pontoontodd

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.

I need to update the wiring info a little when I get time. The engine has been running great, no stalling or anything, makes decent power. I do get some trouble codes related to evaporative pressure, fuel temp, and I did get a mixture lean code once. I plan on getting it tuned sometime and I've heard they can keep some of those from coming up. It does have a head gasket leak, the yard I got the last engine from has a 90 day warranty so I plan on replacing that soon. I would definitely recommend doing a manual conversion in a six cylinder car rather than swapping one of these engines in a different car. I think I just fixed the links.

The Heri plunging axles. We were wondering if they have enough plunge to be removed and installed without taking the suspension apart. Can you measure one fully compressed?

Thanks, it won't be beautiful for long, so I took a bunch of pictures. We've bent at least two of the OEM front control arms, usually hitting a big rock that doesn't move, and they bend back pretty easily, but just not bending them seems best. At first I reinforced the front control arms. (post 44) http://www.ultimates...-2#entry1231150 Then I built heavier duty, wider arms when we did the long travel. (post 85) http://www.ultimates...-4#entry1270481 Thanks for the tips on the longer lateral links. Do you know if they're any stronger? I could have just built mine longer, thought about it, but didn't want the tire to rub on the fender at full compression. How short do your sliding axles compress to and which ones are you using? My friend is wondering if they have enough travel to install them in the car without taking apart the suspension. Would make for an easy trail repair to get back home. Obviously a broken one can come out easy without taking anything else apart.

The suspension is basically the same driving around town, less body roll with the stiffer springs. Better off road, rides about the same but harder to bottom out. Sorry it took me a while to get you front axle measurements. It's kind of hard for me to get exact measurements, but all of them seem to be 27" fully compressed. This is measured without the transmission stub. The old Rockford CV tech manual pages I have say 27 1/8" compressed for various 90s Subaru models. I did notice the front wheel drive axles (Legacy 89-92 auto, 89-94 manual) extend a little more than the AWD axles. I would say roughly 28 1/2" for the AWD, 29" for the FWD. I do not know what years/models have them, but I've heard the tripod inner joints are weaker than the six ball joints. I've always had the six ball joints with my Outback and they've held up well. Pretty sure that's what's in my Impreza.

Long travel struts vs stock Forester struts: One of his strut shafts was badly gouged, you can't see it very well in this picture, but you can see the bumpstop has been pushed down over the strut body. He's known this one is shot for a while but figured we'd be putting the long travel struts on. Broken coil spring on one of the rear struts. We didn't know this until we took them off the car. It took a lot of effort to install the rear struts. Body has to be hammered in some to fit them. Might not be needed for clearance once they're on, but definitely for installation. Then it's a battle to get the knuckle low enough to get the strut to bolt up. It's pretty easy now on mine, maybe because the bushings have taken a set. Also his front lateral links are the C channel style, which are a little taller and the strut hits them going in. As he said, you must know at least ten swear words to do this job. The front control arms, tie rods, and struts all went on pretty easy. Welded some sleeves on the crossmember where the front of the control arm bolts in and used longer bolts like I did on my car. His car sits pretty high with these springs. It is definitely hundreds of pounds lighter than my Outback, but I think they will probably sag a bit after they're fully compressed a few times. When we went to pull out of the garage for the test drive, we were treated to the sound of splines skipping. Figured out the shaft had pulled out of the RR outboard CV when we were trying to get the strut on. Fortunately we were just able to remove, reassemble, and reinstall that axle without completely removing the long bolt or lateral links, which is good because that didn't seem to be coming apart. Then of course the brake line on that corner started leaking. It has rear drums so there is a short section of hard line. He was barely able to remove that and replace it with a piece of metric hard line I had. We just did a short test drive around the block, but he was hitting curbs and steep driveways faster than I would have and the car soaked everything up great. On his way home after about an hour it started shuddering over half throttle. He's checked everything over and says it's probably the LF inboard CV.

We've been working on finishing another set of struts for my friend's Forester. Here are the rear strut parts: Rear struts assembled: Front spring perches: One of the last things I welded was those and the control arms. After a couple of hours of welding on the control arms, I noticed the valve for the inert gas was dripping with condensation: Front suspension parts: Fully assembled:

Not really planning on any other body/frame reinforcement at the moment. Yes, it's definitely heavier, which has to be harder on everything.

If the axles are holding up otherwise and give you the travel you need, it is possible to get high strength cages and races made. If there's enough demand to make 20-50 at a time, the price would be pretty reasonable.

What exactly are you guys breaking? With the OEM or Suretrack axles. Are we just talking EA axles or EJ also? Do you think it's because you're running too much angle, or is it a combination of tire size and lift?

