diluded000

I may have used different bolts than I listed in the original parts, but I think the engine cross-member bolts are indeed 3/8" through a couple of round spacers. Pretty much used what I had on hand at the time or could get locally after work. When I get some other projects finished, I might go back and put an aluminum block in there with three 1/2" grade-5 mounting bolts on each side, rather than two. If I was hitting deep washboard on curves every day I would worry about it more, but most of the miles are on scraped ice and snow covered pavement so these spacers don't see much action in the side-to-side axis. - James B

About day 2 and the lift. Well day 2 turned into more like two weeks, but I did get it finished and back on the road. I took lots of pix of the process and plan to update the original message so that it covers the whole thing start-to-finish. I need to get my home network finished up, and I will get all that online. I try to write things up like an engineering document and want to do a good job with it, so I need to find an hour or two to sit down and do it right. The tubing bender is a great value, and does what I expected. I tried to bend some exhaust pipe, and it just crushes it, though I hear filling the pipe with sand and capping the ends will fix this. It distorted the schedule-40 pipe I used for fabricating a bumper a little bit, but it is still really good to have around. The seven stiches in my thumb are pretty much healed up now, so I am going to be getting back out into the shop for a back bumper, and some oil-pan protection. Welding is indeed adictive, and I can't wait to make more stuff. - James B

Ok, this is a bit of literary personification here; but I think my car was indeed thanking me for driving it hard. I'll have to remember that it likes that. I even left my comparitavely new truck sitting in the driveway this morning to drive the Subaru to work . . . on dry pavement. - James B

My 85 4WD DL wagon with a 5 spd and Hitachi carb has seemed slugish for the last year or so. Not really a big worry since it's mostly a snow car, so I don't need it to run all that great. But tonight I was passing a couple of cars on a two lane coming home from work, and had it wide open in second for a pretty good way. The speedometer is off from the big tires, and it doesn't have a tach, so I can't really say how red-lined it was - but it was screaming pretty good before I heard if over the new stereo and shifted. The next 1/2 mile or so it was acting like it was starved for gas as the cars I just passed started to catch back up. Then presto, its starts running better than it has for the last year. It even made it up a hill in 5th gear So whats the deal? I remember this urban myth about blowing the carbon off valves by running wide open, but never believed it. Did I force something out of the fuel line, or unbind something in the tranny, or what? - James B

If it doesn't snow, I might be doing the rear disk brake conversion on my 85 DL this weekend, and would like to upgrade the soft (on a couple of levels) hoses on the front at the same time. This is really more of a generic brake line question, than a transplant so: can I just go up to the local NAPA/Auto Zone/Advance and buy braided stainless brake lines off the shelf? What am I looking for anyway, a banjo bolt on one end and a 10mm fitting on the other? Any help with how to describe what I need, or where to get it would be a huge help. Thanks. - James B

If you don't mind popping the hood to start it, you can pull the coil wire. I left my car in a hotel parking lot for a week one time, and just threw the coil wire in the trunk before I took off. If someone really wants a vehicle they can just drag it onto a car hauler, but pulling the coil wire will at least slow down the guys with a brick and a screwdriver. I had an ignition lockout installed on my new truck when I lived in Houston. They wouldn't insure it without one. It was about $100 bucks at a place north of you near Louetta and Spring Cypress rd. It automatically engages when the the vehicle is turned off, and you have to put a little plug in and out of the device to turn the vehicle on. If you leave the plug in, or wait more than 20 seconds, the ignition gets locked out; so they call it a failsafe ignition lockout or something like that. - James B

I used schedule 40 pipe from the BORG (Big Orange Retail Giant aka Home Depot) for my custom bumper. My low dollar pipe bender crushed a thinner walled tubing. - James B

I'm quite fond of telling what I call 'crime stories', but that is better than any I have. The closest tales I have are when my apartment neighbor found a junkie sleeping on my hood, and I came out to find a big grease spot on my windshield. And the time some derelict looking guy decided to take a nap under the tree in our front yard. I tossed a firecracker out the window in his general direction and he jumped up and walked away real fast. - James B

Well I saw an old Subaru on 'The Wire' on HBO a couple of weeks ago. There is a scene where a couple of characters are walking on the street and an older Subaru drives up to a stop sign, then turns past the actors. This would be the second to the last, or maybe the last episode, in the 2004 season. Tonite I was watching, 'The Hitcher' from 1986 on AMC and there is a tan Subaru hatchback in the parking lot. It is the scene where the star walks out of the hotel room to find Jennifer Jason Leigh tied up between two transfer trucks at the Outpost Cafe. Quality cinema indeed. - James B

I wouldn't be shy about putting a pointy-tipped sheet metal screw, or the self tapping variety, into your door panels. Just press the speaker frame hard against the opening, put the screw through the vinyl, and bear down on the drill until it bites. You have to back off the drill 'video game fast' so the hole doesn't get reamed out after the screw bites, but you should get a solid connection with the door and get good sound out of your speakers. Pre-drilling with a 1/8" bit can help. I used to agonize over a couple of little pin-pricks in the door and try to drill the speakers to fit the factory clips, but after 20+ years of putting in my own stereos I don't worry too much anymore. For me, the most important thing is having a solid connection betweent he speaker frame and the body. - James B

