Mike W

How about a Hummer or tractor portal hub between the engine and trans?

A "Rock Block" would be nice for those running divorced transfer cases. $1350...ouch. http://www.trailtough.com/transfercase_driveshaft.htm

I got mine done a week ago but haven't had time to post about it. I used KYB struts for a '97 Outback and springs and mounts from a '92 AWD Legacy. In the picture the car appears to be sitting level but that's with a bunch of gear in the back. Un-loaded the rear sits about an inch taller than the front. I'll probably swap the front springs for some just a little taller to make the car sit level. The rear struts were very close or possibly touching the body of the car, so I did a bit of BFHammerology to be sure I didn't have any rubbing. The sway bars were slightly difficult to reconnect but other than that the installation was a breeze.

Great photo! Well that's one way to low-ride a Soob. Any idea how far he drove it on the road? I'd love to hear his conversation with the cop that pulls him over. Years ago I bought a Brat from a guy in Lynnwood that had done something similar with an old GL wagon...he built a big honkin' camper on it. Yeah, a Subaru motor home! I never saw it and he didn't have any photos but by his description it was huge, stupid and un-drivable when it was finished.

My KYB OB struts should be here tomorrow and should be installed this weekend. Just in time too... the air suspension is giving me problems. In case anyone cares, KYB lists the same front strut mounts for '95-'98 Outbacks and '90-94 AWD Legacys. Rear strut mounts are different as someone already stated.

A bad injector or wire would be nice. I'd test compression and spark and go from there. For specs on the Sun Sport, Joe Spitz has it on the bottom of this page: http://www.cars101.com/subaru_legacy_archive.html Pics of this car would be cool as it's a very rare model. I've seen Ti's and Alpine Sports but I don't think I've seen a Sun Sport. Oh and I hope you keep going on Leroy Brown!!!

I'd like to see Mudrat or someone make a quick mounting light bar for Legacys. Same idea as what the rally folks use but for just a couple of lights and not super expensive. The mounts would be permenently installed and discrete, but the light bar itself would quickly detatch. There's gotta be a market for something like this. Guess I'll have to work on designing it myself so I can put my Hella 500s to use.

Hey it's about time someone built tube doors. Nice job. I bet you could sell quite a few of these. Seems to me that these doors would be about as structural as stock doors. And if the unibody is getting flexed and abused a lot, then it might be time for a cage and/or sub-frame. But of all the old Soobs getting torture tested on the trails, how many have folded up? Amazingly the unibody seems to take it pretty well. For foul weather and highway, you could add quick mount lexan or aluminum door skins with flush mount quater turn fasteners. Or maybe stock steel door skins and clear vinyl window with velcro? I think Summit has the fasteners and not too expensive.

If you're going to toss the coil overs and use just the torsion bar for spring, shocked spec'd for a Toyota FJ Landcruiser will work with a 4" lift. These shocks will allow more downtravel than the stock axles can take and they'll hyperexend sooner or later. The fix to that is installing the longer cups from the later EA82 style axles. That will give the axles an extra inch or so of stretch and should fix the hyperextension issue.

Looks like I'll be doing this mod soon so I'm glad to let others nail down the details first. So Thanks for the info! Is Tire Rack the best deal for buying KYB Outback struts? <Caleb...Yeah hey back former neighbor! I keep tabs on what yer up to every time I drive past. Sure wish I could adopt that Brat you're sellin'. I don't think I'll be at the show so maybe I can stop by sometime to pick up the carb. Thanks for reminding me.>

Seems like I read on Legacy Central that there's a height difference in the struts on '90 and '91 Legacies compared to '92-'94 models. Is that right and if is it just the stock struts that are different or is it something in the suspension? When fitting Outback struts, are the Outback strut caps also used?

Another option is to re-tap the captive nut to accept a SAE bolt and if the captive nut is buggered up you can cut a hole in the sheet metal and put washers and nuts on the top side.

