pontoontodd

Friday morning we went to Ely, got gas, and started calling and visiting tire shops. We couldn't find a 215/75/15 of any kind but they did replace one of B's valve stems that was leaking. We'd found Devil's Gate slot canyon online that was roughly on our way so we started heading that direction. Going up the mountain pass we came upon a full size pickup truck with ~20ft enclosed trailer. Truck had a Green Bay Packers sticker in the back window. Fortunately he was pulled over just enough for us to squeeze past him. We stopped at the pass/saddle to enjoy the view and then B saw the truck and trailer coming. We ran back to our cars and made sure we stayed ahead of him. Going down was a narrow, rocky, dirt switchback mountain road. I have no idea how he was navigating it but we looked back when we were near the bottom and could see him slowly working his way down. Continued east through the desert down some washes/canyons. The last one was quite fun, we could go there quickly since it didn't have 2' deep ruts like the Vegas to Reno course. Took it to Devil's Gate. We hiked through it and up to the top and drove out of the wash and while there was a large flat gravel area that could be called a parking lot, there were no signs of any kind this awesome slot canyon is here. It's limestone which is unusual, most slot canyons are sandstone. So the rocks here are polished. From here we headed back into Utah towards Massey northern #13, a portion of the old pony express route. On the way we took a side trail up a wooded valley along a stream with an amazing alcove in one cliff. Cut across Massey 13 and headed north through some hills on some fun trails.

We wanted to check out some areas we saw on our way home from the last Vegas to Reno so we headed south on 93 (alt) and then bailed off on a dirt road to the west. Went up through some old mining ruins in the hills. I tried this hillclimb but didn't make it to the left turn. Saw some wild horses and went through some pine forests. Continued southwest and wound up along a big flat wash. Drove up another one which was a long narrow trail up a wooded valley with quite a few cattle but most of the trees were burned. There was a big hillclimb we drove to the top of. Well, it looked like the top at first but just turned out to be a flatish spot maybe 1/3 of the way to the top. In the picture below you can see the part of the hillclimb we didn't reach. I drove up somewhat farther but was running out of power and traction and came back down. We camped along the trail that night. The main trail seemed to end at a high point overlooking the burned out valley. We drove up another valley but the trail kept getting steeper and looser so we turned around. Also by this time the Impreza's temp gauge would start rising with any sustained climbing or driving on soft ground, I'd have to run the heater to keep that under control. Drove through the town of Cherry Creek, B wondered whether they'd ever seen a Subaru. Went west through a cool canyon, some mine ruins, and through an area with various side trails and some pine forest. Continued south on some mountain trails, hit a few side trails and hillclimbs with some great views. Yes we did the hillclimb pictured below. View from the top. Near the bottom the canyon narrowed up with some fairly steep cliffs alongside us. Continued south to Ely to buy gas. Next we went to a nearby section of National Forest we'd seen on the way home from the last Vegas to Reno and drove into the mountains off the highway. Trail didn't seem too bad and then came to a big grade which looked fine from the side. When I made the turn to get on the grade I could see there was a big rut full of rocks on the downhill side of the off camber trail. I was able to stay out of the rut for a while but dropped in it a few times. The last time I dropped in it blew out my LR tire. I was able to back down to the corner but unfortunately I was stuck in the rut and it pulled me against the bank on the inside of the turn. After some trial and error and head scratching and with some tension on the winch cable we were able to jack the LR up and sideways out of the rut and away from the bank. While we were in the middle of this 2+ hour recovery operation I noticed oil dripping out one of the exhaust welds near the back of the car and something dripping off the LF control arm into the wheel. We replaced the tire in this position which was scary but seemed like our best option. Don't worry though we had a towel on the winch cable. Before I started the engine I turned it a few revolutions by hand to make sure some cylinders weren't full of oil. With four good tires and three of them on (over) the road I was fairly easily able to back across the road to the semi flat spot outside the switchback. The oil leak was probably past the rings down into the exhaust. The other leak was power steering fluid, maybe from turning the wheel without the engine running? Neither leak continued after this incident but it did take a while to burn all the oil out of the exhaust. \ Body damage wasn't as bad as I expected. After that excitement we decided to find a campsite.

From there we took pavement to the golden spike. Asked a few questions at the visitor center and filled up our water jugs. Followed the original transcontinental railroad route/Massey trail as best we could but there are quite a few bypasses now. For instance the road in the picture below is closed to motorized traffic. It follows the northern edge of the salt lake basin and crosses roughly the western third of Utah. There are a lot of mountains/rock formations along the way. We drove up to the top of Crocodile Mountain and Loco(?) mountain and camped near that peak. Wednesday morning we finished the railroad route. For the most part it's an easy gravel road. All of the former trestles are blocked though, they were all fairly small so the trail just makes little jogs down and across and back up out of little washes. Most of these are smooth, many of them are fun, but a few are washed out badly enough to cause a challenge for something with lower clearance. We then headed south on Massey northern #10. The start of this has some fun sections and a lot of cross ditches and some good scenery. We drove around and through Silver and Crater islands. Both fun and scenic. The northern end of Silver island was part of the ill fated Donner party's route. The southern end of Silver island has a lot of campsites and side trails and some traffic. This was a consistent sign we were getting close to pavement. We got food and gas in Wendover. Introduced myself to a French man at the grocery store who'd shipped their RV to the eastern US/Canada and had driven across to UT, heading to the west coast, then back across the southern US and Mexico on a yearlong trip with his wife and daughter.

