pontoontodd

Pull the boot back and take a look. On the Outback should just be a spring that you can slide off and slide the boot out. Probably inner tie rod end or rack bushing.

If you go to subarupartwholesale.com you don't need a VIN. If you need a VIN, the easiest way is just to look up that car on ebay motors and find one for sale, I think they all list the VIN.

We've had good luck with these: https://autoshafts.com/i-23374251-cv-axle-shaft.html Bigger joints and shafts than most Subaru axles, haven't found anything like that for the rear yet. Oreilly's rear seem decent. Next best thing for the front axles are from the old front wheel drive Legacy, I think about '94, also larger joints and shafts than normal Subaru front axles.

We didn't measure, but it definitely looked like it caused a lot of toe change. I think it is set up for roll understeer, probably because they figure it's a midsize family station wagon.

Yes, I understand it will work for you, just pointing out how I can't use that much bump travel without some major changes. Also keep in mind full bump for us is usually landing off a jump or hitting a big rock so the tire sidewall is already mostly compressed.

That's excellent! How well secured are your trailing arm pivots? Just wondering if those will cause a bind or limit you in some way. Also you should tack weld those pivots back on the subframe to make sure your axles are going to allow that much travel. What is limiting your droop travel? I'm not going to do that right now but I'm definitely going to think about doing something like it. One minor issue is the exhaust goes right through where you're putting those pivots. My first thought was to narrow the diff mount and straighten the exhaust. It looks like you're mainly getting more bump travel than I'm planning on. My tires already rub the wheelwells at the full compression I'm planning on so it would take a lot of work to get another 3-4" inches of compression like you show. Also it should be good for crawling but landing off a jump our tires will compress enough that the rear diff would be underground. Not the best bumpstop.

Those videos are a good demonstration of the VDC system. Your two alternatives if you don't have traction control or lockers are momentum and articulation.

Yes, I would make all (two or three) of those lateral links the same length and roughly parallel if you're just going for maximum travel. Ideally you'd want some camber change so you'd want the upper link shorter than the lowers and at a different angle but that might limit your travel. Bump / roll steer is another story, the stock suspension has a surprising amount and you could get rid of it with long parallel links. Probably best for long travel soft suspension, but in some cases the roll steer would be good. That front lateral link does twist an impressive amount. I was figuring if you replaced all the bushings with ball joints including (especially) the trailing arm bushing, you could use just two lateral links. That trailing arm bushing is pretty soft.

If you are planning on modifying the subframe at all, I would just make all the lateral links the same length as the longest (rear) links. That will reduce the plunge of the CVs a lot. If you are planning on using ball joints or rod ends instead of bushings, I'd get rid of the forward/lower lateral links completely, they'll just cause the suspension to bind. So in that case you'd just have to make the top links with ball joints or rod ends and about as long as the rear links. We just mocked up some links, I took a few pictures but it's nothing you'd want to drive on. I just got a set of bushings yesterday so I'll be making the real links in the next few weeks. I'd like to get those done and the shocks lengthened in the next month or so. Should be a good upgrade for you, it'll also give you bolt on rear wheel bearings. Will you have a different bolt pattern front and rear?

Yes, same struts on both cars, slightly softer springs on the rear of the Forester. Need to do some suspension tuning, make the shocks softer on the Forester since it's lighter.

Worth it? You're definitely not going to earn money with it somehow, so no. It does make the cars a lot more entertaining to drive though and you can cover more ground in a day and see more things so in that sense we think it's worth it. Would I do it just for crawling? If you really want a lot of articulation for crawling with a Subaru, it seems like the way to go is to use Toyota transfer case(s) and axles (there are a few build threads on this forum like that), so why not just buy a Toyota?

If you removed your shocks and bump stops you'd have more wheel travel and articulation. Your ride quality and ground clearance would be terrible though. I'm not aware of any shocks that would bolt in that would give you more travel but there must be something. You could start here: https://www.kyb.com/knowledge-center/shock-tech-for-pros/dimensions/ There are definitely better four wheel drives than a Subaru for crawling but I'm not aware of anything that can go as fast, ride well, and hold up on rough terrain. Maybe an old full size car, but those are just rear wheel drive. Unless you're talking about something like Ford Raptor, but those are still $30,000 used.

