Uberoo

still have it,its boxed up and ready to ship,last time I checked it was $15 to ship it anywhere in the Continental US.

I'm thinking a chainsaw would have been faster and easier.

Dents, dings, and smashed panels are one thing but I will not have the brat leave the garage looking like I got stoned and drunk and did some hacktacstic body work late one night, because who knows who might see it,especially after I get my welding certificate and begin to look for a job.It doesn't have to be perfect but I would at least like the brat to be 20/20 before I hit the trails(looks good at 20 ft away at 20 mph). In other words I would like it to look like I atleast gave half a spoob about it when I built it.

My brat build is to see the limits of the subaru ifs,if that doesn't work I might try using toyota IFS front and rear with center diffs.So I fully support this idea.At least with toyota ifs it will be strong.

I was thinking of cutting that weld and straightening the panels then try it again.I was told to tack one side then go to the other side and tack it and repeat the process until it was done.Even welding like 3/4" at a time was too much I guess.

So after the smoke cleared I hung the various parts on the car.The proportions look about right from the side: but the bad news is I ruined an otherwise perfectly usable hood and the fenders arn't too bad but without a lot of bondo there is no way to hide that they were cut/welded together because of the various curves of the fenders.ie flat sections mating with curved sections etc.Every looked good tacked up but it all warped pretty damn bad,the hood espeically because I tacked the skin together and starting welding it together without tacking the supports together.By the time I relized my mistake the hood was warped upward by a significant amount where I cut and spliced the outer edge together. The goal was NOT to have it all look like a total hack job and thats exactly what it turned out like.So I will need to find a new hood because this one is too warped to get it close to where it needs to be.

weight reduction tally thus far: -40 lbs bobbing the bed -*45 lbs for cutting off the front end -6.6 lbs for bobbing the front sheet metal -2 lbs for removing unnecessary wiring -11 lbs for the HDPE adapter plate *removing the front of the brat to the strut towers lost 34 lbs,but I've removed it all the way to firewall and I didn't weigh the metal that came out. But wait theres more! The front tube frame weighed roughly the same as the front metal that was removed so I would say the front end weight reduction is a wash. I added 2 58" 1.5x.087 tubes to reinforce the floor + 12.5 lbs + the 1/8" plate to brace the tubes on the firewall etc It seems right now its an even trade between strength and light weight,there is no question that the tube front end is stronger than the couple pieces of stamped tin the factory used,same with the various reinforcing elements added.It just seems like no matter how hard I try to keep the weight down it keeps creeping up.Maybe I should practice what I preach,I could stand to loose 10-15 lbs myself. On the other hand I still have yet to replace the heavy factory stamped k member or the control arms so maybe there is hope that it wont become a total porker when I get done.I will also be removing the front diff from the transmission so there is some weight to be lost there,Then I will remove extra bosses from the engine for a couple ounces of weight reduction.I would love to remove weight from the front and rear cast iron diffs because those damned things are HEAVY.

So today I was able to get the hood done,it took by far the most time. So I first started by cutting out the sections to be removed: Then I cut out the rest of the hood: Next up I test fitted the pieces of hood: Then deburred the edges,removed paint,test fitted it,trimmed it to fit, then I started tacking it together: Then I started welding 1" sections all around the cut, jumping around to try to avoid warping the hood: After the hood was entirely welded along with the supports I put my flap wheel in my grinder and got to work smoothing all of the welds.Then after it was smooth I shined a flashlight under the weld and started marking the areas that had holes.Then I welded those up,and ground it smooth again.I ended up repeating that about 10 times until no light shown through.Far more work than I wanted to spend but I wanted the hood to be somewhat structurally strong.After all that here is the hood: Finally I spray painted the weld seam on the skin and the supports just to keep it from rusting. After all my careful welding I still ended up warping the hood slightly,If someone wanted to they could rework the metal and put a small amount of bondo on the weld and no one would ever know it was messed with unless you told them,but I'm not putting that much effort into something that will likely be smashed against a rock or tree when it hits the trails.I will still try to minimize warping the fenders,but after welding I will use the flap wheel to knock them down,and as long as no gaping holes open up on the weld seam thats how they will be.In case your wondering,just the hood alone took 6 hours from start to finish,while each fender took only about an hour each to get them cut down and tacked together.

ATV tires/rims are usually only good for ~400 lbs per tire,so anything from the car that you can afford to lose, see that its lost. remove: swaybars,hood,fenders,doors,hatch,glass,rear seats,AC,headliner, carpet,windshield wipers,rear speakers,etc.You can also go bit OCD and remove unused wiring and brackets from the car.The roof can be cut off after the C pillar. I mentioned swaybars first because 1. they limit suspension travel, and 2. they are largely irrelevant even on a street car. So remove them and their brackets for a ~10 lb weight reduction. It also stands to reason that if the driver has bit of extra weight to spare they could also lose some weight. In the engine bay replace any bad hoses,then wrap all of the coolant hoses with electrical tape to help shield them from the UV radiation so they last longer.

