pontoontodd

This is one of the modified front spring perches. Struts are all back together and on the car. Definitely seems quieter than before with tight bearings, hopefully they last longer than the small bearings. Really hoping these bushings stay in place. Another thing we did recently was a change in the fuel cell foam. My wire cage for the fuel level sender didn't stay in place, the blocks of foam still moved around and kept the float ball from going down into the fuel. So I got a piece of foam big enough for half of the fuel cell and we cut a window in it for the float. This foam is pretty stiff so we had to cut a couple of pieces out of the outside of it to fit it in the cell. We put them back in place in the cell. Seems to work for now, again we'll see how long it lasts. One thing I could use some help with is the HVAC. Since I've bought the car it's occasionally been hesitant to switch between defrost/floor/vent. Usually it eventually goes where you want it. Recently if I switch it to defrost or floor it stays there and I can't get it to come out the vents. I'd had it switched to vent for a while and it eventually started coming out them. A couple days ago I switched it to floor and now it won't go back to coming out the vents even after driving it a few times. Advice?

These are the new housings and spring perches ready to be painted. Painted, reassembled, and ready to install. Still plenty of sidewall clearance with the new mounts and definitely more tread clearance too. Hoping the new bushings stay in place.

Since we'd bent the spindle brackets on the rear struts and had plenty of tire clearance at the sidewall, I got new plates cut to bring the strut body out a little and shorten up the tabs. Also boxed in the bottom. At the same time it seemed we were hitting coil bind with the rear springs and had almost no tire clearance at the tread. I doubt we could have even put a new tire on and had it clear. One of the progressively wound springs we were using is on the top of the next picture. You can see it limits our travel a bit since the coils on one end are close together. In the middle of the picture on the strut is one of the new springs we're using. Since there are fewer coils (at least initially) it should stiffen/lift the rear end a little bit. The bottom spring is one of the new ones that hasn't been cut yet. Since these springs have a little bit of play and I don't want them to rotate and pinch the reservoir hose, I welded some beads on the perch to keep them in place. Hard to see in this picture but also welded some little tabs on so the hose fitting limits the rotation of the shock, rather than the hose rubbing or pinching. Putting small hoses on the rear now. Another problem is that the bushings we're using don't seem to stay in place. Most of them were slid down in the housing, even though we now have screws below them to hold them in place. They also would not slide over the shocks. So they seem to be shrinking somehow. Again, not the best picture, but this one was even split. Before I started modifying all this I thought about just making new housings and keeping these for spares. I would have had to buy a shock or two, and didn't really want to do that. Ultimately I decided not to because I thought I would be able to reuse the bushings. Since I'm trying a different kind of bushing, spring, top cap, and hose, I kind of wish I'd just left these together and put together a completely new set.

One thing I'm changing while we're going through the struts is swapping out the top caps with some that have a bigger bearing. The fronts were both badly worn and don't have as much time on them as the rears. These also have a smaller hydraulic port which matches the smaller hoses we're using now. The bushings I'd made before (bottom) were super too since we're using 12mm bolts and the old bearings have a 1/2" hole in them. The new bushings are easier to make and should hold up a lot better.

My wife and I went up to the UP over the weekend, just did a little sightseeing, hiking, and canoeing. After recently driving to Texas and back a five hour drive seems like nothing. Took the Outback which right now has the stock struts on it while I'm fixing the long travel. Figured we weren't going off road for a month or two so I've got the city boy tires on it. You probably know where this story is going. We decided to go to the Keeweenaw one day. Just south of Hougton we saw snow in the ditches and in the woods in Trimountain and a few other places. North of Hancock I tried to head north a couple of times, just finding dead ends. The second one along the Gratiot river was a slightly rough and rocky dirt road. Managed to get a flat RF tire near the end of the road, someone driving the other way warned us we had a flat tire, decided to just drive to the end and fix it there. We walked along the shore a little and drove back to the highway. Found a gas station with compressed air and plugged the bad tire (sidewall and tread) and aired it up. Those tires are super thin compared to the mud tires. Around Allouez we headed north along the shore up to copper harbor. On the way we were going to stop at Cat harbor to walk on the small sandy beach and noticed a Chevy S truck that was sunk into the sand. We pulled up and could clearly tell they had been digging for a while since it was almost two feet down into the sand in the rear, so probably 2WD. I told them I had a strap and they cheered. I didn’t know how much effort it would take so I hooked the strap to both his front tow hooks and around the rear bumper of the Subaru. They asked if I wanted the Jeep that was there to do it but I figured we could get it with the Subaru. I think I even had the left tires on dry pavement. We pulled them out with minimal effort. My wife said one of the women said something about how they were saved by a “little Subaru Outback”. Drove to the end of highway 41 and when we turned around saw the sign for Miami 1990 miles. Drove south to the southern shore and followed that down to Gay, Michigan. Saw some ice on the rocks on the way. Drove by the Gay bar and drove onto the beach. This beach is miles of mine tailings so it's legal to drive on. It's impressive how much ore they must have dug out of the ground and processed. I never thought we were going to get stuck but the stock struts really took the fun out of it. One of those things you don't realize how good it is until you don't have it. Just trying to keep up enough speed so I wasn't worried about getting stuck the car was bottoming out pretty often. Could have probably gone twice as fast without issues with the long travel, with that and the mud tires would have had no concern about getting stuck. Probably would have spent a lot more time checking it out, always a disappointment to drive that far and then have to limit what you do because of what you brought, even though that wasn't the reason for the trip. Between that and the flat tire I decided it's just not worth the slightly reduced tire cost and noise to run the city boy tires. Also, the stock struts have absolutely no damping. It doesn't bottom out as harshly as I remember, but part of that is probably the city boy tires soaking up some of it while the mud tires don't flex much. It's most noticeable cruising down the highway, if you hit a little dip the whole car just oscillates a couple of times.

