s'ko

wow... you need a little mac dog for your hood. and air horns

just thought I would give this a bumpity bump. At the rate my BRAT project is going it may not be ready by then, but I will have my OBS on Forester XT struts. BW

For a canyon carver, you are going to have to figure out how to get rid of body sway and flex. They stock set up especially from a car that is 23 years old is going to be mushy and worn out. HP is important but handling is going to keep your car from crashing into a road barrier. since few people work on or even tune EA81's what you have to ask yourself is how good of a mechanic/fabricator you are or do you know anyone with those skills. The best think to do is to figure out what you want to do and start gathering parts. If you are EJ swapping, changing the crossmember is something that you can do while you are down there. some of the EA82 stuff swaps over but not all. EJ22 DIY project is pretty large undertaking. You will need a garage to keep the car in for atleast 2 months if not more. Lots of info on the EJ swap here. Better handling is a bit easier. From cheapest/easiest to most involved. (most are in the Ultimate subaru repair manual area.) 1) get a set of cooper 205/40/13 tires. 2) find a set of pugs and slap some wider tires on there or find a set of 6X140 wheels and re-drill them for your 4X140 set up. 3) Do a rear disc swap (USRM) 4) retro-fit your rear shock to an EA82 spring shock set up.(USRM) Here's where fabrication skills are in order. 5) make a strut tower bar. 6) install an EA82 crossmember and use the EA82 antisway bars. back sway bars will also have to be beefed up but I don't know if EA82 will bolt in. 7) 5 lug swap. Really complicated. (USRM) For more EA81 power, (provided that you don't have smog to worry about ) Do an SPFI swap. fairly easy to do and you will increase a bit of power but get a lot more reliability. For smog legal power gains an EJ swap is the easiest way to go. Good luck and feel free to kick ideas around here. Just be prepared to "have someone poop on your popsicle" who says things like that??? BW

Yeah I thought of that. I am probably going to connect the lift blocks in the front end that they will support each other. might solve the problem of having a lift bolt come loose. Barracuda. Actually I am going a couple of steps up the subaru evolutionary ladder and going to put in the front struts from my OBS. Just scored a set of forester XT struts So I am going to put those on my OBS. The OBS struts have about 100k on them but I figure with the BRAT being a lot lighter it should last for another 50 or so. Will have to reinforce the strut towers while I am doing that. Lets hope it all works out. BW

I made some rough measurements and here is what I came up with I measures from outer diameter of the holes to the other outer diameter. EA81 front =31 3/4 back =30 EA82 front =33 1/2 back =32 5/8 So we are looking at a difference of 1 3/4 for the front and 2 5/8 for the back The offset in the lift block in the front would have to be 7/8 on each side and 1 5/16 for the back blocks. I will take some more accurate measurements before i make the blocks. BW:headbang:

my bad.. i meant 100 wheels, so 20 sets..

so i met this dude who works for American Racing in Los Angeles. He is going to talk to the custom products department about rims for us older soobs. I asked if they could provide two rim designs, a 15 and 16 inch narrow spoke tuner style rim for the street crowd and a 15 inch fat spoke rim for the offroad crowd. Will probably have set up a group buy situation, but I wanted to get an idea of interest. I said off the top of my head that if we could get about 100 sets sold. That's twenty soobs. Of course it all depends on how much they will be. for the street crowd? for wheelers? So how many people would be interested if the price were 300 a set? 400 a set? 500 a set?

HERE'S A VIDEO OF ME GOING DOWN A WASH INTO A RAVINE. i DON'T HAVE TOO MANY OUT OF CAR PICS, MOSTLY IN CAR B/C MY WIFE DOESN'T WANT TO WHEEL AND IT WAS WAY TOO HOT FOR HER TO BE OUTSIDE. http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j208/boswan/?action=view&current=downhill.flv the rest of the video is not too great b/c SHE'S NOT GOOD AT VIDEOING FROM A CAR IN CLOSE QUARTERS. I will be going there again in December so will get some fresh video to wet your appetites. BW

Hmm. I might pack my longboard and my wetsuit....

I just call the park headquarters and they said that around Jan there is a possiblity of rain, but it's really depends on the weather for the week. The washes can be dangerous w/flash flooding. The have an open camping policy. So if we wanted to we could just park no more than a cars length off of the trail and pitch a tent. They recommend that you don't camp in the washes b/c of the aforementioned flash flooding. oh.. Camp is also free. probably will have to bring extra pans or pieces of wood to catch the oil dripping from the cars. Fires have to be done inside of a metal container b/c they do not want the ground to be scarred. I have a friend who took the tub from a washing machine or dryer and used that. It's got holes, its made of metal and it allows heat to radiate. January is the coldest month there, temps 63 in the day, 40s at night. and it also has the most rainfall of 1.43 inches. Well that is all for now. got to get back to work. I am really looking forward to this event. BW

here is a mapquest link http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country=US&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&addtohistory=&cat=&address=&city=salton+city&state=ca&zipcode= to Salton City, which is the nearest city to the off-road are. From Scottsdale you are about 283 miles. Glamis is more central to everyone except for mountainbiker, but it will be stupid crazy on a holiday weekend. Caravan w/the phoenix/tucson guys.

check your cooling system. Heat kills these cars. Enjoy your car.

