2024 Subaru Forester Pricing and Specs

Okay, let's tackle your questions one by one. The advice you've been given by two repairers doesn't really gel. For a start, you have a mechanic telling you it's an electrical problem, and an electrician telling you it's a mechanical problem. Sounds like neither of them know what's up here. There's a big difference between an engine that has no spark and an engine that needs a complete rebuild, in both dollar and effort terms, so you need to get an independent assessment of what's really wrong with the thing and go from there. If, for instance, it's a simple case of needing new spark plugs or coils, then it's worth fixing. If the engine is indeed toast, then a new one is probably going to cost more than the value of the entire car.

Which brings us to your second question. Given that a 1998 Forester is probably a $3000 to $5000 car in good working order, you're not sitting on a gold-mine. While you could potentially make more by wrecking the car and selling it in pieces, you have the hassle of physically separating the car and selling it piece by piece with cleaning, packaging and mailing the parts one by one. Then there's the fielding of hundreds of emails and phone calls, not to mention the hassle of having a dead car in your driveway for as long as it takes to sell all the bits. Even then, you'll eventually have to have the carcass taken away. The alternative is to sell the car to a wrecking yard to handle that side of things, but you'll be lucky to be offered more than a few hundred dollars to have the car picked up and removed.

The option, to answer your third question, would be to have the car electronically scanned, find out precisely what's wrong with it and make an informed decision from there. If the thing is fixable, great. But if it needs a new engine, it might be time to think about a replacement car as spending thousands on a 25-year-old car that will certainly be showing wear in other areas, doesn't really stack up.

Subaru's EE20 diel engine is an interesting one as it was claimed to be the world's first turbo-diesel engine with Subaru's trademark boxer layout (where the cylinders run in pairs, opposed to each other (like an air-cooled Volkswagen).

The brand has switched from timing belts to timing chains and back at various points in its engineering history, but the EE20 in your car is from the point in history where timing chains were in vogue at Subaru. As such, the timing chain should last the life of the engine and not require periodic replacement as a timing belt does.

The recommendation from the trade is to use a fully synthetic 0W20 or 5W30 grade oil. As the grade suggests, this is quite thin oil, but it allows the oil to flow easily when it's cold and, therefore, reduce wear. Modern engines like the Subaru's have many intricate, tiny oilways associated with the variable vale timing mechanisms, so a thinner, easier-flowing oil is often what's needed.

The flip-side is that modern engines with low-tension piston rings (for better fuel economy) are apt to drink a little oil between oil-changes. So you need to keep an eye on the oil level on the dipstick to avoid running the engine low on oil. This isn't a Subaru-specific thing, but applies to many modern engine designs. What you'll spend on oil will be more than offset by the fuel savings a modern engine can provide.