Let's talk EZ30 H6 headgaskets and other common problems. I bought an H6 Outback from California and drove it across the country at 230k. Slight head gasket leak, seems like you have to stop every 500 miles or so to let it cool off a bit and add a quart or two of coolant. Normal city driving it's not a problem, add a little coolant every couple weeks. A few months ago a friend and I swapped an EZ30 into my 99 Outback. The first one was from a donor car I bought at an auction with about 190k, that engine was horrible, pumped coolant out like crazy. Bought an engine with 80k on it and swapped that in. Similar to the other H6 Outback, uses a quart or less of coolant every 500 miles of highway driving. We run this car in some desert races though, and under those conditions it will go for about an hour before it's pumped out a quart or two of coolant and the temp needle starts climbing. It also lets out a puff of oil smoke when you start it up after sitting for a while. I plan on replacing that engine now. What else should be replaced on the engine while it's out? I'll definitely do the spark plugs. One of the idlers for the belt was frozen up on one of the engines, should I just replace those with new? What else? Is there any way to check these things for head gasket problems without driving them for a while in a car?

To quantify things a bit, I looked at the GPS track from our half lap in the race this year compared to last year. My time for that half lap this year was 31:29, our fastest half lap in that direction last year was 31:36. Considering the course was rougher and I had to pull over about five times to let faster cars go by, it's definitely an improvement. Speaking of which, I had forgotten how rough that course is, I watched the video from last year before we went and forgot how much video flattens things out. Also, I'm not sure how the units work, but our highest speed for the whole day in 2016 was 33.6, highest speed this year was 39.77. Equivalent to 72mph last year vs 85mph this year, which sounds about right.

My friend showed up Wednesday morning, we finished loading up, and headed for Texas. Met another friend in central IL and he followed us down to the ranch towing his 1600 buggy. We got there late Thursday afternoon. Ate Chinese at the Great Wall in Monahans and went to Monahans Sandhills SP. Saw roadrunners, rabbits, and various grubs and beetles in the dunes. Similar to white sands but smaller and not white. Bolted in the harnesses, door bars, number plate, lights, and checked over suspension bolts. We all slept in our friend's giant tent. Friday we went through tech and were one of the first cars out for the pre run. Our friend sort of followed us in his 1600 buggy, I had to keep slowing down or stopping so he could catch up, then he pulled off at the halfway point so we never saw him again during the pre run. After about an hour, about 2/3 of the way through the lap, the engine started running hot. At this point the right front brake was making noise, but we couldn't figure out why. I pulled over and we let it cool down and added water to the radiator, the overflow bottle was overflowing. We made it the rest of the way around the lap alright. When we got back to the pits my friend noticed the RF caliper was loose. The bottom bolt for the caliper bracket was gone. Fortunately I had packed some old ones so I replaced that and checked all the caliper bracket bolts. We spent the afternoon driving to town to get a radiator cap, tried that and rerouting the hoses. Seemed to maybe pull coolant back into the radiator better when it cooled down, but didn't solve the problem. The cooling fans can barely keep the engine temperature stable at idle, sometimes it creeps up, sometimes it will drop back down in the 190s. Tried a bottle of head gasket leak fix, not expecting it to work, but parts store guy said this kind was easy to flush out so we figured it was worth a try. Running 85mph into a headwind in 90F temps with the AC on, it held temperature fine (190s) but was pushing coolant into the overflow bottle. Roughly at the rate of a quart per hour. Got some pictures parked next to a crew guy's STI. Saturday it was much cooler, about 60F. They started the first race at 7AM, just as the sun had come up. We figured we'd see how it would go, we were already there and ready to race. About 10 or 12 miles in the temps started climbing over 200F. They would drop back down to 190F on the straights, but we knew it would only get worse. I decided to stop at the halfway pit and call it a day. We could have stopped every half lap and added coolant, but we were worried it would have gotten worse and we wouldn't be able to drive it home without stopping every hour. This is definitely one instance where if we'd trailered the car we would have just kept going until it couldn't go. The new springs were definitely an improvement though. Much less scraping of the floor on rocks, only bottomed out the suspension a couple times and I was driving it pretty hard. I think we hit 85 on one of the straights, the H6 isn't super powerful but a definite improvement. We have about six hours of video so it will be a while before I edit that and post it up. We waited for the first race to end to talk it over with our friend and in the meantime took the door bars and lights back off and packed up the car. He planned on staying overnight and spending the next morning with his brother, so we left. Car ran fine the whole way home. To be safe we topped off the radiator at every fuel stop. It's hard to tell how much coolant it used since we'd lose some when we took the cap off the pressurized overflow bottle, but maybe half a quart every 250-300 miles. My theory is that with normal driving around it doesn't push much coolant, with the frequent full throttle and higher cylinder pressures on the course it pushes a lot more out. Just as we got into town the RF brake starting making noise again. Turned out this time the bolt holding the caliper onto the pin had fallen out. Never had any of those come loose before, need to start checking them I guess.