Drove Massey northern #5 which had cool fall colors and a lot of embedded rocks. Got to a large, fairly crowded camping area near the end of the trail and had to go south down the trail signed “not suitable for passenger cars”. Had to wait for some loggers to do their thing which was interesting to see. We've seen a lot of this logging equipment over the years but never really in action. Cool mountain views, trails weren't too difficult. Met back up with Massey northern #1 which went down the bottom of a canyon. Got to the eastern end of Massey northern #3 and saw the sign for the rock garden he warned about. Figured we'd take a look and see if we could get to where he recommends people turn around. Most of it wasn't bad but we went through a few sections with fairly big rocks, I did one of them in low range. We were almost to the eastern end of the Massey trail and then we got to the real rock garden. A few hundred feet of big rocks. We used low range and got through with some banging. We were going southwest which is the downhill direction. If we came at this from the west on the Massey trail we might have just turned around when we saw it, but I think we could have done it in the uphill direction, it's not very steep. That's why they call them rockers... Did the rest of #3, tons of campsites and a few campgrounds along it.

Trip report, going to break this up into a few posts. Our first destination was the Killpecker sand dunes in SW Wyoming so we got off the interstate a little ways east of there and headed for some routes I downloaded off gravelmap.com. Site is mainly for mountain bikers to share unpaved routes but most of them seem to be gravel roads, figured it was at least a starting point to finding an unpaved through route to the dunes, can easily download GPX files off the site. Not long after leaving the interstate we stopped to make PB&Js and an old man in a Toyota pickup rolled up. At first we assumed he was mad at us for some reason but eventually realized he was just bored and wanted to chat and possibly help us figure out where we were going, which we didn't want to plan too closely. Told us the nearest paved road was 80 miles north and one 50 miles west or something which sounded good to us. Had the Wyoming gazeteer and some other ancient falling apart Wyoming map he was referencing. Noticed there was a switch on the dash to bypass the clutch safety switch, apparently this is a common thing on Toyotas, pretty cool. Saw some antelope and wild horses. Eventually made it to the campground at the dunes around sunset and decided it'd be best to camp the night first and test out the dunes in the morning. We'd forgotten flags for the dunes but fortunately B had a couple of just the orange flags he'd picked up off some trail. We zip tied those to tent poles closed in the windows along the B pillars. There were some big hill climbs on the back side of the campground B had noticed the night before but we decided to hit the dunes first. Most of the dunes were fairly solid but there were definitely some soft areas. Some variety of surfaces too, some rocky parts, quite a bit of grass and brush growing in the low flat areas, even some ponds. Some interesting rock formations along the northern edge. Saw some small rodents running around on them, would see a lot more throughout the week. I did eventually get the Impreza stuck in some soft sand driving too slow. I was able to lock the center diff but all that did was get all four tires spinning and sink the front in. The folding sand ladders got sucked in by the tires but started wrapping around them in the wheel wells. We jacked the car up, pushed some sand and the ramps under the tires, let it back down, and I got back on the move. Having the easy install square foot base for the high lift was a big plus here. The dunes cover 10,000 acres, in three or four hours we maybe covered a quarter of them. Definitely our favorite dunes we've visited but we haven't driven Glamis yet. We headed down behind the campground and checked out Crookston Ranch. I tried a couple of the big hillclimbs. Started in second gear high and then downshifted to first but that was still slowly losing speed so I tried low range and that just spun the tires. I think with a better power to weight ratio it probably could have held first gear high range and powered to the top. Fairly impressed it almost made it to the top though, those were some big loose hillclimbs. Next we drove to Boar's Tusk. B's Viair compressor fuse was still conducting but had melted itself and the little protective rubber cap. Made some PB&Js and hiked up to the base of the rock. Cool view from up there, walked around to the SW side which had a little easier path down and better view of the rock formation. Checked out a couple of groups of petroglyphs. White Mountain petroglyphs was easy to find. As we pulled up, a couple was walking back to their truck. When I got out of my car the guy says “USMB?”. We laughed and chatted a bit. He said he tested the original SJR lift kits on his Brat. Cedar Canyon petroglyphs took quite a while to reach, we knew where it was but none of our GPS maps was completely accurate. This is a common occurrence everywhere we go off pavement, disappointing sometimes but also adds to the adventure. Before we found the petroglyphs we found a cool little slot canyon. At the petroglyphs we were running low on fuel and far from any civilization so we dumped our gerry cans in our tanks. B has a three gallon can and I recently got a five gallon can. Then we decided to head west. There was a large north south ridge blocking our way west of Killpecker creek. A couple maps showed a road that went over it so we tried that and it completely disappeared when it got to the base of the bluffs. We then took some more major roads southwest. Dropped into the Alkali creek valley and then back out via a short but steep hillclimb, not sure B appreciated this detour since we were both running low on fuel but it worked out. Drove down to Green River, Impreza's low fuel light was on, so I guess that works. I had seen a bridge on the map over the Green River along a minor road so we decided to see if we could cross there. Headed back north and camped for the night because it was starting to get dark. B noticed some faint streaks of red in the sky and our phones captured some grossly exaggerated images of the northern lights. Tuesday morning we drove around the ODI plant and got to the Green River. Took at least one road/trail that was two track and eventually zero tracks. Followed it on the GPS for a while just basically driving through scrub desert until we found it again. Some other trails that weren't on our maps linked up with it. The whole time we were getting closer to the ODI plant which had a huge fire burning next to the main plant. Apparently this is just a Tuesday at the ODI plant, no one appeared to be trying to put it out. Made it up to the bridge, which still exists, but has been closed for a while. We went south to the bridge near the ODI plant and took I80 to 30 and headed for some Massey trails in Utah.

