long travel Outbacks or making Subarus faster and more reliable offroad

[ferp420]

take a look at the cars that drive dirt roads every day the back hatch is where all the dirt collects if your fan is.blowing out you might be ok thats mostly dead air back there mixed with dirtnand road debries personaly if it where me i would run heavy wall steel pipe back under the car and tie it in to some kind of cage or sub frame that way it serves 2 porposes

[pontoontodd]

A valid point.  But good luck finding an H6 for so cheap.  And remember, out here, cars with high miles are usually in better shape cause it's all highway miles at 80mph.  I've had several vehicles with over 300k miles that were in better shape than most 100k mile cars.

 

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?

[pontoontodd]

take a look at the cars that drive dirt roads every day the back hatch is where all the dirt collects if your fan is.blowing out you might be ok thats mostly dead air back there mixed with dirtnand road debries personaly if it where me i would run heavy wall steel pipe back under the car and tie it in to some kind of cage or sub frame that way it serves 2 porposes

 

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.

[ferp420]

the desert buggies usaly mount the coolers to the roof or on the side of the rig i would probly pop out that rear window on the drivers side and mount my fuel filler and coolers and fans there

[pontoontodd]

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.

[Uberoo]

Around here because so many of the roads are : A) poorly maintained, B)dirt roads, or C) non existent it is not uncommon to find AT truck tires even on passenger cars.The reverse is also true, some people neuter trucks by putting passenger car tires on them.My 2wd dakota came that way, but is now has a set of 215/75/15 BFG AT KO's on it. 

[pontoontodd]

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.

 

[pontoontodd]

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.

[pontoontodd]

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.

[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?

[krazykasper11]

I've been having the same problem with my 97. Not sure what makes the AC switch act like that.

[pontoontodd]

I've been having the same problem with my 97. Not sure what makes the AC switch act like that.

 

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.

[Uberoo]

But the cable/rod needs more force to activate,and lazy americans will complain about the effort  .To be fair the cable/rods need to be lubed once or twice every 40 years or they bind up bad.

[pontoontodd]

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.

[Uberoo]

For whatever reason you are not getting enough airflow through your radiator to effectively cool the engine even at speed.Non of my cars have needed a fan to keep cool above 30 mph because the car was pushing enough airflow through the radiator.Why wont yours?

*Do you have a 2.2 or 1.8 radiator hooked up to a 2.5L engine?

*Can you see through the radiator/ac condenser or is it plugged solid?

*Are you using an OEM thermostat that is operating properly?

 

Driving down the road at any speed above 30 the car should be ~200*F because its not generating enough heat/work to really be working the cooling system,At 60 mph it takes about 40 hp to maintain 60 mph on a flat level road with no wind.In other words,about the same as a 1.0L geo metro.If your overheating at that speed on flat ground something is very wrong with your engine.

 

Do you have enough coolant,and is it the proper mix for summer weather?Do you have enough oil in the car?Are you sure you don't have a blown headgasket( quite likely if your running at 230+*F).

 

Something is not right if it is struggling to stay cool, from the factory it was basically designed to do 80MPH+ through death valley for hours at a time with the AC on and not overheat.

 

The vented hood,the rear heater core,fans,etc are all masking some problem and until you find out that is it will continue to run hot.Period,end of story.

[Uberoo]

These articles will better inform you about what goes on under the hood,and maybe even give you ideas on how to modify your cooling system in a meaningful way once you get to the root cause of why you are overheating.

 http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&A=113176

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&A=113177

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&A=113178

[Cyfun]

Could it be something as simple as your water pump going out?  Or maybe your rad cap isn't holding pressure like it should.  Have you replaced that yet?

[pontoontodd]

For whatever reason you are not getting enough airflow through your radiator to effectively cool the engine even at speed.Non of my cars have needed a fan to keep cool above 30 mph because the car was pushing enough airflow through the radiator.Why wont yours?

*Do you have a 2.2 or 1.8 radiator hooked up to a 2.5L engine?

*Can you see through the radiator/ac condenser or is it plugged solid?

*Are you using an OEM thermostat that is operating properly?

 

Driving down the road at any speed above 30 the car should be ~200*F because its not generating enough heat/work to really be working the cooling system,At 60 mph it takes about 40 hp to maintain 60 mph on a flat level road with no wind.In other words,about the same as a 1.0L geo metro.If your overheating at that speed on flat ground something is very wrong with your engine.

 

Do you have enough coolant,and is it the proper mix for summer weather?Do you have enough oil in the car?Are you sure you don't have a blown headgasket( quite likely if your running at 230+*F).

 

Something is not right if it is struggling to stay cool, from the factory it was basically designed to do 80MPH+ through death valley for hours at a time with the AC on and not overheat.

 

The vented hood,the rear heater core,fans,etc are all masking some problem and until you find out that is it will continue to run hot.Period,end of story.

 

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.

[ferp420]

the problem with the flat engine design is they where the cyliders in to a oval shape so just adding new rings pgobly wont stop your oil usage it dident in my 98 outback we ended up replacing the motor with one of the japeness motors after 7 motors we got a good one lasted 60k before it started burning oil again and we took it off the road we got tiered of dealing with that motor i think your better off swaping a good used motor in or swaping in a different motor all together maybe a newer 2.5 or a turbo motor but the 6cly would kick all of them out the door the money you would.need to spend to save that block is better spent on swaping a better motor in

[pontoontodd]

the problem with the flat engine design is they where the cyliders in to a oval shape so just adding new rings pgobly wont stop your oil usage it dident in my 98 outback we ended up replacing the motor with one of the japeness motors after 7 motors we got a good one lasted 60k before it started burning oil again and we took it off the road we got tiered of dealing with that motor i think your better off swaping a good used motor in or swaping in a different motor all together maybe a newer 2.5 or a turbo motor but the 6cly would kick all of them out the door the money you would.need to spend to save that block is better spent on swaping a better motor in

 

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.

[Uberoo]

There isn't a JDM 2.5 because of japans/europe's draconian emission laws-2.5L are essentially treated as big block v8's in terms of tax rates.So 2.5 is a NA thing while everyone else got 1.6,1.8, and 2.0 engines.

[ferp420]

i can get jdm 2.5s all day long they were from a local jdm importer its just they might not be any good they do have a warrenty though i went through 6 jdm engines before finding a good one #7 its still in the car but it burns oil like mad again ive found ring seal works wounders on these engines

[Uberoo]

Don't get a "JDM" engine unless its something that is hard to find stateside-SR20DET,2JZ,EJ20TT,etc.The "JDM" engines are different in many ways from the USDM counterparts-valve cover gaskets,water pumps,injectors,etc.So instead of buying those parts over the counter at your local pep boys,napa,etc you have to order them from Japan.

 

Besides those "low mile JDM engines" have been rode hard and put away wet.They are replaced so often because as a car ages in order to be compliant with emissions standards it becomes cost prohibitive to keep cars around so most people just buy a new car every couple of years and the car gets scrapped.Now if you knew you were only going to a keep a car for 3 years,and all of your driving was going to be stop/go in cities with a long time idling, how much would you take car of the engine?2" of dirt on airfilters and jet black,chunky oil is common on those "low Mile JDM engines".

 

With that knowledge I would only buy a JDM engine, if like I said, it was some rare engine that we dont get stateside.Then I would do a full rebuild on it to ensure it would live a long life.

[pontoontodd]

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?

[Uberoo]

No you don't need to replace the head bolts, but chase and clean out the threads on the block, and clean up the threads on the bolts then lube the bolts on install.