Lackhead.org

Way back in the ancient times of late 2005, I bought a new Subaru Forester. I really liked this car; I could sleep in the back, it had a sun roof the size of Wyoming, and handled great in the snow and on the back-water roads that I tend to wander along down in the canyon lands of southern Utah. There was one thing about this car that bugged me though, was the Hill Holder clutch.

The magic of this annoying (and unavoidable) feature, was that if you pressed in the brake and the clutch at the same time, you could release the brake and yet it would stay applied until you released the clutch. This makes it easier to take off from a standing start on a hill, as you wouldn’t roll back until you were coming off the clutch. Now, not only was this a solution to a problem that in my mind didn’t exist in the first place, but it also engaged with every shift. Well, that’s not technically true- it wouldn’t engage if the car was pointed downhill, but on every flat or uphill surface and you now had to overcome the brake to get moving, which makes feathering the clutch impossible, parallel parking a lesson in frustration, 4-wheeling unbearable, and backing out of parking spaces downright dangerous. And to top it off, since it didn’t work when you were pointed downhill, you only got the supposed “benefit” half the time.

Now, when I first bought my car I asked the dealership to disable it. They told me this was impossible, which I totally disbelieved. I did some research online to see if I could do this myself, but didn’t find much out there. About a year later I dug up some more information about the location of the adjuster cable, but it sounded like a huge pain to get to, as it was recommended that you remove the windshield fluid reservoir, etc. Bah- at that point I had adjusted myself, to the clutch that is, and kinda just got used to it. Of course, people hated driving my car, and it still annoyed me every once in a while when it would egregiously make a parking experience, well, suck.

So, this weekend I finally got up the nerve to disable this bitch. And you know what, it took about 5 minutes total. If I had known it would have been this easy, I would have done it on the sales lot and taught the stupid dealership repair shop that you get a lot more bang for your buck when you fire both your neurons at the same time.

For posterity’s sake, here is what I did to disable my ‘05 Subaru Forester’s Hill Holder clutch. First off, locate where the mechanism is. It’s pretty much in front of the driver, and has a cable that attaches to a short arm that is held in place with a spring. In this picture, I’m actually grabbing it with my right hand:

Here’s what the mechanism looks like close up. You can see the cable passing through the little axle on the swing arm, with the adjuster nut (grey) and the lock nut (copper) on the right side. As you can see, at least on my ‘05 Forester, there is plenty of room for my hands to get down there.

Now, simply disconnect the cable. You’ll have to pop the two nuts apart; on my car the adjuster nut was a 14mm and the lock nut an 8mm. Unscrew both nuts off the cable, push the cable back out the axle, and replace the nuts. You’ll want to be a bit careful here- the mechanism is inline with the brake system, so you don’t want to beat it with a sledgehammer or anything. Really, this is just loosening two nuts, and then putting them back on once you’ve disconnected the cable from the swing arm.

Viola- that’s it! Driving today was a joy- I hadn’t realized how much the Hill Holder clutch had really torqued me off until I drove my car with out it. I should have done this years ago.

-c