Passenger side cooling fan on the Impreza wasn't working because a stick was jammed in the wiring and had pulled the connector. Temps still creep up when idling (or driving slow in the sand) with the AC on. Seemed like a lot of air was blowing around the fans and not just getting sucked into them. I got some adhesive foam strips and took the fans off and stuck those to the perimeter of the fans so they'd seal better against the condenser. The flow feels a little more organized but it made no noticeable improvement in cooling. I did get the cruise control working consistently, see the EZ36 engine swap thread for details on that. I use cruise control a lot so that's been nice. Went back up to the UP with some in laws last weekend. We did some trail riding one day. Pipeline grade was everyone's favorite. The girls in the back were screaming with excitement when I hit the jumps. I had tweaked the front shock valving since the last trip and I never noticed it bottoming out but it didn't feel harsher so that seems like an improvement. Rear tires were rubbing when hitting some of the dips hard so I'm hammering the wheel wells out more. One of my relatives peed their pants riding in the white Outback on the pipeline grade (out of fear I think), fortunately it has leather seats. Didn't have as much time that day for trail riding as the last trip but we all had some fun and didn't get stuck or break anything.

Drove up to the UP with some family friends late Thursday night of Labor day weekend. Green Impreza ran rough for the first minute or so, died a couple times, then ran great all day Sunday and Monday. After we got home I tried it again with the laptop plugged in and I think since the lowest value on the coolant temp table was 84F, if the coolant temp was under that most of the cams were maxed out (most overlap). As soon as it warms up beyond that they all go to their normal 5-10 degrees at idle. Went trail riding Sunday in the Subarus. My wife's friend drove the white Outback and was keeping up with me fine in the woods, I was kind of impressed. She was surprised by even some mildly overgrown trails and we eventually got on some even I wasn’t sure they would connect. Found at least one connect the dots new to us trail not on the map. Hit the pipeline grade which was of course the highlight. Couple decent jumps at the south end we hit a few times, there was a lot of gasping and laughing. She actually ran a pretty good pace through there too, I didn’t have to wait super long for her to catch up when we stopped. Front end of the Impreza seemed to be bottoming out fairly easily. Took them to the fire steel trestles. Had to wait for a group of probably 30 mostly jeeps to pass which took forever. We were laughing at the one guy who had a little camper trailer. She was wondering how you’d ever turn something like that around on some of the trails we were on. When the green Impreza sits and idles the coolant temp steadily creeps up. Only the driver's side cooling fan is working. Fuse is good, relay isn't getting main/battery power but the fuse is. While moving temps are good.

B welded up his strut towers yesterday. First step, stripping out the interior and setting up the bottle jack to spread them back apart. The "frame rail" the rear bumper goes in flexed visibly by lifting up and down on the rear bumper. In the interest of science we set up a mag base indicator as pictured below. I could get it to move 0.1" by lifting on the rear bumper with just my left hand. That's about 2.5mm for you metric types. Next step, cleaning all the paint and rust off the areas he wanted to weld. Then pushed the bottle jack out about an inch until it was getting some resistance and the gaps seemed to close up. I cut a piece of .040" 4130 to patch the worst spot and he welded that in. Not real pretty but a lot of what's left is at least a little rusty. Then he folded the edges over and welded those. Welded lots of other things too, we cut a few other little strips to patch some smaller holes. Welded some questionable seams on the passenger side. After all that I couldn't visibly move the dial indicator (< .001") even lifting up and down with both hands on the bumper. Setting the car back on the ground only moved it .002 or .003". So it's at least two orders of magnitude stiffer than before (by that measurement). I made another square lifting tube for my other high lift. I really like how much more stable this makes the high lift. Also swapped the big base onto the bottom of the short high lift, which is the one I expect to use more often. Green hood scoop I'd gotten had a couple of the tabs broken off the bottom so I JB welded the studs on. Finish sanded that and finally clear coated it. Also replaced the LF tie rod, the headers may have baked some of the grease out of it. It was super sloppy and the grease was runny. Guess I'll see how long this one lasts. Header on the right side is just as close to that tie rod and it seems slop free. Made a better tablet mount. The screw bosses the flap/hatch in the middle of the dash had started to break. Coincidentally, they completely failed on B's Forester, both on the last UP trip. So I made some brackets to mount the tablet more directly without using that flap. Surprisingly stiff once it's all bolted together. One thing I discovered on accident is that having it tilted back a bit means you don't get nearly as much glare. The reflection from the driver's seat is mostly looking at the headliner. In my other cars it was always reflecting off the passenger's shirt, so especially if they had a light colored shirt the tablet would be difficult to read. Also replaced the LF CV axle in the white Outback. It's been making some faint popcorn noises for a couple years now. Both joints felt quite sloppy. Trimmed some plastic in front of the LR tire that was rubbing a bit. Got some new mud tires mounted on some 15" alloys. Plan to take the white Outback and green Impreza off roading soon with some family friends.

B replaced the condenser in his Forester and got his AC working. He also replaced a front wheel bearing. Adjusted the parking brakes and replaced a trailing arm bushing. He's noticed since the last trip the LR door has taken a lot of effort to shut. As he feared this is because the LR strut tower is starting to separate from the body again. This corner appeared to have some crash damage from a prior owner that was repaired fairly well but I'm sure it's not as good as an untouched car. I didn't take any pictures but we plan on pushing that back into place and rewelding it, probably adding some material. This has also pushed up some frame bracing on his priority list. We've been talking about it for years but we really should build something that connects the top of the rear bumper to the strut mount back down to the trailing arm mount. Then probably some kind of hoop across the top and probably also a bar behind the top of the rear seats. Got the AC working in my Impreza. Wiring and setup was pretty simple. Shuts off over 3500RPM so I think the compressor will be fairly safe. Need to verify it's shutting off over 70% TPS. I think I have the cruise control stalk and various safety switches wired properly but I'm getting an error that the Haltech guy says is a bug in their firmware they're working on. Will post details on both of those in the swap/wiring post I started a while back once I actually have the cruise working. I put larger front brakes on the Impreza, same size as the rotors we're using in the rear - second gen Legacy/first gen Forester. While I was doing that, B put new eccentric Whiteline bushings in the aluminum brackets for the front control arms. Curious to see how they hold up. While he was at it we sorted through my stock of used ones a bit and picked out a couple good ones to carry for spares. I started on a rear bumper for the Impreza. Unfortunately I greatly underestimated the amount of receiver tubing I want to use so I need more of that before I go much farther. It will be similar to the front, wrapping around the corners to protect the lights, main beam out of 2" x 4" rectangular steel tubing. Enough room underneath for the license plate. Can't tell from this angle but if you step back a bit even the expiration sticker at the top will be visible. Spacers of 1x2" tubing on top of picture. They'll get cut a little shorter. Those will go underneath the main bumper mounts/receivers, only had material for one of those for now. Also unpacked the car so I can figure out how to repack to make the winch more accessible.

