pontoontodd

Hahhaha. Maybe you can't read english well, but it cracked the windshield and one of the corner lights popped out. Ordered 9003 HID bulbs so I can switch to the early Outback style one piece lights. Crack is still small, just the corner of the windshield right now. We've jumped the car many times, this was probably the most extreme looking, not necessarily the most air. Doesn't seem to hurt anything. It cracks me up that you would never jump your car but you think it's a shame we couldn't do that jump with the Forester.

Last Saturday I drove the 99 Outback down to the Badlands with a couple of friends. Our friend drove his Forester and met us there. We tried to find the figure eight and stumbled on the dragon's tail, so we went through that. They thought that was entertaining. We tried to find some new trails we hadn't been on and succeeded, mainly south of the entrance. We drove from the big concrete building down to the field. The woods at the bottom were somewhat flooded and we headed up to the railroad tracks and drove the length of that and up to the top of one of the areas with a bunch of fairly long steep hillclimbs where we've jumped our offroad race buggy before. We walked along the top and I found one that looked perfect for a good jump. It was fairly steep and smooth and had a sharp peak with a drop and a fairly clear landing area. My friend took video with his phone from the top and I drove to the bottom. As we were headed to the jump I asked my friend riding with me what he thought would be a good speed to start, 30 or 40? And he said, ya, probably 30 or 40. I shifted into second at the bottom of the hill and just maintained speed at part throttle the whole way up. We probably hit it at 40mph and we both instantly knew I had gone too fast. I basically landed in a ditch beyond the flat area and got a little more air off a small berm. We were fairly lucky the only obvious damage was a broken corner light and cracked windshield. Judging by the tire tracks we were off the ground for 40' or so. Our friend showed us the video and we were 6-8 feet in the air. My friend got out to get some other video and we set up my old gopro on the ground to film the car going over it. Our other friend got in and we hit the jump at 30mph and got no air. Then we hit it at 35mph and got nearly as much air as the first time. I decided that would be a good time to stop. Here are a couple screenshots from the video under the car on the 35mph jump. My friends tried in the Forester but it didn't have enough power to maintain enough speed to get any air. The first half of the day I kept telling our friend who hadn't been there we had to find the figure eight, and we asked a few people who had no idea what we were talking about. He kept wondering why I thought it was so important we find the figure eight. Once we finally got there I went around a few times and he thought it was awesome. We let him and our other friend drive around it a bunch of times and we were all cracking up the entire time. Then I suggested we go down the steep hill at the southeast end of the stream and my friend with the Forester said he needed to take a few laps of the figure eight first, even though we've done it a half dozen times and he and our friend riding with him were of course cracking up the whole time. We drove to the bottom of the steep hill going down to the stream in the Outback, turned around, and I drove back up it at half throttle in low range. I have struggled to get up this hill with the four cylinder and no low range, you can't get much of a run at it. With the H6 and low range it was easy. Trying to line up for the rough hillclimb on the other side of the stream I got the Outback stuck and it took a little while to pull me sideways with the Forester so I had a clear shot. I couldn't make it in low range going fairly slow so I put it in high range and just bombed up it and made it to the top. My friend tried a few times in the Forester but couldn't make it up the rough climb. He took a side trail once he got lined up and spun his way to the top. We took some muddy trails with a lot of standing water to the quarry. We eventually got to the quarry and made sandwiches. We watched a couple of Jeeps do some fairly impressive climbs and I tried a few in the Outback with the low range with mixed results. At one point it sounded like something in the steering column was rubbing or catching but the steering worked fine and the noise went away. It took us a while to get back out of that area into the rest of the park. Eventually we found the stream and followed that down to the tubes. There used to be a gap in a concrete wall before the tubes but it was blocked by a log so we drove up out of the stream. I tried going down a trail past the wall and then discovered it had a 3' drop down to the stream. I tried backing out in reverse low range but the trail was so rutted I couldn't make it out and reverse started acting up. They eventually yanked me out with the strap a few feet at a time but there was some clutch smell from the Forester. Reverse did work in the Outback but you have to hold it in under any load or it wants to pop out. It doesn't seem to skip teeth so I'm wondering if the fork is bent. We drove down to the stream on an easy trail and went through the tubes. There was a larger dropoff than we thought, didn't hurt anything but it drove worse than it looked on foot. Drove the rest of the stream. The Forester's LR tire was flat, so we aired that up. Looked like it was leaking all around the bead but not terribly. Took an easy hillclimb back into one of the open areas and headed back towards the entrance since it was about 4:30. We did the hillclimb by the entrance pond and went around the bowl near the entrance and headed out just before they closed. Went to the Mexican restaurant in Attica and then aired up some tires, removed the flags, and went home. Car ran well on the way home, cruise shut off a few times. Drove a couple hours yesterday and cruise worked fine the whole time. We'll probably take the trans out tomorrow.

