pontoontodd

We drove the car out to the Vegas to Reno from Illinois again. Wednesday we got to Vegas about 3 in the afternoon. We put in the harnesses, door bars, lights, etc to get the car ready for tech. After we registered and went through contingency and tech we met with Baja pits. Our plan was to stop every third pit (about every 100 miles) for fuel and switch seats and they would have a tire at those pits that we'd shipped out before the race. We had the afternoon to kill so we checked out the pinball hall of fame. Neither of us is a huge pinball fan, but they had some cool old mechanical arcade games ca 1970. They use blacklights, belts, tilting tables, reflections/projections. As a mechanical engineer that was cool to see. Then we went to the driver's meeting. They warned us about some crazy sounding obstacles on the 540 mile course. There was a supposedly really torn up / soft section of powerline at mile 140-144. At about 170 there was a highway underpass immediately followed by a boulder field that the motorcycle guys would probably have to walk through. The last 20 miles of the course was supposed to be extremely rocky, worse than most years. On the plus side the pit closing times were much more generous than last year and we would only have to average 24mph to finish. That night we had dinner with an off road racer who lives in Vegas we used to race super buggies with in CORR/TORC. He told us if we made it 100 miles that would be a victory. Friday morning we made the two hour drive up to Beatty where the race started. On the way the odometer turned over 230,000. Filled up the car at the gas station and drove to the staging area. Put on our drivers suits, used the port a potties, packed everything securely in the car, and waited to start. We entered Sportsman again. The car fits the 7200 class, which would have allowed us to start at least an hour sooner, but then we'd have 100+ faster vehicles behind us and we'd be ruining their race. Plus the Sportsman entry fee is about 40% of the normal entry fee. So we started in front of about six trucks with 350 ahead of us tearing up the course. My friend started the race. A few of the faster sportsman guys passed us, the push to pass worked well. Less than ten minutes into the race the temp gauge started creeping up, there was a lot of soft ground and some climbs. Turned off the AC and temps were good the rest of the race. Also very early on the HVAC blower motor stopped working. We tried rolling down the windows but then it got even dustier. When we went through the silt sections dust came in the car and took forever to get out since the blower wasn't working, which made it hard to read the GPS. My friend was driving the car hard, it is a race and we wanted to keep up a good pace so it didn't take us 23 hours. Just before the first public road crossing and pit the tire pressure monitor started beeping, the left front was flat. We couldn't find Baja pits in the pit so we put on the spare using the electric jack, which was a big improvement. He drove the next sixty miles or so to pit 3 with no other major problems. The course was rough though, nothing that we doubted we could make it through, but in that first 94 miles to pit 3 maybe 5 miles were smooth. My friend was pretty beat by the time we made it to pit 3, we both just sat down, drank a lot of fluids, and ate some food. Baja pits fueled the car and swapped out our flat spare with a good one. We noticed some of the suspension bolts were loose and the strut tower was starting to split from the rest of the body at the seams. We couldn't think of any realistic way to fix that in the pits. After it cooled off a bit I took the radiator cap off the expansion tank and all sorts of coolant boiled out. We took the bleed plug out of the radiator and filled it back up with water. We sat and talked with Baja pits for a while about what we should do, eventually they convinced me we should go to the next pit 60 miles away and see if the frame got any worse. I am glad we did, that next sixty miles was a lot of fun, maybe 20 miles of it was rough. There were long stretches of 50-80mph running. Even in the rough sections where I thought I was going slow I was going 30. The longest, fastest gravel road we got on I had the gas pedal to the floor for what felt like a couple minutes. There was a guy resting in the shade of his broken trophy truck, he'd probably been there for hours, and when he saw us coming he stood up and cheered for us as we went by. We got that reaction a bunch of times during the race and that was really cool. About halfway down that gravel road was a cattle guard with a two or three foot gentle rise. Hit it about 80mph and got good air off the backside. The six cylinder was definitely an improvement, made it more fun but made it a lot easier in the soft terrain to power through or even just go up the grades without relying entirely on momentum. I also got to go down through a pine forest on a narrow dirt road with a bunch of sharp turns. My friend really got the short end of the stick driving. Near the end of that leg was the dreaded mile 140-144 rough powerline section. Seemed no worse than most of the rest of the course, which made us wonder how bad the other sections would be. We made it to pit 4 at probably an average of 40mph and feeling good until we looked at the body again. It had split considerably more, and what we'd just driven through was not super rough and I was trying to go easy on it in the rough. Just ahead was the boulder field, we weren't sure if we could do that on a good day. It probably would have gotten to the next pit, maybe the next couple pits, but the odds of it lasting another 400 miles on that course seemed very slim. We decided this would be a good place to stop while the car was still intact and head home. We stopped in Tonopah for gas and took 6 to Ely. There were no rooms available there so we drove up to Wendover. Here is the only picture I've taken that shows how big the crack in the body is. Goes almost all the way up and down behind the RF strut tower. In the morning we took the HVAC blower out. There were a few rocks in it, hotwired it to a switch and it worked. Headed back east in the morning on 80 through Utah. At this point we realized the V2R still wasn't over. We were looking for a place to stop and take a little hike to stretch our legs along 80 so we went to the Firehole gorge NRA on the Green river. The whole NRA is crisscrossed with dirt roads and trails so we wound up spending all afternoon driving around there. We did a few things we probably shouldn't have with the car in the condition it was in, but most of the trails were fairly smooth, very smooth by V2R standards. The whole area was beautiful with not many other people on the roads/trails. Saw a lot of elk, some large fish jumping straight up out of the water, and saw a coatimundi crossing the trail right in front of us. I had told my friend about Dinosaur national monument, at that point we weren't too far away so we drove down to Vernal to spend the night. We noticed the brake lights, fog lights, and dome light had stopped working too. Couple pictures at Firehole Gorge: Hill/mountain we tried to climb there: Sunday morning we messed with the wiring a bit, eventually my friend figured out the fusible link was blown. We replaced that and everything but the gauge lights worked. There was a brochure in the hotel about an arch just north of town that you can drive to in an ORV or hike the last part. There was a rough wash crossing about a mile from the arch that we decided would be very hard on the car on the way back so we parked at the car parking area and hiked up. Arch was very cool. Then we drove to the DNM visitor center and saw the quarry building. Not as good as I remembered it but definitely unique. I wanted to go back to Harper's corner trail in the middle of DNM, my wife and I had been on it years ago so we headed that way. We were looking for county road 16 off of 40 and I got us off on some dirt trail headed sort of the right way. A while later we were in a wooded wash with a bunch of trails that just kept getting rougher and weren't really going the way we wanted to go. We headed back towards the highway and found some other dirt roads that eventually got us to 16 and we went up to Harper's corner trail. It was just as dramatic as I remembered it, if not better, one of the best hiking trails I've ever been on. We had been debating driving Echo Park / Yampa bench roads to the southeast part of the park, but weren't sure if we'd want to do it with the Subaru and knew we had to make some progress towards home. While we were on the Harper's trail we could see part of the road that went through the bottom of a canyon and I decided we had to try it. We drove down the “dugway” which was just a bunch of switchbacks on a smooth gravel road. We went into Echo canyon, checked out the cave and river, definitely worth the drive. We went to the other overlooks along the Yampa bench road, they were all amazing, certainly by Illinois standards! I think there were a few slightly soft muddy sections along the road. You could have driven it in a normal street car, but it would be a rough and/or slow ride. We saw a badger running down the road right in front of us and some cows in the road. Stayed the night in Walden, still 1000 miles from home. Arch north of Vernal: Echo Park / Yampa road as seen from Harper's corner in DNM: View from Harper's corner: Echo Canyon: Looking out of whispering cave: Looking back on Yampa road, Haystack rock (I think) in the middle: Monday we got up at 5AM, checked over the car, and went up to 80 for the trip home. We were running later than we'd planned since we'd spent most of Saturday and Sunday trail riding and only progressed about 300 miles east. On the plus side this meant we'd be in a good time and place to see the solar eclipse. When it started we stopped to get gas and put the cameras on the car. I dug out a piece of welding glass so we could look at the sun. Not very dramatic, sky just slowly got darker and then lighter over an hour or two. Could see the headlights on the road but you could see fine without them. It was kind of cool to see the sky dark behind us and light ahead, and then the opposite as the moon moved out of the way. The downside of this is that people from all over the midwest, particularly IA and MN judging by licence plates, had driven to NE to see this, and were then headed back east at the same time we were on 80 and then had to go through Lincoln and Omaha. This caused us a couple hours of delay and I got home just before midnight. My friend drove home from here. I think given a very well prepared car and good drivers, a team could definitely finish the V2R in a Subaru in the time limit. We had just as much fun trail riding the next two days though, and a lot less wear and tear on the car and bank account. We might go to the Texana ranch and try that course, but I think this car's days of Nevada desert racing are over. We have a lot of video from our UP trip, the V2R, and trail riding on the way back. It might be months before I get any of that edited and posted, but it's coming eventually.