Thanks. No. The rear axles might have allowed more travel but we're already pretty close to the limits of the spring travel. We've broken a few of the rear springs (just one coil, doesn't cause a problem but we're obviously stressing them). Plus we'd have to at least make longer shock shafts. Overall that project was probably worth doing, the brakes are better, wheel bearings easier to replace and probably more durable, those and axles same as front so fewer spares to carry, stronger rear axles. Plan to make some more of those knuckles this winter.

B and I replaced the rear diff in the white Outback. What a job. On a stock car it wouldn't have been as bad but with the long travel we have to back the spring preload off as far as possible to get the shock bolts out to get the suspension up to near ride height to unbolt things. That all took hours as it hasn't been apart in a few years. Did do a little extra while we were at it, got all but one suspension bolt out and re anti seized and retorqued. A couple of them we had replaced with longer bolts (our links have little collars welded on so the holes don't get wallered out) were quite worn - those shoulders pictured below started out a constant diameter. So we replaced those bolts. One of the trailing arm bushings seemed to be going bad so we replaced that. Which meant completely removing that trailing arm, which meant taking apart the brakes, removing ABS cable, parking brake cable, etc. The rear spider gears were badly damaged, I'm a little surprised it caused no noticeable noises or anything. The rear diff bushings have been shot for years. We replaced those which took a couple hours. Tried various methods, ultimately the only thing that really worked was the hollow hydraulic cylinder for removal and install. One of the shock bearings was shot too, that took me an hour or two to replace since the snaprings were badly rusted. Kinda wish we'd replaced the wheel bearings while we were at it but they have the press in hubs so that would have been a significant amount more work. Got it all back together and drove it around town some today, everything back there seems good. Glad we did it but always a little disappointing when you do all that work and the car still seems to drive exactly the same as before. There's a rattle in the LF suspension that's been slowly getting worse, need to sort that out but shouldn't be nearly as large a project. Finally got some cables from Haltech so I can start wiring up the cruise control in the green Impreza. Also did some testing with the AC compressor on my folks' 2019(?) Outback with EZ36. I made a little jumper harness where the compressor solenoid plugs in with some long leads I ran in the car so I could monitor the voltage to the compressor while driving. Seemed to be at 12VDC with the HVAC fan on high. When accelerating sometimes it'd drop briefly. In manual mode at over ~3500RPM it would drop to 8VDC (fan on high). With the HVAC fan on low it'd be around 7VDC. I don't think I ever saw it drop below 6VDC. So my plan is just to run it at 12VDC and have it shut off above 3500RPM. At 80mph I'm at 3200-3300RPM in sixth so that should work alright. I basically always have the HVAC fan on high in both these cars (habit from the black Outback trying to dry it out all the time) and just adjust the vents accordingly.

Swapping the struts in the field wasn't too bad. Definitely way less time consuming than taking them apart and swapping shims, bleeding them, reassembling, etc. Will try lubing the high lifts but they seem fairly clean and new. If anything the one I keep in the Impreza was too new, didn't have the paint worn off it when we started and I know that can be an issue.

