pontoontodd

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.

Friday morning we went to Ely, got gas, and started calling and visiting tire shops. We couldn't find a 215/75/15 of any kind but they did replace one of B's valve stems that was leaking. We'd found Devil's Gate slot canyon online that was roughly on our way so we started heading that direction. Going up the mountain pass we came upon a full size pickup truck with ~20ft enclosed trailer. Truck had a Green Bay Packers sticker in the back window. Fortunately he was pulled over just enough for us to squeeze past him. We stopped at the pass/saddle to enjoy the view and then B saw the truck and trailer coming. We ran back to our cars and made sure we stayed ahead of him. Going down was a narrow, rocky, dirt switchback mountain road. I have no idea how he was navigating it but we looked back when we were near the bottom and could see him slowly working his way down. Continued east through the desert down some washes/canyons. The last one was quite fun, we could go there quickly since it didn't have 2' deep ruts like the Vegas to Reno course. Took it to Devil's Gate. We hiked through it and up to the top and drove out of the wash and while there was a large flat gravel area that could be called a parking lot, there were no signs of any kind this awesome slot canyon is here. It's limestone which is unusual, most slot canyons are sandstone. So the rocks here are polished. From here we headed back into Utah towards Massey northern #13, a portion of the old pony express route. On the way we took a side trail up a wooded valley along a stream with an amazing alcove in one cliff. Cut across Massey 13 and headed north through some hills on some fun trails.

We wanted to check out some areas we saw on our way home from the last Vegas to Reno so we headed south on 93 (alt) and then bailed off on a dirt road to the west. Went up through some old mining ruins in the hills. I tried this hillclimb but didn't make it to the left turn. Saw some wild horses and went through some pine forests. Continued southwest and wound up along a big flat wash. Drove up another one which was a long narrow trail up a wooded valley with quite a few cattle but most of the trees were burned. There was a big hillclimb we drove to the top of. Well, it looked like the top at first but just turned out to be a flatish spot maybe 1/3 of the way to the top. In the picture below you can see the part of the hillclimb we didn't reach. I drove up somewhat farther but was running out of power and traction and came back down. We camped along the trail that night. The main trail seemed to end at a high point overlooking the burned out valley. We drove up another valley but the trail kept getting steeper and looser so we turned around. Also by this time the Impreza's temp gauge would start rising with any sustained climbing or driving on soft ground, I'd have to run the heater to keep that under control. Drove through the town of Cherry Creek, B wondered whether they'd ever seen a Subaru. Went west through a cool canyon, some mine ruins, and through an area with various side trails and some pine forest. Continued south on some mountain trails, hit a few side trails and hillclimbs with some great views. Yes we did the hillclimb pictured below. View from the top. Near the bottom the canyon narrowed up with some fairly steep cliffs alongside us. Continued south to Ely to buy gas. Next we went to a nearby section of National Forest we'd seen on the way home from the last Vegas to Reno and drove into the mountains off the highway. Trail didn't seem too bad and then came to a big grade which looked fine from the side. When I made the turn to get on the grade I could see there was a big rut full of rocks on the downhill side of the off camber trail. I was able to stay out of the rut for a while but dropped in it a few times. The last time I dropped in it blew out my LR tire. I was able to back down to the corner but unfortunately I was stuck in the rut and it pulled me against the bank on the inside of the turn. After some trial and error and head scratching and with some tension on the winch cable we were able to jack the LR up and sideways out of the rut and away from the bank. While we were in the middle of this 2+ hour recovery operation I noticed oil dripping out one of the exhaust welds near the back of the car and something dripping off the LF control arm into the wheel. We replaced the tire in this position which was scary but seemed like our best option. Don't worry though we had a towel on the winch cable. Before I started the engine I turned it a few revolutions by hand to make sure some cylinders weren't full of oil. With four good tires and three of them on (over) the road I was fairly easily able to back across the road to the semi flat spot outside the switchback. The oil leak was probably past the rings down into the exhaust. The other leak was power steering fluid, maybe from turning the wheel without the engine running? Neither leak continued after this incident but it did take a while to burn all the oil out of the exhaust. \ Body damage wasn't as bad as I expected. After that excitement we decided to find a campsite.