I will make every effort to come to Red Rocks on the 22nd with my lifted 85' wagon. I work in Longmont, and live outside of Loveland. Sounds like fun. - James B

I have a set of different diameter center punches that could be used for something like this, but I could suggest how to do this with a compass and protractor if you don't have those. I made an aluminum drilling guide for my rims with a CNC milling machine, but if you have a block of wood you could use that as well. Just draw a circle that is 140mm across, then draw a line straight across the center point of the circle that intersects both sides of the circle. Now use the protractor to make another line across the circle at 90 degrees to the first line. This will make the centers of the existing bolt studs on your hubs. Drill at the four intersecting points with a bit the same size as the lugs and you should have a board that will slide over the hub. At this point you want to lay out where the new holes will be centered. Use the protractor to mark 60 degrees away from a line between the center of the circle and the lugs you are going to leave attached to the hub. Drill your wooden guide with something the same diameter as your punch so it can slide into the hole and mark the center, or just use a really small drill bit and use the drill to mark the center on your hub. A drill press or drill guide to help keep the drill square to the drill guide would be a help, or stand something square next to the drill to help aid alignment. Hopefully this rough drawing will help clarify. - James B

I was thinking of adding a skid plate, but am still debating what to tie it to. Maybe bend a pipe that starts at the bumper, connects to the transport hooks, then ends at the engine crossmember? I dunno. Any ideas how to do that would be good. - James B

It's a 12-ton bender from Harbor Freight. It was on sale for like $59 (usd) bucks and comes with about six arbors. I just went and looked at the JD2 site and those look very nice. I stuck some exhaust pipe in mine, and it just flattened it; though I hear if you put sand in the tube and cap the ends it will bend thin walled tubing. On the 2" pipe you can see flat spots where the rollers were pressed against the pipe, and see some outline of the ends of the arbor. The smaller pipe comes out really good, though I think the pipe wants to rotate a little as it bends so it took two tries to allign the top brush guard bend. I really need an OA torch so I can twist out the kinks. - James B

How y'all doin Well santa brought me a pipe bender this year, so I welded up a bumper for my recently lifted (pix soon) 85 DL 5spd 4wd wagon. I used 2" schedule 40 pipe for the big pieces and 1" for the smaller pieces. The local home store sells a budget priced 2" bi-metal hole saw that does a decent job of notching pipe. The pipe is 2" inside and bigger outside, so I really should have used a hole saw that matched the outside diameter of the pipe. But it wasn't that hard to tweak it to fit with the top of a belt sander. The bumper still needs cleaned up and painted, and I might add some tow points, a place to hang the front tag, and maybe a winch. But I thought is was close enought to being done to show some pix. - James B

Being a native Floridian I'm not exactally an expert on the subject, but I put about 100 miles on the 85 DL on snow and ice in the last two days so my experience is fairly fresh, and I have driven in snow off and on since 1980something. I have run M+S all season tires on a 2WD - which are almost useless, 13" snow logo'd snow tires on the 4WD Subaru - which are OK, and 15" studded snows on my now lifted 4WD Subaru (and the 2WD before that). Never tried chains, but they seems like a finger freezing proposition. The deal with real snow tires is they are softer at low temperature and have a tread designed to fling snow out of it. Some other folks might have good advice about sidewall tread and other things I don't really know much about. Studded snow tires really help stop on ice, but don't do much in deep snow. Studded snow tires are legal year round here in Colorado, but I don't know about where you are at. If you can afford some sort of snow tires (which I think wear out faster) I would invest in some, particularly if you are driving in mountains. That sort of raises the point about types of conditions. There are all kind of frozen conditions: thin ice on asphalt, thick ice on ashpalt, re-frozen bumpy ice, snow plowed down to thin ice, snow pack, iced over snow pack, plowed snow pack, deep snow . . . . you get the idea. The best advice I ever got is 'you just gotta be cool' and to go find a frozen parking lot and get a feel for how the car handles when you loose traction. I found my Subaru wagon spins around pretty easy, so watch making sudden wheel jerks, or braking on curves. The rump roast end wants to catch up if you brake too long, so I have had to brake-slide-correct brake-slide-correct multiple times to get stopped fast on ice. Taking your foot off the brake when you really want to stop is hard for me to do, but it works. Some sandbags in the trunk might help with this, but I didn't want the mess. For different conditions I will sometimes make a fast test stop (if nobody is around) to get a feel for how fast I can go, just watch for changing conditions. Have fun snowboarding. - James B