Drove up to the UP Friday night and checked a few of the camping areas we'd found on the last trip. First one had a few people in it including some guys setting off fireworks so I went to the next one which was unoccupied. Camped near an outhouse along the river/reservoir and set up the tent. B showed up a few hours later. Saturday we headed to the first suspension test area. First thing in the morning the tach in the Impreza didn't work but then it started working after some driving and a few restarts and has been working fine since. Stopped at a cool waterfall/rapids at an old bridge/dam with some people fishing just downstream. Saw a Forester out in a field with the back sheet metal cut off. Took a few trails/roads we hadn't been on before that went through but I tried one too many. We'd gone north most of the way on this road before and then went east the long way so this time I tried going all the way north. It was fine until it wasn't. Got stuck in a mud hole in the Impreza. Took us a couple hours to get it out with the high lift and recovery ramps and snatch strap. Then it took us a few more hours to get both the cars turned around. Once we were out on foot digging and jacking it became clear the road was covered with 3-4” diameter logs. These were both a help and a hindrance. We did learn a few things though. One, we need to practice using our high lifts more or perhaps watch some videos. B's seems to just lock up occasionally. Mine wasn't lowering consistently. At one point I kept “lifting” even though it was mostly the jack sinking rather than the car lifting which then took a while to jack the jack out of the mud. I really need to fab a rear bumper for the Impreza with good recovery points. The 1.25” square adapter I bolted on my high lift was mostly useful but with all this heavy use started to rotate, so that could use an upgrade. Definitely need a bigger lifting foot too. I made one for the high lift I keep in the white Outback but it fits so tight I never bother to take it on and off so it makes the high lift even more of a hassle to store. Solving those issues probably would have cut our recovery time in half or less. Gotreads folding recovery ramps were alright. At least once they worked their magic, tire would suck them under and then grab. We slightly bent them but they still fold back in the carrying bag. Definitely more practical to carry than the solid recovery boards we have. We really need to pack the winch so it's more accessible too. Currently I have it buried in the spare tire well. There weren't many large trees around but we probably could have cut our time significantly by winching. While we were getting unstuck we found some scraps of styrofoam, part of a tow strap with hook that we used during our recovery, a floor mat probably from a UTV, a leather work glove, and a few beer cans. So we probably weren't the first people to get stuck there. At any rate, we got out and finally made it to the first suspension testing area. B could go significantly faster in the Forester than I was going in the Impreza without “bottoming”. The Impreza had the front end banging noise we've had in the Foresters that shows up sometimes even when we don't seem to be hitting very large obstactles. Got some baseline max speeds with slight bottoming on a relatively high speed road with some big but fairly smooth dips in it. We started with our tires at 35-40psi and then tried it again at 25psi, didn't notice much difference in ride quality. B did say the Forester seemed less squirrelly at the lower tire pressures, I felt the Impreza understeered less at the lower tire pressures. Just beyond that suspension test stretch is a log section where we were going about 10mph. Headed on to an area where we'd driven through a lot of whoops before. Unfortunately when we got there we found they'd graded most of them smooth. We did find one winding trail that was still whooped out though, very fun to rip through that at 35-40mph. Again the Impreza was limited by the banging noises. We headed on to the next section of whoops that's fairly close to a campground we've stayed at a few times. As we were approaching them it was dark and there was quite a bit of standing water in the trail so we decided to just camp for the night. Sunday morning we headed back up to the fast whoops. You can run most of these at 50-60mph but there are some near the end that are really big so 40-45 is more prudent. 60 will get you very airborne. Again the Impreza was limited by the banging and the Forester could go significantly faster. It was mainly the left front so we tried swapping front tires side to side (two different brands but both mud tires in the same size at the same pressures), that made no difference. We'd brought a set of front struts with different valving in them for the Forester and rear struts with different valving in the Impreza. Since the Impreza was limited by the front end banging and the front struts are easier to swap, we put the struts with new valving in the Forester and the ones off the Forester on the Impreza to see if it would fix the banging. B said the new strut valving felt generally more damped and didn't get as airborne off the same big whoops at the same speed. The struts off the Forester didn't seem better in the Impreza. We headed back to the winding whoops trail to test our changes. Similar results to the faster whoops. We were trying to figure out what might cause the banging noise and noticed the aluminum front control arm bushing on the corner that was making noise flexed a lot more than usual so we swapped that out with a less used spare. The banging noise almost went away, now I was able to drive the Impreza as fast as the Forester with minimal banging noises. This made sense as B has this problem most often, including the last trip, but we'd just replaced those bushings on his car before this trip. Then we headed back to the original test road. Again I was able to drive about as fast as the Forester with much less banging than before. There's a dip at the end that makes a decent jump in the one direction, the cars jump and land fine but at 50+ you're going a little fast for the dips right after the landing section so the cars bounce a bit. Also was able to drive the Impreza as fast as the Forester now through the logs with the fresher bushing. We swapped the front struts on the Impreza back to what we started with. Was maybe slightly better, we both felt that set we started on the front of the Forester was bouncier than the other setups which makes sense looking at the valving. We took the short (distance) way to the campsite which took a few hours. The longer distance way we took the next day takes about a half hour. Bounced the RR tire of the Impreza off a rock on the way there. Put a hole in the sidewall. Tried plugging it but even with three plugs it was still audibly leaking so we just swapped on the spare. Camped at a site we'd found on the last trip overlooking a stream/river. In the morning we headed up to town to meet my brother and take him for a ride and shoot some video since he's the real shock tuning expert. North of town there are tons of trails and we spent a little time wandering and found a wide powerline grade with two trails side by side, one whooped out, that we'd been on before and seemed good for shooting some video. Again the Impreza's coolant temp would start to climb on fairly low speed 2-3000RPM second gear light throttle type terrain especially with a lot of soft sand. As soon as we either stopped and idled or moved at a higher speed the temps came right back down. Still thinking that's the lean tune at low loads and RPM, need to set up another tune at stoich to test between the two. Met up with my brother and took him on a ride through the fun winding whoop trail and the side by side powerline whoops to get some video and took some notes on his thoughts. One thing B and I discussed since neither of the cars we took has functional AC at the moment is how much the 200F heater core under the dash increases cabin temps. Assuming once these cars are 20+ years old a fair amount of air leaks past the control flaps too. Will probably try some shutoff valves and some extra hose to bypass the heater core for summertime use and see if that helps. Even with the AC working, if it reduced cabin temps by 10F that would just improve AC performance further. Definitely seemed cooler driving the Impreza with the windows down to turn the fan off or switch to defrost/floor since the air coming out of the vents felt well above ambient. Overall it was a good weekend. Annoying being stuck that long in the heat and humidity but gave us/reinforced some ideas about improved vehicle recovery. Didn't execute the full original shock testing plan but we think we finally figured out the mysterious banging noise and it's a fairly easy fix and the valving changes we did make seemed to be an improvement. Also both cars seemed to go through the whoops pretty well.

Absolutely, wouldn't want to replace a rear diff in the field. With the auto, not as much of an issue to have a broken rear diff but could have been interesting. We don't trail ride that one much anymore but that's a good point, I should consider a torq locker.

