pontoontodd

So you're going to run EA rear axles all around? You should do a little more digging on struts, maybe you can find something that would be an easier fit or have even more travel. When I was looking, Monroe had some info on their website but it looks like they've taken it down. KYB has this for shocks: http://www.kyb.com/knowledge-center/shock-tech-for-pros/dimensions/ If you click on the link you can look up by application and then see length, stroke, etc but I couldn't find a chart with strut dimensions. If they do have one, let me know!

The EJ (Legacy and Forester at least) rear struts definitely have a lot of travel. Can you put an EA hub in an EJ knuckle/wheel bearings and see if/how it fits? It sounds like you have both. My guess is it's smaller than the EJ hub, do you have access to a lathe so you could make sleeves? I can't remember, are you using an EJ engine/trans for this? Wondering what axles you're planning on using and how that would work with your hub choice.

Went through all the struts yesterday. Replaced a few wipers and boots but these bushings are definitely working a lot better than the old ones. One of the reservoirs had a big gouge on the inside of it for some reason so I'm going to replace that. Otherwise everything seems good - wheel bearings, ball joints, etc. One of the front control arm bushings that's in the aluminum bracket seems worn so I'll replace that. Going to replace rear pads and shoes before V2R as they're fairly worn. We took out the hose going to the rear heater and did find a hole in it near one of the driveshaft u-joints, so that explains that problem. I also flushed the power steering system, the fluid was black and stinky. The pump has been whining, even after the flush, so I put on another one from the junkyard and it is much quieter. Here are some pictures from our UP trip. It will probably be a while before I can edit the 10+ hours of video down to a reasonable length. Bond falls Pictured rocks: Grand Sable lake overlook: beach along Superior:

Way too high, probably around 50psi. That's normally what I fill them to, they all leak after the Texas deal with all the thorns so usually if I check them every few weeks they're down to 30 or so. We did think about airing down and even had a decent 12V compressor but decided to just get out of there. Looking back on it I wish we'd have tried to air down to see how much it would have helped. We've set the OB down with those mud tires at 0psi and they're only about halfway compressed, so we could probably get away with super low pressure. Glad you liked the story, one of, if not the, best offroad weekend I've ever had.

Yes, didn't have to add a drop all weekend after that.