We've done some testing and aiming of the various HID lights. One thing that seems strange is that I have 55w HID conversions on the stock headlights, KC 2x3 spot lights under them, and KC 6" daylighters on the roof rack, but they seem to put out different amounts of light and draw different amounts of current. The 6" KCs definitely draw the most power and since they are pencil beams shine the farthest. The high beams and the 2x3s put out a decent amount of light with more spread. With all of them on it is almost like daylight. With all of them on voltage is a little over 12. With all of them and the AC it drops to about 10.6 but everything still works fine. With the high beams, 2x3s, and AC, voltage is also a little over 12. Turning off just the 2x3s (wired into fog light switch) has no effect on the voltage. This is all when RPMs are above 2000RPM, at idle voltage is lower. I don't know if the ECU would normally turn the cooling fans off while running the AC over a certain vehicle speed, but the way I have it hotwired the radiator fans run when the AC is on. I tried the alternator off the original 187k mile donor engine and it is slightly worse if anything. This all seems strange to me, the alternator should be 100amps. I can't imagine the fuel pumps and other little things drawing more than 10 amps. Each pair of HIDs should be 110w, which would be about 9 amps at 12V. Fans supposedly draw about 20 amps each, so that adds up to about 80 amps max. I got a little car travel wifi unit but we still couldn't get the camera to connect to the tablet, so I'm now planning on getting a dashcam. Should be easier to connect but wider viewing angle. Got a fresh set of tires on the car now and shipped a set of four to the pit service. Took the rear seat out so we can fit two spares and all our crap inside. Helmets and driving suits take up a lot of space. Replaced the rear caliper that had frozen up, put new pads on it, and bled it. Brakes seem a little better now. My friend put the race radio back in and put an antenna that's supposedly matched to it on the car. Seemed to work with one of our handheld radios. We're going to have about 23 hours to do 540 miles of the longest desert race in the US, should be fun.