The slop free shifter in the green Impreza took me a while to get the hang of but it's definitely an improvement. I haven't tested it much under hard braking but one time trying to stop going downhill on wet pavement the rears were locking so I should really put the bigger (2nd gen Legacy / 1st gen Forester) rotors and calipers on it sometime. Other than that one time it hasn't caused any issues. Stock airbox we put on the green Impreza was just one ~2.3" inlet going into a wall to swirl the air. We'd cut most of the wall out and added another hole a while back. I finally epoxied another tube on. Don't really expect this to improve flow but slightly less likely to get mud/water in the filter and puts the intake right at the bottom of the hood scoop. There was a little mud in the bottom of the airbox after the last trip. B cut a hole in the hood scoop baffle for the inlets. Can't see it too well. Should test it with and without that baffle to see if it affects intake air temps. Finally got a few good clock springs (thanks Slammo) and put one of those in the green Impreza, finally has cancelling turn signals and is ready for cruise control wiring. Put the one I'd been using back in the red Impreza. Also revalved and put different springs on the front struts off the black Outback so those are set up for our suspension test, they'll go on B's Forester. White Outback is super smooth under any kind of braking now. Guessing it was mostly the bushings but maybe the rotors too. White Outback's coolant temps started climbing fast a while back when stopped at stoplights in town. HVAC outside temp said 114F but it probably wasn't much over 90F. One of the fan fuses was blown, replaced that and it immediately flashed. Fan blade had come off (crimped/pressed/splined on) and the motor is very notchy and squeaky when turned by hand. Fortunately I'm a horrible packrat so I just swapped on one of the other H6 fans I have. Fuse and temps have been solid ever since. We also did some maintenance on the white Outback. I finally put the EZ36 alternator on it that I've had for over a year. We've had a couple alternators fail on that car, figure it won't hurt to have one that's only ten years old instead of twenty, plus it's a little higher output. Also replaced belt and idlers as those are known to fail. We changed the ATF and trans filter and rear diff fluid. Unfortunately these came out of the rear diff. The small spider gears are missing the tops of many of the teeth. Will get a picture when we remove it. Hasn't made any noise or caused any problems but I'm gathering parts for that replacement. Some bushings should be replaced while we have things apart.

First thing we did yesterday was swap out the long travel struts in the black Outback for some stock Outback/Legacy struts. We plan on revalving these shocks so we have a set ready to swap in the other cars for easier/faster shock tuning. It looks like a lowrider in person now. I'm pretty sure those are stock Legacy/Outback struts and springs but it does weigh significantly more than stock and the stock springs are pretty soft. White Outback has been shaking under moderate braking for months now. Light or heavy braking it's not too bad. Noticed a while back that the control arm bushings were shot so I replaced those. Have had this pair of Whiteline increased caster bushings for a while. Maybe easier to install than their normal bushings since they're not flanged. Only shifts the wheel about 1/4" which works out to about 1/2 a degree of caster. Also replaced the front rotors. Not sure if they were causing the shaking but we're going to need some used ones to turn down for rear use eventually anyhow. Replaced the air filter, it'd been 30k miles and it was super dusty. Still seemed to have good power though. Also replaced fuel filter and front diff fluid. B replaced the taillights on his blue Forester, they've been cracked and leaking for a while. He tried replacing the AC condenser since it had rubbed through on the radiator but apparently the 2001 Forester condenser is different than the good 2000 Forester condenser he had. Also replaced his trans fluid and some other things. Got the STI shift yoke from the dealer. In retrospect I should have just modified the one I'd welded and ground the holes on to clock it but this was easy. Replaced the bushings. Centered up, way less slop, can now fit the shift boot and trim on.

B and I weighed his blue Forester and my green Impreza loaded with our usual off road trip cargo but no camping gear. Blue Forester weighs 3739#. With both of us sitting in it, 4126#. Either way it's super close to 50/50 front/rear weight. Green Impreza weighs 3714#. With both of us sitting in it, 4102#. Either way about 150# more on the front than rear. I was a little surprised it was that heavy, with no cargo it was 3245# a month or so ago. So we started unpacking it, with a few bottles of oil still in it we got it under 3300#. So we had over 400# of tools, spares, recovery gear, tow bar, etc. This stuff really adds up. Just a couple folding recovery ramps and a couple straps was 30#. Definitely not as much volume as we used to pack in the black Outback but apparently most of the weight. Will have to keep working on packing lighter. Lateral bumper support tubes rubbed a little on the front tires and the tires aren't fresh so I wanted to add some clearance. Gas tank guard has already been put to use. Looked over the front end of the white Outback. It's been shaking increasingly worse at certain brake pressures, seems like both the front lower control arm bushings in the aluminum brackets are sloppy. At some point I'll probably replace those and the rotors. B replaced the LF rear lower control arm bushing in the Forester, it was shot. I noticed as we were driving home from the UP the LR of the Forester would change camber occasionally, maybe when cornering but it was hard to tell. We noticed this. B took the link out, replaced the bushings (bolt was frozen in one), welded that piece back in and ground it flush, welded and painted a thick washer over the top, and reassembled everything.

