Month: February 2021

How to Change Cabin Air Filter and Engine Air Filter for 2020 Subaru Outback

Here are pic­tures doc­u­ment­ing the change/replacement of the cab­in and engine air fil­ters of my 2020 Sub­aru Out­back Onyx XT.

Project dura­tion: 10 min­utes under good con­di­tions

Tools need­ed: Hands, maybe a flash­light.

Cab­in Air Fil­ter

Open your glove com­part­ment.

There’s a tab on the right hand side when you open it. Just tug on it high­er up and it comes right off.

On either side of the glove box, are hinges as shown in the upper pic­ture. Push hard on either side to pop them out. It might be hard to do if your car is new­er or when it’s cold. Mine qual­i­fied under both con­di­tions and I had a heck of a time.

Aaaand, it final­ly came out!

Here’s a close­up of one of those hinges. Sub­aru gave it extra felt. Kin­da nice.

And here you have the cab­in air fil­ter box.

I could­n’t fig­ure out how to remove this piece and man­aged to break off one of the clasps on the side of the cab­in air fil­ter box like an idiot. 🙁 All you have to do is squeeze those two things on the bot­tom at the same time and it comes right off.

Here’s the old one.

I don’t think the fil­ter has been changed since I first bought the car Nov of 2019, so it’s been over a year (it is mid-Feb 2021 right now). That’s a gen­uine Sub­aru cab­in air fil­ter.

This is the new fil­ter installed. **N.B. From var­i­ous online videos, I hear that Sub­aru’s air flow is from top to down, but Sub­aru is appar­ent­ly one of the few (if not the only) car man­u­fac­tur­ers for which the OEM cab­in air fil­ter arrow does­n’t cor­re­spond with air flow direc­tion. If you’re using after­mar­ket, then make sure you fol­low the air flow.**

OK, then you just put it back togeth­er. Cov­er on the fil­ter box, line up the bot­tom hinges of the glove box and sim­ply push up until it snaps in, then make sure you replace the lit­tle clasp on the right side and BOOM, you’re done!

Engine Air Fil­ter

Open the hood

On the left side of the engine bay, find this and unhook the met­al clasps.

If you wig­gle it apart, you’ll see the old engine air fil­ter.

Just pull it out.

I used a gen­uine Sub­aru engine air fil­ter. The new one is on the left and the old one on the right.

You just slide it in there, foam-side fac­ing the back of the car, close up the clasps, and you’re done!

Yay!

Most Useful Tools/Items in My Life

Here is an on-going list of extreme­ly use­ful, and effec­tive­ly essen­tial, things that are, and con­tin­ue to be, an inte­gral part in my life. If I had kids, I’d make sure they all owned at least one of these. In no par­tic­u­lar order.

  1. Head­lamp — Recharge­able bat­ter­ies, mul­ti­ple beam choic­es, bright light, water resis­tant. Pos­si­bly the sin­gle most use­ful tool I own. From dog walk­ing, to beach walk­ing, to fix­ing var­i­ous things, to trim­ming dog claws, to gen­er­al illu­mi­na­tion, a wear­able, hands-free head­light takes my num­ber 1 spot.
  2. Yak­Trax — Arguably one of the best gifts ever giv­en to me, walk­ing dogs and gen­er­al mov­ing around in icy con­di­tions with­out fear of falling is a big weight off my shoul­ders espe­cial­ly as I get old­er. Dogs have 4 legs, I only have 2. Bro­ken and injured limbs have no place in my life.
  3. Steplad­der — A few years back, we bought a fold­able Cosco step stool lad­der with polypropy­lene steps and a tray at the top. Despite hav­ing oth­er heavy duty met­al lad­ders of var­i­ous func­tions (con­vertable, tele­scop­ing, etc), this is always my go-to lad­der. It’s the per­fect height for tasks around the house and it’s the most sta­ble with grip­py feet and wide steps. Love this thing.
  4. Toast­er Oven — It can do it all. A nice, large sized oven does every­thing from toast­ing to bak­ing, to dehy­drat­ing with­out hav­ing to turn the big one on. Pret­ty much essen­tial in my life.
  5. Let­ter Open­er — I nev­er knew that many peo­ple don’t use these. A long piece of met­al to not only open mail clean­ly, but also func­tions as a pack­age open­er, wrap­ping paper cut­ter, rough hole mak­er, and for var­i­ous oth­er chores that need a stur­dy, pointy piece of met­al. As a bonus, can be used as a defen­sive weapon.
  6. Wet/Dry Vac­u­um — Wow. How much more use­ful can a tool get? Spilled liq­uids? Easy. Spilled solids? Done. Small area? There’s an acces­so­ry for it. Large area? Yup. Large pieces of debris? *SHHUUNNK* Up the hose it goes. I’ve got­ten to the point where I’d rather use a wet/dry vac to clean my bath­room instead of sweep­ing or wip­ing the dust. And it does a great job of it too. Stairs, floors, rugs, cars, what­ev­er the sur­face, there it is. Seri­ous­ly. If you don’t have a nice one, get one.