AdventureSubaru

Unloaded and in my garage! Seats in need of a little help, (or replacement) The beast! Thinking it's time for new rubber?

Nice! Lifted Imps are a ton of fun. Very capable once they have some ground clearance.

You have options! 1. Bigger tires - easy clearance. 2. King Springs - Gives a little more suspension lift. 3. Strut top spacers - The guys on the legacy forums have some write ups on this. I make them out of HDPE and they are working well on my Impreza. Anywhere from 1/4-1 inch is fairly simple. Not sure I'd want to got higher in plastic. Maybe if I used welded steel. 4. Cut/custom bumpers. The sawzall fixes many problems. zzz 5. Body lift. SJRlift.com has such lifts now. More involved but would give more height than the other stuff listed.

Found some adventure! The lady and I took a 3 day weekend to the Upper Peninsula for some backpacking in the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness Area. Packed to go! As we got further north, cornfields gave way to this... Finally found Lake Superior Campsite for the first evening on the edge of "Lake in the Clouds" had a little fun with the trails. Overlooked Falls Trappers Falls Namesake of this area. Falls on the presque isle area. The lady and I Evening of Day 2 View from the tent the next morning. Lake Superior and frost. Hiking out Presque Isle are day 3. We had a banquet to go to at her school that night so it was a brief day 3. Still had it's rewards.

For a few years, I owned a 77 Coupe which I loved. I did a lot of restoration work to it, made it beautiful and loved it. It was a V6 auto but still had plenty of get up and go to it. I always thought about swapping in a 302 V8 and manual trans but never got to it. About 3 years ago, it was stolen out of storage and I have never stopped missing it. Dang do I miss that car. So a week ago I was browsing Craigslist and came across a 76 Mustang for sale. After a phone call and a drive into farm country I found this project sitting in a barn. It's a mostly complete 1976 fastback with T-tops, 302 V8 and 4 speed manual. Has 51k on the odometer. The floors/seat mounts need some weld work but for a midwestern car from the 70s it's very little rust to worry about. I purchased the car for a whopping $700. and it is now residing in my garage. The lady and I would love to have it complete and pretty in time to use it as a getaway car for our wedding. She promptly named the car "Isabelle" the night we unloaded it. I'm not new to wrenching. But 90% of my automotive work has been on Subarus. So tackling a Mustang is whole new animal. #1. I have a small mountain of parts and a jar of nuts, bolts and hardware. It will be somewhat of a puzzle to sort out what a few things are and where it all goes. Anyone have much knowhow on Fords? #2. The car is mostly complete but I am still going to need a number of parts and would love some help in finding them. Trying to keep it a low budget project but I realize these cars aren't the most common things. If you come across one in a junkyard, or know a part source that would have used part, I have a shopping list. #3. Tune up & mechanical. The engine has been out of the car for at least a year. I'm not looking to build a drag racing beast, but I'd love to have this thing running smoothly with that wonderful V8 rumble. It's good to open the garage door and see a Mustang again. The Subarus don't seem to mind the old timer hanging around.

FANTASTIC! Really like the look of a lifted legacy vs. outback. You can see the height so much better.

As far as the length of the axles goes, the math would say it's possible. No idea about spline count/diameter etc. though. You'd be breaking new ground here. Tribeca is pretty big by comparison to EA cars. Much more HP too. I'm sure the strength is there for what you're suggesting. But like GD said, there's always more too it. Next step would probably be to get a hold of a junkyard Tribeca axle and start playing. See if it's practical to do your lift this way. I doubt it will be easy, but if you pull it off you'll have some fantastic ground clearance with 4 inches of suspension lift. Good luck! And post up pics and such of whatever discoveries you make.

remember to lengthen your steering shaft to accommodate any body lift you do. Lengthen the shaft one inch for every inch you put between body any sub-frame. None necessary for the suspension/strut spacers.

Yeah. Pics would be great. If all you swapped was struts and springs, you don't need to extend the steering shaft. Get some pics up of those extra bolts too. as well as a size for the head at least. 14mm? 17mm? Looking forward to seeing this thing.

I gained about an even 5 inches between 99 Forester struts/springs, 3/8 strut top spacers and 215/75/15 tires. No subframe spacers. The car has been just fine and I've put at least 3000 miles on it since the lift. I'm guessing I got 3 1/2 inches just from the springs/struts/spacers alone. If you're going with 04 XT struts/springs and 1 inch spacers you're looking at 4 1/2 inches before tires. Maybe more. These axles are more forgiving than EA cars but adding stock spacers on the subframe would round out the lift and put the geometry in line with just a strut/spring lift - which has been time tested by several and been just fine on the axles. You'd be safe with the spacers. Without? maybe yes, maybe no.

Yeah. Wasn't sure on that. Never done it myself. I'll probably just be sure I have a nice beefy skid plate to keep it safe.