We have the Outback almost ready to go for the Vegas to Reno now. Replaced a bunch of things just to be safe even though they seemed OK. I replaced the fuel pumps. One of them runs dry regularly, basically any time the main tank is 1/4 full or less. Now we've got plenty of spares. I replaced the air filter. It had some sand on it but was otherwise dust and dirt free. Replaced the serpentine belt and drew a diagram of how it's routed on the air filter housing. I finished getting the struts back together and installed. I got some 40A fuses and put one in for the jacks and the rest in the spare fuse / electrical bag. My friend messed with the driver's door window. It hasn't been closing all the way when the door is closed, which is especially a pain with the door bars in and window nets up, you can't easily open the door to run the window all the way up. After some trial and error and consulting the FSM, he got it to close about 99% of the way with the door closed, definitely an improvement. My friend put the light bar on and got all the lights aimed in useful directions. With that on, the car has six 55W HIDs, they light things up pretty well. The 6" KC pencil beam highlighters on the light bar that we converted to HID are amazing. You can easily see the beam of light coming from them while driving. The 2x3 KCs aren't quite as focused, and the stock headlights (now HID) spread the light out even more. I made plastic visors for the tablets and TPMS to try to reduce glare. I replaced the LF inner tie rod, it was slightly sloppy and the V2R will only make it worse. I got a wifi security camera to use as a rear camera to display on one of the tablets. It appears to need to be plugged into an ethernet cable to work, so I'll probably have to get something different. Need to mess with that some more. Still have to get a tire and swap a few tires around and then ship some to the pit service. The RR caliper piston is very tight so I just ordered a new caliper. Still have to put in the race radio and get some number stickers.

Did you drive to Morocco or did you ship the car there? Looks like a blast.

Need to see a video of your car in action now.

No but it hasn't done that the last thousand miles or so.

Did some work on the 2002 Outback from CA yesterday. Changed oil and filter. Front brakes have been making a squeaking noise sometimes, usually after it rains, goes away after some driving. Checked the front brake pads and noticed the front passenger side CV boots were both starting to leak a little grease. I pulled the axle, repacked it, and put on new boots. One thing I noticed is that the outer CV splines were slightly rusty, going all the way to where the wheel bearing clamps against the CV joint. I put anti seize on the splines so they don't rust in place, but it made me wonder whether water can slowly get in to the bearings from under the spindle nut. Seems like the front diff oil level increased a while back, and who knows when it was changed last, so I changed that. Wasn't much over full, and smelled more like gear lube than ATF, but was definitely thinner than cold gear lube should be. Last winter my wife said a few times she'd have to crank it a couple times before it started. I started reading about the gold stamped cap in the fuel pump assembly cracking and leaking. I took the fuel pump assembly out and that cap isn't cracked at all, so I just replaced the fuel pump. When I started the car, the security light in the middle of the instrument panel was flashing, once then four times. Started it up several times with no problems but the light kept blinking. When I got in and closed the door and started it the light went out. Might get a remote, the alarm goes off when we use the power locks. Packed some bubble wrap in the hole for the driver's door mirror wiring, got some wind noise coming from there at highway speeds. Hopefully that fixes it, other than that the car is very quiet.

Thanks, already started with that. I started the car with all the doors closed and the security light stopped blinking, so the immediate problem is solved. Still would like to remove the alarm completely, doubt the FSM spells out how to do that. I should look back at my notes from when we swapped the H6 into my 99, can't remember what we did with that.

I know, ancient thread, but I'm looking to do the same thing. My 2002 OB came with just a key, no fob. We've been avoiding using the power locks to keep the alarm from going off. Mildly annoying, not a huge deal, but it would be nice to be able to use the power locks. I just replaced the fuel pump, changed the oil, and regreased and booted a CV axle and the security light in the middle of the instrument cluster is blinking. Anyone know how to disable all this? I looked under the kick panel on the driver's side one time and didn't see any obvious alarm/security module.

