Cyfun

It turned out my 15" rims wouldn't fit over the calipers, so we went with 215/70R16s. No major rubbing problems to speak of, but there's like a quarter inch of clearance to the wheel well by the door. So I'm prolly gonna slap on a cheap 2" SJR lift just to give me some wiggle room. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the tires. Nicely aggressive tread, and the gearing hasn't hardly changed. At 70mph my GPS reads 71, and I had no problems climbing steep hills. Gotta find me some sand or mud to see if I can get it to bog down. But to be honest, I saw a '04 Forester XT turbo on craigslist that would make a fantastic candidate for a lift, as it's already got the lower geared diffs and more wheel well clearance. It's a damn shame the only decent low range trans is off an EA82. I wonder how long one would last behind an H6...

Hey Todd, how much would you want to ship a full long-travel kit to me out in Montucky? I'm finally getting around to giving my '04 Outtie H6 some love, as I've beaten the living spoob out of the stock suspension on my racetrack. What do you recommend for tire sizes, anyway? From what I understand, 215/75R15 is the way to go, as it fits under the stock strut spring perch, and doesn't gear me too tall?

So I'm working on a '94 Legacy, checked the trans dipstick, and the fluid is yellow, fairly certain it's gear oil. As far as I know, these automatic transmissions are just supposed to use Dexron. Anyone heard of gear old being used in the auto trans? Is it bad? Should I leave it in there or drain it and put in Dexron?

By the way, do you know anyone who has stuck a powerful Subaru motor on a VW buggy transaxle? I've been tossing around the idea of making a rear-engine rwd buggy with either a Frankenmotor or an H6. Can you imagine what a wheelie machine that'd be?

From what I understand of Heim joints, they need to be frequently manually lubricated. Might make it a pain in the rump roast since you actually drive your car frequently, plus they might all be hard to get to underneath. Why use stock bushings when you could get some super cheap polyurethane bushings for some other car. It's not like you're trying to keep the car remotely original, lol. In fact, maybe some bigass truck bushings would be just the ticket:

What kind of voltages is your alternator putting out when warm or cold? If the alt were over or undercharging the system, it will throw off sensor readings, causing your ECU to compensate by messing with the mixture and timing.

Good to know, Ferp, never really suspected coils to be problematic. Guess it'd be easy enough to swap and test. Also, todd, if you have your scanner constantly hooked up to the car, you can instantly be notified when it throws a code, and which code it throws. So if you're driving along and it starts running crappy, immediately check your codes. If that's where the misfire codes are coming from, then I'd agree that it's either coils or injectors. You checked your plugs and wires lately?

I'm surprised you don't have a power inverter to run that laptop. If you have a Harbor Freight near by, they have some decent ones for about $25. Your guess would be as good as mine as far as diagnosis. Just watch the numbers when it's running funny and see if anything jumps out. Maybe all the sensors are fine, and there is actually an intermittent air or fuel or spark problem. Either way, if the car is running poorly, the sensors should say something.

Do you have a decent OBD2 scanner/logger that lets you see raw sensor readouts? I'm a fan of Torque on Android. If there are no codes, that might point you in a direction.

So you're swapping the H6 into your long-travel outback, instead of upgrading the suspension of the H6 car?

The best part about tilting the engine is that it would be really easy... in theory. Just unbolt the motor mounts, jack it up a bit and see how it sits, then move the mounts accordingly. Might not hurt to have some way of indexing where the front axles sit. Maybe rig up some sort of clamp or pieces of wood to show where it sits now. As far as your Impreza, how attached are you to it? Do you still use it that much? If you don't use it, I'd say either keep it as a parts car/backup car, or sell it to some kid for $500. And what would it sell for if it had a good trans? Even if you save money by sticking a junkyard trans into it, might not really raise it's value that much. Plus all the time you waste on labor swapping it out. If you don't want to keep the car, your time would be better wasted on a car you're keeping, lol. On the other hand, I've never rebuilt a trans, dunno if you have either. If you wanted to pull the trans out, it might be good experience rebuilding one. But again, you've probably got better stuff to do.

