bushbasher

yeah, I think you are right, its for toe in. Mine are frozen, so I cant adjust it (its really toed in alot, I think all justys are stock.

The rear of the justy would not be hard to lift, but the front has the steering arms coming through holes in the unibody, you wouldnt be able to lift it more than a few inches. The engine mounts would have to be worked on too to drop the motor with the front subframe. More of a challenge than lifting an ea81 or 82. Then theres gearing issues, no low range and pitiful hp. My suggestion? cut out the wheelwells, and put some 23-25" ATV tires on 12" rims. Cut off the rear behind the doors to make it like a little truck

The car certainly could have come better prepared from the factory. The design of the tubular crossmember tends to get crap settling in it, holding in moisture and causing the rust. Im surprised its not seen more often. I broke mine in half when I crashed my lifted wagon into a big stump. The area where it broke was as thin as paper, all rusted from the inside. From the outside it still looked great, in fact it still had the original black paint on it.

It will happen eventually, but so far I havent seen anybody put the money and time into making a crazy subaru that those guys put into those trackers. If I make custom I.S. I wont be spending money to stick the axles in subaru hubs with undersized brakes, struts and short trailing arms, nor would I be doing it without putting a tcase in and trashing the tiny stock diffs. Spend money just on axles, and you are still restricted by gearing and diff strength, and the geometry limits of the stock suspension. Strut suspension will only go so far before the geometry gets all whack, same with the trailing arms in the back. The further the trailing arm droops, the more anti-squat you have. At over 6" of droop rear anti-squat is ridiculously high. Basically, to get the subaru to the next level, it requires a complete redesign of the whole package, not just bigger axles.

I made a-arms for my subaru, with ea82 control arms reversed (swapped sides) to make the radius rods stick forward. I then heated and bent the radius rod to form an A, and plated the center to make it rigid. Mounts were welded onto the front xmember for the new bushing location. It worked well, but I didnt make my xmember mounts strong enough, and the whole design reduced approach angle. I scrapped the design, but the concept was solid and could be improved. Heres an in progress pic, the a-arm is not finished, and the xmember mount is not fully welded but in the final shape.

Ive never understood how the laws for vehicles got so nazi-ish in Aus. How many accidents are caused by afermarket steering wheels or modified engines? It seems like a whole pile of bulls#$% and tax money wasted for no real reason other than to give people a false sense of safety. Unless they collect tax money because of it Australia has so much rural area, one would think it would be more like Canada and rural US where there arent really any concrete restrictions, and often not even emissions testing. Do the majority of people support this, or is it something that slipped by and the general population doesnt care, or what? Dont get me wrong, Im not bashin Aus, my step-brother has dual citizenship and has lived down there since he was 16. I plan on coming down there some time to visit.

Unless something is wrong with the strut tops like bad bearings, I think they an be ruled out. I would guess that the angle on the steering shaft joints is too tight and they are binding. What model car is this and who made the lift?

Thats cool then, I guess it makes sense, these old subes run a crazy angle stock. V nice ride

Once your control arms are flat, you are probably at or beyond the point of ideal handling, as the dynamic camber increases towards positive camber in suspension bump/body roll. Going lower might not offer any performance benefits.

There are a pile of older construction pics in my gallery. To mount the nissan case I welded square tube above the floorpans between the brace underneath the front seats and the rear wall of the floorpan. This pic is from the lada case mounting, but I just reused the existing structure for the nissan case: Also, 2" square tube was welded to the rockers to serve as rock sliders and to make a place for the crossmember to mount to. The crossmember doubles as a skid plate and as a way to mount the bottom brackets for the tcase. I dont have any pictures of the crossmember, but it was slapped together with scrap metal just to last 1 trip, so its not exactly a good model to copy. In the ea82, the front control arms dont sweep back like an ea81, so its much more difficult to mount the front diff. You would probably need 10" or so of lift to mount the front diff high enough so the axles fit over the control arm mounts. My solution was to cut and angle the ea82 control arms back 2", mount the whole front crossmember forward 3", giving me 1" extended wheelbase to clear 31s against the firewall. The radius rod lift blocks end up being made with a 1" forward offset. Doing all this allowed me to fit the diff up nice and high with a 6" lift. the rear was fairly simple, 4" lift blocks with some bracing welded in, +2 inch suspension lift. On the ea82, in order to maintain full downtravel with 2" suspension lift you need double DOJ rear axles. These come in some earlier ea82s. The kind with an outer CV and inner DOJ wont have enough travel. I welded up the front and rear diffs, it handled like rump roast on the pavement and I would venture to call it completely unsafe for the road. I would never consider it for a street driven rig, but on the trail its incredible. I would say that just having a welded front diff would have a greater impact off-road than just having the rear welded up. The rust is there, you just cant see it in those pics because thats the side I welded up to look nice. I never got around to the other side, and then I realized how bad the rust was structurally. My next rig will likely involve completely non-subaru independant suspension, or I may completely transcend the subaru body and go straight o a skinned tube frame in the style of a wagon, with subaru power. Or maybe not subaru power. I dunno.

The gearing was great with the tcase,3.65x1.59x2.0x3.9=45.3:1 reduction versus stock 22:1 Makes all the difference in the world. Here are some specs for those who dont remember/never saw: Nissan 720 tcase (previously lada niva tcase) 31" Grabber MTs on stock yota rims 6" subframe lift front, 4" subframe lift rear +2" suspension front suspension moved 2" forward double DOJ rear axles rock sliders welded front and rear It also had custom front a-arms at one point but didnt make them strong enough and they reduced approach angle so I reverted back to the stock control arm+radius rod setup. oh, and there are damage pics there, its just hard to tell. The radius rod in the front is bent, you can see some deformation on the lift blocks as well as a broken weld, and what you cant see is where the radius rod bracket ripped out of the unibody. In the back there was just the broken crossmember.

Well, my lifted sube is no more. It died fairly unspectacularly when I hit a good sized stump at about 40-50kph while offroad. It stuffed the front tire into the fenderwell, launched the car onto 2 wheels, nearly landed on its side, then came down and broke the rear crossmember. The car was saveable but rusty and I needed to clear some cars off my property so.. I scrapped it. Heres my last pics of it. I still have all the good parts and I intend to build a new one at some point. I have new ideas and need to start from scratch with a good non rusty car for my next project. Just another little tidbit: I swapped a Nissan 720 tcase into it, and was able to get it high enough by cutting the tranny tunnel that the output sat level with the rear diff at 4" lift. So, moral of the story is, yes a tcase lift is feasible and practical with 6" lift, you just have to cut your tranny tunnel a bit

the carb is most important for good mileage, get a new 02 sensor (its a computer controlled carb) and make sure the carb is clean. Check that all the vacuum lines are in order IE no leaks or plugged lines. The ignition system is electronic and works great, just set the advance as far as you can go before it pings under load. Use standard NGK plugs. My justy seemed to get around 35-37mpg with the stock carb but its a 4wd and I don't exactly drive like an old lady. The problem is that even with the foot to the floor minivans pull away from me at the lights.

how much power does a 2276 vw motor make, cause one could hardly call an ea81 powerful. IMO you should go straight for an ej18 or ej22. The only difference would that you would have to do electrical work for the fuel injection on the ejxx motor. The ea81 motor would be carbbed which is simple to hook up, and the motors are really cheap, but you are only looking at <100hp With the ejxx motor you will get >100hp, fuel injection, and near the same reliability.

I take it that that the motor is bolted to a vw tranny/irs then? I like it, but the stock sube aircleaner needs to go, it doesnt look the part