One of the last things I did before the UP trip was to finish the mounting posts for the sand ladders. We did end up using them once, these posts and quick release levers worked out pretty well. Over the weekend I replaced the rear wheel bearings, seals, and hubs. The one that had been replaced a few weeks ago was questionable since it wasn't really sealed for a while and it was running hotter than the other three. The other one hasn't been replaced in years, figured might as well do it now. Replaced the parking brake hardware while it was apart. The shoes were still thick so I left those in. Also went through the rear struts. Have to wait for a boot to come in, other than that just replaced the shafts and checked over them. The rear shafts were still the originals from when we first built the long travel. The thread pitch on them wasn't right since my lathe doesn't do metric thread pitches. It was close enough to work for this long, but one of them was looking worn and burnt, so I replaced those. I've noticed that the trailing link bushings are pretty loose, took them off and they look like this: I had a couple that we haven't beat on, one actually looks new, so I put the fresh trailing arms on both sides. My friend replaced the front control arm bushings that go in the extruded aluminum brackets with some Whiteline polyurethane bushings I'd gotten a while back. We did a bunch of other little things to get the car ready for V2R. He is still trying to decide what to do with his Forester. My suggestion is to get a rust free turbo Forester. He's considering that but also planning on taking the intake and valve covers off his engine while it's in the car to try to see how bad it is. I do still have the EJ25 from my 99 Outback. Sounds like we could use the bottom end from that, he'd have to use his heads and intake to make it work easily with his car. That would be a nearly free (but labor intensive) way to fix his car. Thoughts?

I drove up to our friend's house just north of town Thursday afternoon in the Outback. He had his dirt bike loaded in his truck and we headed north. Met our friend from Ohio at the north end of Escanaba that evening. My friend showed up around midnight in the long travel Forester. We started up on some back roads and trails towards pictured rocks Friday morning. I was trying to avoid it, but we wound up on the super whoop trail north of Gladstone. My friend with the Forester decided since we were there we should hit it and take some video, so we went back and forth a few times. Cars soaked them up pretty well, I bottomed at least once in the Outback while they were filming me since I was driving a little hard. Following the Forester, it looks smoother than it feels, the Forester just seemed to stay level and the suspension thrashed up and down, but it's not too harsh in the car. We drove up to Munising and ate lunch at a park in the harbor and watched them build a sea wall. Drove up to Chapel falls and Chapel rock. It was a 6+ mile hike round trip, but Chapel rock was amazing. Best car dirt art I've ever seen on a Yukon in the trailhead parking lot. Then we headed towards our motel in Pine Stump junction. Near the end of that leg we drove down along the Driggs River. At first we went down the west side but it was blocked off a little ways down. Then we went down the east side. The dirt road was decent and winding but the last few miles were really big rollers, we were hitting those hard and getting some air, maybe the most fun trail we were on all weekend. The next morning I checked all the suspension bolts which were mostly good. By then everyone else was getting up and getting ready. We headed back down to Newberry so he could fill up the dirt bike. It only has a 2.6 gallon tank so he has a 110 mile range. We tried the charcoal grade on the way back north. It is basically a 6 mile dead end in the summer, most is just a straight rail grade with a lot of puddles. Then we headed up to Crisp point lighthouse. I believe it's still operational but you can walk to the top during the day. From there we tried to get to Whitefish point. We got to a spot on a trail where a beaver had built a dam and a lodge and flooded the whole area. Someone had cut a big notch in the dam and there were a few bypass routes but the whole area was rough and swampy. My friend got the Forester stuck, so I went around him with the Outback and pulled him forward but then I managed to get the Outback stuck sliding off a high line. The Forester is lighter and has much less traction in mud, so the snatch strap wasn't doing much good. We kept using that, a shovel, recovery ramps, and the electric jack on the low side of the Outback, and we eventually got it out, but it took us about two hours. Our friend had gone ahead on the dirt bike and said the main trail ended at a house about a mile ahead. We decided not to bother proceeding and went back out. Still trying to get to Whitefish point, we were heading down a wide firm sandy road that had some long stretches of standing water. Dirt bike was leading, followed by the Forester, and we were last in the Outback. Forester went in a spot that was mostly only a foot or so deep but had a hole near the end he dropped into that was about 30” deep that flooded his engine. Once the water had finished coming in, he had water on the passenger seat cushion. I could only see a little bit of the top of one of his tires. There was a ridge of dirt/moss on either side, so I was able to carry the snatch strap down to him. We started pulling with the Outback in reverse. It was slowly moving out, but maybe five or teen feet at a time. Our friend suggested turning the Outback around, and then we pulled the Forester out smoothly since first is a little lower than reverse. We took the spark plugs out and we soaked/siphoned the water out of the cylinders. I think he siphoned a half quart out of one of them. Still wouldn't turn so I pulled the oil drain plug until water stopped coming out. We still couldn't get it to turn with a breaker bar or the starter. At this point three couples in side by sides came down the road. At first they were going to go through and we kept telling them the water was over two feet deep, with no doors it would be in their laps for sure, assuming they could drive through it. The first guy's wife didn't look very happy that he was still planning on going and got out and put on her waders. They were locals and he started talking about how this part of the trail is normally dry but they've had rain more days than not this summer and the real water holes were up ahead, so they turned around. We tried pulling the Forester with the Outback and letting out the clutch to pump the water out, still wouldn't turn. Tried pull starting it which didn't work. Pulled it to Paradise with the strap. The first few water holes we went back through were all the Outback could do to pull both cars through. I had it in first gear at full throttle for long stretches, it's a good thing we had the six cylinder and mud tires. After we got the Forester back to civilization we ate dinner and talked about what to do with it. Figure it would cost $1500+ to get a decent engine and ECU and have them shipped in. It would only take a day or so to fix but who knows what else might be wrong or go wrong later. The car has 230k on it and is rusty so the chassis isn't anything special. We decided it would be best to take the struts and some other parts off and get a different car. Unfortunately there was no way to fit three of us and all our stuff plus the struts in the Outback so we decided to get the tow bar we'd left in the truck in Escanaba and tow it back home. We bought gas and found a place to leave the Forester overnight. We put some stuff in the Forester and the three of us piled in the Outback and we went to Newberry to spend the night. Sunday morning we all went back to Escanaba so two of them could go home and got the tow bar, lights, and chains out of the truck to take back to Paradise. On the way we stopped at the upper Taquamenon falls and did a little hiking. We got to Paradise, aired up all the tires, hooked up the cars, and put some of the heavy stuff in the Outback. We drove through a lot of rain, it wouldn't have been a fun day for riding the dirt bike especially, it was raining hard in the eastern UP all afternoon by the looks of the radar. I had noticed the trailer wiring was getting torn up but figured we'd fix it when we got past the rain and got gas. We got down to Menominee and got gas, ate at a Chinese buffet and fixed the trailer wiring. Drove all the way through Wisconsin without coming to a stop until we were in the Chicago suburbs. We disconnected the cars uphill from his house, he coasted it down into his driveway. I drove home and was home before midnight. Aside from killing the Forester it was a good trip. Weather was good, we were on a lot of fun trails and roads, and having two long travel Subarus was great. The dual sport was a better match than I'd expected, he said we weren't really holding him back, but he had no problem keeping up and was willing to go everywhere we went. Before the trip I'd put on a different radiator cap on the expansion tank and this one seems to hold pressure. When you take it off air escapes but it doesn't spray coolant. I think we've had this expansion tank and plumbing on for about 2500 miles now and it hasn't used or gained any coolant. We got a lot of video, eventually I'll get that edited and posted.