i think the total distance on my odometer was about 40 miles. Based on the route that I went it should be doable for a stock 4wd soobie. Some parts might have a bit of radiator support scraping on an EA car. I don't know what the stock height is on an EA car, but my OBS is about 6.5 inches or so. In terms of other people wheeling during the meet and greet, I will be bringing spare parts and stuff, but I don't think the route should give people trouble. I will be going back there in December to scout it out again. BW

just got back from Anza-Borrego. OBS handled great. I aired it down to about 18 PSI. my route was Fonts Point. then to the short wash to the cut-off trail. The cut-off trail to Basin Wash to Tule wash to the pumpkin Patch and then to the main highway. There were a few sections where my bottom was scrapping against the sand. It was mostly when I would drive in the tire ruts and the was a high ridge in the middle. I had a bit of trouble at the Cut-off trail b/c it had some short whopdidos that I had to co really slow over. I am down loading the video right now and I should have some still shots uploaded to my photobucket site. Let's make this happen BW

when was the last time fuel filter was replaced? Also you might want to run a gas line conditioner/fuel injector cleaner with your next gas up.

When you say loss of power do you mean that the engine hesitating or is the car not moving forward? If the engine is reving and the car is not moving under those condition I would says that it's the clutch. I just replace my clutch and near the end in anything but first I couldn't put the accelerator past 1/3 or it would just spin. BTW if you plan to do the clutch yourself. It's easier to pull the engine or move the engine than to move the tranny. There are too many things to disconnect to move the tranny. it was a 16 hour job for me to do it via the tranny method. BW

Rosins up my bow and get my fiddle ready.... "Dear God, you made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that it's no shame to be poor. But it's no great honor either! So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?" If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn't have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy biddy rich, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man. I'd build me a tall BRAT with cupholders by the dozen, An EJ20 as a power plant bolted in A set of cyro gears and axles to match There would be nice big tires for going through the mud, And some slicks for screaming through the town And one more for going nowhere, just for show. I'd fill my soob with lights and a winch and parts and oil For the town to see and hear. And each "flash" and "whirrl" and "clang" and "drip" Would land like a trumpet on the ear, As if to say "Here lives a wealthy man." If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn't have to work hard. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. If I were a biddy biddy rich, Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man. I see my wife, my Tonya, looking like a rich man's wife With a proper SVX. Sitting is leather, its her heart's delight. Pulling up to rich folks they ask “is that a maseratti?” Oy, what a happy mood she's in. Screaming down the freeway, day and night. ok back to work………. so how many of you young guys are feeling like this right now?

HMM... so i could get a beater ea82/ea81, hack the car in half and then make a rear frame w/a single rear wheel. IIRC EA81's are pretty light. I could hack away some of the body and replace it w/a tube frame. Maybe take the doors off when I take it in for inspection. I guess the key is to make the car look decent and not like this frankentrike. If I so make it out of the foam material, I would like to replicate an impreza front end cause the look awesome. BW

found a good site w/a tutorial for rear welding http://www.derbypro.com/tut9.html

nice. So from what I gather you just fuse the center stuff together? I have been trying to decide LSD or welded rear. Can anyone give me a picture or something of where you weld? BW

someone is already doing something along the lines of what you want to do. do a search on themixtoo and his project. he is putting an entire OBS drivetrain into a BRAT. So far it's taken him over a year to do. I guess it's all about what you are willing to tackle and if you have the skills. If no skills then do you have the money to pay someone to do it. EA82 crossmember is not a direct swap. you will have to make an adapter plate b/c it's wider than your ea81 body. If you are going to do anything, do an EJ swap and put in a 5spd 4wd tranny. If you can find a RX then you will get dual range and LSD. re:wheels 5 lug XT6 parts if you can find them or redrill your rotors to 6 X 140 and run 6 lug wheels. You gotta remember that you don't need a full WRX motor b/c you have a lot lower power to weight ratio. Hope that helps. BW

I wonder how long a tree will last lashed to the roof my soob.... probably get home and it will look like the tree from that Charlie Brown Special:dead: anywho... will see what can be done. It's a bit of a drive from LA but my wife and I don't have any major plans for November so maybe we can swing it. BW

ahh.. I see. I went to pismo beach once and drove in Mexico a bit on the beach. I think the key will be to air down and bring some boards w/me. How is Fonts Point? BW

leaning car is definately cool. but I am a caveman in terms of engineering and I have no idea how to make a leaning car work. Anyways just thought I would put it out there. If my wife approves the project and I don't have a baby, when I finish my BRAT I will buy the plans and take a look at how it's build. I think the key to a car/vehicle like this is accident avoidance. It's like people who drive MGs or 914s or the original mini coopers. Look for pockets in the traffic flow inbetween the packs of car and get a flashing headlight for day time driving so people will see ya coming That and an open exhaust. VROOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Kinda like harleys. What would be really interesting is if you could use a 4wd tranny and make it a 3wd. __________ __________

Nice...... Anyways I have to schlep 40 miles each way to work and since I am not carpooling, I have to look with envy at all of those people flying past me. Don't want a motorcycle b/c there are too many stupid people here in LA and Subaru doesn't make a hybrid. Per CA DMV if a three wheeled vehicle weighs under 1500lbs, its a motorcycle. Which means no smog. So I can build up the EA81 to high comp/weber/stroker or go turbo spfi. hehehe... that would be excellent. I think the key is make a cabin that is safe. BW