From there we took pavement to the golden spike. Asked a few questions at the visitor center and filled up our water jugs. Followed the original transcontinental railroad route/Massey trail as best we could but there are quite a few bypasses now. For instance the road in the picture below is closed to motorized traffic. It follows the northern edge of the salt lake basin and crosses roughly the western third of Utah. There are a lot of mountains/rock formations along the way. We drove up to the top of Crocodile Mountain and Loco(?) mountain and camped near that peak. Wednesday morning we finished the railroad route. For the most part it's an easy gravel road. All of the former trestles are blocked though, they were all fairly small so the trail just makes little jogs down and across and back up out of little washes. Most of these are smooth, many of them are fun, but a few are washed out badly enough to cause a challenge for something with lower clearance. We then headed south on Massey northern #10. The start of this has some fun sections and a lot of cross ditches and some good scenery. We drove around and through Silver and Crater islands. Both fun and scenic. The northern end of Silver island was part of the ill fated Donner party's route. The southern end of Silver island has a lot of campsites and side trails and some traffic. This was a consistent sign we were getting close to pavement. We got food and gas in Wendover. Introduced myself to a French man at the grocery store who'd shipped their RV to the eastern US/Canada and had driven across to UT, heading to the west coast, then back across the southern US and Mexico on a yearlong trip with his wife and daughter.

Drove Massey northern #5 which had cool fall colors and a lot of embedded rocks. Got to a large, fairly crowded camping area near the end of the trail and had to go south down the trail signed “not suitable for passenger cars”. Had to wait for some loggers to do their thing which was interesting to see. We've seen a lot of this logging equipment over the years but never really in action. Cool mountain views, trails weren't too difficult. Met back up with Massey northern #1 which went down the bottom of a canyon. Got to the eastern end of Massey northern #3 and saw the sign for the rock garden he warned about. Figured we'd take a look and see if we could get to where he recommends people turn around. Most of it wasn't bad but we went through a few sections with fairly big rocks, I did one of them in low range. We were almost to the eastern end of the Massey trail and then we got to the real rock garden. A few hundred feet of big rocks. We used low range and got through with some banging. We were going southwest which is the downhill direction. If we came at this from the west on the Massey trail we might have just turned around when we saw it, but I think we could have done it in the uphill direction, it's not very steep. That's why they call them rockers... Did the rest of #3, tons of campsites and a few campgrounds along it.