These are the strut tops out of the Impreza. Driver's side on the top, passenger side on the bottom. New one on the left. You can see the one from the driver's side on the right was cracked about 3/4 of the way around. My friend recently had to replace the RR CV boot on his Forester. I think the long travel finds any questionable boots and tears them apart. Despite having anti seized the long bolt in his rear suspension knuckle and loosening it and turning it occasionally, it still rusted solid into the rear bushing. Also the eccentric bolt for the lateral toe link was rusted solid. There was a lot of sawzall action to get the rear suspension apart. He got some group N bushings and pressed them into the links. He got some 14mm stainless rod and I threaded the ends on the lathe to replace the long bolt. We're hoping that won't rust in place. At least if it just rusts into the knuckle it will be pretty easy to slide the links off the ends. It will take a few years to find out.

Would a bad O2 sensor cause the engine to cut out or stumble slightly for a couple seconds? I have gotten a mixture lean code at least once, no idea if it's at the same time. The O2 sensors normally read steady.

I drove down to Florida to visit a customer last week. About 250 miles from home, the right rear of the Outback started making bad noises. I stopped at the next exit and took a look, there was grease on the CV joint which looked crooked, wheel bearing had gone bad. We've been hearing a humming noise from that corner for a long time, maybe a year, but even after the bearing started making a lot of noise and losing grease it had no slop. Looking back on my notes the rear wheel bearings haven't been replaced in about two years, and I think I've done the right rear a couple of times. The nearest car rental was in Effingham, so I drove down there on the state highway at about 55mph, wheel bearing would occasionally make a lot of noise but was not too bad most of the way. Found a repair shop who said they could fix it in a couple days so I left it there and he drove me to Enterprise. I told him there were three seals and make sure to get them all. On my way back when I was getting close to Effingham and called him, he didn't have the car back together yet because the axle boot was torn and seal surface damaged and he hadn't gotten a replacement axle yet. I told him I had spare front and rear axles in the back of the car, but he thought they were both fronts. Eventually I just told him to tape up the boot and put it together and I could fix it when I got home. The ride back in the Outback was pretty good. It stalled at least once coming to a stop sign, maybe because the ECU doesn't know the AC is on and it idles at 500-600 RPM. The tach still bounces around a bit near 4000RPM occasionally cruising on the highway, usually with the cruise on, but sometimes with cruise off. Most concerning is that about once an hour, and I think only with the cruise on, it will hesitate or cut out for a split second a few times and then go back to normal after a couple seconds. On the plus side, I've put over 1000 miles on it now with the new expansion tank and the coolant level hasn't changed at all, it's never run hot, but does have some foam in the expansion tank occasionally. Mechanic swears he put in a new wheel bearing and "both" seals, and it was much quieter on the way home, but the inner most seal which is more of a dust shield was shredded to bits by the time I got home, and the center seal that really seals the inner side of the bearing wasn't there, so he probably didn't get all three. Got one from the parts store and put in the rear axle that had been in the back of the car the whole time. In a way it was good I had to replace the axle or I wouldn't have known that the inner side of the bearing was basically unsealed. Bled the clutch and put the skid plates back on.