Yea, i know my garage looks like a bomb went off in a junkyard.I have parts everywhere from different projects and all my shelves are full of old parts from cars I no longer have.One of these days I'll declutter it. I want a shed to put parts into,right now my garage has all the parts for the brat on the ground next to it,as well as a driveshaft for a mazda and dodge pickup for another project,then I also have a box of honda 90 parts I would like to get rid of.

subarus /= toyotas. a good set of mud tires on a subaru will do wonders because subarus are so light and in stockish form their bellys are flat like a sled. A subaru wagon like yours only weighs 2500-2700 lbs, remove the carpet,headliner,rear seats,and a few other things and they are very light. Toyotas on the other hand are alot closer to 4K+ lbs,it takes alot bigger tires to get them to float on stuff.The hatch in my sig was running 31x10.5x15 mud tires and the tires were too wide for it.It would just spin on mud without really grabbing traction, in the snow it was amazing because it floated on top of the snow and only sunk in a half an inch.However you will need a ej22 or ej25 to make the power needed to spin the tires,that or massive weight reduction,or both.You don't need the hood,tailgate,doors,glass,front fenders,etc for a trail rig...

So I today I went out into the garage and with some advise a friend gave me in my head that "its only metal" I began slicing up the front sheetmetal with my 4 1/2" angle grinder.I cut up and spliced the passenger side fender together without any pics except at the end as a test. Then I thought someone might be interested in the process so I took a bunch of pictures of all the various steps on the driver side fender. First off I cut off the front edge of the fender along my cut lines: Then I cut out the marker light: Then I cut out the section to be removed,here is a picture with all the various pieces so far: Then I ground off the paint near the edges,deburred the edges and began test fitting the pieces back together: After a bit of grinding to both pieces so they fit well I started tacking the pieces together.I started at the top edge near the hood and then tacked it various places where the metal was shaped differently.Then a few more tacks in places.The bottom leading edge of the fender did not line up because of the vastly differing shapes,so I cut it off from right under the bumper to the wheel well opening: Then it was time to put the marker light in.So I put down a piece of tape vertically from the rearward most point of the corner light cut out,and set the marker light where I wanted it,the leading edge on the tape and the top edge lined up with one of the body lines.Then I traced around it,and cut the metal out of the fender: A few tacks latter and bada boom bada bing, the marker light is part of the fender again: I started working on the hood, but it wasn't too long before my cutting disk was all burned up from cutting through the hood skin and the supports, so I need to go get some more for next time.In addition to that my grinder burned up when I went to start cutting up the driver side fender,so i had to get another one,ended up finding the updated model of my old grinder with more power so I'll see how long it lasts,last one lasted 2 -3 years which I thought was pretty good for a $20 cheapo grinder.

The tractor tires work great but they have issues with tree roots. Sand-see snow. Horizontal radiators have been done before,Just have a radiator shop change the filler tube and possibly the outlets to better suit your layout.Mounting can be however simple or complex you want it to be,some people have made tilting setups that use hydraulic hood or tailgate supports to lift the radiator up while other have been perfectly content to just mount it solid. Your tire choice depends on your preferences.If you live out in the woods where you can just start the car and your at the area you want to explore then tractor tires.If you have any amount of pavement driving to do then run some 235/75/15 mud tires.Changing tires and keeping the other set in the car is a major PITA,especially after a day of wheeling when its raining or snowing and your cold,tired,wet,and dirty and just want to go home.

*Note* by snow I mean snow deep enough to get high centered,not that snow in the pictures.Those pictures were taken as I woke up to all that on the ground so I went out to go play and drive around in it before it got plowed away or it melted.

13" tractor tires don't exist,at they didn't when I ran some.You will need some 14" rims off a 6 lug mazda or something and drill holes in steel rims for them to fit or redrill your hubs for 6 lug(6x5.5).The tire size you are looking for is 6-14 which is about a 27" tire.Offroad the traction is unmatched but you do not have the HP to spin them and make the mud fly.On my 83 gl that had tractor tires on it, pressing the gas just made it go faster in the deep mud.It was unstoppable in mud,but on the snow the tires were too aggressive/narrow and they would just dig down until you high centered.For snow your gonna want something like a 235/75/15 in an allterrain also about 27" but that also requires new rims. I ran street tires to get there and then I changed out tires. an older pic showing the tires on the car. When I got the car the front end was smashed so I tried to pull it out with my truck,didn't even feel the slack in the coming out until it ripped the front off the car.So I found an old bed frame and used it to make a core support to mount the radiator. Eventually I put something across the bottom of the radiator.Then I used some cheap off road lights I had for some headlights... Eventually, I got tired changing out the tires and instead opted for a lift and bigger tires year round.

235/75/15's work fairly nice but it does sap some power but with a ej25 it should be about perfect with a 4" lift.