We went to the upper peninsula (UP) of Michigan this weekend for a long off road trip. After driving about 100 miles on the highway the temp gauge in the OB started to fluctuate but stayed in the middle for a while. Eventually it started rising so we pulled into a gas station, filled up with gas, and added at least a gallon of water. After another 20 or 30 miles it started to do the same thing, we filled it up with water and hooked up the tablet with the OBD2 reader. After another 20 or 30 miles it started running hot again, bought coolant at a gas station and dumped that in. We kept trying to see if or where it was leaking but it was raining so the whole car was wet. Didn't see any steam or smoke out the exhaust. Called our friend who's worked on a lot of Subarus and he said it sounded like a leak rather than head gasket based on my description. I put the stock heater hose back to eliminate the rear cooler from the circuit. After that it ran 185F the whole way up and didn't use any more coolant the rest of the weekend. I plan on just pulling those hoses out of the car for now. We did some trail riding and sightseeing since a couple of the guys haven't spent much time in the UP. We eventually found the sandy pipeline road we were looking for in the Baraga plains. It was a ton of fun in the OB, my friend was driving and we eventually stopped at a cross road to wait for our other friend in the Forester. He said the clutch was slipping so while we waited for it to cool off I took our other friend who was riding in the Forester on a ride up and down the pipeline road in the OB. We ran about 50mph and got air off a few of the hills/jumps and I think we mostly cleared a double. At this point the Forester clutch was still slipping and it was starting to get dark so we took gravel roads to the highway and cruised on that to the hotel near Marquette. The owner acted like he was in an altered state of consciousness but set up the garden hose for us so we could flush out the clutch on the Forester. After a few minutes with the nozzle and pumping the pedal the clutch seemed back to normal. Thanks to Uberoo for the tip on that: The next morning I checked over everything and added a few fluids. We headed southeast through a bunch of trails and dirt roads, saw a couple of waterfalls, and eventually hit Manistique for fuel and stop and make sandwiches. We went to pictured rocks and then down to miner's beach. Far from there we took a sandy trail through the woods up to the lake. It ended at the top of a bluff overlooking the lake. There was a steep sandy slope going down to the beach. There was a wide sandy beach that went on for miles. There was about a 10' sandy bank with grass on top about 30' wide and another sandy bank about 20' tall with the woods at the top of it. One of the coolest landscapes I've ever seen. We stayed south of Grand Marais the second night. We didn't see a garden hose and the Forester clutch seemed good so we checked fasteners and fluids. The OB had started to run rough the last half of the day every time we went through a lot of water, by the time we got to the lodge we hadn't gone through much water but it was still surging. It would have minimal acceleration at low throttle until you'd suddenly hit a point where it would go. Very annoying. Our friend said when he was following and when it did that it smelled very lean. We hooked the tablet up to the OBD2 scanner and drove it up and down the road. It seemed to be leaning out 30% on the low speed fuel trim when cruising at light throttle, then when opened far enough it would go back to 0 fuel trim and accelerate. The front O2 sensor was reading 1V all the time, the rear one seemed to be operating fairly normally. One of the wires on the O2 sensor plug was broken, so we just unplugged it from the harness and drove it again. The problem went away completely so we cut the other wires and plugged it back in so the connector would stay clean. Ran fine the rest of the trip. The next morning we headed south on trails and eventually got to some wide, straight, rough, soft sandy roads. The Forester clutch started slipping again. We limped it out to Seney and found a gas station. We flushed out the clutch with a garden hose out front and bought gas. Headed towards the big spring. On the way we saw a sandy powerline trail on the northeast side of Manistique. We started going and it was very soft. I was driving the OB and got on the CB to see if they wanted to turn around/get off but got no response. We got about halfway down it and I pulled over in the OB to wait for them to catch up in the Forester. As soon as we stopped we knew we were stuck. Eventually they caught up and pulled off in the grass so they wouldn't get stuck. We got the OB unstuck with some digging and down onto the grass. We couldn't find a good exit so we decided to go back the way we came in. I almost made it up the big hill near the start of the trail in the OB but stalled out just as we were levelling out at the top. Backed down and couldn't steer to get in the grass. My friend was able to get the Forester in the grass after not making the hill. We decided to drive up onto the highway which was a more gradual slope and grassy rather than sandy. With some pushing, digging, and sand ladders we eventually made it out. We went around the south end of Indian lake to the big spring. Everyone really enjoyed that, I hadn't seen it in years and they were impressed by the clear water, steep drop into the spring, and big fish swimming in it. We hit a lot of good trails on the way to Escanaba and stopped for gas. Just before we got to Escanaba we were on a trail with about two foot deep whoops for a few miles we were running about 45mph in the OB. I can't describe how ridiculous and fun that was, the ride was decent but we were clearly beating on the car, a few of the deeper ones would launch us in the air and the car just took it. We went to the start of the Felch grade and got on that. There was a new trail they were working on that ran more east/west that crossed it but looked like it would be very difficult to pass on. After about five miles of the Felch grade I asked if they wanted to lead in the Forester so they weren't eating dust and falling behind and they said they'd rather just cruise on the highway. We stayed on the Felch grade for a while in the OB cruising 50mph but the yield and stop signs every mile or less were a lot more annoying at that speed than the last time we did it at 20mph. We drove the rest of the way back to the cabin where we started on the highway. Covered 800 miles according to the GPS, 200-300 miles of which was paved. We had an easy drive home, AC seemed to be working well, car ran straight down the highway at 80mph. The Forester's radiator and overflow bottle had been randomly full and empty all weekend, he went through over a gallon of water on the way home and had to run the heat at high speeds. Overall a great weekend, we had a few problems that were pretty easy to solve, covered a lot of ground on some cool trails and roads and did some hiking and sightseeing. Eventually I'll get the video edited down and posted up but here are a few screenshots to give you an idea.

