pontoontodd

B and I pulled the dash out of the Impreza and worked on some wiring. The neutral and clutch switches (for canceling the cruise control) haven't been registering on the Haltech in a while. I had them wired 12VDC to one side, signal wire to Haltech on the other side. B suggested trying to ground them and that made them turn on and off at the Haltech. Still don't understand that, had them wired to power and they worked for a while. I think they stopped working when I replaced the expansion module or updated the firmware. Regardless, they work now. B installed the cabin air filter kit. Slammo turned me on to this. Very simple install/upgrade. B also cleaned out the HVAC box and blower motor. B wired in a retained accessory power module from timers.shop. Set that up to keep the power to the family band radio and two cigarette lighter outlets after the ignition is turned off. Will set that to 99 minutes I think. Been meaning to do that for years. He also made a little panel and added a switch so we can turn on one fuel pump or the other once the extra fuel tank is done. He replaced the backlight bulb in the gauge cluster so the clock shows up now. I wired all four EGR solenoid grounds to one of the outputs of the Haltech so we can see if that does anything. Wanted to get it working before we tune the car on a dyno. I got the horn working. Since the cruise inputs for the Haltech need a 5VDC power supply I had to separate that out (they're normally powered by the 12VDC horn circuit) and run the horn power through one of the airbag wires. The main reason for pulling the dash was to try to get the speedo working. After some trial and error and back and forth with Dakota Digital, I seem to have it working now. Will update the EZ36 swap thread with details. On that topic, I plan on just putting a swap guide and base map on my website soon too. Not sure how to share files on here.

The plan is to have a vent/overflow line connecting the tops of both gas tanks. So the second tank will be vented through the stock fuel venting system. Then I'm planning on having a port at the bottom of the second tank with a fuel pump connecting it to the stock tank. This will go in one of the inspection plates and near the bottom of the stock tank. This way the pump can either fill the stock tank from the second tank or fill the second tank from the stock tank. Current plan is just to use two fuel pumps since they have check valves. I already have them, the wiring will be easier really, and I haven't found any reasonably priced reversible fuel pumps. Not extremely fast, the pumps I have are rated at about 75 gallons per hour at 0psi. But it won't be used at every fill up and could potentially start the process before getting to the gas station if the stock tank has a significant amount of gas still in it. Seems better overall than having another filling and venting system for the second tank. There are other ways to do it. For instance I could have some kind of valve that would dump the overflow/relief flow from the engine to the second tank and just run the stock fuel pump to fill the second tank. Just a straight hose from near the top of both tanks connecting each other should allow passive filling of the second tank through the stock filler but - it'd probably be slow, I'd have to add another vent fitting to the second tank, and I'd have to add a fitting to the stock tank which would be difficult and a possible leak source. Definitely open to suggestions.

B and I cut his interior panels to fit around his frame brace and he got them installed. Should be relatively easy to take the panels back out to check on the body occasionally. As with my car, took a good portion of the day to get them to fit back in. I've got some material on order to build the spare tire well gas tank for the Impreza. We tested a stock Subaru fuel pump and it didn't pump backwards. B removed this check valve from one but it still didn't pump backwards when we reversed the polarity. I have at least four Walbro 255lph pumps but they also don't pump backwards. They appear to have a check valve too but not as easily removeable. So I'm on a quest for a reversible fuel pump. Worst case I guess I use two pumps.

We finished the rear strut tower brace for my Impreza. Made a spare tire mount to hold the tire upright. Had to make sure it was over far enough to clear the hatch strut with the hatch closed. Just built a simple mount, thought about making something with a few more tubes but this seems plenty solid. Also relocated the seat belt retractors since they were in the way of the front diagonals. Seat back latch and coupler for cross bar. Had to shift latches forward a bit to make room for the spare tire. Seat back is not as reclined as stock but not too much different. Removed everything for welding and painting. Installed showing plates that bolt through rear trailing arm mounts. Those tubes are barely visible with the seat in place. Didn't have to notch or dent the seat at all. Did have to slot and reform parts of the interior. That took a look more hours than you might think but turned out pretty well. You can see the biggest spot we had to heat and deform for the right rear diagonal but we had to do similar for the front diagonals. Slotted the carpeted floor panel to sit flat too but haven't cut the rubber mat yet. Spare tire and one of the totes in place. Have another one that stacks on top of this. Room in front of it for spare CV axle, etc. Camlock fasteners for spare tire out of the black Outback. Front bolt hole in the "frame rail" for the LR trailing arm mount was starting to pull out and appeared to have a little crack running forward. This was the best picture I could get. Good thing that's bolted all the way up through that brace now. Happy with how this turned out but we also keep wondering if we should have just built two seat buggies by this point.

