pontoontodd

It would definitely help with that, although with the long travel that problem hasn't occurred. Some rock crawlers use two so they can lock any combination of brakes.

We replumbed the brake lines before we left. Just used stainless braided flex for everything. That didn't require many fittings which also gives it fewer joints to leak from. I've always wanted to try a cutting brake on this car so we put that in. After a lot of discussion it seemed that mounting next to the parking brake was the best solution. You can definitely lock up either rear tire on a loose surface (grass or gravel), and occasionally dry pavement when you really lean on it. It definitely works, but it definitely slows the car which is often not desirable. If the car had more power it would probably work better. Turns in sharper rather than swinging the rear out as normal handbrake operation would do, so that's usually good. If the front end is pushing on a loose surface it helps turn the car without having to let off the gas. Overall probably not worth the time and money to put it in.

One of the projects we finished before going to Kentucky was this receiver tire rack. I've wanted to do this for a while and this seemed like the simplest way to carry four tires without putting them on the roof. Diagonal tube is 2" x .12", horizontal is 2" x .06". I didn't want to block the license plate or brake lights. It is just far back enough that you can still open the hatch. We discussed a lot of different ways to do this before we came up with this layout. You can even comfortably stand between the hatch and tires when you're getting stuff out of the back.

Trip report from last weekend at Black Mountain off road park in Harlan County, Kentucky: We drove the Outback down to Cincinnati on Thursday morning, got to our friend's place with the Toyota buggy around 2PM. Helped him swap out the dead battery on the Toyota, put the seat and belts back on, and loaded it up. Got to camp at twilight, swapped the tires and pulled the bumpers off the Subaru and tried to hit the trails for a bit. The Toyota wouldn’t start so we charged the battery for a bit and then headed out. After about five minutes they said we should head back, the Toyota was barely running and showing 9V. We pulled the alternator and belts off back at camp. Alternator had only 130 ohms from the + terminal to ground. He had supposedly spent two hours winching some guy out of the woods the last time he ran it. I woke everyone up Friday morning at 7AM so we could go to the parts store and get an alternator. Fortunately we were able to find one. The electrical plug was slightly different but it seemed to work all weekend, in fact going up to 16V if he didn’t have the lights on for a long time. The only trail into the park from where we camped that was still open was marked red on the map (most difficult) and had some very steep and long climbs. There was one climb we could not get enough of a run at and could only get about halfway up in the Subaru, so both days they had to tow us up in the Toyota. A low range would have been great at this place. There were a lot of trails that were very narrow with a steep drop on one side. Our friends in the Toyota would often discuss how far down it was until we would be stopped by a large tree if we went off the side. One trail had a large freshly fallen rock laying on it that didn’t allow a lot of room to get by between it and the slippery, muddy ledge. We were able to drive by in the Subaru but with much less room than they assured us we had. Since we had to (and could) go much faster than the Toyota on hills, we would often stop at the top and wait for them to catch up. One time we came to a large clearing and there was a family standing around by their side by sides and atvs and seemed entertained by the Subaru. We went over to talk to them and they immediately offered us some moonshine from their jar. We sipped on that, the Toyota pulled up, they had some moonshine and beer. My buddy later commented that if we hung out with those guys for a few more hours, everything would look like a Subaru trail. Not too much farther up the trail was the helipad at the top of a mountain. We watched the atvs and Toyota go up and tried to figure out what the best line was. About 1/3 of the way up there was a ledge that I slowed down for the first two times and didn’t make it all the way up. At one point I realized the AC was on so I turned that off. After the first or second try the guy who gave us moonshine told me I should try it in low range... The third time I stayed to the right of the ledge, which was rougher overall but I was able to hold my speed and get to the top. Most of the trails were rocky and therefore hard so the water holes were not a problem. After a while we got confident and I decided to go through the middle of a ~100’ mud hole. I had the passenger side tires up on a muddy strip and the driver’s side quickly sunk in to the windows. I kept the throttle wide open and we were just creeping through at a very slow pace. We both thought we were going to be climbing out the windows and swimming for shore for a minute. We started to pick up a little speed and barely came out the other side. Realized we had the AC on the whole time, which actually might have helped since the fan was probably acting as a prop. In this picture you can see how deep we were: At one point we were trying to get up a rocky trail and I misjudged our ground clearance and hit a big rock(s) at speed, which dented the exhaust and cracked the skid guard. Tried to take it easier the rest of the day. Eventually we got to the end a trail in the southwestern part of the park and had a long (but not too steep or rough) climb back up the mountain. After a few minutes I noticed the temp gauge was all the way up so I pulled over, turned on the heat, and popped the hood. The coolant was boiling in the overflow and the fans weren’t running. After it cooled down we drove the rest of the way up and let it cool off. Figured out we had a blown fuse and replaced that and the fan kicked back on. The scenery was amazing. I pressure washed the car as soon as we got off the trails and we swapped out the wheels and tires and put the bumpers back on. Drove home the next morning with no incidents but we did probably consume more oil than normal. This picture is a bit extreme as the rear end is heavily loaded. We do have the front and rear sitting about in the middle of the travel, which makes it sit higher in the front than the rear. We got about 6 hours of video so it will be a while until I have that edited down to Youtube length.

