pontoontodd

Front and rear it would be easy to have receivers that wouldn't hang down. On the sides you could put them right where you're lifting the car in the pictures, the stamped "frame rail" hangs down a few inches there. You would have to notch the pinch weld.

I assume you will make a larger platform to attach to the bottom. One thought I had if I got one was to put specific lifting points for it on both sides and front/rear of the car. Since I already have 1.25" square receivers in front and rear, I would attach a 1.25" tube to the lifting arm of the jack. That way the jack is less likely to tip over.

The CV axles aren't limiting us in the Subarus. It's more of an issue of tire-body (structural body, not just fenders) clearance at full bump. At full droop, it's a bunch of things. Tie rods are binding. Springs can only be so long to fit above the tire when fully compressed, so they can only extend so far. CVs are close to binding too. Subarus have much longer CV axles than most other cars or even IFS trucks. The only thing I can think of that would be similar are VW/Audi. Thought about going Mitsubishi, like an Outlander, they basically have an EVO drivetrain and can supposedly take 400hp. Biggest problem is the front CV axles are short. Perhaps with rzeppa joints on both ends and a ball spline you could get good travel, I doubt that would be cheap though.

I've been talking to a bunch of people about other cars/SUVs that would be better for what we're doing. Without going wide I don't think we're going to find anything that rides better than the Subarus with more interior space for similar money. We mocked up wider control arms in the front on one side of my 99 Outback to see what that would do for us. Right now bump travel is limited by the tire hitting the part of the body that supports the fender and strut tower. Since this is the part of the body we started to rip off at the V2R it is obviously important structurally. Maybe we could cut it out and replace it with tubing and get a couple inches more up travel. We would have to go about 7" wider per side to get the tire entirely outside that part of the body, and it still wouldn't clear when steered at full bump. With a control arm about 3" wider than what we have now, we would have another inch or two of droop travel for a similar CV axle angle. The other advantage of widening the arms is that the strut would be at more of an angle so the spring could probably go alongside the tire rather than having to be above the tire. That would make more suspension travel and spring selection easier. Not really worth making longer axles and modifying the struts for another inch or two of travel though. In the rear there are similar issues, so for now I'm going to leave it at the current width. I do have some ideas for improving the shocks that I'm going to try to get parts for this week. It really is already a huge improvement from stock, and it's not too often we have to slow down because roads are too rough. I put a different AC compressor on the 99 Outback, added some R134a, and it's still reading the same pressure (50-60psi) on the low and high side with the compressor running. Is there a chance the orifice is blown out or something? What else would cause this aside from the compressor not compressing?

I'm glad you got it home with minimal damage. If you keep going solo you should figure out some better recovery method(s). The electric jacks and recovery ramps/sand ladders have worked well for me. Or get a winch and build mounts and wiring to put it on the front or rear of the car. Slow but effective if you're near trees.

I'm still not sure how you're going to lift your car with a high lift, but if you have one it would certainly be easier than a bottle jack. You should be able to get a 12 ton bottle jack for $20 or so. Yes, you will probably have to stack stuff under the car and prop up the jack and do it in stages. There are telescoping hydraulic bottle jacks too, you get more lift but they're more expensive and the second stage can't lift as much. By far the easiest solution would be to find someone with a tractor or big 4WD and beg or pay them to drive over there and pull your car out. If you do that or try the winch again I would pull on both tow hooks, especially considering your car is rusty.

What kind of jack do you have? With a good hydraulic floor jack or bottle jack if you dig out a spot for it you should be able to lift the car. If you can't lift it enough in one shot, stack blocks of wood or something under the car, lower the jack, stack some blocks under the jack, and do it again. Even if you had a hi-lift you probably have nowhere on the car to lift with it. Were you using the pulley with the come along like in those pictures? Do you have a decent chain or something that won't break?

It doesn't look hopelessly buried. I think you could get it out by jacking up one corner at a time and putting branches under the tires. It will take a while and some digging. I haven't done much with my 2002 but I think the radiator support on those is fairly strong, just watch if you jack up on that so it doesn't bend. Yes, I've used one of those winches, I think it was rated at 4 tons. You will probably want to use them like they are shown in those pictures so you have more pulling force. If you unhook that other hook and don't use the pulley you will get more length but half the pulling force. If you can get one with solid toothed wheels rather than the stamped and riveted wheels, they hold up better. If the winching goes slowly but doesn't require a lot of force you could try putting branches right in front of the tires and try to winch it up on them. You could try tire chains but if you can get them on you can probably just put branches under the tires and drive out without them. Take plenty of boards, shovels, heavy ropes, chains, or cables.

