bushbasher

a bolt and nyloc nut would work. I would make sure its a high quality fine thread bolt not for strength but for thread precision, so it wont come loose easy.

there hasnt been a cloud in sight for 2 weeks now, and a nice 10* that drops to 5* at night. It almost couldnt be better for working on my vehicles, cause its not too hot, not too cold. I dont freeze my hands on cold wrenches, and I can beat the hell out of stuff with a hammer and not break a sweat

the struts have their own rubber bumpstops. I wouldnt want to limit travel any more than it already is

you can slot the bolt holes in your strut towers to regain some camber when you do a suspension lift. To do a suspension lift in the front without welding you need to find a longer spring to fit in your strut. Other possibilities are to make a lift block on top of the strut to push it down. Or you could find udjustable struts from an 85-86 GL wagon, and crank em all the way up. You might need to modify the adjustable struts depending on how much lift you want. either way you will have noticeably increased wear on the cvs. Its a factor you should weigh in before you decide to do a suspension lift.

Cool, another BC guy! The creamy stuff in your oil tube is likely just condensation mixing with oil at the tube. Nothin to really worry about, but if your actual oil is creamy you's got a problem, likely headgasket related which also makes sense if your coolant is oily. Im thinking maybe a simple vacuum leak would cause your idling problem. have you tried running it on a steep incline yet to get rid of the air? take the rad cap off when its cold, start it and drive it up on a steep incline. Fill as needed. See if that helps. At 390k your rad/water pump might need to be replaced, everybody with an old high miles sube seems to go through that at one time or another.

rxs and xts are almost the same drivetrainwise, but xts are a little heavier and dont have the stiffer springs/shocks that the RX has. RX is probably the best, with the xt turbo next and then the turbo wagon. Post 87 turbo subes have a boost cut that is really tough to get around so if you want to mod a turbo get a pre 87.

I have a cheap sony mp3 deck. Mp3s are cool but its tough with all those songs to navigate, thats my only real gripe. I've noticed too with mp3s that at low volumes you cant really tell the difference but when you crank it up the bass and midrange distorts more than cd audio. I have a set of german RFT home theatre speaker cabinets sitting in the back of my car wired to the rear channels and all 4 stock subaru speakers wired into the 2 front channels. Its a pretty crappy setup so I cant complain about mp3 quality at this point. The home theater speakers are perfect actually but not enough to make me feel immersed in sound.

I have gotten 95% thumbs up from everyone who's checked out my wagon. My friends drive BIG scouts, jeeps, and toyotas, and they are genuinely excited about it, especially now that I've gotten a chance to show em what its made of. I've actually gotten a surprising amount of respect from the guys on Island4x4.com (local wheelin' club) considering they havent even seen it in person yet. They will soon enough though. Showed a local guy with an STI my subaru and he though it was wicked. I told him about guys modding the old cars for performance and off-road and such, told him about the rx, the granddaddy of the wrx, and really opened his eyes to the old school generation of subes.

heres a link to the t-case faq I wrote up: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24388&highlight=t-case Find some pics of qman's brat for some ideas on mounting the rear axle. You can use pretty much any solid rear axle that is 6 bolt (to match the front) v6 toyota pickup rear axles are the widest toyota rear axles, and use a removable 3rd member design so you can find any 4wd toyota pickup axle and swap 3rds to get the ratio you need. most 2wd datsun 720 pickups have rear axles with a 3.9:1 ratio to match a stock subaru diff for the front. 4wd 720 rear axles usually have higher ratios like 4.11:1 or 4.375:1. Also a plus is that they can use the same driveshaft flange as a subaru. A little too skinny though, qman needed spacers to match the front width qman just swapped in an isuzu rear axle which was a better width than the nissan and also has disc brakes. so theres quite a few possibilities.

the welds wont break if you put enough meat in between the gears with a high powered machine. a 110 mig is not going to do the job, you need an arc welder or 220mig to really melt those gears together On mine you can barely tell theres any gears in my diff, its just solid metal.

your buggy is really light, i wouldnt worry about breaking stuff so much. I bet with the tires, bumpers, winches and supplies, a subaru could be close to 3500lbs. My guess is that you'll be just breaking 2000lbs fully loaded?? I would air down those quad tires. They are very round, so they have very little contact patch at high psi. My quad is useless at street pressure. Then I air down till the contact patch is about flat all the way across, and I can crawl along and follow all the rockcrawlers up the cliffs. It doesnt handle very well though, nearly flat tires and a 3.5ft track dont go well together :-\ ...another point is that you are only running 26" tires with stock gearing. The rubicon rigs with the exception of qmans brat were running better crawl ratios and bigger tires in addition to the greater weight. I dont think you have anything to worry about.

