pontoontodd

In case anyone else out there has this question, my friends did get one of my key fobs to work with the car. More importantly, one of my other friends found the security black box on the right side of the radio when we were doing some other wiring. We unplugged the security box thing and I can now use the power lock switches on the inside of the doors and the alarm never goes off.

That's too bad. I found when my Outback was lifted and had no swaybars it would still corner well with mud tires. In fact I usually still drove it faster than 99% of the other cars on winding roads. If you're talking about bottoming out the floor of the car on the ground, don't worry about it. If you're talking about bottoming out the suspension, lifting it won't help that (unless you use lift springs instead of spacers). Removing the swaybars will make it even easier for one wheel to bottom out, so you could try putting them back on. If you are still willing to give it a try I would try AGX struts. They have more damping than stock so it should be more stable on winding paved roads and harder to bottom out on rough roads and they're not extremely expensive. Taller tires will give you more clearance and more sidewall to make the car bottom out on the ground and at the suspension less often.

No, we're not welding on Fox shocks. We use a lot of Fox parts but many of the parts are custom machined and fabricated. If you start here you can see how they're put together: https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/144953-long-travel-outbacks-or-making-subarus-faster-and-more-reliable-offroad/?page=25&tab=comments#comment-1355228 If you're using a-arm suspension just use threaded body coilover shocks - Fox, King, etc. Depending on what you're doing with it I would look into some of the position sensitive single shock options - internal bypass (IBP) or coilpass (bypass tubes above coil springs). Otherwise most offroad racers run two shocks per corner, one is basically just a coil carrier with a little damping and the other has external bypass tubes.

Yes, but he wasn't hitting any sweet jumps or whoops, had to go slower on the rough trails than we did, and he still bent a strut. Of course stock Subarus are fun, they're just more fun when you can hit jumps, go faster, and not have to worry about bending struts. He's put AGX struts on it since then so we're curious to see how those ride and hold up.

Video from our trip to the UP in August: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_GPBHOLdIE

Replaced the trans mount, both the used ones I'd had when I put it in were split like this: That long stud keeps it from moving too far but the less engine and trans movement the better.

Latest structural reinforcement to the 99 Outback was to tie all the trailing arm and subframe bolts together and run a longer subframe bolt through the floor. Welded this plate on the top, overlaps the plate for the trailing arm bolts. Tack welds are holding a crush sleeve on. Painted and reassembled. Paint turned out like crap because it was either too cold and/or the primer wasn't dry enough. Unimportant for this repair. Welded a plate underneath to the front edge of the trailing arm plate I'd welded on earlier and to as much of the body "frame rail" as I could. We cut out and ground flush the tubes we'd welded in in Vegas. I was originally going to weld in other tubing but I think the fabricated strut towers will be good enough. Might make some bolt in triangulation for desert racing. Will be a paint to get in and out of the back seat so I'd leave them out most of the time, just bolt them in for racing. Meanwhile M and B replaced the engine mounts on my 2002 Outback. Both pairs I had when I swapped the engine in were split, these were actually the best. You can see that you could pull them apart by hand if you really tried. B also replaced the front control arm bushings that have been worn out an noisy all year. Still need to replace the trans mount but that should be much easier.

Eventually we might try that but for now we're just using it for manual brake control. One problem with the units we've experimented with is that the pump pumps fluid from the calipers to the master. So in order to use it to pressurize some of the calipers, the brake pedal must be depressed slightly so the fluid can build up pressure and not just pump back into the reservoir. Slammo suggested that a twelve solenoid ABS unit as used in cars with brake based traction control (such as Subaru VDC) should be able to do this without pressing on the brake pedal. As scalman has pointed out, the Subaru VDC system already does this, so if you really want it you can just buy a Subaru with VDC.

We will find out on the rust free cars with long travel how well the bodies hold up. So far, fairly well. I tried different bushings but the stock bushings seem to last for a decent amount of time and have enough flex.

Finished filling in the wheel well. Checked and it had tire clearance at full bump. Tire actually rubs a bit on the plastic around the gas filler at full bump, but that's with the bumpstop removed. Inside the wheelwell fully welded. That took longer than I expected. Painted. Didn't turn out great but as long as it keeps it from rusting for a few years I'll be happy. View from inside the car fully welded.

