long travel Outbacks or making Subarus faster and more reliable offroad

[pontoontodd]

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.

 

 

[Uberoo]

It would probably be a good habit to remove the radiator from the car after each race and clean it out.It doesn't take long for it to get plugged up.

[pontoontodd]

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.

 

[ferp420]

that looks like mine did the last time i cleaned it it still amazes me what gets trough the fins i was thinking of puting a screen over it or something might help catch some of that but i dont know if it would help or not i ended up soaking the whole mess in a trash can full of water for a few days it all cleaned up nicely

[Cyfun]

that looks like mine did the last time i cleaned it it still amazes me what gets trough the fins i was thinking of puting a screen over it or something might help catch some of that but i dont know if it would help or not i ended up soaking the whole mess in a trash can full of water for a few days it all cleaned up nicely

 

A screen might impede the airflow.  I'd just clean it real good periodically.

[pontoontodd]

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.

[Uberoo]

Well, if you insist on being the only racer with AC,you could always retrofit a filter to keep dirt off the evaporator.Or you can file all of the AC components in the round bin for weight reduction.

[pontoontodd]

Well, if you insist on being the only racer with AC,you could always retrofit a filter to keep dirt off the evaporator.Or you can file all of the AC components in the round bin for weight reduction.

 

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.

[Uberoo]

Yea, no AC in an enclosed  car with a firesuit and helmet could get a bit hot, but what if all the glass except for the windshield went missing BECAUSE RACECAR then the AC would be redundant.If you are still abit hot afterwards you could always get one of those coolshirt setups...

[pontoontodd]

Yea, no AC in an enclosed  car with a firesuit and helmet could get a bit hot, but what if all the glass except for the windshield went missing BECAUSE RACECAR then the AC would be redundant.If you are still abit hot afterwards you could always get one of those coolshirt setups...

 

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.

[Uberoo]

One might say that a long travel IFS subaru with a rollcage would be totally impracticable to drive on the street.

[pontoontodd]

One might say that a long travel IFS subaru with a rollcage would be totally impracticable to drive on the street.

 

One who's never driven one on the street.

[pontoontodd]

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.

[pontoontodd]

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.

Edited June 16, 2016 by pontoontodd

[Cyfun]

So glad it's running cooler.  Imma laugh my asss off, though, if your new problem is that the car runs too cool.

Edited June 17, 2016 by Cyfun

[pontoontodd]

So glad it's running cooler.  Imma laugh my asss off, though, if your new problem is that the car runs too cool.

 

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.

[Cyfun]

Oh, did you take the t-stat out?

[pontoontodd]

Oh, did you take the t-stat out?

 

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

[pontoontodd]

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.

 

 

[Cyfun]

If I were you, I'd do away with the rear heater core setup for now, as the car seems to be behaving much better, and all those lines are just another thing to go wrong.  Ooh, perhaps the thing to do would be to install some valves going to the back, so you can open or close the flow to it as needed.

 

By the way, one nifty thing you might consider installing is the Wix coolant filter.  It'd designed for diesel trucks, but you can get a filter element without additives that works great on gas cars.  Most folks install it by putting some tees in the lines going to and from their heater core, and mounting it between.  Part number is 24019, but 24770 seems to be a newer and cheaper model.  And I believe the filter you want is 24070.  You can find them both at Napa and O'reillys, but I've seen them online for like $30.

[pontoontodd]

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.

[pontoontodd]

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:
 

There is but its better not to run it,because all it will do is stop the mud/water from draining back out.Next time if your clutch starts slipping open the top rubber clutch cover and spray some water down into the clutch with a hose while the engine is running. Depending on how much is in there even a 20 oz bottle of water might do the trick.

 

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.

 

 

[Cyfun]

Very cool. So your car quit using coolant after you disconnected the rear heater lines?

[pontoontodd]

Very cool. So your car quit using coolant after you disconnected the rear heater lines?

 

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

[Scott in Bellingham]

Sand question, what tire pressure you run when your stuck in the sand? If you drop your tire pressure way down you may drive right out, I've done a bunch of sand driving and will run as low as you can go without running off the rims, then air up when your back on hard ground , good story thanks for sharin