It rides probably a little harsher than stock on the highway. But it's the highway so it's smooth. On the big potholes it's definitely better than stock though. There are probably some things we can do with the long travel we couldn't do with the stock struts. But mainly you can just go faster. One thing I can think of off the top of my head is that there is often a ditch or berm at the base of a hillclimb. We need momentum to get up hills, especially before the H6 and low range, but also since there still isn't a ton of articulation and/or lockers. So with the low range you can get a better run at hills and drive over the ditch or berm much faster. No, I purposely found a donor car without VDC. I've read that makes the engine swap much more difficult. One thing the low range has made really obvious is the limited articulation and open diffs. The long travel and lack of sway bars helps, but it's still not great. Also over the winter we went to stiffer springs to raise the ride height a couple inches, so that hurts the articulation a little. I still think momentum is key with the Subarus. If you add power and/or low range and had lockers or even good limited slips and really got good traction, you're just going to break the 5MT and R160. Much easier to just stick with the EJ, no low range, and just go fast. When possible, on long hillclimbs sometimes you just need the low range.

We do have to run the front wheel drive Legacy front axles since they have a little more plunge travel. I already had them on my car since they're bigger than the normal Subaru front axles. CV axles seem to live about as long as with the stock suspension. Occasionally the boots start to leak and you have to repack and reboot them. I think I've only replaced two since we did the long travel because they were making noise. Inner tie rods seem to get loose faster than before, probably because we're driving harder. That Vegas to Reno in particular is hard on equipment. Other than that ball joints, wheel bearings, etc seem to last longer than with the stock struts if anything. It's basically bolt in the struts and go. We replace the front control arms with fabricated when we do the struts to get the wheels a little farther out and forward. Probably why we need to use the Legacy front wheel drive axles. Only other thing is mounting the reservoirs somewhere in the wheel wells. With the oversized tires some wheel well hammering was required on my car so they don't rub at full bump and steering.

Many of the problems with my 99 Outback stem from the fact that it has been driven for almost 20 years and 240,000 miles on salty roads. It is possible a Jeep or truck would have had fewer issues but like I said, I've never been around a remotely stock truck that can maintain the pace we drive at, even with the stock Subaru suspension. You can buy long travel struts, you can buy lift springs, there are options for Subarus, but none of them are cheap. The cage definitely takes away from the practicality of the car, but mainly it makes the backseat impractical. We did just drive 5700 miles in it in two weeks, it's not that bad. I have ridden in and driven some serious four wheel drive trucks and it is impressive what they can go over. But they don't ride as well as the Subaru, especially with long travel struts.

