jmoss5723

Welcome to the USMB! A restored brat looks good next to just about anything, but that just my opinion. There have been several brats coming and going on craigslist in PA. If you are serious about buying, they are out there.

That sucks! I probably will just remove my struts and make a template. I was hoping I could minimize downtime on my car by making the spacers ahead of time since my Forester is my only car at the moment. Sometimes you just have to do it the hard way, I guess.

If you've already done it in a CAD program, could you save it as a PDF file that will print to scale on 8.5x11 paper and share it? I'm sure a lot of people would like to have that.

I'm trying to get like an inch of lift as cheaply as possible. I can get HDPE material for like $20 bucks and make spacers myself. I agree that new springs is an overall better approach, but I can't beat the price. So again I ask, anyone have a print-to-scale file of a template like the one originally posted? Or does anyone know how I can make one? I know I could take my struts off of the car and figure something out, but with my forester being my only vehicle at the moment, I'd rather have the spacers fabbed in advance so that I can have minimum down time on the car.

Does anyone know where I can find a drawing of this pattern that will print to scale? I've decided to lift my forester and I want to trace this onto my lift material and cut it out with a band saw.

I guess I forgot that I color matched my mirrors and that they used to be that gray color. I like your Stop sign plate. I used a "Slow Children Playing" sign for the same. Before I installed it though, a friend make a great suggestion to put it reflective side up. Now when I put a light into my engine bay, the highly reflective surface adds nice illumination. The downside to doing it that way is you lose "the look" of the sign under there.

Awesome! thank you!

My nether-regions are tingling from looking at this.

I'm not sure about your warranty questions, but as far as suspension and wheels go, it all kinda depends on your preference. The stock set-up is nice, but some people like the look or performance of lifting or lowering or stiffening the suspension. If you like the way the car looks and drives and it does the things you want it to do, I wouldn't mess with it. If not, change it up a little bit. What do you generally use the car for? Daily driver, off-road, racing, etc. How you want to use the car really dictates what components you want to install.

That's exactly what I was hoping for. Perfect!

Looking good! Next mod needs to be painting or plasti-dipping that C-pillar black. That was one of the first things I did to mine and it helps to give a continuous look along the length of the vehicle. That random gray chunk just looks out of place.

Greg, is that the stock location for the seats? Just curious whether you reinstalled seats and that's what looked good to you, or if they were still in the factory position.

I'm also curious about forward/backward placement. I am putting seats back in my 84 and I'm not certain where they should go.

1987 was the last year in the US.

Welcome to the board! I'm sure you'll do just fine here. Use the search function a lot and ask questions in the right places and you should find that everyone is pretty helpful. I wish I could get a Brat that new! Definitely jealous. Post up some pictures!

I had the same symptoms in my 2004 Forester a little over a month ago. I went for the fuel filter first. Didn't help. Check the codes for my CEL (it's always on due to an evap leak, so I didn't know it was throwing new codes) turns out the terrible bucking was the engine misfiring under load. I went to pull spark plugs to do a little diagnosis and the rubber hood on the first plug was soaked with oil. My head gasket was leaking oil internally and causing my misfires. I got the HG's done on the engine and it has been perfect ever since. Maybe the HG job wasn't perfect and it is leaking internally? (Edit: Just tweaked some wording.)

True. Thanks bratman.

I found these drawings a while ago on subaruoutback.org. I have never seen these drawings anywhere else and I thought they might be useful to some people here. If they are already posted here, sorry. The subaruoutback.org post claims these fit 95-99 Legacy and all Foresters up to 2008, but you might have to do a little measuring to confirm. If anyone has made a lift using these dimensions, give us a little feedback on it. I plan to make a 1 inch set for my 2004 Forester XS in the near future and I will let you know how it goes. Link to original post on subaruoutback.org: http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/99-do-yourself-illustrated-guides/31520-diy-strut-spacer-lift-templates-3.html

Awesome car, and welcome to the board! The RX is rare: only 2,600 units were made between 1987 and 1989. Be good to it! Whatever questions you have, someone here can probably answer it.

Ya that plate relies on its shape to give it the strength and it really is a pretty decent little piece of protection! But like I said before, it was not designed to be jacked on and i would avoid it in the future. If you must jack it from the center, a few inches back on the cross member should be fine in terms of strength, however a little tippy.

Also, you REALLY should not jack it up on little skid plate. Move back to the cross member or just jack one side at a time from the frame rail of the unibody.

It pains me to hear that it is going to be a winter car. I don't think it'll last long. However, it will a do a great job at it and it was probably pretty cheap.

Hm. Well, we'll see what shakes out with this. I'm going to keep digging. It is nice to know that it'll work out even without the bolts, though.

Bolts to nothing?! What are the 4 big bolts for, then? There are two on each side.

SuperBrat, thanks for the info! I didn't figure I'd have to remove the bumper, but it's half-off right now so that I can put some "customized" fenders on anyway. So the guard just sits on that lower chrome bar under the radiator, and bolts to the uni-body? I'd just go look at, but I can't look right now because the car is in my father's garage for repairs.