Trip report, going to break this up into a few posts. Our first destination was the Killpecker sand dunes in SW Wyoming so we got off the interstate a little ways east of there and headed for some routes I downloaded off gravelmap.com. Site is mainly for mountain bikers to share unpaved routes but most of them seem to be gravel roads, figured it was at least a starting point to finding an unpaved through route to the dunes, can easily download GPX files off the site. Not long after leaving the interstate we stopped to make PB&Js and an old man in a Toyota pickup rolled up. At first we assumed he was mad at us for some reason but eventually realized he was just bored and wanted to chat and possibly help us figure out where we were going, which we didn't want to plan too closely. Told us the nearest paved road was 80 miles north and one 50 miles west or something which sounded good to us. Had the Wyoming gazeteer and some other ancient falling apart Wyoming map he was referencing. Noticed there was a switch on the dash to bypass the clutch safety switch, apparently this is a common thing on Toyotas, pretty cool. Saw some antelope and wild horses. Eventually made it to the campground at the dunes around sunset and decided it'd be best to camp the night first and test out the dunes in the morning. We'd forgotten flags for the dunes but fortunately B had a couple of just the orange flags he'd picked up off some trail. We zip tied those to tent poles closed in the windows along the B pillars. There were some big hill climbs on the back side of the campground B had noticed the night before but we decided to hit the dunes first. Most of the dunes were fairly solid but there were definitely some soft areas. Some variety of surfaces too, some rocky parts, quite a bit of grass and brush growing in the low flat areas, even some ponds. Some interesting rock formations along the northern edge. Saw some small rodents running around on them, would see a lot more throughout the week. I did eventually get the Impreza stuck in some soft sand driving too slow. I was able to lock the center diff but all that did was get all four tires spinning and sink the front in. The folding sand ladders got sucked in by the tires but started wrapping around them in the wheel wells. We jacked the car up, pushed some sand and the ramps under the tires, let it back down, and I got back on the move. Having the easy install square foot base for the high lift was a big plus here. The dunes cover 10,000 acres, in three or four hours we maybe covered a quarter of them. Definitely our favorite dunes we've visited but we haven't driven Glamis yet. We headed down behind the campground and checked out Crookston Ranch. I tried a couple of the big hillclimbs. Started in second gear high and then downshifted to first but that was still slowly losing speed so I tried low range and that just spun the tires. I think with a better power to weight ratio it probably could have held first gear high range and powered to the top. Fairly impressed it almost made it to the top though, those were some big loose hillclimbs. Next we drove to Boar's Tusk. B's Viair compressor fuse was still conducting but had melted itself and the little protective rubber cap. Made some PB&Js and hiked up to the base of the rock. Cool view from up there, walked around to the SW side which had a little easier path down and better view of the rock formation. Checked out a couple of groups of petroglyphs. White Mountain petroglyphs was easy to find. As we pulled up, a couple was walking back to their truck. When I got out of my car the guy says “USMB?”. We laughed and chatted a bit. He said he tested the original SJR lift kits on his Brat. Cedar Canyon petroglyphs took quite a while to reach, we knew where it was but none of our GPS maps was completely accurate. This is a common occurrence everywhere we go off pavement, disappointing sometimes but also adds to the adventure. Before we found the petroglyphs we found a cool little slot canyon. At the petroglyphs we were running low on fuel and far from any civilization so we dumped our gerry cans in our tanks. B has a three gallon can and I recently got a five gallon can. Then we decided to head west. There was a large north south ridge blocking our way west of Killpecker creek. A couple maps showed a road that went over it so we tried that and it completely disappeared when it got to the base of the bluffs. We then took some more major roads southwest. Dropped into the Alkali creek valley and then back out via a short but steep hillclimb, not sure B appreciated this detour since we were both running low on fuel but it worked out. Drove down to Green River, Impreza's low fuel light was on, so I guess that works. I had seen a bridge on the map over the Green River along a minor road so we decided to see if we could cross there. Headed back north and camped for the night because it was starting to get dark. B noticed some faint streaks of red in the sky and our phones captured some grossly exaggerated images of the northern lights. Tuesday morning we drove around the ODI plant and got to the Green River. Took at least one road/trail that was two track and eventually zero tracks. Followed it on the GPS for a while just basically driving through scrub desert until we found it again. Some other trails that weren't on our maps linked up with it. The whole time we were getting closer to the ODI plant which had a huge fire burning next to the main plant. Apparently this is just a Tuesday at the ODI plant, no one appeared to be trying to put it out. Made it up to the bridge, which still exists, but has been closed for a while. We went south to the bridge near the ODI plant and took I80 to 30 and headed for some Massey trails in Utah.

Passenger side cooling fan on the Impreza wasn't working because a stick was jammed in the wiring and had pulled the connector. Temps still creep up when idling (or driving slow in the sand) with the AC on. Seemed like a lot of air was blowing around the fans and not just getting sucked into them. I got some adhesive foam strips and took the fans off and stuck those to the perimeter of the fans so they'd seal better against the condenser. The flow feels a little more organized but it made no noticeable improvement in cooling. I did get the cruise control working consistently, see the EZ36 engine swap thread for details on that. I use cruise control a lot so that's been nice. Went back up to the UP with some in laws last weekend. We did some trail riding one day. Pipeline grade was everyone's favorite. The girls in the back were screaming with excitement when I hit the jumps. I had tweaked the front shock valving since the last trip and I never noticed it bottoming out but it didn't feel harsher so that seems like an improvement. Rear tires were rubbing when hitting some of the dips hard so I'm hammering the wheel wells out more. One of my relatives peed their pants riding in the white Outback on the pipeline grade (out of fear I think), fortunately it has leather seats. Didn't have as much time that day for trail riding as the last trip but we all had some fun and didn't get stuck or break anything.