I don't know of any other cheap struts that would directly fit Subarus. Hotbits sells the cheapest long travel off road Subaru struts I know of but I've heard they don't hold up to really hard use. Most human decisions aren't rational. Most modifications to cars are money wasted in the eyes of a rational person. But I'll try to rationalize my decisions for you regardless... In the US Jeeps and Toyotas aren't any more expensive than Subarus. I agree if you want to do crawling and really hard trails those have a real low range, lockers, more articulation, a real frame, and can fit bigger tires than a Subaru. My goal isn't to do rock crawling. There isn't much of that around here, it doesn't really interest me, and there's plenty of other dirt roads and trails that aren't extremely challenging. I'd rather drive moderately fast on dirt roads and trails so I can see more things and cover more ground and have enough capability to do 99% of the legal dirt roads in the US. I've been told that a Cherokee or truck with the right long travel kit rides well, and I'd like to ride in one sometime to find out. None of the Jeeps or trucks I've ridden in or gone trail riding with could even keep up with a stock Subaru since they ride so rough. A side by side, ATV, or dirt bike could go at the pace we do, but they're definitely not as comfortable for long highway trips or in bad weather. So the Subaru seems like the best choice for me. I can drive it hundreds or thousands of miles on the highway to where I want to go and drive on almost any dirt road I can find. Also in general it seems like Subarus are more reliable than a Jeep or side by side.

The front suspension is basically the same. I think even the new Subarus still have the same front struts and spindles, but the lower control arms are different. The rear suspension on the 2000+ Outbacks is multilink. That should make it easier and cheaper to make it long travel. I haven't gone into it far but I measured it once without the stock shock and I think we can get over 12" of travel. I even still have the coilover shocks we initially used for the a-arm front suspension we built for my 99 that are about the right length and should be decent springing and valving. Yes, I think the long travel suspension is the best modification we've made to these cars for what we're trying to do. The increased travel is only part of it, getting the spring rate and damping right is when you can really drive hard and not get thrashed around or bottom out. And since they're stronger you don't bend the struts. A lot of that is because even though the stock rear struts have 8" of travel they basically sit on the bumpstops at ride height, so it doesn't take much to bottom out, and that's when they bend.

Outback sat for at least a few days with the doors open to air out while I drove the Impreza. Didn't realize the dome light was on and the battery was completely dead the next time I went to start it. I tried using the lithium ion jump starter but it wouldn't work. Put it on 1 amp charge for maybe a half hour while I did some other things and then the lithium starter fired it up. Checked voltage and it was over 14V so the alternator was charging. I don't think I ran it very long but can't remember. A couple days after that I went to start it and it had a little voltage but wouldn't crank. I was in a hurry so I tried using the jump start feature on the battery charger but it wouldn't quite go. I hooked up the lithium jump starter and it fired right up. Anybody else use these things and have any tips or tricks? Or know of a better one?

Yes, I had something in mind like the top one. I would probably use plastic totes/bins so you could slide them out and get at everything easily. The bottom one looks nice but it's blocking the rear windows and they obviously don't drive where and how I do. Just look at that glass jar sitting on a wooden shelf. A few issues I've thought of: A stock sized tire doesn't really fit in the wheel well of a 2002, let alone something a little bigger. So either the spare would go elsewhere, maybe stood up like I did in my 99, or the wheel well would have to be modified. If it has no tire in it, I'd like to use it for water and/or fuel storage. It is nice to have a backseat sometimes but it takes up a lot of space. Especially since my 99 doesn't anymore. So if I did a platform I'd try to make at least the front part easy to remove and put the backseat back in or fit over the backseat (like the one you posted). But then you can't fit much under the front half of the platform. I'm really not sure how I'd do the interior. My main thoughts were to make a front (and maybe rear) bumper, skidplates, additional headlights, and long travel suspension. Try to keep it fairly light, at least not a lot heavier than stock. Probably not at first but I think a 6MT and R180 would have to replace the stock trans and diff. I need to take more measurements but I think I could make a lower first gear so I don't need a low range. Something like 4.5:1 would be good enough with an H6 and a light car.

No, there's no room to sleep in my 99 OB with all the parts and tools we usually carry. The rollcage doesn't help either. Eventually I plan to make long travel suspension for the 2002 H6 Outback and might try to make a sleeping platform in that with shelves or compartments underneath it for storage.

