long travel Outbacks or making Subarus faster and more reliable offroad

[pontoontodd]

B welded up his strut towers yesterday.  First step, stripping out the interior and setting up the bottle jack to spread them back apart.

The "frame rail" the rear bumper goes in flexed visibly by lifting up and down on the rear bumper.  In the interest of science we set up a mag base indicator as pictured below.  I could get it to move 0.1" by lifting on the rear bumper with just my left hand.  That's about 2.5mm for you metric types.

Next step, cleaning all the paint and rust off the areas he wanted to weld.  Then pushed the bottle jack out about an inch until it was getting some resistance and the gaps seemed to close up.

I cut a piece of .040" 4130 to patch the worst spot and he welded that in.  Not real pretty but a lot of what's left is at least a little rusty.

Then he folded the edges over and welded those.  Welded lots of other things too, we cut a few other little strips to patch some smaller holes.

Welded some questionable seams on the passenger side.

After all that I couldn't visibly move the dial indicator (< .001") even lifting up and down with both hands on the bumper.  Setting the car back on the ground only moved it .002 or .003".  So it's at least two orders of magnitude stiffer than before (by that measurement).

 

I made another square lifting tube for my other high lift.  I really like how much more stable this makes the high lift.  Also swapped the big base onto the bottom of the short high lift, which is the one I expect to use more often.

Green hood scoop I'd gotten had a couple of the tabs broken off the bottom so I JB welded the studs on.

Finish sanded that and finally clear coated it.

Also replaced the LF tie rod, the headers may have baked some of the grease out of it.  It was super sloppy and the grease was runny.  Guess I'll see how long this one lasts.  Header on the right side is just as close to that tie rod and it seems slop free.

Made a better tablet mount.  The screw bosses the flap/hatch in the middle of the dash had started to break.  Coincidentally, they completely failed on B's Forester, both on the last UP trip.  So I made some brackets to mount the tablet more directly without using that flap.

Surprisingly stiff once it's all bolted together.  One thing I discovered on accident is that having it tilted back a bit means you don't get nearly as much glare.  The reflection from the driver's seat is mostly looking at the headliner.  In my other cars it was always reflecting off the passenger's shirt, so especially if they had a light colored shirt the tablet would be difficult to read.

 

Also replaced the LF CV axle in the white Outback.  It's been making some faint popcorn noises for a couple years now.  Both joints felt quite sloppy.  Trimmed some plastic in front of the LR tire that was rubbing a bit.  Got some new mud tires mounted on some 15" alloys.

Plan to take the white Outback and green Impreza off roading soon with some family friends.

Edited August 25 by pontoontodd

[pontoontodd]

Drove up to the UP with some family friends late Thursday night of Labor day weekend.

Green Impreza ran rough for the first minute or so, died a couple times, then ran great all day Sunday and Monday. After we got home I tried it again with the laptop plugged in and I think since the lowest value on the coolant temp table was 84F, if the coolant temp was under that most of the cams were maxed out (most overlap). As soon as it warms up beyond that they all go to their normal 5-10 degrees at idle.

Went trail riding Sunday in the Subarus.  My wife's friend drove the white Outback and was keeping up with me fine in the woods, I was kind of impressed. She was surprised by even some mildly overgrown trails and we eventually got on some even I wasn’t sure they would connect. Found at least one connect the dots new to us trail not on the map. Hit the pipeline grade which was of course the highlight. Couple decent jumps at the south end we hit a few times, there was a lot of gasping and laughing.

She actually ran a pretty good pace through there too, I didn’t have to wait super long for her to catch up when we stopped.  Front end of the Impreza seemed to be bottoming out fairly easily.  Took them to the fire steel trestles. Had to wait for a group of probably 30 mostly jeeps to pass which took forever. We were laughing at the one guy who had a little camper trailer.  She was wondering how you’d ever turn something like that around on some of the trails we were on. When the green Impreza sits and idles the coolant temp steadily creeps up. Only the driver's side cooling fan is working. Fuse is good, relay isn't getting main/battery power but the fuse is. While moving temps are good.