I now have the rear heater core hooked back up with stainless braided lines in the back of the car and normal heater hose routed through the trans tunnel. Put a stock thermostat from the dealer in also. It gets up to temp much faster now. Today was about 80F, mostly sunny, picked up some parts and then went up the interstate a bit. Ran about 185F while moving, regardless of whether the AC was on or the rear fan was on. As soon as the car stops moving the temps creep up, eventually stabilizing around 210F, both fans run whether or not the AC is on. The air coming from front or rear radiator with fans on doesn't seem very hot. When I refilled the system after I replaced the thermostat I filled it through the upper radiator hose and it started coming out the inlet of the radiator, and I've driven it a few times since so I'm pretty sure the system is full.

I rerouted the coolant lines to the rear heater core to the trans tunnel, just haven't hooked them back up yet. Going to replace the rearmost part that's still in the car with braided stainless. We pulled a strut off and checked the new bushings. They are staying in place, greased, and not worn, so hopefully they'll last longer than what we used before. I made up this panel under the bumper out of 1/16" 4130. Doesn't seem to make the car run any hotter.

Drilled a bunch of holes in it. I'll have to put in 50/50 for the winter anyhow.

Ya, now we'll probably have to run the AC to keep the engine warm. I'll put a stock thermostat back in it at the end of the summer.

I took the Outback for a test run in 90F heat today up the interstate at 70-80mph. First run was normal, stock hood, rear heater core not hooked up, fans plugged in, AC on, ran about 180F. Unplugged the fans, made no difference. They kick in over 190F but do run with the AC, not a surprise they do nothing at highway speeds though. Turned the AC off, ran about 170F. With this arrangement (fans unplugged, no rear heater core, AC off), we were running 230F before with the bad headgaskets and stock dirty radiator in 80F heat. Taped on a piece of cardboard covering the area between the bumper and the lower radiator support. AC on, back to 180F. Surprised that didn't make it run hotter. Definitely going to make a sheet to cover this area, should keep the condenser from getting beat up by sticks. I had noticed that the passenger side fan was never on, so when I got home I let it idle until it got hot enough to turn on the driver's side cooling fan (about 200F). Unplugged the driver's side fan and the passenger side fan never turned on, even at 220F. When it's slightly unplugged it seems to work at a similar temperature to the driver's side. So I'll probably wire another plug in for that. I put the vented hood in the basement. It didn't seem to drop the temps much. I also realized that if it did work it would be feeding hot air into the cowl inlet for the HVAC, which would definitely not help cool us off.

Replaced the head gaskets. A lot of the black rubber was worn off. After we got the engine back in the car it wouldn't start. It would sort of fire but didn't run. After trying a few other things, I took the timing belt covers off to double check the belt alignment. I realized I'd used the arrow on the crank pulley instead of the barely visible hash mark to line the crank up. Fortunately it had retarded the crank ninety degrees so it doesn't seem to have hurt anything. This is the first timing belt I've installed wrong like that and I was very relieved that the engine ran once I lined it up and doesn't seem damaged. While the engine was out and apart I put a new (to me) oil pan on it, replaced the valve cover gaskets, put in new spark plugs and re siliconed the boots. Bores looked good, could still see the crosshatching and ring gaps appeared to be .020-.030", so we didn't touch the bottom end. Seems to run as well as before if not a little better. Another strange thing while we had the engine out is that the car has been sitting for a couple of weeks with doors open, etc so the battery voltage was a little low. We replaced the HVAC control and tested that out. Seems to work but the door sticks near the middle of the travel so sometimes the motor can't push it past that point by itself. May have been the problem all along, I never re tested the old controller. So after doing that we turned off the ignition and the fuel pump kicked in and started pumping gas all over the floor. Did it to my friend and then I did the same thing later. Now that the battery is charged and everything is hooked back up to the engine it's back to normal. While the engine was out it was a perfect time to put in a new condenser and bigger radiator. The stock radiator support seemed very weak and bent out of shape, so we started by cutting that out. Purposely made the brackets for the bottom of the condenser so they can bend when things move. This shows the mounts for the grommets for the radiator and condenser, I also cut some notches out of the tube and boxed them back in to clear the tanks. Had to mount the radiator as low as possible to get the hood to shut. Grommets (and engine) installed. The fans I got were too short. It think they might be for a normal Legacy instead of a turbo. Welded some tabs to the bottoms of them to make them work. Painted them later. The radiator I used is for an early 90s Legacy turbo, which doesn't have a radiator cap. Apparently the stock little pressure tanks tend to go bad so it's cheaper and easier to just buy an aftermarket one. Welded some brackets on to steel pipe plugs that go in either end. Also had to move the hood latch. Here's everything painted and put together. The car runs much colder now. Hard to say how much of that is the head gaskets and how much is the radiator. I haven't had the OBDII on it yet but it probably runs 70 degrees colder than before. It rarely gets up to the middle of the gauge. I'll probably make a panel soon that blocks off the radiator under the bumper to protect the condenser and radiator from sticks, etc and keep it from running too cold.