Exactly. I've never worked on a Subaru as rusty as the pictures you've shown and I think ours are bad. I'm shocked you haven't had to replace all the brake and fuel lines and fuel tank. Doesn't seem like you have a lot of work into that car. Like jf1sf5 said, save your money if you have to and buy something rust free. There must be some countries in the EU that don't use road salt. The 2002 H6 Outback I bought from California with 230k miles on it looks brand new underneath and cost me $1800. I would think you could find something like that. You will be happy you did, any modifications or repairs you do will take half the time if you don't have to deal with rusty bolts. You can keep the one you have for parts if you have the room.

EZ30 has been running well. Still has a bunch of trouble codes, I haven't bothered checking them in months. Sounds like a bad country to live in if you want to modify your car. No wheel spacers, the struts we made have more clearance than stock, especially in the rear. These tires did fit the stock suspension but rubbed a little.

Do you have a pressure washer? Or a coin operated car wash nearby? Soak the engine and trans in engine degreaser and then blast them off. That's the only way you'll get any of that clean without spending many hours. Too bad about having to pull the lift spacers for inspection, what a pain.

Yes, it's road legal. You should see the lifted pickups in Arizona, they would probably blow your mind. It's good on long trips. Cruise works so that helps, we were going 80-85mph most of the way on the highways. It's not too loud, has a full exhaust with cats and a muffler. The tires probably make more noise than anything else and they're not too bad. The suspension rides a little rough over small stuff like pavement cracks, but for big bumps and dips it's great, especially if you're going over 40mph.

That is some amazing scenery! Looks like you had a good trip. That road you have pictures of looks pretty new. Is this a road or hiking trail? You might be able to get screens to put in your car windows so you can get some fresh air without letting arthropods in.

We got to the safari park near Dallas shortly after it opened and started driving through the park. There were tons of animals and feed had just been dumped out along the roads so they were out and most would walk right up to the car. We spent about three hours driving through. This was included in the cost of the "behind the scenes" tour we took in the afternoon. The guided tour was good, the driver was in way more of a hurry than we were in our car since there was a lot to see in three hours. You have to be at least seven years old to go on the behind the scenes tour so the animals don't charge the small children, tear up the fences, and make the kids pee their pants. He told us the only animal in the park humans can outrun is the tortoise. We got to see the wolves, black rhino, and cheetah cubs but not the black footed cats or coati. This is a maned wolf, they smell like skunks. Covered about 5700 miles according to GPS, got 14-20mpg, usually around 18. Used about two quarts of oil and added some power steering fluid once. AC stopped working, I think about the time we got stuck in the water. Cruise control would turn off occasionally the last few days of the trip, usually when I wasn't using it, but a few times when it was set. Any thoughts on that? One thing I hadn't considered is that the days are short in November so we didn't have a lot of daylight. In the spring we'd have similar weather but much more daylight. Gopro is full of video, over the winter I have 3-4 trips worth of video to edit and post on youtube.

We hiked the trail to Upper Frijoles falls, the trail beyond that to see the lower falls was closed. You could see where the stream runs into the Rio Grande (not pictured). We started driving towards Texas. We stopped in Santa Rosa but I wanted to stop somewhere else that afternoon to get out of the car so we stopped at Muleshoe NWR near Lubbock, TX. There weren't a lot of trails open but we saw thousands of sandhill cranes. When we got a little too close they flew over to a larger pond across the trail and made a huge ruckus. I tried heading east between a couple of lakes on some fairly flat and straight dirt roads but many of the roads on the map didn't exist or were private. This part of Texas has tons of north/south east/west roads in a big grid like they are in central Illinois, but most of the roads in central Texas are dirt.

The US is a huge beautiful country with many interesting things to see. The closest mountains to my house are about 1000km away though. Really only the western third of the US has lots of fun unpaved roads.