Best video clips from four trips to the UP last year. Haven't been taking as much video as previous years. We have video of our five hour recovery but I didn't think it was worth sharing even at a much higher speed or cut up. Still have video from our trip out west and our trip to Arkansas. Also want to do a walkaround video of the black Outback before we part it out. Probably same for green Impreza now that it's mostly done. If I have time long travel highlight videos and a recovery compilation video too.

B's Forester continues to run well, isn't consuming much oil. We started work on some rear strut tower braces for my Impreza. Didn't have couplers or enough tubing for a crossbar but we probably have over half the work done. Still have to space the seat latches and relocate the seat belts and add a spare tire mount too. I've been fixated on carrying more fuel since our last trip out west. Would have allowed us to get even farther off the beaten path before having to return to civilization for fuel. I looked into rectangular off the shelf gas tanks but none of them seem to fit well in the spare tire well. My latest idea is to just make one. Two pieces of aluminum, fairly simply cut and bent. Can keep the floor flat this way, should hold 10-12 gallons. Thinking I'll just make the flat flaps wide enough to bolt in under the strut tower braces. Fairly easy/simple mounting and might stiffen the chassis a bit without adding a lot of weight. Thinking 1/8" thick aluminum, two ports in the front, one high, one low. Already have some of the parts. Took the Impreza down to southern IL over the weekend. Drove on a lot of icy/snowy back roads on our way to various hiking trails. A few that were dirt but nothing real crazy. One time we stopped on an icy uphill grade because there was another car parked off to the side and I decided to ask them if they needed anything. They didn't but at first I was getting just some rear wheel spin trying to drive back up the hill. Locked the center diff and drove up without any drama, after about ten or twenty seconds of that I unlocked it, never had to use it the rest of the weekend.

B and I decided to break in the engine on the Forester. Didn't start and idle well at first. Had a code for coolant temp high. I found the coolant temp sensor and we hadn't plugged the connector in so B did that. Seemed to idle smooth but he tried to do as little of that as possible. Went out of town and tried to run it at moderate load and RPM for 20-30 minutes. Ran as well as expected, temps were stable, sucked some coolant out of the overflow when it cooled off. B's big project was replacing his hatch. It'd been beat for a while, he got a better one over a year ago, wanted to wait until he had a good rear bumper to protect it. Added some wire plugs because the junkyard had cut the wiring. Swapped over wiper motor, lock, and actuator, got everything working.

I did change the auto trans fluid in the white Outback. It seems to be driving as normally as a 4EAT can. Got B's car back in the garage. Timing belt is shredded into a few pieces. All the idlers spin free and the tensioner was extended. Removed the engine, took off the intake and heads. All(?) the valves were bent. You can see where a few of them hit the pistons. Since he's had a few of these engines start to burn a lot of oil and we're assuming those were due to stuck rings, while we had the heads off we removed the pistons and replaced the rings. First pin came out fairly easily but we made a tool for the slide hammer to remove the rest. After we made and used this tool B noticed the Subaru FSM recommends using their tool which looks just like it. The old oil control rings barely floated. None of the rings stuck very far beyond the piston either and had about double the gap specified. Bores were within .001" round and taper which amazed me for an engine with about 150k miles on it. Gapped the new rings (they were all good out of the box) and put the pistons back in. B had lapped all the valves and replaced the valve stem seals in a better used pair of heads he had. New head gaskets, head bolts, seals, timing set, etc. Tried the old packing with grease and hammering in a pin to push the pilot bearing out trick. That didn't work. So we replaced the pilot bearing in the conventional manner. When I was tightening down the longest bolt for the PS pump it stripped out of the block. Not enough room between engine and condenser to fit a drill and drill bit so I could install a thread repair. Fortunately I was able to tap the hole deeper and use a longer bolt. Cranked a few times for about ten seconds each with the coil pack unplugged so we could get some oil circulating. Once we plugged that back in it fired right up. Seems to idle a little low and rough to me but I don't know what's normal. Runs smooth when you rev it up a little to 1000-2000RPM. No noticeable leaks or smoke. Just drove it out of the garage and back in the driveway but seems to be ready for another off road adventure.

