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Went to the UP the last weekend of July with three Subarus and five people. B wasn't able to join us. Before the trip I was checking my notes and realized there was a crack in one of the rear uprights of the black outback so I welded that. The rear tires on the white Outback were almost completely bald so I put some less bald tires on it. I had looked before we went and saw a large area of public land east of Sagola we hadn't explored. There were several fire towers and the ELF (extremely low frequency transmitter) in the area too. Didn't expect much of those but gave us something to roughly wander towards. Fire towers turned out to not exist or be on private property which is about what I expected. When we went to where the ELF was originally marked on my GPS we couldn't find anything. Later Z looked it up and we did make it there but it's some kind of secure gov't facility so we didn't get to see anything. On the way up I was driving the black Outback when suddenly I looked down and the coolant temp gauge was pegged. It had been right where it normally is for hours so I figured it might be the sender or gauge or something. Pulled into a shady spot in a parking lot. Realized it was the same hose that had rotted out on us out west and replaced it with a spare I had. The oil leak there keeps eating those hoses. Left that skidplate off for the time being figuring we'd just reinstall it at camp. Crossed into Michigan and started wandering off pavement. Z got his Forester high centered and stuck on a stump (between engine skid and trans crossmember). Lifted it off with the high lift and threw some wood under the tire. This part of the UP was rockier than most of the UP but not like the Keeweenaw. Trying to follow a powerline grade Z got his Forester stuck in some soft mud. Good reminder that any time you see even a slight trickle of flowing water up there the ground is probably going to be super soft. At this point I realized I'd left my brand new speed strap and folding recovery ramps at home. Then we broke my 2” speed strap, it's seen a lot of abuse but I was still a little surprised. Z had a tow strap and with a combo of that and my marginal speed straps we were able to get his car out. One of those situations where we tried about ten iterations of straps thinking each one would work, might have been just as fast to winch or jack him out of there. Went the other way on that powerline grade which had some good rock ledges and climbs but didn't go very far before going off into the woods. Before one fairly big drop we decided we should put the one skidplate back on the black Outback so we did that while V cooked the burgers since it was supper time. Maybe the first time we've cooked supper before getting to camp. Saw a (juvenile?) porcupine standing in the road, got a few good pictures of it before it walked off into the brush. Late in the day the black Outback started making some fairly high frequency drivetrain noises proportional to wheel speed like a gear in the transmission was rubbing on something. M was driving and I played with the shifters and then it went away. Found a FS campground and stayed the night there. The next morning we did a little more trail riding but the transmission noise was back. It was making enough noise even in neutral that we didn't think flat towing it would be a good idea. We discussed a few options and decided the best would be to try to fix it. I have been carrying a stock DCCD so plan B was to install that and plug the shifter holes. We went back to the campsite we'd stayed at the night before since it was decent, close to toilets, and there had been no one else in the whole campground. Of course during the day two other campers showed up and occupied the spots on either side of us. Disassembly went fairly smoothly but time consuming. Realized we'd need gear oil so Z and V drove to town to get that and some groceries so V could cook us some fajitas since we knew he'd have plenty of time. The main problem seemed to be thrust forces (from the helical gears I assume) wore out one of the snapring groove lands to the point that one of the snaprings was just floating around in the middle of the low range. We just removed the snapring, the part it'd been holding on was already galled/peened in place. M and I tried about ten times to put the low range back in the trans and then put the cover on with no success. Finally we put the low range in the cover and put the whole thing on and it went right together. One trick we used was to tie the split needle bearing on the front output shaft on with a blade of grass since it would instantly dispose of itself, before that those bearings kept falling out of place during assembly even though we'd greased them. As it turned out the grass fell out during assembly but did its job. Then we put everything else back on and I took it on a test drive around the campground before dark. Seemed to work fine but still a little noisy. Camped again in the same spot we had on Friday night, something else I don't think we've ever done before. Sunday we had a solid day of trail riding with no major issues. Found a stunt area, unplugged a culvert that'd been dammed up by beavers, then Z got properly stuck in the mud in a clearcut area. Probably over 100' from the nearest fairly solid ground. Set up the winch and swapped the Anderson connector from the white car on to his battery. Winched off of several different stumps with the snatch block and eventually got him on to solid ground. Good reminder that having a winch you can put on either end of any car is far superior to having it permanently mounted to one end of one car. He was then able to drive through the clearcut along the trail back to where we were parked. The whole thing took under two hours with surprised us. I got the black Outback stuck after turning around and trying to climb up a steep bank. A backed the white Ouback back to where we were. By then I remembered I had a proper elastic snatch strap and soft shackles so we used those. They hit much softer than the speed straps. I couldn't really even feel when it hit even though A was taking a 10-20' run at it. He eventually pulled me up the little bank. Somehow the rear bumper cover of the white Outback had come off so we cobbled that back on and continued. Monday morning while we were following the black Outback it seemed like the rear camber on it would be both tilted to left, then both straight. Eventually A decided to pull over because it was steering itself. The subframe had pulled out of the remains of the unibody on both sides. We also had brackets connecting it to the skidframe which had mostly ripped off. We sort of straightened out the brackets and hose clamped them back on and ratchet strapped the subframe up into place. (We were able to ratchet strap the subframe back up to the body, not shown) A managed to navigate us down a fairly long and almost entirely off pavement route south. Got to an abandoned railroad track. Had to restrap the rear subframe a couple more times. The last time A came up with the idea of strapping the subframe to the skidframe laterally which helped a lot. Black outback is probably finally and properly totaled. Needs a trans rebuild, radiator, coolant hose, rear diff is no longer limited slip, rear axles and wheel bearings are ticking time bombs, and most importantly needs some serious body/frame repair for the rear subframe. In the meantime it is still driveable if I need to drive it around town some. Really need to get the Impreza running. Will try to post an update on that soon.

I love these adventures and the off-road repair success stories. Thanks for tanking the time to post them up.

Hold my beer - watch this.

Shirt answer: get a 00-04 Outback ECU Subaru changes ECU part numbers ALL the time, they’re almost pointless for determining compatability. All 2000-2004 Outback/legacy 4 cylinder non turbo, and all non turbo bajas, ECUs swap and plug and play. Yours is an outlier Subaru went CANBUS in 2005 with OB legacy which are notoriously NOT interchangebe plug and play ECU The components are married and need done at a Subaru dealer. You can’t even swap a 2005 legacy GT ECU with another identical 2005 legacy GT unless you take it to Subaru and ask them to wave their magic sorcery electronic sauce at it. But since the Baja was just a 00-04 Outback castrated in the rear, the later 05-06 models are just 00-04 outback’s. they didn’t redesign the Baja to later Gen aesthetics or components. this will confuse online listings and information which doesn’t have the fidelity or experience to parse all that At least that’s my understanding. 05+ are off years as Subaru rolled out CANBUS technology piecemeal across models. But it’s fairly safe to say your 05 baja is just a 00-04 OBW and you can use any 00-04 Outback or legacy non turbo 4 cylinder ECU