We spent another cold night in the tent again there and hiked to Wijiji in the morning. We packed up the tent and decided to try the south entrance since it looked like that road led to a major highway so we figured it might be smoother. I noticed on the map there was another ruin (Kin Klizhin) to the west of the south entrance that was a twelve mile drive on a “four wheel drive” road. This was probably the most fun dirt road we were on the whole trip. There were washed out rough sections but nothing terrible. There were lots of medium speed turns almost like slaloms through fairly flat desert. When we got to the ruins it was very quiet, if there was wind there weren't any trees to make noise. We could hear the cows a few hundred feet away walking and chewing. From there I decided to continue west to the nearest highway. We were still looking for a blanket and stopped at a roadside stand in Pueblo Pintado. They did not have blankets but we got Navajo burgers which had only lettuce and tomato but we both agreed were the best burgers we'd had in years. We stopped in Cuba and picked up some groceries and went in the variety store in the same building. It had quite a variety of inventory – some used books and magazines, a few puzzles, a guitar, tamborine, old CRT computer monitors, heating elements for cigarette lighters, etc. We did buy a comforter in town and only used it that night since it was the last night we camped. We were able to get to Bandelier NM mid afternoon and hike the main trail. These ruins were short buildings built along the base of a cliff. There are tons of natural caves in the cliff the natives had enlarged (using rocks). You can climb into some of them on sturdy wooden ladders bolted to the cliffs, in one you could crawl into multiple connected rooms. At the end of the trail was a natural alcove high up on the cliff you can climb up to using four ladders and a bunch of stairs. There's a small kiva and some small cave rooms in the alcove. We stayed that night in the campground which had only one other site occupied.

There was frost on everything in the morning including the tent. We spent the day hiking to many of the ruins and petroglyphs. The next few days were perfectly clear skies once the sun burned some clouds off in the morning. These were probably the most impressive native American ruins we saw on this trip, some of them were hundreds of rooms and three stories tall.

We've wanted to check out Antelope Canyon, the pictures look amazing, but there was a line of cars waiting to get in for a tour and it hadn't opened yet, so we kept driving. Drove to Canyons of the Ancients in SW Colorado. I drove through a different section of Navajo reservation on the way there through Shonto and hit a few jumps on a dirt road. My wife said she can't really judge what will be a jump but when I hit the gas she knew it would be. We were trying to find a blanket to keep us a little warmer at night. We stumbled on Navajo NM so we hiked a short trail there to an overlook where you could see a settlement built into an overhanging cliff. I took another couple of dirt roads to Kayeta where we also couldn't find blankets but filled up with gas. On the way there I think is where we hit the biggest jump of the trip, at about 50mph we got decent air and should be recorded on gopro. We eventually got to Canyon of the Ancients which is a bunch of fairly small native ruins on poorly marked trails in the southern portion of the park. Saw a small tarantula on one of the spur trails. We drove to Cuttthroat Castle. The main road going to the upper trail is a rough dirt road. Then it gets to a small parking area where you can either hike a mile down to the ruins or drive down a road for high clearance vehicles only. Needless to say we drove down it, it was really not much worse than the main road to the trailhead. Took some pictures of the ruins and headed back. The drive back up was probably faster since I wasn't looking into the sun and had an idea of what obstacles we had to drive over. Didn't have to use low range. Then we drove to Lowry Pueblo, probably the largest ruin in Canyons of the Ancients and saw a bunch of deer and a cool sunset along the way. It was nearly dark by the time we got there but we were able to walk around it and check out the big kiva. Then we drove to Chaco Culture NHP across the border in New Mexico. The road going in to the north entrance was fairly rough. You could have driven it in anything but it was a lot of hard ruts and rattled the car. I was surprised there was no warning sign at the highway. I had reserved a site there for two nights so we could spend all day exploring the ruins. It was another cold night.