When I pulled the white Outback in the garage after firing it up outside in single digit (F) temps and doing a lot of steering it had puked some power steering fluid out. When I was jacking it up to replace the automatic transmission I assumed was bad, I noticed the RR axle was pulled out of the rear diff. I thought I'd looked for that but apparently not. Good reminder to diagnose thoroughly before undergoing major repairs. The diff side seal was shot so I knew at a minimum we had to remove the axle. Also you can see the inside of the diff carrier is quite worn but I wasn't too worried about that. Noticed the inboard joint pulled apart easily, that was strangely worn like it had been overextended and wiped out the big snapring and groove. Balls were no longer shiny and smooth. Fortunately I had a spare axle for that corner. Insert several hours of cussing here. Seemed like the snapring wasn't really holding the axle in very firmly so I foolishly tried bending the snapring a little smaller. Then the axle wouldn't go in at all. Was able to remove and install that snapring a few times (of the course of said hours) but then it would be too small for the axle to go in all the way. After some testing on other axles and diffs it just seems like they're pretty easy to pop out. Seems like in the past they've taken some significant effort to remove. Eventually I noticed the crosspin had turned (while the diff was still in the car). At that point I figured we should just swap the diff. Rollpin must be broken, haven't fully disassembled. By removing both the rear cover studs we were able to swap the diff with only one axle/suspension corner disassembled, which is a huge time savings. Took the car on a test drive, seems back to its normal level of slush. While I was cussing, B replaced the side mirrors. After the test drive, we installed the sandblasted and repainted front bumper and skidplate. Doesn't match the lower half of the car nearly as well as the bumpers on the Impreza match it but I got them all painted together and figured this would be better than its previous rusty state. So I guess we're doing a long term test on what a little brake fluid in your auto trans does. I will change that soon but even a drain and refill on an auto trans only changes about half the fluid.

Video from our trip to the UP last year. If you like extracting Subarus from mud you'll love this one:

This is nothing, you should have seen us when we were racing the buggy. I did tell them it was cracked (at the time I'd only seen the small crack in the bead area and they've seen that before) and I didn't want them to put the new tire on it but I wanted it back. So they might have thought I'd already noticed the larger crack. Only one out of five spokes is broken though.

Got the tire with the hole in the sidewall replaced under the Discount tire road hazard warranty. When I got the wheel back I noticed this crack through one of the spokes. Not sure how we didn't notice that, maybe the tire machine opened it up a bit. M stopped by to plug a tire on his wife's late model Outback. He noticed my tire reamer is quite worn. It's been used a few times. I tried a different crank position sensor on the Impreza, same voltage as the old one while cranking. Been starting fine but just want to be sure. I also replaced the RF tie rod which was quite sloppy, that was the corner I cracked the wheel and popped the tire on. B worked on his heads some more, got one almost fully assembled and started lapping valves on the other one.

Finally edited and posted video from our trip out west in 2022. short version: long version: maybe the most scenic off road trip we've ever done

Yes, rear bumper same gray color as front, roughly matches the bottom of the body. Agreed on the towed vehicle braking. Maybe the simplest would be to have an extra master cylinder plumbed in that the tongue would push on. Have seen this on some boat trailers. Could just have the extra master on a hose and store it somewhere on the vehicle when not towing. Also have discussed wiring a trailer light pigtail into the front of each car so we don't have to use the magnetic lights. But all of those things require a significant amount of work on all of the cars.

Yes, rear bumper same gray color as front, roughly matches the bottom of the body. Agreed on the towed vehicle braking. Maybe the simplest would be to have an extra master cylinder plumbed in that the tongue would push on. Have seen this on some boat trailers. Could just have the extra master on a hose and store it somewhere on the vehicle when not towing. Also have discussed wiring a trailer light pigtail into the front of each car so we don't have to use the magnetic lights. But all of those things require a significant amount of work on all of the cars.