B and I did a little reverse engineering of the Subaru ABS system last night. Under no circumstances should you modify or alter your ABS system or its function. Do not try this at home or at all. Here is what we found: The unit we disassembled was from a 2000+ car with the ABS control system as one unit with the solenoids. The one we've been experimenting with most successfully is in the lower left of the picture from a 1997 Subaru Legacy Outback. It has a big center wire to power the solenoids and eight separate ground wires. The top row of solenoids definitely closes off the wheel circuits. I assume the bottom row opens them to the pump or dumps them back to the master but we couldn't get the pump to pump anything anywhere. It would make a little turbulence or bubbling at that "passage to pump" in the middle of the diagram but couldn't ever get it to pump. Tried powering one or all of the bottom solenoids, tried powering pairs of top and bottom solenoids, no significant pumping anywhere. We tried bleeding it but maybe it still had air. Does anyone know the specifics of where the brake fluid is pumped to and from? Also, I remember reading about a procedure using the Subaru Select Monitor that would pressurize each individual wheel cylinder but can't find it anymore, if anyone could point me to that I'd appreciate it.

We plan on fixing the other rear strut tower over the winter too. More on that soon. The rear end of that Toyota kicks really bad over those little jumps. I've noticed that with a lot of Dakar cars though, especially the Peugot DKR, and they still beat everyone else. My guess is that it is a compromise for better cornering and/or traction. Jumps don't occur very often naturally so if you have to slow down for them a bit it's probably not as much of a time penalty as having worse traction the rest of the time. It would be a lot of fun to race the Dakar, it will be interesting to see what it looks like in KSA next year.

It would be very difficult to swap the cage into a different body, at least if you want to keep the windows and doors functional, which I do. Fuel cell wouldn't be too bad but all of that tubing under the car is so beat up now I'd end up just doing that again from scratch. It's months of work in total and then the car is not as practical for normal use, I don't think I'll cage another one of my Subarus again. Especially now that they moved the Dakar to your side of the Atlantic. The long travel suspension should be easier on the body than stock suspension, but then we drive the cars a lot harder so it's a lot of stress on the body. We will find out in the next couple years since we now have two rust free cars with long travel suspension. So far it's been pretty good, a little separation at the rear subframe/trailing arm mounts on B's Forester that we need to deal with, but haven't noticed any problems on my white Outback. Worst case the body only lasts a few years and then you get another one, still relatively cheap entertainment. B and M and Z were in town over the weekend so I decided it'd be a good time to tackle the worst rear strut tower. This is how it looked when we started: It's hard to tell from the pictures but the bottom of that one strap isn't really attached to anything. Really the tubing is the only reason it's staying together. Then I just started cutting. Not a lot of cutting was required, many of the seams were completely separated. One of those projects where you just have to stop and draw the line somewhere, so I stopped there. Basically got to sound sheet metal most of the way around and there was still enough left to provide structure and a template. We cleaned the undercoating, paint, and rust off all the way around. Started with a couple of flat pieces, one the shape of the wheel well, the other just in front of the gas filler. Then curved a piece of steel for the main strut tower. All 1/16" 4130. Added a couple more pieces to close it up. Tried to make the wheel well a little bigger than stock for plenty of tire clearance. Here is how that looked from the wheel's point of view. Still need to make the wheel arch and finish fitting at least one spot. Overall this went much faster than I thought it would. Saving the cardboard templates for the other side, we'll have to do the driver's side also before the Vegas to Reno. B patched up this hole behind the rear tire. That was a lot more work than it looks like. Z has the AGX struts on his FXT now. We didn't get time to try them out on the whoops but I'm curious to see how they work and hold up. He does have a little tire rub on all the spring perches. He hammered them up. The driver's side rear was the worst though, he took that off, slotted the holes, and welded plates on to shift the spindle away from the spring perch.

Do you know this guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LKD7s6k3I More on the body repair soon. Again, if it didn't have a cage, fuel cell, etc in it I would have replaced it by now.

That thing is cool but it's more VW than Subaru IMO.

I do have a crescent wrench on the list. Seriously though, I have that socket. That list doesn't include all the little things, I typed it up off memory. Yes, the Outback XT definitely looks cool. I tried to get T to post about it but he's 78 years old so it might be beyond his technological capabilities. He has done a lot of work to it to reduce weight, stripping out a lot of interior, gutting the doors, replacing a lot of things with carbon fiber. He has entered it in the Sonora rally a few times, it is a Dakar style race/navigation challenge in the dunes of northern Mexico. The organizers of that race made him put in a cage before he entered it the last time. I do not think I got any photos but it is a heavy duty rally style full cage. The engine is mildly modified but I couldn't tell you exactly how. It has a five speed manual. With the horsepower and the light weight it did well in the dunes. Unfortunately he'd recently had someone do suspension work to it and they made the rear suspension far too soft, even unloaded it bottomed out easily. He will probably have us build him better suspension and join us on some of our trips next year.