We spent a couple days hiking, camping, and visiting with relatives. We headed up I15 and got off near the west end of the Mojave Road. The trans am trail follows this part of it and there is a slot canyon, lakebed, and lava tube in the western section of the trail I wanted to check out. Shortly after we got on the road it crossed a river/pond. I figured since most of the ground was hard that the bottom would be fairly solid. It was swampy and badly rutted and we got stuck just before we made it across. We ran the jacks up before I got out since the water was well above the bottom of the doors. That worked and I was able to get the ramps under the rear tires. The passenger side jack went back in but the driver's side wouldn't move. Eventually I unbolted it and discovered the shaft was bent, so I fed it into the car and unbolted the foot. At least the air and water were warm. First I tried backing up but couldn't but I was able to drive forward onto solid ground. We had been stuck for about a half hour. I used low range but probably didn't need to. That was the only time we got stuck on the trip. We drove along the road to a slot canyon. Walked into that as far as we easily could, had to use headlights for at least half the time, it was a few feet wide but probably hundreds of feet deep. Walls looked like mud with rocks stuck in them. At this point we were a little short on time trying to get to our next destination that afternoon so we tried to follow a supposedly main road out. It was washed out with a big berm in front of the washout so we drove around for a while. Drove on some old small railroad tracks and found a mailbox out in the desert with random stuff in it. We eventually got on a main road farther north and took that up to I15. On the way there was a sign indicating we were in an ORV area which explained all the random tire tracks in the desert that were confusing us. That afternoon we got to Johnson dinosaur track site in St George. It was a pretty cool site that the owner stopped development on when he found dino tracks. A building was constructed over them and they're still working on excavating all the tracks. In the mural along the wall was a Delorean. What other kind of car would have been able to visit that time period? That night we drove to a campground along Lake Powell north of Page.

First stop the next morning was Cinder hills ORV park, we saw some Albert's squirrels and large eared deer on the way in. The Albert's squirrels were cool but we didn't get a good picture of them. Park has trails running everywhere and they're basically all on pea-gravel like cinders, similar to the Badlands off road park but much bigger. Most of it is wooded and the trails just go all over between the trees. Most of the trails were whooped out pretty bad so we had to creep around most of the time. I did climb up one hill that was hundreds of feet high and got us near the top of two hills/mountains with a good view. Started out in second, dropped to first, had to use low range but then ran about half throttle and 3-4000RPM to try to go easy on the car. This is the only time I definitely had to use low range on the trip. The wind was blowing hard from behind and pushing our dust in front of the car. Wound back down around on some other trails and left the park. I think this is when I first noticed the trans will sometimes pop out of first or second when engine braking, usually going down a bumpy slope. Going to try to get a stiffer detent ball spring for that. We headed up to Wupatki and checked out most of the native American ruins there and headed for California. There was a blowhole in the ground which was a small opening to a large cave. Depending on the weather there is either air rushing in or out of this small hole. We met some relatives in southern California and stayed the night.

The next day the odometer turned 234567. We made it to northern Arizona on 40. We wanted to see Grand falls in the Navajo Nation even though we knew it would be dry. I asked a guy at the casino and he said we didn't need passes or permits or anything. Took a dirt road off the interstate that went straight north to the falls. At first it was quite rocky, most of it was wide and fairly smooth but with a lot of washboard. This was the main north/south road in this part of the reservation, the side roads looked worse. We got to the falls and it did look like they would be cool when the water is flowing. We headed west to Flagstaff on slightly better roads. The only campsite open near where we wanted to stay this time of year is Lockett Meadow. It's a somewhat rough and narrow dirt road up the mountain to get there, it's on part of a huge extinct volcano over 8000 feet. This might be the volcano we read about elsewhere that deposited up to 1000 feet of ash on the central US when it erupted millions of years ago. The road closes after the first major snowfall. It was dark by the time we drove up there and it was cold and windy that night. The wind came in gusts, you could hear them coming in the trees every twenty minutes or so and when they got to us they shook the tent. It was probably the coldest sleep we had this trip, not shivering all night cold but not comfortable.

My wife and I took a two week vacation out west with my 99 Outback. Tried not to do any crazy offroading, but we were off pavement most days. Visited relatives, tent camped about half the nights, did some hiking. I wanted to see portions of the Trans American Trail to see what that's like. Didn't get to see much of it but what we saw was not too challenging. I'm going to do a post for each day or two so it's not one giant post. We stopped at Maramec springs state park in MO to stretch our legs a bit and make a sandwich. It's the fifth largest spring in MO and has tons of fish, a few muskrats, small waterfalls, an iron furnace and related equipment.