Travelvw isn't real close to us but close to Arkansas. We've met him and slammo down there a few times. Quite a few trails there and it's almost never too cold for tent camping. Kinda far from home for B and I so we tend to go there in the spring and fall when it's too cold or snowy in the UP. Closer than going out west though. Not going to tell you it's safe to flat tow like that but it's plenty stable with a decent tow bar. There's a significant number of people who will buy two (or three) vehicles at a time at an auction and link them together this way and drive them long distances. We see them fairly often on our way to Arkansas in particular. Most of them seem to survive. Braking is obviously half (or less) normal so you have to be careful. Towing with trailer brakes would be significantly safer. B thinks he did the belt about 35,000 miles ago. Can't remember for sure but I think he did the tensioner/idlers. Know the current best brand belt/tensioners/idler/water pump to use?

That'd be good. A little worried it messed up a piston or bore but guess we'll just have to wait and see. B dug out his best pair of heads, cleaned them up, and lapped in most of the valves this weekend. I worked on the tow bar a bit and installed the painted rear bumper on the Impreza. Already got a couple compliments on it running some errands in town this morning. Should make recovery easier.

Also forgot to mention, ran the AC on some fairly long climbs when it was 60F and temp gauge never budged. Not conclusive but I'm pretty sure under similar conditions it would have started going up on the trip out west, so hopefully the thermostat fixed that problem.

I wasn't the only one doing last minute prep on my car, slammo put his old skidplate on his daily driver and met up with us. Friday I picked up the bumpers from the paint shop but didn't have time to install before I left since I was packing the car. B and I drove down through Joplin MO and we found a campground south of there that had tent sites. Slammo and travelvw camped at this site. Saturday morning we headed south and met slammo and travelvw in Talihina OK. We drove east on highway 1 into AR. Did some trail riding there with travelvw mostly leading the way. Slammo and I both got to drive travelvw's bug. It rode quite rough as he has much too large torsion bars in the rear. He said the limited slip makes a big difference and it definitely looked like it on loose climbs, much less wheelspin than I would have expected. Travelvw's windshield washing technology: Near the end of the day we drove to the top of Eagle mountain. There was a rocky obstacle near the top that slammo left his car at the bottom of. B and travelvw were getting video so I took the most difficult line and put a hole in my RF tire sidewall. We swapped on the spare and drove to the top. A little off to the side of the building at the top there's a nice rocky outcrop with a good view. We camped at a site travelvw had been to before where two streams came together with some little rapids. We left slammo's car there for the day. Sunday morning I found this weirdly rotted out trunk near the campsite. We headed east. Hiked to a couple different old lookout towers, one a much longer hike and also more intact than the other. From the intact one you could see the hills/mountains generally run east/west. Views were good but it was overcast most of the weekend, on a sunny day they would have been great. Eventually travelvw had to head back north and we headed back west on some different trails. We went to the two footed oak tree which is bizarre. Went back to the campsite. We all planned to be back home Monday night so we figured we only had a few hours for trail riding Monday morning. We'd crossed a powerline grade near the campsite so we went to check that out first. It turned out to be a dead end but a decent hill climb. Headed north into Mena to get gas. Saw some plane junkyards at the airport. Decided to check out Top Walker Mountain road on the way north. Quite a few side trails on the way there. Drove to the end of the side trail/ridge on the map. There were a couple of narrower trails so we tried one of those, it dead ended at Round Mountain. Again, pretty good views but would be really cool in clearer weather. Before we got back on the tarmac for good we aired up and ate some sandwiches. We hadn't made it very far north when the Forester's engine suddenly stopped running going up a long grade and he pulled over on the (fortunately wide) shoulder. Engine cranked over fine, too well really, sounded like it had no compression so we assumed timing belt failure of some kind. Hooked up the tow bar to my Impreza. Had never towed with it before, has no wiring set up for towing. Towed Forester to the nearest off ramp. Slammo convinced us to do some wiring so we got some scotch locks and a four pin wiring pigtail from a parts store and wired up running lights and brake lights to the magnetic mount lights. Continued north, seemed a little squirrely when braking but not terrible. Slammo split off at Joplin to the north and we headed east. When I pulled into the next gas station in the dark it felt worse and I could see the Forester was clearly off center. Fortunately it has no problem driving over curbs. At this point only one leg of the tow bar was attached to the Forester. We straightened out the tabs and cranked all the bolts down and added a ratchet strap to keep the legs of the tow bar from spreading. After that it was much more stable the entire ride home. B took part of the timing cover off at one stop and confirmed the timing belt was loose. Didn't see this until after we got home. It's been a while since I've worked on EJ engines but I don't think you're supposed to see the timing belt through the cover and that looks like the wrong side of the belt. We both think the Impreza can hold grades better while towing the Forester than the Forester can while powering itself. I don't think we burned significantly more gas on the way home either but my speedo/odo still isn't working so I'm not sure. Overall a decent trip. Weather was pretty good. We never got stuck but I did get a flat tire and B's engine clearly needs some work. It probably needs new heads or at least valves. He does have two pairs of probably good heads in his basement. Impreza ran well all weekend. Did take three tries to start once but generally started pretty quickly so I'd say the rewiring was a success. I'm going to try a different crank position sensor and eventually probably shimming/shaving it up or down to get more cranking voltage.