I've heard of Subaru drag cars having high stall converters. Not sure if there are any pre-made ones, but from what I understand, many transmission shops can modify just about any torque converter to have a different stall speed. I would honestly rather have that than a stick shift and 4-low when offroading. But a 6-speed with 4.44 gears might be just perfect. If you're worried about skid plate clearance issues, consider that getting an extra inch or two of clearance out of the car might really not make that much difference when you nail a massive rock. And if you do want more axle clearance, the only thing you can do is go with taller tires. But of course to gain just an inch or two, you'd end up with MUCH taller gearing. I think your best bet is to simply reinforce the skid plate to take a lot of abuse, and to secure the engine so that it isn't succumbing to inertia. Numbchux gave me an idea, though. He pointed out that if you lift the engine and trans straight up, that it'll probably pop your CVs apart. But what if instead of lifting it straight up, you TILT the front up and the back a little bit down? That would give you more oil pan clearance to the ground and between the pan and skidplate, but still keep the trans output shafts at the same height. Basically all you'd have to do is make some new motor mounts, maybe adjustable ones with slotted holes, drop the trans mount on the crossmember slightly, and massage the hood a bit since the engine is sitting up higher. In the processes, you could possibly redesign the vibration dampening bushings in the motor mounts to be stiffer. Maybe make your own with some urethane casting compound.

Glad that H6's coolant issue seems to have been easily fixed. I've heard nothing but good things about these engines. Instead of going with a manual trans, have you thought about simply getting a high stall converter, like 3200rpm? All that extra power is most useful when you can keep the motor at peak revs. Would help negate the taller gearing, and and fight the bogging down on hills, deep sand, etc. Could use it as an excuse to rebuild the trans, or maybe even swap in Forester 4.444 gears. Always cracks me up when you go out of your way to replace a part, only to end up repairing the original one with bubblegum and paperclips. I've often debated about raising engines for offroading to gain oilpan clearance. There are two major downsides: raising the center of gravity, and the steeper angle of your front CV axles, the latter being the bigger concern. The angle of your CVs will always be your biggest limiting factor. All you can do to counter it is taller tires, but of course are limited there mostly by gearing. But now that you have a car with more balls, that might allow you to squeeze on taller tires if you so desire. It's definitely good to have some room between the oilpan and skidplate. But remember that even if the skidplate hits the pan, sharp blows to the bottom of the plate will be translated to the oilpan with a more broader force, far less. I would suggest simply making the skidplate thicker, reinforcing its mounts more, and engineering it to prevent flex under the oilpan. Also, you can always reinforce the oilpan, or add a skid plate beneath it that mounts to the engine instead of the unibody frame. Another consideration is the engine mounts, which between the engine twisting from torque, and bouncing around from hitting bumps, might also cause the oilpan to hit the skidplate. So if you haven't already, perhaps some stiffer engine mounts may be in order. Or even just rig up some tensile bracing of the engine to prevent it from moving downward more than a tiny bit.

Congrats on the new rig. You really need to get a trailer, though, lol. Sucks that it already has issues and needs trans work. But then again, it's a good excuse to swap in a 6 speed, or maybe even a dual range 5 speed just to see how long it holds up to the power. And once you sink a few hundred bucks into a head gasket and a tune up, bet it'll run like a bat out of hell. And I'm curious just to see how well it does offroad without any lifting or suspension work, with all that low end torque. That one at the auction in Helena was up to $1400 last I saw, but suddenly now it's down to $250, and there's still no auction date set, so I dunno what the hell is going on with it. The H6 in Flathead is really tempting, especially since it's the VDC model. If I can get the guy to come down on the price a bit, I might just go get it. And I could stop and look at the one in Helena on the way. Not that I really need more cars, but a well maintained H6 in the 3-digit range is hard to pass up. And if all else fails, I can wait til there's a foot of snow on the ground and sell it, cause even with the miles, it still books for at least $2500.

Might be time to shell out for a new one. Oreilly's has one with a 1 year warranty, but Autozone has a lifetime warranty one for $210. And there are a few on Rockauto with lifetime warranties for around $100, but then have such terrible customer service, if you ever had to have it replaced, they'd probably screw you over. By the way, was watching the auto auction the other day, saw an 06 Subaru H6 come through. Almost bid on it, but it went for like $1500. Dunno if there are any good auto auctions down your way, but if you want a parts car that still has its engine, that's the way to to go. Personally, I still think you should just find a complete H6 and build a new car, keeping this one to either use or sell.