Is your car still stuck? You should be able to jack it up and put branches under the tires, sounds like you were doing that. Might have to jack it up on a big piece of wood so the jack doesn't sink into the mud. If you can't afford an electric winch (which you would have to mount and wire), you should get one of these: https://images.homedepot-static.com/productImages/bbf497dc-de27-4e06-a1e8-6bd6a7d4faf6/svn/big-red-engine-hoists-stands-tr8041-64_1000.jpg They are called winches, hoists, or come-a-longs, not sure what they call them in Lithuania. The dual toothed wheels like these have are better than the old ones with a toothed wheel on one side. If you look around you might be able to find one with solid toothed wheels, those are the best. Most are made up of a few stampings riveted together. It will take you a while but we used one of these to get my Outback out of a ditch a few years ago. The cable isn't very long, you will want to bring chain or heavy rope too. I have also heard of some wheel mounted winching systems but that is another topic.

I was talking about one of those swing out spare tire carriers like you've pictured. I think putting something as heavy as a spare tire on the roof and bouncing around off road might damage the roof but maybe not as slow as you drive...

You should really carry a spare tire! You can probably fit a 215 65 16 tire in the spare tire well, it might not sit down all the way and it's a tight fit going in and out, but better than not having a spare. Probably wouldn't take too much work to open up the spare tire well, it will only hit in a few spots and you could cut those out and rebuild them, you know how to do sheet metal work and it doesn't have to look good. If oversized, you could make a bracket to stand one up in the back. A few guys on here have made swing out tire carriers on the back of their cars too. At least take a compressor and tire plugs or at a minimum a can of fix a flat. I think just a wheel and tire assembly on your roof on rough roads could damage your car.

Welding nuts should certainly keep people from stealing your lights! Do you have to worry about theft where you live? Magnetic could be convenient, you would have to be careful if you don't want to scratch your paint, from the mag base and the wiring rubbing around. I have seen a few people reinforce their roofs by adding something like a roll cage that attaches to the roof rack mounting area. It's a lot of work and takes up interior space. Aluminum isn't really lighter than steel for the same strength. I would avoid using a roof rack if you can, it raises the CG, might damage your car, gets in the way of tree branches, and your cargo is more likely to get wet or stolen.

It's much better at low speeds with the dual range. On relatively smooth climbs it's great, you can go up long climbs at half throttle that I would have probably stalled out on at full throttle without the low range. On really uneven ground when you start lifting tires the limitations of open diffs and low speeds (no momentum) become obvious. Mine has a 1.6:1 ratio, which is the most reduction made for them that I know. Keep in mind that means you not only have 60% more torque into the trans, the engine RPM is 60% higher at the same wheel speed, so you're making more torque too. Even NA Subaru engines don't seem to make a lot of low end torque, certainly not the EZ30. I think something with more reduction could fit. Also I have the 4.11 ring and pinions, you could swap 4.44s in the trans and diff but it's a lot of work for 8% more reduction.

I would just get HID conversions for your high beams. Why bother upgrading the low beams? You'll just aggravate oncoming drivers. I think with those and your LED fog lights you'll have enough light in the woods. Putting them on the roof risks getting them knocked off by a tree branch or stolen, and the wiring is more difficult. Cleanest way I've seen to do that is to run the wiring under the base of the hood by the wipers, then up the A pillar at the edge of the windshield. Don't have to drill any holes and still looks decent. That said, we put a pair of KC 6" daylighters with pencil beam lenses and HID conversions from our buggy on the roof bar of the 99 Outback and they put out a ton of light.

Looks like a great improvement. LEDs are great for flood, from what I've read only the expensive ones are any good for long distance. One thing you should consider is buying HID conversions. I don't know if they sell in Lithuania, but for instance DDM tuning sells them for about $40 per pair with ballasts and bulbs, plugs right into your stock wiring, one year warranty. On your car the high beams are separate bulbs so you could keep the halogen low beams. Already got them for my 2002 Outback just haven't swapped them in yet. I've been looking into HID/LED projectors too, they are probably better for distance than putting the HID bulbs in the stock housings, but more work and money. There's just so many options now.

It's a five speed manual, so first gear. I don't know if that's true about the automatics but I think you can easily wire a toggle switch to manually lock the center diff.