One who's never driven one on the street.

That's obviously what most off road racers do. Totally impractical for a car that's mainly driven on the street though. FWIW, there are some race series that require AC. It's proven that if you can stay at a comfortable temperature, I think around 70F, you will make fewer mistakes. Equipment operators are 20 or 30% more efficient with heat, AC, and a comfortable seat and controls. I've heard Dakar racers talk about how having the cockpit well sealed, dust free, and air conditioned really helps. That's not to say that for a one day desert race it's worth having windows and AC.

Considering the evaporator probably hadn't been touched in 17 years and 200k miles, I think it will probably stay clean for a while. This car is primarily used for driving around town, road trips, and trail riding, and the AC is very nice for all of those things. Also, in a completely enclosed car with a firesuit and helmet on, it gets pretty hot. I would imagine really hot if it's 100+ outside. I think the only AC component that weighs more than a pound or two is the compressor. The refrigerant probably weighs as much as the condenser or evaporator. I could see removing the AC for engine cooling or fuel consumption purposes though.

I think a lot of it slowly accumulates from dust clinging to the condensation when the air's on. So unless you had an actual cabin air filter, a screen probably won't do a lot of good.

This is what the AC evaporator looked like. This is after we cleaned it as best we could while it was still in the car a couple months ago.

You could use electrical conduit (EMT) instead. 1.5" conduit is almost exactly 1.75" OD, you can buy the bends and straights and tack weld them together for your templates. If you want to stick with the PVC, you can get elbows that will probably be close to a tubing bend. A quick search shows Home Depot has these for $3, they're called long elbows: http://www.homedepot.com/p/1-1-2-in-PVC-DWV-90-Degree-Spigot-x-Hub-Long-Turn-Elbow-C4807LTHD112/100347073 You can chop off the outer part of the collars to make it fit flush with the inside of the car if that's a concern.

So I drained the coolant and pulled the radiator and condenser out so I can replace the condenser and test fit the Mishimoto rad. It'll make engine removal much easier too. This might have been hurting the cooling system performance. Between cleaning the stock rad up and replacing the head gaskets we'd probably be safe, but who's to say the radiator won't get half plugged up during the V2R. Might as well have as much cooling capacity as possible. It looks like the Mishimoto rad will fit with the first gen Legacy fans. Even looks like the fans plug right in and rad hoses probably fit. Looks like I'll probably need an overflow can w/ cap, didn't realize the Legacy turbo had a remote cap.

So I'll probably just do the Felpro head gasket kit and replace the spark plugs. Going to order new heater hoses too since the one blew out. Do I need to replace the head bolts? Thermostat (Subaru), water pump, idlers, and timing belt all have less than 20k miles on them. Anything else I should replace while it's out and somewhat apart?

After talking to our friend who's done a ton of them, at the moment I'm just planning on doing head and valve cover gaskets. Quite a bit more work and money to do the bottom (middle?) end. Didn't see any JDM 2.5s in a quick search either. Not excited about the wiring, etc to make the H6 work this summer.