Made a lifting foot for the passenger side electric jack. Tried to build more section height into it than the last one. Not exactly how I hoped it would turn out. I'm nervous about the body holding up, so I finally finished a strut tower / trans mount brace I'd started on a long time ago. Here is my CAD (cardboard aided design) model and steel bracket for bolting on top of the trans mount. Just bolts on with four 6mm bolts, but folds around the bracket. Here is what it looks like tacked up in the car. Had to dodge the new fuse box and it has to be at least two piece since the strut studs are all tilted inwards. Welded. Painted and installed. Not very difficult to install and isn't in the way of much.

Modified the old front a arm jig to make a rear lateral link jig. Turned the ends on the lathe out of some thick tubing, fit pieces of 1" x .120" 4130 for the links. The stock links are 3/4", no idea how thick, we've never broken one, but they bend pretty easily. I wound up buying Group N bushings, they're cheaper than the stock ones. Pressing them in was difficult. I turned up this funnel to help with that. Soapy water or any other lubricant also helped. Here you can see all four of the ones on the car were bent in one direction or another. Made it impossible to get anything other than toe out. Here's what they look like installed.

One of the last wiring projects was the air conditioning. The 99 system is pretty simple. There is a wire for the AC compressor relay the ECU grounds. The ECU also runs the radiator fans. There is another wire that goes to the ECU that I assume tells it you have the AC switched on. It goes through the temp sensor on the evaporator. The 2002 system is much more complicated. Four pages in the FSM versus one for the 99. There are at least five wires going to the 2002 ECU related to AC. Long story short I couldn't get it to ground the AC compressor relay. The 99 is pretty simple so it was fairly easy to hotwire the AC. I plugged the connector from the 99 that goes to the compressor into the H6 compressor. There is 12V going through the pressure switch and the thermal overload and then to the AC compressor relay. If the pressure is too low (or maybe too high?) or the thermal overload is open, the relay won't have 12V. The 2002 H6 compressor seems to have different thermal overload wiring than the 99, so I hotwired that. I wired up a four pole switch to ground the AC compressor relay, fan relay, main fan relay 1, and sub fan relay 1. This seems to throw a fan code on the ECU, I assume when the ECU sees the fan relay is already grounded when it tries to turn them on it gets confused. So now the AC works. Cycles on and off sometimes, either my low pressure gauge isn't working quite right or the orifice is occasionally clogged, but discharging the system a bit seemed to make it run continuously. One good thing about this setup is that we could just unplug the compressor or compressor relay and turn the switch on to run the fans if it's running hot. The biggest downside is that it doesn't turn off at full throttle. That wouldn't be too hard to do, not sure if I'll bother. The last wiring project was the lights. They will probably help at night, but the main reason we added these is so that people can see us coming in the dust. It seems like the first thing you see when someone is catching you through the dust is their lights, the higher the better. Drilled a couple holes in one of the roof rack crossbeams and zip tied the ballasts to the bottom. Here's what it looks like installed. Finally got the rest of the dash in. Had to leave out the passenger side air ducts and it was still difficult to get it in. Normally the driver is hotter than the passenger so it should work out. Added a tablet mount to the steel plate that covered the passenger air bag. My friend made a little panel for the roof lights and AC switches and two cigarette lighters. Tablets for GPS and gauges and tire pressure monitor. That all works pretty well. The angle in the picture is deceiving, they don't block your view at all. Going to make some visors for them though, when it's sunny and they're dusty they're difficult to read, especially the tire pressures. Before the V2R we want to figure out some kind of rear camera system for the one tablet. The mirrors leave a lot to be desired. It would be nice to also have the temp readout on that one too.

Any Subaru made in the last 25 years or so will have an H engine, that just means a flat (four or six). The EJ engines will be most common, those are the flat fours. The EZ engines are the six cylinders you will most likely find. I often go on car-part.com for used parts, there are always a lot of options. Our local pick your part always has a few late 90s Subarus, and as grossgary pointed out, many of the parts are the same across years and models. The engines are usually gone quickly though. If you're really worried about that buy something made in the last 15 years, I think the 90s Subarus will get rare in junkyards in a few years. I've only done a few head gaskets, been lucky that the blocks and heads have been flat and didn't require machining, never did a valve job. Check over everything like any used car, in Arizona you won't have to worry much about rust. Test everything to see if it works, power seats, windows, locks, HVAC controls, etc. If nothing else gives you reasons to talk the seller down. If you're going to get thorough, check the wheel bearings for slop (have to jack up car or put on a lift), caliper pins, ball joints, tie rods, rack slop, CV boots, etc. If it's an auto, drive in tight figure eights and see if the tires drag or chirp.