With longer links and shocks, which I'm working on, it will have 11-12" of travel, about the same as my 99. You could remove the shocks and bumpstops, that would give you more travel for zero money. Removing the swaybar doesn't give you any more travel, it would help the articulation but not much considering how soft that swaybar is. There are probably some cheaper shocks than what I'm using that would give you more travel but you have to make longer links or figure something out with the axles to get much more travel than stock.

Yes but I've heard they don't hold up well. Plus as I said the stock links are so short you can't get much more travel even without the axles.

I was just thinking the other day about using old radiators or condensers as traction mats.

We did some mockup for more travel with the rear multilink suspension. The limitation in droop is the inner CV bottoming out since most of the lateral links are much shorter than the axle. Made some slightly longer than stock links to get a little more droop. Here you can see it's a couple inches more droop than we had before (old on left, new on right). Full droop: Full bump: This is 11-12" of wheel travel. I need to get longer shafts and bodies for the shocks and make the longer links. I'll also need to stick the top of the shock inside the car. Thought about making a drop mount at the spindle but it's already the lowest point of the suspension. Got a complete multilink rear crossmember/suspension/axles which helps to look at. What's really limiting the rear travel (even with the struts) are the inner CV joints bottoming out since the links are shorter than the axles, the wheel pulls inward at droop. Even if the CV had more travel, the links are getting pretty vertical at full droop and really pulling the tire in. Thought about making longer links, which would probably require making a new rear subframe. Some of the axles we've gotten have 30 degrees of angle capacity at the inboard CV. If you had links about as long as the axles and plenty of body clearance, 22" of wheel travel should be possible. I think the easiest way to do that would be a body lift. For every inch of up travel you wanted to add, you'd have to add 2" of body lift with the same strut top mounts though, the compressed length of the spring/strut is going to be about 1" longer for every extra inch of travel. Also at full bump the bottom of the wheel is about even with the bottom of the body now. The tires get fairly compressed when landing so at some point you'd just start bottoming out on the crossmembers. I already hit the front skidplate on the 1999 Outback occasionally on the face of a jump.

Video from our July trip to the UP. https://youtu.be/i7CXTijNXYI

Yes, if we hadn't put the cage, fuel cell, etc. in it, I would have swapped the parts from the 99 Outback on to a rust free car by now.

Yes, the planetary will be just before the center diff so that and the AWD system will operate normally in high or low. Some of my other ideas eliminated the center diff to provide a high front wheel drive / low four wheel drive but I think it would be best to have a center diff, if for no other reason so the steering brake still works. I haven't decided for sure but I will probably get an aftermarket DCCD controller, some aren't too expensive. Might wire up a toggle to give it 6V to lock initially but it will probably start with no electricity.

CNC mill

Going to put a 2.9:1 planetary before the center diff. Sketched up a half dozen different ways to do it and that seems like it will be the simplest/cheapest/best. Will add a ~3.5" long spacer to the case. I'd like to do something like that to a 5MT but there's not much space and the center diff in those is already so weak I think you'd have to replace or eliminate that too. R160 would probably be the next thing to go in a normal Subaru, I'm putting an R180 in when I install the 6MT. Of course I took pictures. We made a few while the machine was set up. Stock one on the right. Installed on the shaft.

I assembled the dual range with some bronze blocker rings I had made. I could no longer get stock replacements. These have male keys so we don't need the separate keys and spring clips that may have caused the last failure. We put it in my friend's Forester yesterday. Seems to work and shift alright. It does seem noisier than I remember, but maybe I'm used to the 52 mile trans in my Outback, and we did have some interior out of the Forester. There's a rattling noise at times and a gear whine when it's in low range. I do remember it making some noise before even when it was working fine. The 1.6 is definitely better than nothing but not exceptional. It wouldn't start when he first got to my house so while we had things apart we sanded the various battery cable ends and now it seems to start consistently. I'm pretty far along on drawings for the low range for the 6MT, definitely need to get that going.