You would definitely be safe milling out the part that goes in the spindle or slotting the wheel pilot. Most of the weight savings is probably in making the wheel flange star shaped though. Are you even going to be able to do that after adding six more holes to it? It will make the flange weaker too, but it would probably still be strong enough. Also, since wheel bearings and hubs are a wear item, you'd have to do this every time you replaced them. Same with the brake discs. I personally don't think it would be worth the time and effort. I saw something where a guy CNC milled small block chevy block castings and took 30-50 pounds of iron out of them and they were still reliable. So that kind of thing is feasible, just a question of how much time you want to spend on it. You could clean 100% of the undercoating off your body and save quite a bit of weight there.

I have to thank you guys for hounding me about the head gasket issue or looking at some other cause of the overheating. I've checked several times, even used the head gasket leak tester. Over the weekend we drove down to the Smoky Mountains. At one gas stop I left the engine running and looked in the overflow bottle and saw tiny air bubbles coming out the overflow hose. Maybe one every few seconds, 1/16 or 1/8” diameter. So the engine probably has a bad head gasket. Temps were in the 80s all weekend, had to run the rear fan quite a bit of the time on the way down, AC running the whole time. I had to shut off the air going up long grades a few times each day the whole trip. We met up with our friends who brought their street legal woods buggies down to do some sightseeing and hit some trails. Saturday we circled around Smoky Mt National Park mainly on paved roads, some of which (32) were miles of switchback turns. Not really my thing but I practiced using the turning brake a bit trying to keep up with them. That paved section of 32 was the only time I struggled to keep up. We did get to a one way road (Heintooga Round Bottom Road) that leads down to the Cherokee reservation. At the top a Jeep was heading down so my friend decided we should wait and use the bathroom so we wouldn’t be stuck behind them the entire time. Then a guy in a Subaru Crosstrek headed down the trail. Then a girl in a Mazda came flying in and shot down the road like she wasn’t even going off pavement. Then someone else in a late model VW headed down. That road was pretty fun, a little rough but driveable in basically any street car. Fortunately everyone we caught up to (all the cars we saw head down plus a few more) moved over to let us by, which was not the case on most other roads. We passed the Subaru shortly after starting but it took us a while to catch the Mazda. We weren't going super fast, just running a decent pace. For five or ten minutes after we passed the guy in the VW he was keeping up with us, then we got to some rough sections and never saw him again. We stopped in Cherokee for ice cream. Started heading back to Gatlinburg and stopped to watch the elk. They wanted to head back to the campsite to clean up so I decided to loop back on the Blue Ridge Parkway and hit the one way road again. Ran it a little faster this time. We did come across a native American family driving an 80’s monte carlo up the road the wrong way. Got back to the elk crossing area and took some pictures. We put on about 200 miles that day. Sunday we met them at the campground again and went to Max Patch, which is a 360 degree view of the Smoky Mts on a big grassy hill. Rode some interesting dirt roads down from there, probably the roughest trails we were on that weekend, again could have probably driven them in a stock Subaru. At one point we stopped in a parking area to use the bathroom and a minute after shutting off the Subaru coolant started steaming out from under the hood. The stock heater hose that's still in place had burst in the middle. I was able to reroute the hoses going to the rear heater core to just bypass the stock heater core. Fortunately we didn't need heat and got kind of lucky that happened in such a convenient spot. So I obviously need to replace the head gaskets. I have and will read up on this, but what else should I check or replace while the engine is out and torn apart? It's going through a quart of oil every 500 miles or so. I think it would make sense to hone the cylinders and replace the rings and bearings. Should I get reground cams? Should I replace the timing belt or oil pump? Is there some 30k mile $1000 JDM engine that would bolt in and plug in? How much work is it really to get an H6 to run in this car? One of my friends does have a 2.5L from a first gen OB sitting in his barn but I think it needs head gaskets also. I'm still going to replace the condenser and evaporator since those are both beat up and dirty. I'm going to see how well the thicker first gen legacy radiator and fans fit too, probably still try to make that work. It's nice to have some extra cooling capacity in case something gets clogged up or we develop another head gasket leak or something.