Struts + 3/8 top spacers. No subframe spacers. Seems fine after about 3000 miles since the swap. No problems at all. EJ cars seem to be more forgiving than the EA cars on the angles. The only way I'd go higher is I lengthen my struts from the bottom somehow to allow for a 30 inch tire. But for now I'm more focused on refining what I have. List for the future is as follows... Alignment - Not showing any wear yet and drives perfectly straight, but I'm thinking the camber has gotta be adjusted. Thoughts??? Cut/weld/fit front push bar. (Or maybe fab one up/custom bumper) Dual Range Swap - Make it more wheeling ready. Possibly more highway fuel efficient. Skid plate up front. Maybe chop/weld the oil pan to tuck it in a little higher. Exhaust work - patch a leak and again, tuck it up closer to the body. More Stickers! CB radio - anyone able to guide me through installation? Thrift store in Madison sells these for like $3. Survival Kit Weight reduction - (As available. Not going nuts.)

p.s. That alternator belt has been painted red, blue, white. U.S.A.? Puerto Rico? Some sort of tacky patriotism going on under the hood.

1. It's been modified which means kids have probably raced it and beaten it HARD. That by itself is enough reason to walk away. 2. A good dealership could give you a good rundown on it's condition, but again, that's hit or miss. There's no guarantee that the guy looking it over is a Subaru guru or someone hired right out of tech school. 3. You are looking at a relatively high maintenance car with admittedly little mechanical experience. You'd be much better off with a more reliable Subaru than trying to breath life into an abused performance machine. 4. I had my own dealership for a few year. Buying from a dealer generally means A) You'll pay too much. And You'll be buying a car made to look as pretty as possible. I was one of the "nice guys" I didn't hide issues with the car. I washed them, fixed things, but sold them with full disclosure of issues that I knew about the car. Few dealers know much about cars to even know whether the car they are selling is sound or not. Even fewer would let you know anything otherwise if they did. Dealers are very good at hiding things. 5. The amount of aftermarket plastic in there suggests poor taste and even poorer maintenance. An air filter shouldn't be that dirty unless this was a rally car, in which case, refer to number 1. Welcome to the board! An Impreza is a fantastic car. Mine are 253k on an EJ22 motor and 210k on an EJ18. Both are running and driving daily. I would recommend going for a good naturally aspirated car as well. Far more reliable and plenty of pep. A turbo car will require a lot more wrenching experience or a lot more money. (or both.)

I'm planning this swap in the near future. When I do, I'll post up a write up with pics. Not enough dual range cars on the road out there. Most of the 80s subies have rusted their way into junkyards or scrap metal around here.

That's the plan. Got almost everything useable off the old engine and will be posting up pics of the damaged on as I take the block apart. Surprisingly, it's not seized up entirely. The shaft still rotates 360.

A while back I was looking at dual pipe exhausts for subies. There's a company out there called Perrin that makes them. Some of the Impreza guys have youtube videos capturing the sound. Pretty cool sounding. Far from the fart cans I'm used to hearing go by the house.

Waited long enough to post up pics. Now that she's moving, I've been posting less. here's a few snapshots of the process. Old Engine out. Carnage. (More pics of this to come. It's demolished in there. "New" engine going in seated. Had the worst headaches figuring out that I neglected to swap over the o-ring seals for the fuel injectors. I didn't even check to see if there was anything there to be swapped when i swapped the fuel rails over to the new engine. Car would redline right after starting. idles well now. Some more tune up stuff is in order in the not so distant future. But the car runs, drives and rides nice. Very cushy. Very clean. Very smooth.

I'd jump in on such things if I'm not working. The Adventure car has not had enough exercise lately.

If you're doing much (if any) wheeling or hard driving, you probably want to weld braces between the blocks of the "anti-lift" (Tranverse links) I think there have been a few instances of them folding under stress in your current state. Looks cool! Don't see many EJ series lifted cars. Looking forward to the progress. Keep it coming.

If I recall, a board member that did an Impreza lift swapped over a rear sway bar from a first gen Forester. It was about twice the thickness of the Impreza and looked like it was just a bolt on.

I came across this before. Not on a Subie, but my 3000GT. The temp sensor acts up from time to time. If the engine has only half cooled off, the car has a really hard time starting. Not sure what the relation is between temp sensor/starting, but for $14. I'd just replace it and see where you're at.

Just did this swap for the first time a couple months ago. It's heavy, and it takes a while, but it's not hard to do. Far easier if you use a tranny jack. Some will recommend pulling the engine first. Seating the torque converter is the only tricky part. There's a write up somewhere that if you follow the instructions, takes maybe a minute to do it right.

Sounds about right. You'd be amazed what hills/downshifts do to fuel economy. We used to have this Ford Ranger that could get close to 30mpg on flat highway. Went through the smoky mountains and the little 4cyl engine was chugging to get over the hills. Went down to about 14 mpg on that stretch. For a 2.2 with that big automatic trans, AWD, biggish car for the power and hills, I'd say you're right on.

New wires already done. The blown motor had a nice set of NGKs on it.