Drove up to Z's Friday night. He noticed one of the brake lights in the Impreza was (artistically) burned out so we went to Oreillys and got a pair of bulbs. B met us at Z's, we headed up and camped in northern WI. Saturday morning we headed north and Z took us on some ORV trails north of there so we headed north on those. Within four miles we saw a black bear and a bald eagle and some other wildlife. The main one Z had intended to take us on is ATV only. So we just drove up to the UP. Started out in an area north of Norway we'd only been through once and found some other trails and potential campsites there. Next two pictures are of one of the fairly long rocky hillclimbs (by UP standards) we did that weekend. Saw a wolf pup(?) walking down a side road, took a few pictures and let it be and got to the (nearby) dead end. Found a hillside with some big sandy hillclimbs so I tried one but stalled out and backed down when it got too off camber. Hit a different one and made it to the top. Found a human shaped sculpture made out of chainsaw parts. This sign was a bit misleading, while the road was rough by many peoples' standards, it was about average for what we drove on that weekend. Got to a man made dam that appeared to have blown out and then repaired by beavers. At the bottom where we had to drive by it there was a big leech sucking on a dead crayfish. Forester had been making a lot of exhaust noise under load so we stopped to fix that. One of the bolts had fallen out of one of the exhaust flanges so we found a nut and bolt and B got it back together while I cooked some burgers. Z spotted a big Eastern Fox snake in the trail. Wandered north and hit a bunch of trails and found a giant pile of potatoes in the woods. About a mile from the nearest farm, not sure if it was just a handy berm construction material or if they just needed to dump a bunch of potatoes. We had decided to go up to Craig Lake as B and Z hadn't been there before. Drove up to a campground and stayed the night. One of the random assortments of decorations we've seen in the UP over the years. This is miles from pavement. This weekend was a good demonstration that you never know what you'll find in the UP. Came across several beaver dams that were flooding old roads we were trying to follow. Got to a wetlands reserve and hiked in there a mile or so. Unfortunately we got up near Craig Lake to find that it's closed for the summer for maintenance. Hit some trails and did a little hiking and then camped in that area. Saw a ruffed grouse alongside the trail. It was jumping around and fanning its tailfeathers etc. It was on the passenger side and I looked out the drivers side while Z was taking pictures and saw what looked like a mouse on the ground. I went to take a picture of it and realized it was a chick so we continued on. Monday morning we went down a snowmobile trail to start wandering back home, it was eventually flooded so we found a different trail and headed south. Hit a stunt area we found last year and did a few hillclimbs. Impreza had a lot of wheelspin and rev limiter in first gear climbing a fairly steep one. Saw a turtle wandering around. Went through an area we'd been years ago that looks significantly different now, some berms gone, other berms added, trees growing up in areas that had been clearcut, etc. Found one stretch that would be good for suspension testing/tuning. A mile or so with decent sized dips and bumps and another section that's quite rough with holes in between small logs. Wound up taking a few narrow trails that went on for miles and surprised me by connecting to main trails. We took a tour of an old iron mine that was interesting. Drove through part of the southern UP we hadn't explored before with some decent camping areas. Saw a lot of turtles and some muskrats. Aired up and drove home on pavement. Lots of rain on the way home. I'm a little surprised the Impreza doesn't seem to have any leaks or electrical problems even driving through heavy rain for hours, I've done it a few times now. Overall a good weekend. No major issues, never even got stuck or got a flat tire. Impreza is great on the trails. Not used to having good rear visibility, way easier to back out of trails and the shorter wheelbase and rear overhang make it easier to turn around in the woods. The 60% rear bias and light rear end and open center diff make it handle almost like a rear wheel drive car. It was never close to actually spinning out but it has power oversteer in second or third or even fifth gear sometimes off pavement. Surprised me once in first gear on wet pavement. Steering seems to be a little quicker than the Outbacks which helps in those situations. There was one time on Saturday when B was driving it and he got stuck in a soft muddy trail. I could see just the rear tires spinning. He locked the center diff, all four tires started spinning, and he was able to drive out. It's easiest to lock and unlock when moving, never makes any grinding noises, helps to pump the clutch. So if we were in a really rough or muddy or sandy section I'd just lock the center diff for a while until we got back to some easier trails and then unlock it. Never used the low range all weekend. There was at least one hill I climbed in first gear high range that B had to use low range in the Forester to climb. Some things I like about it aren't from our doing but just because it isn't as beat and rusty as the black Outback. You can drive around with the windows down without choking on exhaust fumes, drive through all kinds of water and rain without getting any in the car. Found myself keeping it under 2000RPM most of the time and it had plenty of torque for normal trail riding. Fans ran more than I expected, when we'd start going really slow or stopping and starting the temps would creep up and at least one would kick in and then basically stay on until we shut off the car for a while but temps never got much above normal. As soon as we were moving the temps would drop back to the normal spot. Wondering if this is partially caused by our current tune being lean at part throttle at 2-3000RPM in an attempt to save fuel. Seemed like it would run a little cooler at 1500RPM where it's probably running richer. Probably a couple times a day after nearly stalling the engine it would start running rough. I just shut it off and restart it and then it would run smooth. Impreza might get a little better fuel economy than Forester on the road but worse on the trails. Might be something wrong with the fuel filler on the Impreza, on the last couple fillups it didn't seem to actually fill the tank. I've noticed recently you can feel crosswinds push you around. Not dangerously like an air cooled VW but something I never notice driving Legacy Outbacks.

Installed V band clamps on the headers. Turned some aluminum slugs to align the various pieces. Mockup assembly, I had to cut the Y pipe back beyond those grooves. Siliconed some pieces of silicone under the C shaped pads I'd welded on the crossmember to keep the top of the exhaust from denting. Meant to do this a while ago, hoping it minimizes the noise of the exhaust banging against things. V bands welded and exhaust assembled. Exhaust is much quieter now on the throttle, seems to have eliminated the raspy exhaust leak noise. Still sounds good under load though. At about 60mph the exhaust is so quiet you can barely hear it, at least over the tire/bearing noise. At about 80mph you can definitely hear the exhaust but it's not obnoxious. I did get a slightly longer muffler I want to try out sometime too.

Just made this shock tuning video public. Best jump starts at 0:27. Stay to the end for a laugh. https://youtu.be/3hFvQLtI2kQ

I replaced the front shock hose on the Impreza. Seems like that spring perch just rotated out of place, hopefully won't be a problem in the future. We took it and the blue Forester to our friend's little jumps. Forester seemed to jump a little better than Impreza. Impreza seemed to nose over more and was probably bottoming out the front suspension on landing when hitting the jump fairly hard. Also got video driving over parking barrier as a baseline for shock tuning. Did all that with 40psi in the Impreza's front tires though. When we got home I put softer springs on the rear of the Impreza. Only sits about 1/4" lower initially but will probably settle down a bit after some use. Replaced one of the rear CV boots that had a little rip while I was at it. Didn't get back out to test jumping for various reasons, curious to see if the softer rear springs help. The gas pedal in the Impreza seemed too far to the left so I tried to just bend the rod to the right. Was working for a while until the plastic barrel it rides in exploded. So don't do that. Got it super glued and safety wired back together and seems to work. Surprisingly open design. Gasket on the black plastic part probably seals against the sheet metal. Bought a used replacement off ebay, guess I'll have a spare. Meanwhile B's main project on the blue Forester was removing and replacing the stud for the lateral links out of his knuckle. Welded a 14mm nut to an acme nut and used my hollow hydraulic cylinder to pull it out. I'm working on replacing the two bolt flange connections in the Impreza exhaust with V band clamps. Will post pictures when that's finished.