I used rubberized underbody coating on mine and it stunk for weeks and tended to smear in hot weather. So then as an experiment I shot some spraycan truck bed coating over the underbody coating. Not a good idea... it cracked and then smeared. So then I stripped off the under coating and took it down to just the tar mats and paint and sprayed on multiple coats of truck bed liner. That works ok but worth the trouble??? No way. Real Rhino Liner or equivilent would be nice but don't bother with the cheap stuff. Doing it again I'd just toss the carpets and tar mats and hammer the floor boards so the muck drains out the drain holes better. Oh yeah, the vintage 1980 vinyl floor mats I got from Zap work great. They deaden some road noise and who cares if they get wet.

The next Subygal?

And if remember right, Primitive Racing used to sell them.

The inboard mounted brakes are kinda trick. Makes engineering the IFS a lot simpler that way. Sure would be fun to toss money at a project like this.

Looks sorta like what I was thinking of doing with Datsun axles. Main problem seems to be with heat treat and welds.

Thanks to you guys pioneering the way. I bet there will be a lot of early Legacys getting "outbacked". So just to clarify, we're talking Legacy Outback struts not Impreza Outback Sport struts correct? (Or are they the same thing perhaps with different spring for the lighter Impreza?) As for the plain steel wheels, for cheap new ones I'd try Les Shwaab tire stores. The used to sell plain black steelys for winter tires and also those white or black wagon wheels.

Ah, so that's how you got less lift than Zap. Thanks for the info and the tip regarding the rear sway bar. If I can find them for cheap, I'd like to add stiffer sway bars so it doesn't corner like a shopping cart.

I just recently did a solo tranny swap in my Legacy and now that it's over I can actually say it was practically a piece of cake. I'm too outa shape for this bench press crap so I cheated and bought a $49.99 scissor lift transmission jack from Harbor Freight. The automatic tranny was a heavy sucker and pretty much maxed out the jack capacity but boy it worked so sweet! The jack was it was a little flexy when all the way up but that just helped me move the trans into position. It could have more tilt in the head but tilting the engine with a floor jack takes care of that. If I get around to it I'm going to make a turnbuckle pitch stopper for tilting the engine since I hear that's how shops do it. The jack also works pretty good as a mig welder cart. I put a piece of plywood under and over the welder, cut a hole in the top plywood for the gas bottle, strapped it too the jack and voila! instand welder cart.

And do the Outback strut tops fit on a 90-94 Legacy with no hammerology? Offroadsubaruguy, did you have any alignment issues with the Outback struts on your early Legacy? You mentioned that the Outback springs stiffened up the ride. If I used Outback struts and tops with stock 92' Legacy springs, how much lift do you recon I'd get? I'm only looking for 1.5" or so lift. I just want it to sit at the same height it does now with the air struts "up" and yet I want the ride plush so my GF doesn't gripe about the pot holes.

How about some pics when you get it done. I'm about to de-pneumotic my suspension and have been toying with the Outback Strut method. I have standard legacy springs already, but the question is which struts to use.

I used a Dynomax muffler because it was a perfect fit and the price was right. Don't know if they still sell them but I got it out of JCWhitney for under $30 and it was an fit (6" round by stock length and offset 2" inlet & outlet.) The difference between generic and the Dynomax is that the Generics don't have the radius pieces inside to help the flow and the Dynomax is fairly rust resistant. Some oval shaped staight through mufflers can also be fairly quiet.

I've also tried many different combinations on 1.8liter Soob engines and in my view the best was stock y-pipe with 2" custom bent back to a Dynomax turbo muffler. This result gives a little less torque at low rpms but much more top end performance on the freeway. The sound level increased slightly around town and moderately at full throttle. Larger than stock y-pipes lost major hp, probably due to scavenging like Ken said. Tubing larger than 2" loses too much lowend for crawling along in the woods. A Weber carb is pretty much a given...that'll help bring back some low end torque. You might need to rejet the carb after changing the exhaust.

Hey if this for street use and a lot of HP, how about a R200 VLSD? Because of the shorter case I think the weight isn't much more than the R180. They show up on Ebay and sometimes sell kinda cheap. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7980419112&category=33728&sspagename=WDVW http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7980288306&category=33731&sspagename=WDVW A decent source of nissan info is http://www.nissanoffroad.net Oh yeah, and does this project have something to do with a German car? If so have you seen that 4x4 bug that Davesport used to rally? http://www.davesport.com/rally/images/davebug.jpg