Drove up to the UP with some family friends late Thursday night of Labor day weekend. Green Impreza ran rough for the first minute or so, died a couple times, then ran great all day Sunday and Monday. After we got home I tried it again with the laptop plugged in and I think since the lowest value on the coolant temp table was 84F, if the coolant temp was under that most of the cams were maxed out (most overlap). As soon as it warms up beyond that they all go to their normal 5-10 degrees at idle. Went trail riding Sunday in the Subarus. My wife's friend drove the white Outback and was keeping up with me fine in the woods, I was kind of impressed. She was surprised by even some mildly overgrown trails and we eventually got on some even I wasn’t sure they would connect. Found at least one connect the dots new to us trail not on the map. Hit the pipeline grade which was of course the highlight. Couple decent jumps at the south end we hit a few times, there was a lot of gasping and laughing. She actually ran a pretty good pace through there too, I didn’t have to wait super long for her to catch up when we stopped. Front end of the Impreza seemed to be bottoming out fairly easily. Took them to the fire steel trestles. Had to wait for a group of probably 30 mostly jeeps to pass which took forever. We were laughing at the one guy who had a little camper trailer. She was wondering how you’d ever turn something like that around on some of the trails we were on. When the green Impreza sits and idles the coolant temp steadily creeps up. Only the driver's side cooling fan is working. Fuse is good, relay isn't getting main/battery power but the fuse is. While moving temps are good.

B welded up his strut towers yesterday. First step, stripping out the interior and setting up the bottle jack to spread them back apart. The "frame rail" the rear bumper goes in flexed visibly by lifting up and down on the rear bumper. In the interest of science we set up a mag base indicator as pictured below. I could get it to move 0.1" by lifting on the rear bumper with just my left hand. That's about 2.5mm for you metric types. Next step, cleaning all the paint and rust off the areas he wanted to weld. Then pushed the bottle jack out about an inch until it was getting some resistance and the gaps seemed to close up. I cut a piece of .040" 4130 to patch the worst spot and he welded that in. Not real pretty but a lot of what's left is at least a little rusty. Then he folded the edges over and welded those. Welded lots of other things too, we cut a few other little strips to patch some smaller holes. Welded some questionable seams on the passenger side. After all that I couldn't visibly move the dial indicator (< .001") even lifting up and down with both hands on the bumper. Setting the car back on the ground only moved it .002 or .003". So it's at least two orders of magnitude stiffer than before (by that measurement). I made another square lifting tube for my other high lift. I really like how much more stable this makes the high lift. Also swapped the big base onto the bottom of the short high lift, which is the one I expect to use more often. Green hood scoop I'd gotten had a couple of the tabs broken off the bottom so I JB welded the studs on. Finish sanded that and finally clear coated it. Also replaced the LF tie rod, the headers may have baked some of the grease out of it. It was super sloppy and the grease was runny. Guess I'll see how long this one lasts. Header on the right side is just as close to that tie rod and it seems slop free. Made a better tablet mount. The screw bosses the flap/hatch in the middle of the dash had started to break. Coincidentally, they completely failed on B's Forester, both on the last UP trip. So I made some brackets to mount the tablet more directly without using that flap. Surprisingly stiff once it's all bolted together. One thing I discovered on accident is that having it tilted back a bit means you don't get nearly as much glare. The reflection from the driver's seat is mostly looking at the headliner. In my other cars it was always reflecting off the passenger's shirt, so especially if they had a light colored shirt the tablet would be difficult to read. Also replaced the LF CV axle in the white Outback. It's been making some faint popcorn noises for a couple years now. Both joints felt quite sloppy. Trimmed some plastic in front of the LR tire that was rubbing a bit. Got some new mud tires mounted on some 15" alloys. Plan to take the white Outback and green Impreza off roading soon with some family friends.