I've fit bigger tires with no lift,so yes you can go bigger.With the ej25 you might be able to go as big as a 31" tire depending on what sort of terrain you will be running in.If its really tight and technical like rocks and trees stumps than about a 29" is max so you still have something resembling gearing, for mud/sand/and bombing down fire roads than run some 31"+ tires. When the cars are still powered by the 1.8L "pancake of power" expect to effectively loose 5th gear with +sized tires,however, with the ej25 that might not be as much of issue. As far as parts that break,hehe, everything. With 1.8L of fury motivating the cars,CV axles front and rear,struts,control arms,differentials,and even transmissions have been known to give up the ghost offroad.With a ej25 depending on how you drive EVERYTHING up and including the engine is fair game as far as breakage goes. I'm sorry to say but subarus make very poor mall crawlers,meaning that if you want to lift it for appearance sake you will be sorely disappointed.Lifting a subaru is really only done when you want to improve how it offroads-at the expense of everything in the drivetrain being subjected to much more stress than normal, so failure of said parts is not a matter of "IF" but "when".Commuting in a lifted subaru with tires bigger than 27-29" is not really that fun.Not alot of power(with the 1.8) and the MPG takes a BIG HIT even after correcting for tire size.Ive had subarus with the 1.8 go from roughly 25+ mpg in town to 18-19 mpg.the car in my profile picture had 31" tires with an additional transfer case along with deeper 4.11 differential gears and an ej22 and there will still some times where it didn't have enough power/gearing.For instance starting from a stop in 1st gear in hi range required a little bit of clutch slipping,in the mud 2nd gear low/hi or 2nd gear hi/low was about the best it could do(subaru hi/lo range+ transfercase hi/low range, lowlow was only for rock crawling)

So with the body reinforcement done the the next part of the project is to connect the tubes up front and re-make the tube front end.A major hurdle for that is the fact that because I was able to move the engine rearward, and there is no radiator up front, the entire front end needs to be shortened for a better approach angle and a slight weight reduction. So today put the engine in place and mocked up where it was gonna sit.Then I hung the front sheet metal. With everything in place there is 8.5" from the crank pulley to the back of the grill so I decided to remove 6" so there should be *just* enough room for the radiator hoses to snake down past the engine,I may or may not have to clearance the back of the grill for the upper hose but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. So with an amount decided on to remove I painstakingly spent the next couple hours laying out tape and measuring the hood and front fenders to find the material that needs to be sectioned out. fender: I will cut the marker lights out and weld them back into the body where ever they fit best once the fenders have been shortened. hood: next up is cutting the hood and fenders and splicing them back together sans 6",hopefully my measuring and layout lines are correct and the body lines will still line up,if not its an offroader so I might just have to keep it extra dirty.

I have two 78 brat instrument clusters and non of them have tachs. They just have a square speedometer, a fuel gauge, and a temp gauge.I know that doesn't really help you but if you want them you can have them for the cost of shipping. Other than that,you have a VERY nice and clean original car.

find a skidplate or make one-its easy to to tag a rock without even noticing it. As far as the knuckle breaking,become one with your inner redneck,ducttape,ratchet straps,pieces of wood,etc have been used to limp vehicles off the trail before.

The difference is title or not.I have not and will not derby a car that has a title because it can be saved and driven on the road for years to come.If however situations make it impossible to title the car then it can be derbied.My thoughts are that any car deserves a viking's funeral at the end of its life especailly if its destined for the crusher with no title.Sell any many parts as you can then do what you can to make the car's last moments amazing.If the car is straight and has a title sell it to someone who will drive it because there still is lots of life left in it.

on 13" street tires the tires will probably break traction before the stud axle breaks what turbosubarubrat said is technically correct but it only really applies to lifted offroad vehicle with big heavy tires,on factory tires the tires really don't have that much grip to do anything,especially if you run the rear tires slightly over inflated.

Welding the diff WILL: *wear all 4 tires faster *cause more stress on parts *give awesome traction As far as actually welding the diff goes use lots of heat to weld the gears together and rotate the diff to minimize warpage(weld one set of gears together then rotate diff 180* and weld a corner opposite to the side you welded.repeat until the whole thing is welded.Let the gears air cool.Put the ground clamp on the ring gear or carrier and not the case because you dont want that current flowing through the bearings.Use non clorinated brake cleaner to remove all the grease and oil before welding.Then some more to remove weld spatter. Some say to weld the spider gears to each other and then to carrier, while other just say to weld just the gears together.I personally prefer just welding the spider gears to each other and not welding to the carrier but that is my thoughts,That being said I've ran welded diffs both ways and not blown them up.Sure Ive broken CV axles,and stub shafts, but other than from running mud as a lubricant I have never blown up a rear diff.

there are bigger R180 and R200 diffs that have air lockers available but for the cost you could go through several sets of tires with a welded diff before you would break even.

with a welder and a torch anything is possible.