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Could be a shot CV joint up front or a worn out front hub spline, allowing the cv shaft to spin in the hub. Or a front shaft may be removed for some reason with the hub held together with the remains of the outer joint with the stub axle piece. Cheers Bennie

3" would not be enough to fit 33" tires. You'll either need a solid axle swap or some serious wheel spacers and lift to manage that as well as some serious cutting. Not to mention the subaru gearing with tires that size and 160hp will make the thing a dog. Is there a specific reason you're wanting 33" tires on a Subaru?

Drove north and stopped at a little grocery store in a small town. Started on the BDR which was gravel roads for quite a while but eventually got into the Lincoln NF which had all kinds of side trails and campsites. Some of those were pretty cool, a lot of embedded rock like AZ. The forest and mountains reminded us some of Wyoming and northern AZ. We drove along a ridge/bluff when we first got in that was sort of like the Mogollon rim, not as dramatic but still cool. More big grasshoppers, I had forgotten about the mouse sized ones we'd seen near Texana. Much of the BDR was just dirt and gravel roads but one section in particular was a rough rocky steep climb. Friday night we looked for a lower elevation campsite as it had gotten fairly cold the night before. Stopped at an observatory which was pretty cool. Drove down the BDR towards Alamagordo and camped in a clearing down off the highway. There were quite a few springs along and near the BDR. B's Forester's front suspension was making a lot of noise so we swapped out the rear control arm bushing since it's a pretty quick fix. The next morning we did more of the BDR. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant at a reservation and ate lunch. Eventually we got back to a highway and figured we needed to start heading home on highways to get back at a reasonable time. B had to air up his tire we'd plugged the sidewall on fairly regularly and I had to keep putting oil in my engine due to a leak but other than that the drive home was fairly uneventful. Definitely left us all wanting to do more of the NM BDR. One thing I was definitely impressed by was the overlanding/sleeping setup of slammo's Lexus. I've thought about doing that to an Outback for years but it's always seemed like there wouldn't be enough room to sleep and would make it hard to haul large amounts of cargo around in when not trail riding. We have to rebuild the Subaru dual range again, at least replace the synchro(s). Would be ideal if we just set up all the cars with the 6MT low range but that's not as simple or cheap of a swap. Have to finish the 6MT low range for slammo and will complete a couple more at the same time. Also we should do more shock tuning, it would be nice to be able to hammer out whoops better and ride more smoothly over the embedded rocks common in AZ and NM, even if it means bottoming out on the big jumps which we rarely see. Have to finish long travels for slammo and travelbyota too.