I drove a short distance on the road in a scout 80 with a welded front and no power steering with the hubs locked in. The turning circle was not much worse, but you had to hang onto the steering wheel with both hands through a turn cause it was always trying to lurch back to center. Then my stupid friend tried to drive it with one hand, and dislocated his thumb. Still, it was pretty insane what the thing could drive up. If there was a way to disconnect the front end quickly like with manual hubs, I'd be telling everyone to do it. Its not so bad in the dirt. Theres a thing you can do called the "fozzy" locker, which leaves some play in the side gears when you weld it. I allows almost a quarter turn at the wheel, so that would help alot during stationary or near stationary turning.

if it was out of a non-turbo car it will be the same.

your constant 12v to the radio, is that your own wire or part of the stock wiring harness.

probably unrelated. Welding the diff will only create stress through the drivetrain that links the 2 rear wheels together.

theres a guy who rallies an rx in australia who swapped the guts from a wrx tranny into his ea82 5spd ft4wd box including the 4.11 diff. I remember him saying its a bolt-in affair between ej and ea internals, and that if you swap everything at once you can make it work. I dont know if you can mix and match and keep your current Dual range though.

it pushes metal blocks against the spider gears to reduce their ability to move independantly. It is similiar in action to a clutch pack lsd like a stock subaru rear lsd, only it uses metal on metal friction instead of clutch pads. If you overcome the friction force holding the spider gears together, and have 1 tire spinning and 1 not for any length of time, you'll be dealing with overheated/annealed gears and then plenty of metal shavings or even a grenaded spider gear.

What color is the interior? I think either a bright silver, a metallic graphite-ish grey, or just a nice deep black (needs a nice straight body for black though) rip all the grey rubber trim off the outside and replace it with black (or paint it black with the right paint).

you can buy one tested and ready to go for 300-400 on ebay if ya really want one. Why do you feel the need to modify the fuel system? if you wont be upping the boost, the increased CR won't be more demanding on the fuel system than stock, it just uses more energy out of the explosions.

thats for replacing the center viscous coupling in the tranny. He's talking about the rear differential. I say weld that sucker up, everybody's doin it. the center viscous coupling will work fine for an ice racer, no need to fiddle with it.

to be fair, the reliability of those old british cars was not much worse than the american cars of the time. We're all just used to japanese cars now. Generally the lucas problems come from corroded connections, and also quite frequently from the hack-jobs of the PO's. oh and scoobaroo, wassup frank zappa sig buddy!

Hey Trevor, you've got the same rims as me, they are actually 15x6 if you measure between the 2 inside edges (I'm told thats the way to get the actual measurement) If you measure outside to outside they seem like 15x7. ] A "15x10" rim will actually measure about 11" wide actual width. I have 31s on my 6" lifted wagon, and with my front suspension moved forward 2", they can still rub on the footwell area. I havent pounded really hard though, just folded the seam over.

If its an off-road only rig, with zero driving on the street, I say go for it. You'll be amazed at the stuff you can do. Just keep your thumbs out of the steering wheel The standard dual range selectable fwd/4wd tranny has no center diff. Its already straight through. Only full time 4wd trannys have center diffs or viscous couplings.

Napolean Dynamite really is a love it or hate it movie. I was in stitches. Napolean reminds me of my little brother's buddy Fraser. "I see you're drinking 1%. Is that 'cause you think you're fat? 'Cause you're not. You could be drinking whole if you wanted to."

since the t-case is divorced there'd be no reason to try to mate another engine to the stock tranny since that little tranny is tiny and weak anyways. Just use the transmission that comes with the swapped motor and make a custom shaft from the tranny to the t-case. Some good swaps I've seen are toyota 22r or 22re out of a toyota pickup/4runner/80's Celica, mazda 13b rotary (that was a frickin insane ride ) Theres also the 8v sohc1.6l from a chevy tracker/suzuki sidekick, and the 16v dohc 1.6 from some other suzuki (geo storm or something I think. Swapping between suzuki products is the easiest, everything bolts together, sensors work together, same shaft splines etc etc. I followed a writeup on Pirate4x4 about building a turbocharged 16v pushing 250hp in a 1700lb samurai