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A tale of 2 Outbacks.....and some road tax


Lanciaman

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Evening people.  I've had my current Subaru Outback for over 3 years now - the longest I've ever had a daily driver - I'm 53 this year. Brilliant car, love it. 3.0 flat 6, with a quality LPG conversion.  56 plate, now sitting at 132k miles.  Picking up a mates facelight 2007 version of same car next weekend.  90k miles. 

  However, the new one has no LPG so the realism of 25mpg on a good day will hit home, rathre than LPG one which does realistic petrol cost of around 38mpg.   The 56 plate has started on the old underbody corrosion, although looks near mint on top. I'm under it every year with the gloop but scottish salt and mud has started to take it's toll.  

The dilemma is this - I would quite happily keep both, as in the sticks of Aberdeenshire, so having a standby is not a bad idea as zero options if the car goes down. Not happened with the Outback but getting on now. But both are in the high road tax bracket, so to keep both is going to be a £1200 hit annually.  Man maths with having the 1 has been justified by a lack of repair bills as bugger all goes wrong with the 3.0 Subarus. Just maintenance and consumables.  No pissing about with DPFs, dual mass clutches, shitty Bosch components going fizz and all the rest of it with "senisble" cars. 

Annual mileage is circa 8000, so obviously it makes zero sense to pay 1200 quid road tax. But the 3.0 OBs and Legacies so hard to get hold of now,  is there any semblance of justification?  I am guessing this is going to be the last 3.0 pez hurrah.

 

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You have options.. many many.

Run your lpg one till rust ruins its mot and store the newer one until then then run that,  possibly cherry picking it and nicking its lpg kit etc.   (Or do that now, take the lpg  kit and make the best one possible out of the 2)

Sorn one and run the other for 6 months  at a time or so the  swap them over. Youd only be taxing one so as long as you can deal with insurance faf/some extra cost.  You can decide which one sees the mucky wet winter and one which  see the wet summer 🤷‍♂️

Put your LPG one into an intensive  refresh and derusting program and go to town with the vatcan and  Bilt  Hamber and overhaul it. Run the newer one while it's being worked on then sell it on afterwards ( or do the same) the advantage  as well  being you dont have to do it bit by bit and have it back together for next weeks commute

All depends on how much you want to keep one or both and storage space.

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Jealous much! I used to have an 05 2.5 litre bought blind off eBay and it was the best car that I ever owned. Not the most fun of the fastest but it could and did everything. Off roading, towing, comuting, long runs, load lugging.

I would love another outback but there are no Subaru dealers within 30 miles of me.

As for your back up - does it need to be taxed and insured all the time? Assuming you have a driveway then keep it there. You can tax it and insure it online when (if) needed.

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they are thirsty but so good. This was mine, if it had LPG I'd probably still have it as it was so capable but I wasn't using it enough to justify the expense. Mine had the full flappy paddle auto setup and 25mpg was about right though it would nudge 30 on a run. if you can keep one I say do it. From what I read the facelift had much better corrosion protection after there were a bunch of problems with the rear subframe on the pre-facelift model so maybe see if you can swap the conversion. I don't think the H6 changed very much between versions. 

 

 IMG_0594.thumb.jpeg.18599376d7936fa1436cebb4846a68ec.jpeg

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