Nothing broke (as far as I know). There's just a lot of camber change with the short upper arm.

video from a recent test run

Thanks for that tip. Makes sense looking at the input shaft teeth.

While the exhaust was off, I sleeved a major leak and it's much quieter now. The driveshaft u joints all felt sticky so we replaced them all. One of the old cups appeared to have no needles in it. Now that I've driven it a few times I'm glad I did the group N mounts. It only causes a little more NVH than normal under full load, low rpm, in fifth gear. Otherwise unnoticeable. The higher clamping force clutch doesn't seem to have much more effort than stock either.

The 2 x 2 x .120 should be plenty strong. You could run the new rails inside the stock frame and bolt them in from the top like the EJ cars. Weld some nuts inside the new rails, drill holes in the top of the stock rails. Probably best to put some kind of stop in the old rails so if you hit something too hard it doesn't just bend/shear the bolts. Not sure what you mean by 4 chassis rails though.

Reverse idler gear missing about 1/4 of the teeth: Took a couple highway trips with the unevenly worn mud tires and locked up the center diff last fall. Since I mainly drive it on the highway or off road, I kept driving it. You can see the lower gear in this picture welded to the shaft: That broke/pushed the snapring out that holds the viscous plates in, although they were still all in place. Also broke the outer cage of the bearing that supports the center diff, but it was all intact and functional when we took the trans apart. We were barely able to get this sleeve off the input of the trans with a 3 jaw puller. As you can see the base kept chipping. Is this an original part or some kind of repair sleeve?

Alright, that makes sense.

In case anyone is interested, we are now planning on meeting at Rush off road park in KY the weekend of April 25th.

In the chance this helps your diagnosis, I've had a similar issue with my 99 Outback. Normally this happens when it's wet. Since I siliconed the spark plug boots in the heads it hasn't happened nearly as often. Car will run fine until the needle on the temp gauge swings up to the middle. Engine will stall at the next stop (manual). Engine will immediately restart, but runs very rough. Lots of bucking under light acceleration. Seems to run fine with more throttle and RPM. Shut off the engine, even for a few seconds, while coasting or stopped, and restart it and it will run fine the rest of the day. One time I had a long drive home and the restarting trick did not work. The engine would only run well above 1/2 throttle or near idle, which was a PITA cruising on the highway. Reader's digest version - try shutting the engine off next time it runs rough, count to ten, then restart it and see if it runs better.

When you guys talk about "t casing it", how exactly would you do that? Keep the stock front drive and just use the t case to drop the rear drive? Use front and rear outputs of the t case and use some other IFS or front axle? If you're doing that, why not use a RWD trans? Just curious, I've heard a bunch of people on this forum now hint at doing this but I've never seen how they've done it.

If your steering is wobbling, the first thing you should check is the u-jointed steering shaft that connects the column to the rack. You may have to remove it to tell for sure if it's bad. At a minimum watch it while someone else rocks the steering wheel back and forth slightly and watch if you can see any slop. Not super hard to replace. I had an old VW with dried up steering u joints that was sloppy enough to cause the wobble you're talking about. Another thing I had to replace on my car was the rack. You could rock the driver's side of the rack up and down in the housing a signficant amount, say 1/16" of an inch. It should be rock solid. More difficult to replace but not too bad. You should also check the inner and outer tie rod ends. Pretty easy to replace if you have the right tools. Check the lower balljoints and wheel bearings too. A lot of those components were in need of replacement when I got my Outback but haven't had to be replaced a second time, even after a lot of off road abuse. The best way to check all this is to jack the front end of the car up and rock the tire by the top and bottom. If it is at all sloppy, try to see if it's the balljoint or wheel bearing that's moving. Then rock it in a steering motion (front and back of the tire). You can really only see the outer tie rod but should be able to tell if there's any slop in the steering system. Watch the steering wheel through the windshield to see if you have any slop. If everything is in good shape, you should not be able to feel any slop in either direction. If you have enough time on your hands, remove the front struts and remove the front springs (make sure to do that safely with spring compressors). You will be able to tell if the struts are bad if there's no resistance up or down or if they have any slop side to side. Check that the springs don't have a coil broken off too.