Video from our trip to Badlands off road park. Near the start you can see the hill climb where I broke the rear spider gears in the Outback. After that we were kind of taking it easy with the other two cars.

I cleaned out the idle air control valve and replaced the gasket. Another friend told me the 07+ Silverados are plumbed the same my brother described. I got a two quart expansion tank and some bungs welded in the radiator. Cut and capped off the old lower water neck and made a new, longer one that better clears the valve cover. Put a bung in the top of the other side of the tank too in case we want to put a bigger fitting there. So I ran a 1/4" hose from the top of the hot side of the radiator to the top of the expansion tank. Ran a 1/2" hose from the bottom of the expansion tank to the bottom of the cold side of the radiator. Ran a 1/4" hose from the overflow fitting of the expansion tank to the bottom of the overflow tank. Once it's warmed up at idle there isn't any coolant flowing into the expansion tank, but if you rev it up there's a little stream. The level in the expansion tank never seemed to change. When I take off the cap, even if the engine is hot and running, there is no sound or spray. When I have the cap on the expansion tank and the overflow hose from the expansion tank hooked up to the bottom of the overflow, the overflow tank does get some bubbles in it, but it still has no coolant in it. One indication of cooling system effectiveness I've noticed is that when everything is working right (minimal air in the radiator), the fans only run for about 30 seconds and the engine is cooled back off. If it does have air, the fans will run for minutes or continuously. Now they just run for 30 seconds or so. So I think it's working. Drove for about an hour on the highway. Only 70F outside. Temps were 176F at 65mph, 181-183 at 80mph. Once at the start and once at the end of the trip, after getting up to speed it went over 190F briefly but then came back down around 180. Never did that with the AC on. This is with no skidpans/shields on, they may actually make it run cooler. Expansion tank had about the same amount of coolant as I started when I got back. Let it idle for a few minutes until the fans kicked on, they only ran for 30 seconds and shut off. No noticeable pressure in the expansion tank when I took the cap off, did see one bubble in the overflow tank while it was idling, but that's still basically dry. Also, intake air temps with the old cooling setup were 110-120F, but it was about 90F outside. Today it was about 70F outside and intake temp was about 90F. Thinking about making some kind of hood scoop or making the stock one ducted over there. We mounted the expansion tank and overflow tank, ran it until it got hot enough to run the fans, coolant level seemed not to change, so hopefully it's good now. Going to drive it around this week. We did some other little things on the Outback like getting the rear hatch power lock working and worked on mounts for the recovery ramps. My friend noticed the short vertical vacuum hose in front of the throttle body was cracked so we swapped it out with the one from the old engine. The Impreza has been handling funny for the last couple weeks, I've looked at it a few times and finally noticed one of the tires is about to blow. At least one wheel is bent so we went through those. I have at least four steel wheels that are pretty straight (.030-.040") and a bunch that are bent .1"-.2", so I have to get a couple tires and do some wheel/tire swapping. While I was trying to get one of the wheels off I noticed the LR strut was moving around at the top. The top hat is broken. With weight on it, not a big deal, but when it droops out it can wave around and wind up elsewhere. The other side is cracked about 3/4 of the way around. So I need to replace those.

I drove the 99 Outback quite a bit today, some 80mph cruising and some driving around town. Pulls through first gear now, but stalls sometimes, thinking that's the idle air control thing being dirty. It still seems to slowly push coolant into the overflow, maybe not as bad as before, but definitely still bubbles sometimes. Tried the head gasket leak tester a couple times and it hasn't changed color yet. One of my friends thought maybe there's a hot spot somewhere that's boiling a little coolant. My brother said they way they plumb those expansion tanks is usually to run a 1/4" hose from the top of the hot side of the radiator to the top of the expansion tank. Then run a 1/2" hose from the bottom of the expansion tank to the bottom of the cold side of the radiator. I think that should continuously purge the air out of the system. Maybe not really fixing the problem but if it can keep the air out of the coolant it should work. Ordering a bigger expansion tank right now. Should be able to just run it without the radiator cap to see if it works. When I have them reweld the lower neck on the radiator I'll have them weld on a couple of 1/2" NPT pipe bungs, one near each water neck, then we can try various sizes of hoses if need be.

