Monday morning we checked over the cars. Both front control arm nuts on the black Outback had backed off a lot, the one almost to the end of the stud. We headed to the pond where C swamped his Impreza, had about as much water in it as it did then.
We went back and hit the best dips/jumps on the road just before the pond where B blew out the strut tower on his green Forester. The last big one made the black Outback wheelie a couple times.
The other runs it just jumped level, not sure what made the difference. While taking runs at these dips/jumps I noticed the clutch was starting to slip. Figured we'd just take major snowmobile trails down to the big spring. Wound up taking a ~15 mile dead end to a couple big water holes. The first one was about a quarter mile long, couldn't even see the end of it. Took a different route and that one went to a water hole that was shorter but probably quite deep so we turned around and drove all the way back to the highway.
Much of that snowmobile trail has little jumps/whoops that sneak up on you, just cruising along at 50mph and all of a sudden you hit a dip and you're in the air. At this point we didn't have time for the big spring and the super whoops. The big spring was farther out of the way and most of the group preferred seeing the super whoops so we headed there, had to drive on pavement for a couple hours. Clutch in the black Outback was definitely starting to slip over about half throttle. Sometimes with the cruise on going up a grade you could see it slip 50-100RPM and then come back down. We hit some little whooped out sandy trails on the way there. Along the paved road to the super whoop parking lot was a narrow sandy trail with small whoops so we hit a portion of that. The guys pointed out it would make for great video driving along the car filming from the side watching the suspension thrashing up and down. At this point I'd noticed a pinhole leak in one of the fuel hoses in the black Outback so I fixed that. They took everything out of the back seat of the white Outback and took that and the Forester through the super whoops. Apparently the rear end of the white Outback kicked up badly with four people in it. They came back just as I was finishing washing the fuel off my hands and arms and M and A and I took the white and black Outbacks up the first half of the super whoops, switched cars, and came back down. The black Outback was definitely better but the white Outback didn't kick up too bad with just one person in it. On the way out we drove part of the mini whoops with the black Outback and Forester and filmed with the other two cars. We dropped off J on the way home and all the cars drove home OK.
Clutch in black Outback still slips some, seems to be fine when you first drive it and then will slip after maybe five minutes of driving. Thinking that might indicate an oil leak so I ordered a rear main seal and rear cover o-ring for the engine and input shaft seal for the trans. Windshield isn't any more cracked than when we started the trip, still just has the cracks down in the passenger side lower corner. Never had to bend the wiper arms/cowl either. Needs a driver's side front CV axle, it was making a little noise at the start of the trip and a little more by the end, the outer boot is badly torn. B and I both drove it with the parking brake on so that needs to be adjusted.
White Outback also needs the parking brake adjusted. Has a high pitched intermittent grinding noise I think coming from the rear.
We noticed the Impreza has a sloppy RF wheel bearing early in the trip. Never got worse but it would be good to put one of the bolt on wheel bearing knuckles on, already did that on the LF. Needs the post cat portion of the exhaust reinstalled.
Overall it was one of our best trips so far. Weather was about perfect, no major breakdowns, good variety of trails.