Definitely say hi at next year's V2R. As you know there's always plenty of waiting around at off road races. I've been thinking about typing this up for a while. Here is what I usually take in the Subaru. Tools that stay in the car: 3/8” and 1/2” ratchet, breaker bar, and extensions 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 & 19mm sockets spindle nut socket (32mm?) 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 & 19mm wrenches 5/16 and 10mm nut drivers screwdrivers crescent wrench vice grips screwdriver 3' long prybar shovel multimeter telescoping bottle jack RV scissor jack stick electrodes & welding glass tire pressure gauge inner CV rollpin punch hacksaw blades 3# hammer When trail riding I also pack an inner tie rod tool (long socket). Spare parts that stay in the car: belts CV axle – 1 front, 1 rear electrical wire fuel pump u joints zip ties tire plugs full size spare fasteners fuses hose clamps up to 8” dia thin and thick safety wire 1/4” wheel spacers Spare parts I pack for trail riding: tie rod – inner and outer lower ball joint control arms (depending on how many stock suspension cars are going) struts (depending on how many stock suspension cars are going) starter alternator rear lateral links and trailing arm front and rear bolt on wheel bearing and hubs I also keep in the car: lithium jump pack 2” snatch strap ratchet straps fluids (oil, brake, PS, shock) fix a flat recovery ramps water jugs wet wipes JB weld RTV For trips I add: maps car title (if car is fairly disposable like my Impreza) cordless recip saw with long wood blades spare keys 12V compressor vidcams handheld family band radios winch, extension cord, block & tackle food/drinks/utensils TP/PTs/hand cleaner tents/sleeping bags/air mattresses insect repellent clothes, towel, shoes toiletries, glasses, headlamp phone & charger camp stove, propane, pan, lighter For desert racing we also pack: rear lights door bars & window nets number plates rear bumper corner windows harnesses second spare tire suits helmets HANS shoes gloves hoods but we usually don't take the winch and a few other things when just desert racing. Unrelated, we do have some useable whoops now just outside of town. We can hit them at about 20-30mph and they're fairly harsh so it should be a good place to tune our shocks.

Made more clearance between skidplate and engine. Pulled down/straightened out radiator support by welding these big tubes to the skidplate again. This time I welded the "hooks" to the radiator support so they wouldn't slip off. I think I had it a little beyond straight under load but that was about the best I could do. It sprung back to slightly bent but was definitely pulled down from where I started. I was trying to figure out how to reinforce things and B suggested welding another piece of tubing to the bottom of the radiator support. Since it's at the back edge it doesn't really hurt approach angle or get in the way. Could have actually fit a 1" x 2" tube vertically but would have had to mostly cut out the gussets on the skidplate so I thought 1" square was a good compromise. Fully welded with new tabs for skidplate and longitudinal tubes to the swaybar mounts. Have already replaced three of the six skidplate side tabs with 2" wide (they all started 1" wide). Gusseted the remaining original tabs. Cut more clearance for the engine and rewelded a couple seams that opened up. Trying to make it Nevada proof. Repainted top and sides. Didn't bother with the bottom, that stays paint and rust free from use. Lateral tubes were pretty beat, this picture doesn't show how bad they were, but bent/smashed at the bolt holes. I welded in tubes on the new ones and ground the welds flush. Painted and reassembled. Got the side skidplates back on too, no big changes there, welded a couple washers on some wallered out holes and hit them with a little paint. They were a pain to install mainly due to the radiator support being pulled down. Will see if those settle in a little with use, fortunately they don't have to come off often. Will probably work on our shock tuning area this weekend before the ground freezes. Anxious to improve the shock tuning further. Also sounds like I'll be building a few new sets of struts over the winter.

Sounds great. If you start beating on it offroad, then it won't be pretty, and then you won't feel bad about beating on it offroad. The EZ30 and 4EAT does really pull once you get going. I'm disappointed by the low speed acceleration in my 2002 but my 2001 is pretty good. I would see if you can fit one of your 16" rims from your old car on the new car, but the front brakes might be too big. If they do fit, get some off road tires for those 16" rims so you have more sidewall height.

So this is an Outback? What year? Where is the rust? Underhood pics? What are your plans for this one? Do you still have the old one?

How much is the car? How much does the shop want to replace the head gaskets and mill the heads (basically always needed on the EZ engines from what I've read)? What year is it and how many miles? Is there any rust visible anywhere on the car? If you can buy the car and have the head gaskets replaced for less than you'd pay for a car that doesn't need head gaskets then it's a good deal. Supposedly the EZ engines have very few head gaskets problems but of the six engines I've had in three different cars, only one of them has no head gasket leak. Most of them are very minor, you just have to add coolant every 500 miles or so. In the long run I think you'd be better off with a rust free Cherokee or Toyota for the low speed off roading you're trying to do. Are you still driving your 2001 OB? I'd just run some longer bolts all the way through the floor and get that trailing arm mount back in place for the time being. Even a big ratchet strap through the floor would hold it well enough for pavement driving while you get a replacement.