B and I moved most of the rest of my business inventory to my machine shop across town. We took one trip with his Forester and my white Outback loaded with parts. Then while he was working on his car I loaded the white Outback up with another literal ton of parts. Almost as soon as we started driving the transmission acted like it was slipping. Got to the shop and unloaded everything, still slipping on the way back and has been ever since. I tried adding some brake fluid since my brother knows some people who've had temporary success with it but it didn't really seem to help. Plan to get a lower mileage replacement trans from a junkyard and hopefully a tan leather driver's seat while I'm at it. The Impreza has been taking a while to start fairly often since the swap after it sits overnight or longer. Sometimes it takes two or three tries before it starts. A while back I discovered this was because the crank position sensor wasn't generating enough voltage while cranking. Voltage signal on the Haltech oscilloscope looked decent but it wasn't enough. I lowered the threshold voltage and also added a column for 0RPM which seemed to help but still wasn't a complete fix. Then it just wouldn't start, was giving crank position and throttle body codes. I took apart the engine harness connector as that's been the source of most of my problems and the wire pulled out of the pin for the crank position sensor. I repinned that and checked the throttle body connections and it started and no longer had those errors but it was running rough, probably on five cylinders. I decided I'd had enough and ordered some closed barrel pin connectors and a tool from JR Ready. I'm not a huge fan as they're made in China and I don't like how closed barrel pins don't crimp on the insulation but M says they're the best thing they've found for wiring airplanes so I figure it might be good enough for trail riding in a Subaru. The week before we left I rewired the engine harness plug on the Impreza with some help from B. Shortened up the wires with a couple feet of excess length in the process. Directly wired the throttle body and MAP sensors to the ECU as they're pretty easy to unplug and then I'd have one less connection in line and fewer things to run through the connectors I added. Added four Deutsch connectors with closed barrel pins. I did zip tie them away from that bracket after I took that picture. Labeled and checked wires, pinned out the connectors, double checked wire color matches and tried to start the car Thursday. Only cranked but didn't fire. I checked various things, sensors seemed to be reading except the cam and crank position sensors. Then I realized I hadn't plugged that connector in. Then it fired up. Overall pretty happy with how that turned out, should be much easier to repin those connectors and the reduced wiring under the dash makes it cleaner and allows the glovebox to fit better. Bit of a last minute fix finishing that the day before we left but I'm glad I did it.

I'm sure the way we drive these cars has nothing to do with the strut towers coming apart, definitely just the rust and previous crash damage. You're welcome Mr T VW!

Video from our trip to Minnesota (a little bit in northern WI on the way) August 2022. Decent trail riding but overall not as good as the UP, even more mosquito infested, and farther from home. Plenty of beaver dam breaking opportunities though. Next one will be our trip out west October 2022. Probably the most scenic trip we've ever taken. Might take a while to edit that one, got a good amount of video that week.

Video from our trip to the UP June 2022. Plan to catch up on these over the winter.

We do have people riding in our back seats from time to time but boxy fuel cells in the rear wheel wells would be pretty simple, cheap, and low center of gravity. My green Impreza is a little front heavy though, plus putting the fuel tank in the tire well will be easier to slap a piece of sheet metal over for more fire/leak protection. Excellent point about the bracing. Certainly a valid concern, guess we'll see what happens. On the blue Forester in particular the LR strut tower appears to have been replaced in a crash and we've already had to weld it several times.

Yeah the tank is certainly heavier than I'd like. On the plus side it's not going to leak in a crash. The downside of that is it won't crumple in a crash either. Good point about the cross brace, would at least have to plate that part of the strut tower to make the cross brace functional.