pontoontodd

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.

Got a 54L, 56# (empty) propane tank from Belgium. 650mm diameter, 200mm tall. That fitting welded to the side has six tapped holes so I plan on making a cap to bolt to that with a couple of o rings for sealing and a couple of fittings. Fits nicely in Forester spare tire well, could probably go an inch bigger on diameter. Sits well below the stock foam under the rear floor. Not so much in the Impreza. Had to hammer quite a bit to get it to mostly fit. Sticks about 2" above the rear floor. Should still be able to stand the spare tire up next to it on the floor, so not a big deal. Next step is to see if a stock fuel pump is reversible. We finished rear strut tower bracing for B's Forester. He did the majority of the work on this. Diagonal tubes go down to the rear bumper bolts. Cross bar is removable. If we left the rear seat latches in place, we'd have to put the crossbar far enough back that it would block the strut nuts. So we spaced the seat latches forward 3/4". This also helps hold the top of the strut tower down. The front diagonals require us to move the seat belt retractors. We have that all figured out and welded up, basically moving them up about 3". Mostly welded with gussets. Here you can see where the front diagonals go down to the top of the trailing arm mounts. Seat backs are a little more vertical now but still reclined some. The back seats rarely get used but they're good to have when we really need them. Finished welding them outside the car. This will be a good car to test them on since the one rear strut tower has been repaired a few times now, the first time due to crash damage under previous ownership. So if it stops this car from coming apart we'll know they work. Might make a set for the Impreza over the winter too. Would be a very convenient thing to weld a spare tire mount on.

Yes, the heater blows hot so I assume there's good flow through the heater core. And when I run the heater when the engine is running hot it cools off pretty quickly.

Yeah I really need to get a good read on the actual engine temp. I'm using an EZ30 temp sensor since it has three pins. One I ran to the gauge. Another I ran to the ECU. The Haltech says the coolant temp is about 190F in the normal position (slightly below middle where it usually sits). When the gauge is reading 3/4 the Haltech says it's about 217F I think. So it hasn't been getting super hot, probably not hot enough to worry about. But on my other EZ powered cars (with stock radiators) the temp is always rock solid in the middle if everything's working right. If anything they drop a bit with the AC on since the fans are running. I've been thinking about adding two temp sensors with a Haltech calibration. One on the intake, one on the outlet. Another variable I've been thinking about is the thermostat is at the engine inlet but the temp sensor is at the engine outlet. So assuming the radiator can do a good job of cooling, it's possible it just runs hotter at higher duty cycles of the engine since the thermostat is controlling coolant flow based on engine inlet temperature. The fact that it runs hotter with the AC on doesn't back up that hypothesis though.

No I didn't bother trying to take the temperature. Since the temp was slowly rising, it's hard to tell if it was a time difference or temperature difference. Assuming the water was at a fairly constant temperature while boiling (should be, right?) I think it was more a time difference. The old one took a minute or two longer than the new one to open to about the same gap. I find it odd that they then seem to gradually close the same amount at the same time/temperature as they cool. Only data point I have to compare is that the second electric fan still cycles on and off at idle which is disappointing. It's been only getting up to about 60F ambient here but I haven't seen the temp gauge move above the middle at all, even with the AC on, so that's promising but far from conclusive.

Rear bumper fabrication conclusion. Added some slider tubes to protect charcoal canister, hang muffler, and provide some kind of ramp when backing over obstacles. Added tabs for license plate and license plate lights. Added lateral receivers for jacking and winching. Ready for paint. Might get the old rusty front bumper on the white Outback painted at the same time. Should protect the body from trees and make recoveries easier. Slammo had suggested the thermostat in the EZ36 in the Impreza might be bad. I drained the coolant, cleaned the radiator (seemed pretty clean inside and out, don't think that was contributing to the problem), and removed the old thermostat. It looked fairly clean but is most likely 11+ years old and sat for a year or two dry. Tested it side by side with a new one from the dealer by bringing a pot of water up to boiling. New one (bottom) definitely opened sooner than the old one. But after a few minutes they both opened the same amount. While slowly cooling down they looked the same. Did that twice, same results. So hopefully the new one will help stabilize engine coolant temps. Still might add inlet and outlet temp sensors that have a calibration for the Haltech.

Wife's 2001 H6 Outback has been leaking oil from the front of the driver's side valve cover for a year or so now. I replaced the valve cover gasket a while back which didn't seem to help. Have also been getting spray marks on the engine cover behind the radiator cap for a while, tried a different radiator cap, hasn't been using much coolant. A few weeks ago it became clear the top radiator tank was leaking where it joins the aluminum core. Long story short I got a new one and had new hoses on hand that have been getting oil dripped on them so I replaced all that. My "fix" for the oil dripping on the radiator hose was this flap of sheet metal. Made some progress on the rear bumper. Tubes in the middle are spacers under the main mounts. Will probably weld the two together for added strength. Main beam in place with cuts sketched out. Metal origami as B says. Sticks out about an inch wider than the body on each side. 2" clearance vertically to the hatch and lights, 2" back from the rear sheet metal, should be plenty of room to wrap a strap around and provide good protection for the lights. Still a bunch of things to add but the main beam and mounts are ready to weld.