That's a good question and one we want to answer over the winter. I'm guessing with the cage, jacks, and fuel cell it's almost 4000#. On a trip like that we have a good 500# of cargo in it, figure 300-400# for driver and passenger, so 4500# ++ loaded. During a desert race it's closer to 200# of cargo (tools, spares, etc). The main reason we're not bottoming out is the long travel struts with spring rates and damping for hard driving. This car bottomed out all the time on the stock struts and springs when driven hard without the cage, jacks, fuel cell, H6, etc.

Overall it was a good trip. We made progress tuning the shocks and got some ideas for how to improve them further. End of the V2R course didn't seem too bad so we're planning on trying that again next year. Frame fix was one of our best yet. Have to improve some things over the winter. No CV axle replacements so the softer springs on the Forester probably helped with that. I put just over 5000 miles on my car. Got 18-20mpg on the highway, considerably better than the 17mpg I am used to with the EZ30. Wondering if the fuel pump or an injector is going bad. Optimistically it could be due to improved flow through the new (to the car) cats. Only used two quarts of engine oil, B said the Forester's oil consumption was less than that. The three big things I decided we should do to my black Outback before the V2R are: rear strut tower reconstruction and addition of tubes to rollcage front skidplate lowering/adding engine clearance – already started on this safety wiring and/or cotter pinning all suspension fasteners and exhaust manifold nuts There are many other modifications, inspections, and preventative maintenances that are on the list too. I've been thinking about it for a while but T made us think about weight reduction more, we think we can take 100# or more out of the car fairly easily while lowering the center of gravity.

Saturday morning we headed north up SW #18 Smoky Mountain road, it was a wide and fairly smooth dirt road. We actually saw people camping and on an ATV. There were a few decent jumps on this road, one was a cattle guard just before a fairly hard right hand turn. We got some video of the cars hitting that. There was another big uphill tabletop that we decided would have to wait for another trip. By the time we got to the town of Escalante it was time to drive straight home on pavement. Just north of the town of Escalante there was a narrow ridge road with no guardrails with amazing views. Driving through Escalante we saw probably the best overlooks of the trip, it's over 10k feet and you can see a huge amount of red rock formations down at 5k feet, like looking out of a plane. We drove through Escalante and Capitol Reef national parks but didn't have time to really check them out. We passed Swingarm City stunt area and avoided the temptation to spend time there. We camped at a big sandy lake in Nebraska. Sunday morning we packed up and continued driving back. I had noticed a slight vibration but thought maybe it was just the concrete. Somewhere in Iowa I heard a pop and the vibration increased. Pulled over and didn't see any obvious problems or leaks so we got off at the next exit and drove to a parking lot. The front u-joint was sloppy, somehow one of the cups had come out. Put in a new one and snapring and continued. We all got home without any more problems.

Friday morning we tried going up a few trails that we could see from the campsite but they were ultimately gated off. Found the tunnel/underpass to get to the main dune/rock area. There's a large hill you can drive up either on fairly extreme rock crawling trails or a long soft sandy grade. We weren't able to get all the way to the top in the sand so we decided to go elsewhere. The next trail we went to was Massey SW #15 Skutumpah Road. We had to drive through Zion National park, scenery was amazing but we had to wait a couple times for a half hour due to traffic/construction. We did see mountain goats sitting about 20' off the road I think going through Zion. When we got to the start of the road there was a sign indicating it was closed 15 miles ahead (it's a 33 mile long road). We decided to drive up it and see if it was actually closed (it was, but I think more than 15 miles in) and then took some side roads/trails instead. These followed some soft sandy/gravelly washes through some small canyons until we got to 95. Many soft sandy sections and portions that were cut/milled into solid rock. Those road beds probably don't require much maintenance. After we drove east on 95 we drove Massey SW #20 Nipple Creek / Tibbet canyon which was my favorite on this trip. It was a good Subaru difficulty level – the average lifted Forester/Outback could probably have done it but I don't think my stock Impreza could have. Fun sections in canyon washes and some awesome views. I think it was on this trail we observed that we'd driven for a few hours with no signs of current or former human habitation aside from the road we were driving on. Then we drove up SW #21 Smoky Hollow trail. We camped out on a big flat tailings pile from an old coal mine. We made a campfire and burned oily rags, cardboard, wood, a cow pie, and coal all at the same time.