have been easier to abandon authenticity and use a synthesizer.

You haven’t had fun in a band until you’ve used a pitch pipe to “tune” a Selectric when playing Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter.”

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I have been the soloist on Leroy Anderson’s “Typewriter” a couple of times with the chamber orchestra I play in. We have a tuning routine where the oboe plays an “A” tuning note. I strike a key on the typewriter and our conductor shakes her head. She comes over and summons the concertmaster who brings a spark plug wrench. I have a spark plug under the lid of my Olympia typewriter. The concertmaster extracts the sparkplug and the conductor has a gap gauge and checks the gap setting. We then pretend to put the sparkplug back in the typewriter and play the piece. When we have performed this routine at assisted care facilities, the old timers love it. When we have played for younger audiences, many don’t get the gag. I am not sure younger people have seen a typewriter, let alone understand tuning an engine.
This is the only time I have used the typewriter in recent years. The typewriter was my high school graduation present back in 1959.

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I had a couple portable electric typewriters in my home office. I just asked my wife where they were and got the usual “you didn’t need them anymore, I threw them out.”

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@old_mopar_guy. The first time I was asked to play Leroy Anderson’s composition “Typewriter”, I spent an hour searching the house for my faithful old Olympia typewriter. I had to spray contact cleaner to free up the keys.
I did all my college papers, my master’s thesis and the rough draft of my doctoral dissertation on that typewriter.
I don’t miss the “good old days”. The computer with a word processing program has made life so much easier.

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Btw, did you know that Leroy Anderson wrote the “Song of the Nairobi Trio” for Ernie Kovacs?

Can I assume that luckily few in Texas are familiar with ‘Oedipus.’

Ignore my last post. The song of the Nairobi Trio was by Robert Maxwell

Back to cars: When I do the routine in tuning my Olympia typewriter when we perform Leroy Anderson’s “Typewriter”, I make sure to use a Champion J-8 spark plug.

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In that case, the typewriter should be a Chrysler product.

@old_mopar_guy The 1952 Dodge my parents owned when I was in high school used the Champion J-8 spark plug. The 1954 Buick that they also owned at the time called for an AC 44 spark plug, but the AC 44 was cross referenced with the Champion J-8. Our LawnBoy two stroke mower ran on a Champion J-8. Our rototiller with a Lauson engine used a Champion J-8 plug. Even our three horsepower Evinrude boat motor ran on Champion J-8 plugs. We tuned up everything with a Champion J-8 spark plugs. That is why I tuned up.the Olympia typewriter with a Champion J-8.