I don't know the pin-outs, but as an alternative they sell an FM transmitter that plugs into an 1/8" phono plug at Radio Shack called an IRock that will let you play your iPod over an AM/FM stereo for about $29 (USD) bucks. I used one of these with an MP3 player for over a year and it eats bateries, but does the job. I just installed a $119 Jensen MP5720 stereo that has an auxilary input that works great with the MP3 player. But the nice thing is this will also play MP3 encoded CDs, so you can copy over 100 songs onto CD-RW media and play out of the CD player. If you go poking around on your Clarion you might try to put a DMM or a circuit test light on the pins to make sure you don't accidentally send 12v into your iPod. - James B

Some of the school zones around here have those radar signs that tell you how fast you are going, and then flash if it is too fast. I hold a steady speed the use the radar speed those signs display to estimate the percentage error in my speedometer. I did this when I put smaller snow tires on my truck. The Boulder County Sherriffs Department only charged me $75 to confirm that even though my speedometer said I was going 65 mph in a 45 mph, I was really only going 60 mph. - James B

For getting metal hot, I have used a hibachi grill with a hair dryer and I may build a propane forge at some point for sand casting. For the lift, I was planning on extending my rear shocks at the bottom, but after seeing your bent flat stock will do that instead. Since I don't have easy access to an OA torch to heat the metal, it will be charcoal with the hair dryer. Maybe I can throw a steak on there as well. Now you made me paranoid on my steering extension. I welded a piece of pipe over a severed shaft for an extension, doing as much stress relief as I could by tapping it as it cooled. When everything else is working maybe I should put some holes between the pipe and shaft to put an extra bolt in there - in case the weld cracks. The front end of my lift is finished up. Last night I got the rear end detached and dropped onto the garage floor, so all I have left back there are the shock extensions and some spacer blocks. I am going to a work party tonight and don't like to mix 100 proof with power tools , so maybe tomorrow I will make more progress. - James B

Wow, that is nice equipment - and it looks pretty clean to me. My ShopVac doesn't perform very well at the altitude I live, and it seems to have finally choked out. My wood shop has central dust collection, but I was thinking of getting a bigger canister vac with enough velocity for the metal shop and making a mini central chip/shaving collection. Really cool video as well, very interesting landscape. I got my strut tops finally finished and installed last night. Hopefully I can extend the steering linkage tonight and get the front wheels back on. There is snow in the forecast and my 2WD Nissan pickup is nearly un-driveable on ice, so hopefully lifting the back end will go fairly faster than the front. - James B

Not a Smithy, just a Chinese 3-in-1 that I am learning to use. I also have a little Sherline milling machine that I built a CNC controller for, but it is better suited for making a little itty-bitty model of a Subaru - not anything very big. I put a photo of my garage below. The bigger wood shop is in the basement, this helps keep sawdust off the lead screws and grease off the hardwood. There is a good steel yard near here (Colorado Iron and Metal in Fort Collins, CO) but they close about the same time I get off work so I have to wait until Saturday to get up there. The local home stores stay open late, but they have a weak selection that I wind up using more often than not. Working on this stuff really is fun for me as well, I spent 9 months putting a bedroom and bathroom in my basement and I couldn't wait to finish to start working on the Subaru. - James B

Thanks for the info and photos, that really helped me think about this in a different way. The round stock looks like you took the time to part it on the lathe . . . nice. For the strut tops, I don't think the local home store sells tube big enough around to do what I need, so I might try to do it with straight pieces. When I get something together I will post some pix. - James B

It looks nice and warm and green in you pix, we still have snow on the ground and a high wind warning. anyhow . . . How did you make the strut tops? I am in the process of lifting my 85 DL wagon 3", but am fighting the strut tops a bit. Last night I cut four steel triangles that are small enough to allow for milled slots to adjust in the top of the strut tower, but after I cut the metal I saw the same triangle is too small to fit over the top of the strut. I guess tonight I will make bigger triangles to go over the strut, then try to get center of the bolt holes offset by 12 degrees and weld it all together. Does this sound right? - James B

I am pretty happy with my shop setup, but I would call it learning-how rather than know-how. Furniture making is my other hobby - this metal work is new, but I like how metal doesn't change dimensions with humidity, or split, and how you don't have to wait for a weld to dry like glue. As for a stereo, I'm really holding out for a JVC that will play MP3s right off the CD, and some decent speakers. The factory stereo still works, and I use an MP3 player with an FM transmitter, but it is really weak as I can still hear my valves knocking and the non-existent muffler connection. I'll have to get a recommendation for a JY when I go to put in a d/r. - James B

Santa is bringing me a 12-ton tubing bender for Christmas. Well actually Santa couldn't lift it in her car, so I went down to Harbor Freight and bought it, but I won't unbox it until Christmas, anyway. With a forced vacation coming up the week of the holidays, and a new tubing bender, I can see new bumpers in my future. I'm just wondering how to integrate the turn signals so they stay dry, protected, and visible. But before all that, my car is still in pieces all over the garage floor. I got blocks under both sides of the engine crossmember now, and re-tapped 1/2" holes for the tranny bushing bolts after work last night. Hopefully I can get blocks fabricated and bolted under the transmission crossmembers tonight, and pull the struts to start thinking about how to do the tops of those. And I won't run off with anybody's d/r. That is months away. - James B