The near vertical rock wall? No. Once we got the car upright and all four tires on the wall they would just slip. Didn't try airing down, should have tried straddling one of the ruts.

Video from our trip to Badlands off road park around Thanksgiving. Couple of good jumps at the start and you can see a few spots where I tried the dual range:

So the spacebar doesn't work when I try to reply using Edge but works in Firefox. Videos show up in Edge but not in Firefox. Here are a few videos I've edited and uploaded recently. I've got another one to put up, maybe tonight. Let me know what you think of the videos and if you can see them in the post. Always appreciate feedback regarding what parts of the videos you like or don't like, are they too long, too short, etc. On the first day of our trip back from the V2R we spent most of the day at Flaming Gorge in Wyoming. My favorite place overall that we've gone trail riding. Lots of different trails, most fairly easy, some difficult climbs to try, awesome scenery and wildlife. We still had a big crack in the body so we were trying to take it easy. On the second day we spent a lot of the day in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. Easily the most scenic place I've ever driven off pavement, but there's basically just one long dirt road and it's not challenging. We still had a big crack in the body so we were trying to take it easy. Two week trip my wife and I took to California and back in November in the 99 Outback. First time I really used the low range, at about the one minute mark I put it in low range for the rest of the climb. Most of this is near the UT/AZ border.

We haven't beaten on a second gen outback yet. I'll let you know when we do.

I think the main structural problem we've had with the Outback might be caused by the leverage the lower arms have on the front crossmember. The crossmember is spaced out from the body on the 99 and that spacer isn't very long. This is where the body cracked and the lower arms and engine seem to keep getting pushed back. I tried bracing the crossmember close to the control arm mounts but that didn't clear the exhaust. So I cut a couple of tubes that push against and bolt to the engine crossmember and trans crossmember. If I do a 6MT swap I think I will just make a trans crossmember from scratch that bolts to the engine crossmember. Also, I've uploaded a few more videos to youtube recently and have at least one more to go but I can't seem to post them here anymore. Even old videos posted on the forum that used to show up are just blank spaces. Anyone know what's going on?

The 2wd and 4wd I beam suspensions definitely give a lot of wheel travel. Camber change is excessive as you point out. Probably the only IFS truck/SUV that would easily give more wheel travel than the Subaru at a similar width. I've seen people convert the front of their Jeepspeed Cherokees to TTB. Surprisingly, lots of SUVs and small pickups are lighter than the Outback, like similar year Wranglers, S10s, and Rangers. Probably nothing with a full body and as much or more interior volume than the Outback is going to be lighter though. Trackers are much lighter but have much less power and the shorter wheelbase probably wouldn't ride as well. One of my friends has one of those he claims rides like the Subaru but I haven't seen it in action. You are right about the body lift, that would be easy and improve approach, departure, and breakover angles and should allow more travel and/or larger tires. Right now I think my biggest structural problem is the leverage the front crossmember has on the body with the stock subframe spacers. With taller spacers that would be even worse. The 2002 doesn't appear to have any spacers though, so that might be a better car to body lift. I've been thinking about just building a new trans crossmember that would connect to the engine crossmember, if I did a 6MT swap I would probably do that. Even the limited slip rear and lockable center diff of the 6MT/R180 from an STI would be a big improvement. I rarely get into situations where lockers would help but it would be nice. Perhaps the VDC would be an adequate substitute as scalman says but I've heard that makes engine/trans swaps much more difficult.

Noticed one of the seams on the front crossmember was cracked a bit so I welded that on both sides of the car. I drove down to visit a customer in Florida in the 99 Outback. Car ran fine all the way down, trans is fairly quiet and seems happy. On the way home I always pass through a national park near the FL/AL border. This time it was getting dark when I got there and I started driving around in the woods on some dirt roads. I got on a few trails that were fairly narrow and had some crazy jumps built into them (erosion control). A bunch of these had a drop of about ten feet within fifty feet of the ridge. I only aired it out a couple times. One of them had some big ruts right after the landing that bottomed out the suspension. I used the steering brake in a couple turns and broke the reflective part of the passenger side mirror (already replaced). The new headlights are definitely low beam in either position, with the extra HIDs they're not too bad but I need to get that figured out. On pavement it's no big deal but in the woods more light would be better. The rest of the trip home Tuesday was uneventful. The next day the left front tire was flat and I eventually figured out the leak was coming from a small crack in the rim on the inside of the wheel. Got that replaced today. I've been talking to a few of my friends lately about a better vehicle for what we're doing than the Subarus. The idea would be to get/modify something with similar or better ride quality than what we have but have a true low range and locking diffs or at least limited slip and staying fairly narrow. A better power to weight ratio would be good too. Small SUVs with IFS like a Blazer or Toyota have shorter CV axles than the Subaru in stock form and would be difficult to improve without making them considerably wider. Even Raptors with longer arm long travel kits I've seen have only 14" of travel in front if they keep the 4WD, and that's getting really wide. Rear solid axle would be fairly easy to get some reliable wheel travel with. A Cherokee might be more reliable than a Blazer but the solid front axle would mean it would have to sit high to get a decent amount of suspension travel. Perhaps a Ford with TTB would be the best. Any of those would allow larger tires than the Subaru. I'm going to try to get a few rides in some prerunner trucks next year to see how well they really ride. At the moment I'm planning on sticking with the Subarus. One thought we had was to build internal bypass shocks or just add hydraulic bumpstops so we can soften the suspension a bit. If you guys have ideas of a better car/truck for what we're doing I'm open to suggestion.

