There’s a postscript to the radiator replacement. Less than two weeks after that saga, I was just driving the Forester like nothing had ever happened when suddenly huge clouds of smoke started pouring out from under the hood. This is what I found when I pulled over:

The hose for the turbocharger coolant expansion tank had split open along a 3 cm section. Everything was covered with coolant. It’s a shame nobody noticed it during the radiator replacement, especially since the hose was obviously badly swollen. Naturally, the cooling system immediately got air trapped in it, and the engine started overheating quickly. I drove back home. Even though I only had a few kilometers to cover, a lot of coolant was lost - 2.5 liters. As luck would have it, I had a spare hose that I bought together with a new expansion tank for the Type-R:

The coolant filling funnel I bought for this occasion worked brilliantly. Here it is in the closed position, to build-up pressure:

And here it is opened during the bleeding process:

Now I no longer have any excuse, and I’ll finally have to install the additional fourth-cylinder cooling kit in the Impreza, which has been sitting on the shelf, gathering dust for good few years.

• Impreza
• Gc8
• Type-R