The dirt collecting there means it's a low pressure zone, which should be pulling air out of the car through the heater core. It could fill the thing up with dirt I suppose. I had also thought about some kind of steel tube under the car to run pipes/hoses through. Keep coming back to the driveshaft tunnel, not sure how well I could make it fit there and I'd have to attach it to something. I'd also thought about something just alongside the stamped "frame rails", I think it would have to be pretty thick tubing to survive there. Not a bad idea to tie it into the frame somehow. My plan is once the vented hood is done to go out on a hot day and tape off / unplug various openings and fans and see what really helps keep it cool. Need to either get a OBD dongle to use with the tablet or some kind of actual temp gauge too.

Good point on finding an H6 for that price. Haven't really started looking very seriously but that does seem to be a cheap one. Any advantages/disadvantages to second vs third gen Outbacks?

Looks like a decent car. At this point I'm thinking something with lower miles and a 2005+ for the bolt on front wheel bearings. Although I guess I know I can just put them on an older car, especially since I probably won't care about ABS.

Still trying to decide what to do about the radiator. At the moment I'm leaning towards the Mishimoto for 91-94 Legacy Turbo. The tanks, inlet, outlet, and mounts look the same. Expensive but probably worth it. I definitely have to replace the condenser. Waiting a bit on both of those, no sense getting them beat up and dirty before the V2R. Didn't see a good place to put the heater core in the front. I suppose it could be mounted to the hood itself but we'd have to do some testing to see how we could get air to flow through it. It would certainly make the plumbing a lot simpler and safer. One of the main thoughts behind the heater core in the hatch is that it should stay pretty clean. Still working on the vent in the hood. I'll post some pictures eventually.

I'd suggest a small Lincoln MIG welder. I've had a weld pack 100 for about twenty years now and it still works great. It runs on 120V AC like most inexpensive welders in the US, so I'm not sure what an equivalent model would be for you. You will definitely want to use inert gas and solid wire. You can get a gas kit if it doesn't come set up for it. The cheapest way in the long run here is to buy a bottle (75/25) and then have it refilled. I bought the largest one they have and probably get it refilled about once a year, sometimes less often. You can still get a small bottle if you need to move it around a lot. I made up a filler out of fittings from McMaster (not sure where you'd get them) to hook one tank to the other to refill the small one with the big one since it's fairly expensive and a hassle to get the small one recharged all the time. If you're going to do that get solid fittings that are rated for the pressure you're dealing with. It's cheaper to buy the larger spools of wire (I think they're 11#) but if you don't use it often and it gets wet/moist the wire can rust and cause all sorts of problems. So if you don't use it a lot get a small spool of wire. For the weld pack 100 I normally use .023" wire. That welder can weld very thin and/or rusty/painted metal surprisingly well. It's of course ideal to have clean metal to weld together but some things can be rushed or can't be cleaned. That welder can weld up to about 1/16" steel very well. You can weld thicker steel with it but you should do multiple passes at the least. I also have a power mig 180C. That's what I normally use now. It is the cheapest 220V welder Lincoln sells here and is MUCH smaller than their other 220V welders. I use .030" wire in that one and you can still turn it low enough to weld .030" thick steel. It's definitely good for 1/8" thick steel and does fine on thicker stuff.

How/where would you suggest doing that? I was originally going to run them in the driveshaft tunnel but I was afraid they'd get snagged or smashed, plus running alongside the hot exhaust would sort of defeat the point. Why would I put heat shielding insulation around the metal lines? The whole point is to reject heat. We even discussed running some of those finned aluminum lines, but they'd probably have to go on the roof or something. If nothing else this way I can find out how much it drops temps to have that heater core and fan in the back.