Always too many trails and not enough time. Certainly in the UP. One forum thread I read implied that Toyota wouldn't even have a clutch switch for the starter if it wasn't required by law. Most common explanation/use was for creeping the truck forward in low range while standing outside it.

Drove to a large old gold mine called gold hill, supposedly mined in the 1850s. We saw a few stacked stone walls a few feet tall sloping up to the mine. Took a trail that wound up going along one of them, it was there to hold the road up, still holding 170 years later. At first B was hesitant to drive up but when he saw me going up it without any issues and taking pictures he decided to follow. We made it to a little flat spot at the top and checked out the main mine pit on foot. Found some quarts crystals. Did some five point turn arounds in the little flat spot, hanging the bumpers over the edge of the cliff, but got down without incident and went to the pony express trail. Again, mainly gravel roads, but all kinds of roads/trails off of it and good scenery. We camped just off the route in Overland canyon. One of the most beautiful sights any human has ever witnessed reflecting a nice sunrise. By this point it was clear the electric fridge slammo gave me wasn't working. You could hear it running but the sound was different and it wasn't getting cold. Also had noticed a weird smell when I opened that door of the car so I'm guessing the refrigerant leaked out. Important ingredient for staying out of civilization for extended periods of time so I'm probably going to buy a better one. Saturday morning we finished the pony express trail. Over the last couple days B had mentioned some vibration in his car, at first he thought it was washboard on the road but mine was riding smooth. We swapped a few of his tires around, never made it better, the last one we switched seemed to make it worse. Then he said it got a lot worse. Driveshaft was missing three bolts on the diff flange and the remaining one was loose. We put in some spare bolts and continued on smoothly. Pony express route generally follows the southern edge of the salt lake basin. As we went farther east there was actually traffic on the road, which was unusual for the week. Not sure if it was because we were getting closer to the Salt Lake City metro area and pavement or because it was Saturday or both. Also I think this is where we saw the first UTVs on the trail all week. We'd become accustomed to seeing a few pickup trucks a day or maybe a Jeep if we stayed off pavement. When we got to the first vault toilets (at a campground entrance) there was almost steady traffic on and off the road for people using them. Continued east, not long after we got on pavement we saw a stunt area not too far off the highway so we started driving towards it. As we got closer there was a truck and trailer parked in the main trail, something we saw in Gold Hill the day before. In this case though the guy on the flatbed trailer was setting up to do some target practice. His buddy waved us by and we found the little hills and trails we'd seen from the pavement. Made some PB&Js and found a different way back to the highway. Along the way we saw a few other fairly large stunt areas with all kinds of trailers and dirt bikes, might have to check those out sometime, maybe during the week. Stopped at the closest gas station, filled up with gas, swapped out air filters, and aired up tires. B mentioned as we drove into SLC metro that we could probably see more cars at one time than we'd seen in the entire previous week. Drove back home without any other issues. Cruise is working pretty well in Impreza. AC works great but if I used it on long mountain grades the coolant temp gauge would start to climb. B said he did about 3900 miles, I'd guess around 1000 of that was off pavement. Need to figure out the cooling issues with the Impreza, after discussing it with slammo I'm thinking maybe thermostat. It's most often a problem at low speeds while climbing or driving on sand but will start to go up sometimes going up long grades at high speeds with the AC on. Impreza takes some cranking before it starts sometimes, usually after sitting overnight. Wondering if it takes a bit to build fuel pressure. A few times, sometimes after some hillclimb, we'd hear the fuel system make a gurgling noise after the car had been shutoff for a minute. We used our jerry cans twice and I rolled into gas stations on empty four times. And that was after cutting our trail riding short so we didn't run out. It would be great to have more fuel capacity so we can wander better. I discussed the propane spare tire well tanks with slammo and he found one for about $300US shipped with 10 gallon capacity that should easily fit. https://shop.vanmeenen.com/en/lpg_cng-tanks-&-valves-1/lpg-toroidal-tanks-42 I'm thinking a vent/overflow hose to the main tank and another line with reversible pump. Then it can just be filled by the stock fuel filler and when the stock tank runs low it can refill that. Definitely need to finish the rear bumper for the Impreza, would have made the recoveries easier. Super happy with the performance and reliability of the Impreza overall. Forester holds up well too but definitely needed the low range to do some hill climbs the Impreza could do in high range. Still a great way to explore the back country and hit some fun trails. It also seems like on our last few trips a lot more people than usual have been complimenting us or commenting on the cars. These turn of the century Subarus are getting more rare in general, and who doesn't love a first gen Impreza, but it's still a fun surprise. Over the winter I want to make the straight cut planetary low ranges and get caught up on editing youtube videos, we got some good footage this past week.