Here you find some information about Subaru Forester cars.
For a 2017 Subaru Forester base 2.5i with CVT transmission, I have used the following fluids:
engine oil: 0W-20, ~4.7 us quarts which fills up ~3/4 on the dip stick.
differential oil: 75W-90. front: ~1.26 us quarts. rear: ~0.8 us quarts.
spark plugs: NGK #93482 SILZKAR7B11
If the passenger side window does not move from the driver's switch
console, but is moving from the passenger door switch, it may need to
be re-calibrated and the driver's switch console is not
broken. To re-calibrate move down the passenger side window all the
way with the passenger door's switch and continue to hold down the
switch for another 6 seconds. Then move up the window all the way and
continue to hold up the switch to another 6 seconds. This should
re-calibrate the system and make it accept up/down commands from the
driver's console again.
The front and rear wheel bearings on Subaru cars are known to wear out frequently.
You find many videos on YouTube how to replace these bearings.
All videos talk about how difficult it is to remove the bearing,
as they're often corroded into the knuckle.
I have successfully used a tool, as shown on the video by
MrSubaru1387,
to remove a wheel bearing with only 3 swings of the 5 pound hammer.
I can recommand buying this tool. It can be found under many brand names for ~$50 on Amazon.
Search for ATD-8629.
For my 2017 Forester I've purchased the following parts from Subaru:
Wheel Bearing 28473FL040
backing plate 26704FJ012
cv axle nut 902170049
cv axle retainer (dust cover) 28437FG000
Some other tools and pieces you may need:
2x M8 screw to lift off the drum brake
2x M12-1.25 nut to attach the ATD-8629 tool to the bearing
32mm or 1.25" socket for the cv axle nut
10mm, 14mm and possibly some other size sockets to remove brake calipers, backing place, bearing and other pieces.
The Forester service manual lists the following torque values for the various bolts:
wheel bearing: 65 Nm, 48 lb-ft
brake caliper: 66 Nm, 48.7 lb-ft
brake hose bracket: 33 Nm, 24 lb-ft
ABS sensor: 7.5 Nm, 5.5 lb-ft, basically hand tight, it's a plastic piece don't squish.
cv axle nut: 190 Nm, 140 lb-ft
wheel nut: 120 Nm, 88.5 lb-ft
I have replaced the stock 6.2 inch radio (Clarion CF658UL) with a
modern touch screen Android 7.1.2 based radio in 2018.
You find these from many sellers
on aliexpress or your
local Ebay. See below for some YouTube videos showing such devices
and how to work on the radio. Mine was made by the
the Shenzhen Cusp Technology
Co and I have the model px3. The Android settings show the
following values:
My 2017 Forester base model uses the 28 pin connector. After some research the following pinout seems to be correct for my car. I've mainly used the following 2 sources: 2016 Subaru WRX/STI 28-pin wiring and flickr. See also Subaru WRX (2017-2018) Head Unit pins and signals with information on the other connectors.
For an easier search I've made a HTML table plus the picture below.
The connector diagram is showing the connector pins, when looking at the front of the connector.
The connector has the name i87 in Subaru's wiring schematics.
(see the pictures above for an example)
| pin | description |
|---|---|
| 1 | n/c |
| 2 | +12V reverse gear signal |
| 3 | brightness, illumination dimmer cancel |
| 4 | +6V microphone power (or +5V) |
| 5 | microphone signal |
| 6 | microphone detection (should be GND to make radio detect) |
| 7 | n/c |
| 8 | n/c |
| 9 | n/c |
| 10 | n/c |
| 11 | +6V rear camera power |
| 12 | rear camera video signal (NTSC) |
| 13 | rear camera shield, should be GND |
| 14 | n/c |
| 15 | parking brake on (active low) |
| 16 | n/c |
| 17 | vehicle speed signal (VSS) |
| 18 | n/c |
| 19 | microphone GND |
| 20 | rear camera GND |
| 21 | steering wheel switch 1 |
| 22 | steering wheel switch 2 |
| 23 | steering wheel switch GND |
| 24 | n/c |
| 25 | AUX input enable |
| 26 | AUX input right |
| 27 | AUX input GND |
| 28 | AUX input left |
The Subaru rear camera uses +6V as operating voltage, not +12V as
most other car electronics. The Subaru factory radios will supply
the +6V to the rear camera via pin 11, when they sense the reverse gear signal
(pin 2). They will also display the camera image on the
radio display, when the reverse signal is detected. To use the rear
camera with a replacement radio, you'll need to manually add a +12V
to +6V voltage converter. These can be purchased for little money
on aliexpress. You'll
find them for $2 to $3, you don't need to pay more. Then wire them
into your radio circuit harness as follows:
| converter | connector | pin | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| +12V | i85 10pin | 3 | +12V ACC |
| 12V GND | i85 10pin | 7 | GND |
| +6V | i87 28pin | 11 | +6V camera |
| 6V GND | i87 28pin | 20 | camera GND |
| pin | description |
|---|---|
| 1 | ? |
| 2 | ? |
| 3 | +12V ACC (when car key is in ON position) |
| 4 | +12V battery (always has 12V, even with car key removed) |
| 5 | ? |
| 6 | ? |
| 7 | GND |
| 8 | ? |
| 9 | ? |
| 10 | ? |
Several developers on the xda-developers forum are working on custom
firmware for these radios. My PX3 hardware is of
the MTCD
or MTCE type. See also
the Generic
Android Head Unit wiki page on xda-developers for an explanation
of these terms.
I have currently installed
the Hal9k
Modded ROM 2.0 and it is working fine for me.
An alternative firmware (not tested by me) is
the Malaysk
ROMs for any yet known MTCD-MTCE Device.
The following websites and videos have been helpful for me to plan and do this project:
In 2024 the CUSP px3 radio showed signs of age. Especially Google
Maps ware barely useable any more, because the Google developers
have added many features in the past years which made the program
run much slower than 6 years prior. Also the radio didn't support
Android Auto, and the WiFi was not very stable when connecting to a
telephone.
I changed the radio to a new model, labelled as T 8-128
CAM. This runs Android 14, has 128GiB storage and 8GiB RAM and
can support a SIM card. I purchased this unit on aliexpress.com for
~USD200. The seller did provide a harness for the Subaru model,
which was mostly plug and play. The seller wired a +12V → +6V
voltage regulator for the Subaru factory rear camera. The camera was
set up for a 5pin connector, which my car doesn't use. I moved the
pins to the 28pin i87 connector and everything was working.
The following image shows the system information.
The Android version number is most likely fake.
The factory password is: 000000.
A thread on the XDA forums talks about this kind of system:
Android 10 UIS8581A (SC9863a), MCU: ZA001
I don't like the music player that was installed by default,
it always auto plays a song when the car starts,
and it also plays a random next song from all scanned songs.
I would like to music player to remember the directory which I was playing when turning the car off,
and resume playing the song and then choosing the next song on the directory.
For me the VIVID Car Launcher
seems to work better. It has a built in MP3 music player which works for me.