Installed a big heater core in the hatch door plumbed into the heater circuit. Started with this heater core for a 78-97 Dodge full size van and 8" Spal fan. Found the heater core on a chart online of heater core sizes, the flange is very convenient for mounting. Cut a hole in the hatch to fit the fan. Heater flow goes first through the stock heater in case we actually want heat, then over the gas pedal and under the radio. Then through the console and under the carpet over the driveshaft tunnel. Then under the rear seat and up along the rear seat belt. Then over the spare tire to the hatch. Then in the hatch door to the rear heater core. Cut a hole in the interior panel to allow airflow. This is how it looks from the back, moved the license plate over to the side. The fan moves a lot of air, but the only time I've driven it since and gotten it up to temp it wasn't fully bled yet so it wasn't very hot. There is definitely a noticeable difference in temperature between the hose going out of the engine and the one going back in under the hood.

Another thing I did after we got back is to weld some bushings on the subframe for the driver's side control arm. The holes were wallered (slotted) out at least 1/8" each way. Turned up a couple of bushings to use a longer bolt so the shoulder would be engaged on both sides. Tack welded them on with the control arm bolted up. Then swung the arms down (as pictured), finished welding and threw a little paint on. I'll eventually do this to the other side to be safe. After the race the steering shook over 60mph on the highway. Between replacing the one control arm bushing, tightening a castle nut on one of the tie rods, and this fix it's now back to smooth steering on the highway. I've been thinking about how to get more travel and keep thinking that we really would want more up travel. I don't know how much more a couple inches of droop travel would help. I don't want to raise the car much. At full bump the bottom of the wheel is about even with the bottom of the body, so we could use at least a couple more inches of up travel. At the moment I don't know how to practically do that. For one thing the front tires are very close to the wheelwells already. I think the rear axles get pretty close to the rear crossmember at full bump, that might take some effort to fix. Mainly though the springs are already at coil bind at full bump without any room between them and the strut mounts or the tires, so I don't know a good way around that. Maybe shorter but stiffer springs that would be a couple of inches short at full droop would be the answer.

Did you check the valve cover bolts and oil pan bolts? Try to get it as clean as you can, use brake or carb cleaner, put it up on jackstands, fire it up, crawl under and see if you can tell where the leak starts. Yes, you can pull the stamped heat shields off the exhaust manifolds and run it without them. They're pretty easy to get off with a big screwdriver, just pry them apart at the spot welds.

I ordered a head gasket leak tester and that came in, but the fluid was on back order so I figured I'd get it locally. The guys at the O'Reilly's I stopped in yesterday couldn't find the test fluid. I stopped in an Autozone and got a bottle. After a lot of bubbling the test fluid was still blue. To make sure it worked I put it behind the exhaust while the engine was running and after a half dozen squeezes of the bulb the fluid changed yellow or almost clear. So I don't think I have a head gasket leak. It does seem to take a lot less throttle to cruise at 80mph now that the exhaust isn't crushed on one side, I wonder how much of our problem that was. I also replaced the rear O2 sensor since the wires were pulled out but I doubt that would make much difference. The car did seem to run cool at the start of the race and got hotter as we went, but so did the ambient temps.

Up travel on both ends is limited also by tire/wheel well clearance. You are right though, in droop on both ends the CVs are close to bottoming out. In the rear they slide inwards at full droop. Various other things are binding up too though. Maybe if we went to heim jointed links instead of rubber bushings that wouldn't be a problem. In the front the CVs slide outwards at full droop. The outer tie rod ends also run out of travel, which wouldn't be the hardest thing to fix. If we moved the control arm pivots much I think we'd get some bump steer. The nature of the shocks/struts limit the travel too. For instance, say the compressed height of the shock/strut is 14" from the top mount to the spindle, you can only have 11" of travel. I've seen some rally cars get around this by offsetting the front strut to go down alongside the axle, like the stock rear struts. Looked at doing that and didn't seem like it would work for us. I have seen some offroad cars mount the top of the shocks sticking through the hood but didn't want to go that route if we could avoid it. More practical to do that in the rear, but the rear struts are already pretty long so probably not necessary. I had the springs off many times and cycled the suspension while we were building the long travel. The springs themselves are an issue too. The rule of thumb with aftermarket "racing" springs is that you only get about half their height in travel without yielding (permanently deforming) or hitting coil bind. That is why at first we had the springs running almost the full length of the struts alongside the tire sidewalls. To get the springs pointed at the wheel and the strut body farther out to reduce binding, we went to a traditional spring perch over the tire layout. So again, the best we can find are say 5" compressed at full bump, 16" long at full droop, so only 11" of travel. You could probably just run another inch or two of droop and have the springs float. The springs we're using now are the best MOOG springs I could find using their chart. I would like something 30-50% stiffer to get a little more ride height, right now it sits in the middle of the travel. So without getting custom wound springs that is a limitation also. Unless someone knows of another spring chart out there.