I've owned the green Impreza for (checks notes) 22 months now. Definitely the longest I've ever had anything on jackstands. Happy with how it turned out though. The power to weight ratio makes low range almost unnecessary but it's nice to have that for when I need it. The big front axles, bolt on wheel bearings, and real parking brake with the billet knuckles definitely gives me some peace of mind too. I just updated the EZ36 swap page too. Still have some photos to add there and once I finish the wiring I'll have to update it again. Also have to figure out some way to share the base map, a lot of this info is kinda useless without it. Worst case I'll share it on my website. Tell me if there's anything I should add/edit on the swap page.

Will try to find/post better pictures eventually but for the cooling system we settled on a modified Miata radiator. Pushed the condenser as far forward as we could with minimal cutting/bending/hammering. Flipped the condenser brackets IIRC, put some rubber in between it and the body. Seemed like a stock H6 radiator would have fit but it would have been rubbing on the timing cover. Cut and welded some water necks on the Miata radiator to fit the H6. This is one of my biggest disappointments of the swap, it might be worth using a second gen Impreza just so you could run a stock H6 radiator. While we had the water necks cut off it seemed that part of the tube they welded in might be blocking flow. So we ground that out. Probably won't matter but I want as much cooling capacity as I can get. Used a cheap universal fit coolant overflow tank, I've used these on a couple cars/trucks and they seem to hold up. Swapped to a 13psi cap from the 20psi cap the radiator came with and the level in the overflow seems to go up and down with coolant temp as you'd expect. Using two pusher fans. For the intake we just modified a Can Am airbox to pull air in from the scoop. One downside is that filters are fairly expensive and not really available retail. Put a water repellent filter sock on it too. Installed the grommet and air intake temp sensor for EZ30 in it. Also have a couple cone air filters. Plan to eventually test them on the dyno and then cut the baffle under the hood scoop appropriately.

Hose clearance to the spring perch is pretty tight, seems like maybe the spring perch rotated (we cut some extra clearance on the side with the hose). Easy fix but will have to see how it holds up long term. Should be the same as our other cars and we haven't had problems with the hoses on those for years.

I don't think it was the injector being clogged but probably a loose wire connection. The engine harness connector just doesn't seem right. There's 54 pins in five rows and the three small rows are difficult to insert the wires into without kinking. I'm thinking about replacing it, maybe with a few 20ish pin connectors (open to suggestion there). When you flex it around it will cause the engine to run well or poorly. I got it to run decent and taped that connector up and it ran well for a few days. We've been planning on going to the Badlands off road park today for a month or so now. This weekend they allowed 2WD buggies which they normally don't. One of our buddies we used to race with was planning on bringing his buggy so we wanted to meet him there. Yesterday B's blue Forester was running rough again and he eventually noticed the fuel coming out of the fuel filter looked like coffee but the fuel going in to the filter looked clear. So somehow the fuel filter had started pushing dirt into the engine. He replaced that and the complete intake with injectors. Then it ran fine. C and I headed down in the green Impreza. Aside from the lack of cruise control, AC, a speedometer, etc. our drive went fine. We're pretty sure the rasp in the exhaust is one or both collector gaskets, I want to replace them with V bands. At light load there's no rasp and the exhaust is actually fairly quiet. We got a message on the way down that B's Forester started running like crap or not at all after they filled up with gas. C told him he'd had the same problem with his Subaru Baja and he just had to run it at full throttle when it was full of gas. We're guessing it's getting fuel in the vent/evap system and flooding the engine. B was able to get it going again. Meanwhile C and I checked in and started wandering the off road park looking for J. The green Impreza has no problem cruising around the tailing piles (similar to pea gravel). I was mostly cruising around in second. Only a few times all day did I need to use first on some fairly steep hills. B had to use low range on at least one of those. I had the center diff unlocked all day and it got quite a bit of rear wheelspin. It will slide the rear end out a bit but nowhere near enough to spin. I didn't think about it until we got back but I should have tried locking the center diff and seeing how it did. We eventually found J and followed him around a bit in his buggy until B showed up. We mostly drove around on the tailing piles as J's buggy is too wide for some of the trails but we did hit some of those too. J's buggy can easily eat up the rolling whoops at high speeds. We swapped back and forth to the different cars during the day. After we'd been riding for a while Z was driving the Impreza and said it started running rough. I was able to push the wire harness into the connector and get it to run smooth and taped it in that position and it ran fine the rest of the day. With the heat in the engine compartment that connection had gotten significantly softer than when at room temperature, something I should keep in mind. The light weight and high horsepower/torque of the Impreza was great for just getting around and climbing hills. I exceeded the limits of the approach angle a few times but just in the tailings. We'd noticed a looseness in the RF corner of the Impreza and eventually C noticed it was leaking shock oil. Went back to the campground and took the shock off and the hose was kinked and caused it to start leaking. We were running out of time so we headed into town for dinner. Drove back home fine. We were disappointed that only a few buggies showed up to the park that we saw but glad we got to ride in J's. Probably drove over 500 miles and burned about 25 gallons of gas, overall a solid first run for the Impreza. Also the first real test of the billet rear knuckles / front CV axles in rear setup. Even at about 10 degrees at ride height and some occasional wheel hop in the tailing piles they survived the day. I will probably put slightly softer springs on the rear to cut that down a bit.