I found some springs from Century (L-30) that are about the same wire diameter but about half the coils and a little longer than the stock detent ball springs (on right), so they're about twice as stiff. Fortunately pretty easy to swap out with the trans in the car, I replaced all three. They definitely make a difference in the feel, it is notchier going in and out of gear. But if I didn't know I had replaced them I'm not sure I would notice the difference, it's not super stiff. It will be a while until I can do a good rough downhill test but they are promising. They're cheap but the downside is Century has a $40 minimum order and none of their dealers stock this size. I had to buy some other springs for other projects so I got them at the same time. Finally got the 9003 HID bulbs and installed the early Outback one piece headlights. Should be more robust, the level on top is nice, and the adjusters are much better than the 99 headlights. They work well but there seems to be no difference in brightness or pattern between high and low beam. Plugged into the same wiring and ballasts as the old bulbs, hi/lo worked on those. What would cause that?

Rerereassembled the dual range trans. I got a new 1/2 selector/hub assembly. To replace that the pinion gear stack has to come completely apart. It is scary how small the keys are that drive third, fourth, and fifth. Once I got it all apart I found that first and second do not run on needle bearings and the shaft that first runs on was worn down about .020". This seems to have transferred some material to the inside of the gear. This was right next to that pinion bearing that failed on me the first time. And yes, there was some debris or RTV plugging one of the oil holes. This might explain the rumbling/growling noise at idle. I have plenty of other shafts and gears now, for better or worse, so I used a good set and put the new 1/2 selector/hub and the gears that were in the dual range on it. I made a thinner spacer for the reverse idler, this one is .14" thick. This allows the idler to go a little past the output gear but it's still mostly engaged. Figure if the teeth wear/bend a little it will be pushing the idler into that spacer under load rather than popping out of gear. Idler is still entirely engaged with the teeth on the input shaft. I noticed one of the diff bearing outer races had some dents in it. You can see they're just on one side of the bearing, not all the way around. I'm not sure if it was dented before, but I thought I should replace it while everything's apart. Have to check the backlash and pattern anyhow. Set the backlash and checked the gear pattern. This is really tedious. Fortunately with the low range case you can sort of get to the ring gear through the input shaft hole. Then you're trying to rock the ring gear either with the diff stubs, through the drain plug, or through the input shaft hole without disturbing the dial indicator. The real problem is you need some preload on the diff bearings, so that has drag, but the pinion shaft has almost no drag. So it's much easier to check the backlash by turning the pinion shaft. I wound up double checking backlash by putting an indicator on fifth gear, which is outside the case. It's about 50% bigger pitch diameter than the pinion gear but with a little math it makes for a much easier and more consistent measurement. So I think I have decent pattern and backlash. After I did that I tried to put the input shaft assembly in but it wouldn't go in all the way. Eventually I figured out the gear I put in from the old Outback trans (right) was slightly different than the one that was originally in the dual range (left). You can see the groove on the OD of the gear on the left and the groove on the face of the gear on the right. They are only about .010" or .020" different in diameter but one has 38 teeth and the other has 39 teeth. Good thing it wasn't the opposite, I probably would have assembled it and not even noticed. So I polished out the inside of the gear from the dual range, unstacked and restacked everything and double checked the gear pattern. First test drive went well, there is a slight rattle when coasting in neutral, but I found something on the body rattling a little so I hope that's it. It shifts nicely and doesn't make any significant noise at low speeds and doesn't leak.