I was suggesting you do it. Without a low range, we could really use more low end torque than anything. One of the reasons we have to go "too fast" over obstacles. I've thought about a six cylinder swap but I think it would be better to eventually replace my Impreza with a rust free six cylinder car and start on that. Still planning on making a low range at some point. There are very few classes or series of desert racing that allow turbos. A six cylinder would not bump us up a class and would have much more torque. Not that I plan on caging one of these again. The engine is still stock. The previous owner supposedly replaced the head gaskets, and I've replaced the timing belt and spark plugs and wires, but that's all that's been done to it as far as I know with 210,000 miles of abuse on it. I've thought about some of the frankenmotor builds but I'd really like to see some dyno charts starting at 500RPM instead of 2 or 3k. At this point, especially for desert racing, we're still almost totally limited by the suspension. We could get up to speed faster out of the corners with more power but it we'd still have to go slow in the rough. I'd rather have a 25% improvement in suspension than double the power. Even though the suspension now is far better than stock. More power would probably make it a lot more fun to drive but like you say then we'd probably just start breaking CVs, etc.

Finally got the video from our last race edited and posted on youtube. It's not the greatest since we were focusing on finishing on time and couldn't really get video out on the course. I'm still really happy we were able to drive the car that hard for over nine hours that day. answered this question in your thread

I would think you'd bend a flat skidplate like that more easily than tubing. A big skidplate like that will protect the exhaust and control arm mounts better than what I built though. It really depends what you're doing with the car. If you want to slide up dirt berms, the flat skidplate is probably the way to go. If you're worried about a giant rock in the middle of the trail taking out your oil pan, a piece of tubing will provide more protection.

You should ask those guys if they have overheating problems. I know it's an issue with rally cars when they lose the front plastic bumper. The stock plastic will sort of limit your approach angle, but not really. It's very flexible. This comes back to the question of what you're really going to do with the car. If it's occasional mild off roading you can probably just leave it alone. With your lift it might scrape and flex sometimes but stay on the car for years. I wouldn't bother with rear diff protection, I can't imagine how you could break one of those. I would build something under the gas tank if you're going to do a lot of rocky trails. This is what I was talking about for the front. You probably don't have to go this far, but the front end will really take a beating if you start pushing the car. The lower radiator support will start bending up and the oil pan will certainly be destroyed. Run a tube the full width of the lower radiator support. On our other cars we've welded plates onto the ends of this tube and bolted it to the tow hooks. That gives you something solid to anchor your oil pan guard to. On this car we've run tubes up to the fabricated bumper, but that's a lot more work.

I was mostly joking, like why not get the WRX engine/turbo/etc and swap it all in?

It depends how hard you're going to push the car. If you really start doing difficult trails, you will want to do something about the bumper covers. On both of my Subarus I've made the bumper covers bolt on and off easily. That way you can have clearance for the trail and they don't get torn up, but for driving on normal roads you can put them on so it looks stock. The other two things I would recommend are some kind of radiator/oil pan guard and gas tank guard. You can buy or make skidplates. We've made them out of steel tubing, otherwise the radiator support, oil pan, and gas tank will get badly dented. I would also not worry about bushings or swaybars. The lift doesn't seem to hurt them.

You're probably right, and maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like she was telling me it costs $30 to rent it. It'd probably be handy to have one so I'll probably just buy one. I'm surprised the exhaust is still attached to the car. It hangs below everything else but seems to require very little maintenance. We did crush the driver's side in the same spot as this about a year ago in Kentucky, I think I posted about that a few pages ago on this thread. Why not just run a turbo and pipe the outlet straight up out of the hood?

Henry Ford 100 year old Model T showing how it's done on a RTI ramp!!!

OReilly has one but it's $30 to rent it, and I think you have to pay for the fluid, so I'm just going to buy one. I did pour in a bottle of coolant system cleaner and drove it for a few days, just flushed it out this morning. No obvious flood of junk came out. While it's drained I'm going to drill some holes in the thermostat. Another thing we noticed after we got back is that the passenger side exhaust was crushed. First I pried off the heat shields. I cut a scrap of 1.75 x .120 4130 leftover from the cage to fit. Should flow a little better. Yes, I ground the flash out of the inside of the tube. Tack welded it in while the exhaust was still on the car, took the exhaust off, finished welding it, and put it back on the car.