The Outback is a lifted Legacy, more likely to have various power options and leather seats than the Legacy and cost more but the same car. A little more room inside than a Forester. The Forester in my opinion rides better off road stock vs stock. My guess is that they have basically the same struts and springs but the Forester is lighter. It would help to know what your budget is. Avoid the EJ25 (2.5L four cylinder) if possible, but it's probably the most common engine in used Subarus these days. Make sure it's fully warmed up and open the overflow bottle and look for bubbles coming up, even if they're tiny, it has bad head gaskets. Not terribly hard to fix but probably the most common expensive problem in a Subaru.

Having just towed an old Beetle across the country with an H6 Outback, it's decent but not something you'd want to do regularly. Towed it up some long steep grades in 80F weather at about 70mph without getting hot though. If you can't flat tow the SVX since it has an auto, then you need to add the weight of a flatbed trailer and it'd be heavier than the Outback. I've towed a slightly lighter Subaru with another Subaru before and it's not too bad here in the midwest, again not something you'd want to do a lot. Definitely check for head gasket leaks. Make sure it's up to temp, check for bubbles in the overflow, make sure it doesn't overheat at idle. I'm not sure why all the hate for engine removal in these cars, doesn't seem much worse than any other Subaru. For $1000 or so, getting an engine with under 100k on it made more sense to me than rebuilding a shot engine.

I really shouldn't have done that one jump but we should have gotten video of it. I was thinking we'll just be playing around in the woods so why bother getting video. We're going to Texas in a couple weeks and should get some good video and pictures then, but it might be a while until I edit and post it.

One of our friends who is planning on racing his 1600 buggy in Texas was looking for a place to run it for a little shakedown. We all went out to another friend's place so he could drive his buggy up and down the road, then we drove around in the woods a bit. The H6 and stiffer springs are a definite improvement. You can easily spin the fresh mud tires on dirt in first gear. It was far from a scientific test but I think it bottoms out less on rough ground now that it sits a couple inches higher. At one point I hit a little triple jump he has a little too fast, hit the third one pretty hard, which launched the whole car into the air. It flew nice and level but landed hard. The blower motor immediately started making all kinds of noise. I had knocked a rock and one of the wiper bushings I must have dropped into it. Other than that, everything seemed to work well, cruise control set at 62 on the way out there, running 180-190F on the road, 190s in the woods, temps in the 70s. Only the passenger side fan was coming on if you let it idle long enough at about 199F, quickly drops to 190F and shuts the fan off. Even with a resistor in the temp sender it's only turning the passenger fan on. AC doesn't seem to leak but still isn't working but haven't wired it up to the ECU yet, going to try that today. When we got back the driver's door seems to rub on the fender a bit when you open it, don't remember it doing that before. Passenger fender also looks cracked near the top of the door, don't remember that before either. I've been thinking about putting a strut bar in the front but I'm skeptical it will do much good. I'd like to tie it into the trans mount on the firewall but can't think of a good way to do that. Ideally I'd run tubes from the strut mounts to the top of the cage but there are various hoods and windshields in the way. Any suggestions?

Reused the skidplate we made last year to build sides for the new skidplate. Basically had to do some trimming and welded some vertical pieces to the sides. Here are the new sides welded and trimmed. Here is everything bolted on. A bit of a hassle to put it all on but it definitely protects a lot of important things. I noticed a couple more little cracks in the body where the fenders meet the windshield on both sides. Welded them as best I could. Engine compartment wiring basically all loomed and taped now. The coolant line and hoses at the bottom front of the engine looked questionable so to be safe I got new ones from the dealer and replaced them.

We have a couple little breather filters on the bottom of the strut housings. I like your bladder idea, seems fairly simple and should keep the system sealed.

We just use Fox shock oil in the shocks. Grease on the bushings, they only have wiper seals on the top so oil would just run out. Seems to work well.

Thanks. They're very similar to what we had. About 11" shock travel rear, 12" wheel travel. About 10" shock travel front, 11" wheel travel. Measured without bumpstops. Yes, wiper seals above the bushings. Shocks are completely sealed. Springs are all about 225 pounds per inch now.