Good news I think. First I took the clutch hydraulics out. The first thing I noticed (yes, after removing it from the car) is that the master reservoir is bone dry. It's translucent and looks like it's a little over full from the outside but that was just dirt. I did wipe it out and put in fresh fluid, but I was still unable to bleed it. The hose is damp, so I'm guessing what happened is that the hose was leaking slightly, eventually the master ran dry, maybe after that the master went bad. Put in a new master, hose, and slave, bled it, and that seems to work fine. Figured I'd try something different with the overflow so I just plumbed the small hose from the top of the radiator to the bottom of the (non pressurized) overflow. One thing I noticed that I'm pretty sure the other engine didn't do is that this one misfires at 5000RPM in first gear, but pulls fine in the other gears. Idle eventually seemed to smooth out and went down to 700RPM too. By the time I got home there was actually less coolant in the overflow than when I started. I let it sit and idle for a while and tested it with the head gasket color changing fluid. Fluid color never changed. Seemed like at first it was bubbling into the overflow quite a bit. Eventually the fans cycle on for about thirty seconds, which brings the coolant level in the overflow down 1/4 or 1/2". I started picking stuff up in the garage and let it just cycle a bunch of times. After a few times it would just pump coolant into the overflow as it heated up, then suck the coolant back in when the fans ran and stopped bubbling. So maybe no head gasket leak? Going to drive it some more tomorrow and hope for the best. The overflow system we've been using is a small hose going from the top of the radiator to the bottom of a small pressure tank with a radiator cap on it. A hose goes from the top of that to the bottom of a large non pressurized overflow tank. That seemed to work fine with the four cylinder, that's how we ran the Vegas to Reno, but the six cylinder seemed to keep pushing coolant into the overflow until there was a lot of air in the radiator/engine and it would overheat. I think what I'm going to do about the radiator is make a longer water neck for them to weld on closer to the bottom and just cap the current one since it has to be welded anyhow. At that point I could probably get/make a radiator cap fitting for the top for them to weld on. With a little cutting of the hood bracing I think it would fit. I could leave it as is, I will for a while just to see what it does driving around town, but will it cause problems having a non pressurized coolant system? I know having it pressurized raises the boiling point, but I am running 50/50 so the boiling point is much higher than the engine temps ever get. I have heard one reason is that the engine will have localized hot spots that the pressure will keep from boiling. Thoughts?

I thought about it. Then our steering brake wouldn't work. And we drive it hundreds or thousands of miles to where we off road it.

I got a replacement H6 engine from the junkyard for the 99 Outback that supposedly only has 70k miles on it, but they really butchered it. Fuel lines are bent, at least four wire plugs were cut on the engine side, coolant hose at the bottom of the engine is screwed up again, no oil fill cap, etc. Fortunately I still have the original engine from the donor car to rob parts from. One thing I did while the engine was out was to shave down part of the timing cover to give more clearance for the radiator hose. Also drilled another hole in a new thermostat and put that in, figured it will make it easier to bleed if nothing else. Put this one in the Outback and it runs OK but idles high and hunts up and down. Doesn't really run rough, just not a stable idle. Sometimes idle is steady but probably less than half the time. Need to clean out the idle air control valve, my brother did that on the 2002 he bought in CA, just waiting on the gasket first. My friend helped me finish swapping a low mileage rear diff in. Did some brake and other work while it was all apart. Here are the broken spider gear teeth: We drove to dinner and on the way back home the clutch pedal stuck to the floor. There is some kind of spring loaded toggle mechanism at the pedal that pushes it down once it's past 1/4 or 1/2 way down, possibly to make it easier to hold the clutch pedal down. Seemed like the clutch was fully engaged (clamped) with the pedal up or down, so I drove most of the way home in third gear timing stop lights as best I could. The slave cylinder wasn't moving much so we tried bleeding it. The bleed screw was of course clogged with rust/debris, so I cleaned that out. Put a clear plastic hose on the bleeder nipple. When you push down the clutch pedal it fills the hose with brake fluid, but then letting up on the pedal sucks it all back in. So we're guessing the master cylinder is bad. I ordered a master, slave, and hose (that looked damp), they should be here tomorrow. Most concerning though is that this engine might also have a head gasket leak. After we drove around the coolant level had gone up in the overflow bottle and didn't go back down when it cooled off. A couple hours after we drove it I started to take the radiator cap off the pressurized coolant bottle and there was still pressure in the system. I'll have to mess with that more once I can drive it again. I think the first thing I will do is to just connect the top of the radiator to the normal overflow tank and run it without the pressurized overflow a few times and see what happens. We replaced a couple of CV boots on my friend's Forester. Also fixed the exhaust where it had broken at the offroad park and did a couple other little things. We still have to replace/repair his front bumper. Changed the engine oil, filter, and rear diff oil in the Impreza. Engine oil has been in there for over 3000 hard miles and was getting pretty black. Dunno if I've ever even checked the rear diff fluid, but that seemed full and clean. Also replaced a front marker light we broke at the park and replaced a burned out rear brake light bulb. I have video from the offroad park edited, just need to upload it to youtube, I'll do that soon. Aside from the hillclimb where I broke the rear diff it's not very exciting though.