Here is the vented hood we tried. Started by cutting a U shape. Cut out some of the ribbing under that section. Bent it down as far as we could while leaving about an inch of clearance between the flap and the accessories. Tack welded in some pieces of sheet metal on the sides. Welded and sanded it. Still in the primer / sanding phase. A few days ago it was 80F so we did some cooling system testing. Unplugged the radiator fans for better consistency, removed the air dam, covered the rear heater core, and taped a piece of cardboard over the vent in the hood. My friend brought his bluetooth OBDII plug and loaded the app on my tablet. The temp gauge doesn’t register until the ECU says about 110F, then gets up to the bottom of the thermometer (middle of gauge) at 150F and stays there until it gets over 210F. 230F is about the top of the thermometer picture, almost 3 / 4 of the way up the gauge. So the gauge is very non linear. It did seem to normally register a rise in temperature slightly before the ECU but they otherwise followed each other consistently. Going up the highway at 65mph with the AC on the temps only got up to 200 or 210F. By this point the cardboard had blown off the vent, it clearly had higher pressure underhood than above. On the interstate at 80mph the temps crept up to and stabilized at 230F with the AC off. We put the air dam on, didn’t seem to have any effect. Then we taped over the hood vent more securely this time. It may have increased the temps a couple degrees being blocked off. Perhaps with the fans on the vent would be more helpful. Then we removed the cardboard from the hood vent and the rear heater core. Without the rear fan on, it lowered temps to 226F. With the fan on the temps immediately started dropping, going down to about 210F. We were then able to run the AC and the temps went back up to about 226F. So the hood vent and air dam seemed to do almost nothing. The rear heater core without fan was good for five or ten degrees, with the fan it dropped temps about 20 degrees. Turning the AC on raised the water temp about 15 degrees. After that we put the stock hood back on. The next day driving around town in 87F weather with the AC on full blast and the radiator fans plugged back in it ran at the bottom of the thermometer except for one time it started to creep up a little bit, maybe 220, and then went back down. Never turned on the rear fan. The day after that it was in the low 80s. We drove the OB out to our friend's test area outside of town at 60-65mph. AC on the whole time, temps at the bottom of the thermometer. We took the Subaru out in his yard and beat on it pretty hard. Everything was quite overgrown but I was hitting some of the little jumps faster than I think we have in the past. After a while I noticed the temp gauge was at the top of the thermometer so I turned off the AC and turned on the rear fan. After the temps dropped I turned the AC back on. When we headed back on the highway I had to have the rear fan on most of the time to keep temps at the bottom of the thermometer. AC wasn’t blowing very cold on the way home. Last year we were able to drive down to the off road park on a 90F day, beat on the car all day, and drive home, all with the AC on full blast the whole time and no rear heater core and no overheating. Then in TX during the race at about 70F we could only run the AC a small percentage of the time by the end of the day. The next few days down there in the 80s we had to run the heat quite a bit to keep the car from overheating. Now we never have to run the heat but occasionally have to run the rear fan if we want to run the AC in the 80s. So even without using the rear heater core it's better than it was in TX but not as good as it was last year. Next week I'm getting a new AC condenser and evaporator. They're both pretty beat/dirty. I'm also getting a 2" Mishimoto aluminum radiator for early 90's turbo Legacy and used fans and overflow bottle. Seemed like the most likely thing to fit and hook up.

The Haynes manual actually has some good info on this. They have the pinout for the heater control (the thing with the pushbuttons on the dash) and mine appears to be completely dead. No continuity between any terminals in any setting. Fortunately the fan and AC switches still work. There is also a mode control motor above the gas pedal screwed to the HVAC unit. It looks like this and has a brown wire harness plug going into it: It has an arm coming out the back (passenger side when in the car) that actuates the flap for vent/floor/defrost. You can test it by applying 12V to the two pins on the end nearest the middle of the box. One polarity moves CW, the other CCW. Mine seems to work. At the moment I just pushed the arm this controls to the vent position by hand. AC is weak as always but at least it's coming out where I want it. When you compare this to the super simple, cheap, lightweight cable that controls the hot/cold mix it's almost comical.