He still has the Geolanders that came on it. They still have decent tread but they're obviously not very good in the mud. It was super slick, the Toyota with street tires might have been worse.

Video from our last off road trip:

Thanks for the advice on the clutch cover. I'll try the hose thing if it happens again. Definitely agree on the mudflaps, I could see removing the disc brake dust shields too. Not sure I agree on the timing belt covers, I suppose I should pop one off and see how much stuff is in there.

I think the main cause of the clutch slipping was mud in the pressure plate. I cleaned some of it out and the fingers came up: You can still see the machining marks on most of the friction surface. Disc and flywheel still looked good too. Is there a dust/splash shield that covers the bottom of the flywheel for these cars?

More than I'm willing to spend, although it is low mileage with rear diff and axles. Good to know that option is out there.

That would be great. Easily the biggest handicap to car ownership around here. What do they use near you, sand?

Here's a little trick I figured out that might help someone down the road. I got the nut off the top of the shift linkage bolt but couldn't break the bolt loose. I was starting to round off the hex head. I put the nut back on so I wouldn't damage the threads and put a big socket over the bolt head and pressed it out with a c clamp. If you learn nothing else from this build thread, you should learn never to buy a car from the midwest.

Good to know. How expensive is expensive? Once I have the bad one out and a good one in, I'll probably look more seriously at setting it up with a low range or other mods. Also, how common is trans breakage when offroading these cars? I've heard of guys street racing them breaking first but not off roading. I'm going to keep driving the suspension as is for a while, but so far I think long travel struts in front would be much easier and cheaper than the a arm setup with almost as much travel. I'm hoping the higher clamping force will make the clutch last longer. Hopefully I'll just get a little more wheelspin and less clutch slip when starting. This trans is out of the same year Outback so I should be good, but is there an easy way to check the ring and pinion ratio without taking the trans apart? Next question: We did tear/wear out a brake hose in the rear. There was clearance for it to go up in an upside down U between the tire and strut/reservoir. Then that clearance got filled with mud. I've been thinking about replacing all the brake lines for a while. One of them rusted out last fall and had to be fixed. I should probably reroute them on the suspension with this added travel. The ABS has never worked and takes up space and adds a lot of plumbing. I've always wanted some kind of cutting brake or functional handbrake. My thought is to just run braided stainless -3 from the master, tee to the front calipers. Then run a line from the master to a cutting brake (single handle, left rear, right rear) and from there back to the rear calipers. I could put in two hand brakes and have four wheel independent braking capabilities. Rock crawlers often do this so they can lock up both fronts by pushing both forward, both rears by pulling both, either rear by pulling one, etc. That would cost hundreds more dollars and require a lot more plumbing. Do you know what fittings I would need to do that or where would be the best place to get the fittings/line/etc? I think the Subaru master is 10mm x 1.0 and the calipers are all just banjos.

The auto would definitely be better for crawling, or going to that park we went to Sunday. As you can probably tell I don't have a lot of interest in going super slow. The suspension is almost all bolt on. We'll see how it holds up, but I'm definitely interested in building suspension kits for sale if you have the $$...

Alright, time for more advice wanted. Long story, and eventually I'll at least put up some video, but we went to an off road park yesterday that was all rutted muddy trails. On the plus side, the long travel seemed to work great and we even went over a rock pile that I never would have attempted before. After hundreds of starts/stops and a bunch of pulling people out, my clutch was starting to slip. Then near the end of the day I broke reverse. Not sure how, it just suddenly didn't work and made bad noises. Fortunately we were able to drive home but the clutch did slip a few times just flooring the gas pedal in fourth or fifth gear. So I need a new clutch and trans. I was looking at the Exedy HD, specifically 15801. I think I've found a trans not too far way for $350, I will probably just get that and then try to fix this one when I have time. I would really like lower gearing and/or locking diffs but that's probably not something that's going to happen in the next couple weeks. Thoughts?