Ya, the course is good, most of it isn't super rough. Probably less than ten spots in the fifty mile loop you really have to slow way down and get in first gear to creep over something.

That chart is great, thanks for sharing. I'm surprised you could find something like that. There's usually no reason for even the manufacturer to have that kind of information. If someone wants an axle for a Camry, they make a copy of that. It's very rare someone would say "I need an axle this length with these splines" and not know what it fits. Also, keep in mind just because two CVs have the same number of spline teeth, those splines aren't necessarily the same, in fact they're probably not. Also they are going to be different spline lengths, snapring styles, bearing and seal diameters, etc. Not to rain on your parade, but it almost seems like engineers go out of their way to make things different than what already exists.

I got a different H6 from the junkyard, this one with supposedly 70 some thousand miles on it. It does look much cleaner inside than the last one. They butchered this one too though, the O2 sensor wiring plugs are pulled apart, cut one of the other engine harness plugs off, ripped the small lower coolant hoses again, bent one of the fuel lines, etc. Got a rear diff coming in from NC with 52k miles on it. Looked into the R180 conversion and didn't seem worth it. The 4.11 was only available in Nissans, and they have different diff splines, so then I'd need an STI diff and set up the gears. Best solution would really be a 6MT and R180 with 4.44 gears. Finished editing video from our last trip to Texas and put that on youtube: Just started putting together the video from Badlands, I'll post that up when I'm done.

That sounds about right, it would probably be considerably less if you ordered 20-50 at a time. You should definitely try OEM axles from a yard, go to car-part.com, most junkyards will ship to your house.

I spent a few hours Saturday night getting the Impreza and Outback hooked together and loaded up in the driveway. Got up at 5AM Sunday and headed for the Badlands off road park. By the time I got there the rest of the guys meeting me were there. I didn't recognize my friend's Forester at first glance with no bumper covers and the long travel struts. He had put the 2WD axles on the day before and they seemed to have enough travel. He did spacer one of them out from the hub a little bit. We got the cars ready to go and hit the trails. First thing I wanted to try was a rocky trail we'd seen last time. Our friend got the Impreza up there and thought we shouldn't try it, then took a while to get the Impreza turned around and back down, dented the hatch a little. The Outback's power advantage is significant on the big soft hills of tailings. You can easily climb any grade while the four cylinder Forester and Impreza can sometimes barely maintain speed in first gear on a slight grade. Unfortunately I decided to try a steep climb of large broken concrete pieces in the Outback and broke the rear spider gears near the top. I basically made it to the top with the front tires, so then I had to try to roll back down. Didn't quite make it all the way back down and the car was stuck, but didn't really look high centered or anything. That's when we noticed there was some fluid, probably not water, under the back of the car. My friend pulled his Forester a little closer and we hooked up his strap. I put it around his front bumper, which instantly ripped off since the tabs on the body were already cracked and rusted, which I didn't realize. We got the Outback down off the hill and towed it back to the parking lot. Took a little break and our friend made lunch. As we were finishing, SnatchedHatch showed up and we went back out on the trails with the Impreza and Forester. Some guys in a full size Toyota SUV that looked perfect were going the other way. They liked seeing the Subarus and said they wanted to follow us. Our friend warned them we were going in the woods and the guy said “I can go anywhere you can go.” We were on some super narrow trails, probably mainly used by ATVs, and after a while we heard a bang and looked back to see the plastic front bumper hanging off the Toyota. Then he ran it over and they threw it in the truck. Also dented the front fender. The guy later told us he'd never taken it off road before so he was breaking it in. On some narrow woods trail Jerry broke the RF marker light and front airbox on the Impreza. I used some duct tape that kept them together the rest of the time. Later on I was riding in the Impreza and we were following the other four in the Forester through the tubes. We were trying to figure out what noise the Impreza was making as we drove through the tube and then went away when we got out. It sounded like the exhaust dragging but nothing was hanging under the car. Later on I realized it was probably the CB antenna rubbing on the top of the corrugated tube. That part of the stream has a lot of 10” rocks and we managed to get stuck on some of them in the Impreza. They backed the Forester close enough to us to throw the strap and we pulled it off the rocks and drove the rest of the stream. We tried climbing a concrete grade we've gone up before. Couldn't make it in either car, my friend backed into a tree with his Forester but just made a dent, so we turned around. My friends towed the Outback back to my house with the Forester, I followed in the Impreza. Got home without any other issues. Looking into doing an R180 conversion since the rear diff has to come out. Got lots of video, eventually I'll get that edited and posted. I had gotten pretty far editing the video from Texas before we left but now that will probably have to wait while I replace the engine and rear diff in the Outback.