B replaced the condenser in his Forester and got his AC working. He also replaced a front wheel bearing. Adjusted the parking brakes and replaced a trailing arm bushing. He's noticed since the last trip the LR door has taken a lot of effort to shut. As he feared this is because the LR strut tower is starting to separate from the body again. This corner appeared to have some crash damage from a prior owner that was repaired fairly well but I'm sure it's not as good as an untouched car. I didn't take any pictures but we plan on pushing that back into place and rewelding it, probably adding some material. This has also pushed up some frame bracing on his priority list. We've been talking about it for years but we really should build something that connects the top of the rear bumper to the strut mount back down to the trailing arm mount. Then probably some kind of hoop across the top and probably also a bar behind the top of the rear seats. Got the AC working in my Impreza. Wiring and setup was pretty simple. Shuts off over 3500RPM so I think the compressor will be fairly safe. Need to verify it's shutting off over 70% TPS. I think I have the cruise control stalk and various safety switches wired properly but I'm getting an error that the Haltech guy says is a bug in their firmware they're working on. Will post details on both of those in the swap/wiring post I started a while back once I actually have the cruise working. I put larger front brakes on the Impreza, same size as the rotors we're using in the rear - second gen Legacy/first gen Forester. While I was doing that, B put new eccentric Whiteline bushings in the aluminum brackets for the front control arms. Curious to see how they hold up. While he was at it we sorted through my stock of used ones a bit and picked out a couple good ones to carry for spares. I started on a rear bumper for the Impreza. Unfortunately I greatly underestimated the amount of receiver tubing I want to use so I need more of that before I go much farther. It will be similar to the front, wrapping around the corners to protect the lights, main beam out of 2" x 4" rectangular steel tubing. Enough room underneath for the license plate. Can't tell from this angle but if you step back a bit even the expiration sticker at the top will be visible. Spacers of 1x2" tubing on top of picture. They'll get cut a little shorter. Those will go underneath the main bumper mounts/receivers, only had material for one of those for now. Also unpacked the car so I can figure out how to repack to make the winch more accessible.

Thanks. No. The rear axles might have allowed more travel but we're already pretty close to the limits of the spring travel. We've broken a few of the rear springs (just one coil, doesn't cause a problem but we're obviously stressing them). Plus we'd have to at least make longer shock shafts. Overall that project was probably worth doing, the brakes are better, wheel bearings easier to replace and probably more durable, those and axles same as front so fewer spares to carry, stronger rear axles. Plan to make some more of those knuckles this winter.

B and I replaced the rear diff in the white Outback. What a job. On a stock car it wouldn't have been as bad but with the long travel we have to back the spring preload off as far as possible to get the shock bolts out to get the suspension up to near ride height to unbolt things. That all took hours as it hasn't been apart in a few years. Did do a little extra while we were at it, got all but one suspension bolt out and re anti seized and retorqued. A couple of them we had replaced with longer bolts (our links have little collars welded on so the holes don't get wallered out) were quite worn - those shoulders pictured below started out a constant diameter. So we replaced those bolts. One of the trailing arm bushings seemed to be going bad so we replaced that. Which meant completely removing that trailing arm, which meant taking apart the brakes, removing ABS cable, parking brake cable, etc. The rear spider gears were badly damaged, I'm a little surprised it caused no noticeable noises or anything. The rear diff bushings have been shot for years. We replaced those which took a couple hours. Tried various methods, ultimately the only thing that really worked was the hollow hydraulic cylinder for removal and install. One of the shock bearings was shot too, that took me an hour or two to replace since the snaprings were badly rusted. Kinda wish we'd replaced the wheel bearings while we were at it but they have the press in hubs so that would have been a significant amount more work. Got it all back together and drove it around town some today, everything back there seems good. Glad we did it but always a little disappointing when you do all that work and the car still seems to drive exactly the same as before. There's a rattle in the LF suspension that's been slowly getting worse, need to sort that out but shouldn't be nearly as large a project. Finally got some cables from Haltech so I can start wiring up the cruise control in the green Impreza. Also did some testing with the AC compressor on my folks' 2019(?) Outback with EZ36. I made a little jumper harness where the compressor solenoid plugs in with some long leads I ran in the car so I could monitor the voltage to the compressor while driving. Seemed to be at 12VDC with the HVAC fan on high. When accelerating sometimes it'd drop briefly. In manual mode at over ~3500RPM it would drop to 8VDC (fan on high). With the HVAC fan on low it'd be around 7VDC. I don't think I ever saw it drop below 6VDC. So my plan is just to run it at 12VDC and have it shut off above 3500RPM. At 80mph I'm at 3200-3300RPM in sixth so that should work alright. I basically always have the HVAC fan on high in both these cars (habit from the black Outback trying to dry it out all the time) and just adjust the vents accordingly.

Swapping the struts in the field wasn't too bad. Definitely way less time consuming than taking them apart and swapping shims, bleeding them, reassembling, etc. Will try lubing the high lifts but they seem fairly clean and new. If anything the one I keep in the Impreza was too new, didn't have the paint worn off it when we started and I know that can be an issue.