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Everything posted by pontoontodd
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Front bushings and spacers. I drilled and tapped these for grease fittings. Should have done the same in the rear. New front shock tops on the left, old on the right. The new ones have a larger ball joint (3/4" ID vs 5/8" ID) and locate on the ID of the steering bearing rather than the OD like the old ones. I'm still surprised the old ones held, there wasn't much of a ledge holding that bearing mount from sliding up. Put the front struts on the car and drove around a bit last night. Can't really tell the springs are 50% stiffer than before, rides about the same. Sits two or three inches higher in front than before also, so both ends are a little above the middle of the travel at ride height. Rear sits about 1" higher than in front. With that and the lower profile skid it definitely has more ground clearance than last year. I don't think it's really much higher than it was way back with the 1.5" strut spacers and no cage, fuel cell, and six cylinder. I think all the added weight and sagging of the springs was getting it to be a lowrider. Anxious to see how the added power and ride height will do offroad.
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Noticed a crack in the front subframe when I was putting the new struts on. No idea how long that's been there. Threaded insert for the RF control arm bolt came loose in the body. I had threaded it out far enough to be able to cut it off and get the arm out of the way. Welded this bar on the end of the bolt but couldn't thread it out. Cut a hole in the body to fish it out. Sort of held down by little welds but I think mainly the rectangular shape is what was keeping it from turning. Made a new insert. One problem I've seen is that a lot of the bolts thread past whatever threaded insert and that extra exposed part of the bolt threads is what gets really rusty and doesn't want to come back through. So for that reason and for better welding, made my insert about the length of the bolt threads. Here's the insert in place, drilled a 1/2" hole to plug weld it too. Since this part of the body was doubled up and obviously fairly structural, I welded the two sheets together as best I could and then welded this 1/8" patch over the top of that. Paint dried to that fast, didn't have to worry about runs. Another thing I wanted to do was replace the aluminum control arm bushings. Old one is on the right, as you can see it's pretty beat. It's been on the car a few years. I need to at least get new rubber bushings from the dealer sometime to press in and see how long they last. This aluminum bracket was bent towards the rear of the car, so I pressed the bushing in the "new" one towards the rear of the car to get it bolted in. The front crossmember is bent back a bit I'm pretty sure. Passenger side wasn't as bad, bracket wasn't bent at least. One thing we did different with these front struts is to use modified eccentric bolts all around. Basically shorten the eccentric part to about 1/2" to fit the thick plates on the strut tabs. Then all of the holes in the spindles are 14mm after we sleeve the top holes in the front spindles. All the bolts are the same and adjustment is more obvious. But the main advantage is that with the stock bolts you are just relying on a 14mm thread pushing against a fairly thin mounting tab, that always seemed to get worn out. I think the RF CV axle had been making noise so I replaced that while the suspension was apart.
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Low mileage H6 in, bad H6 out. Got a set of BFG Mud Terrains to try. Only have two Hankooks with decent tread left on them. Going to run BFGs on one side and Hankooks on the other and see if one side gets more flats than the other. They seem to be the same diameter and tread depth (new), but the Hankooks are about an inch wider. Both 215 75 15. Took the front suspension, steering, and axles out of the parts car before they picked it up. Figured this was the easiest way, I really just want the axles and aluminum control arm bushings, but some of the other stuff might come in handy. What was left of the sedan, my Impreza, 99 Outback, and the front suspension in the background. I did keep one shock/spring from the rear of the sedan. Seems like 10" of travel will be pretty easy, probably can get a few more inches of droop than that too. And it will be much cheaper and easier than building struts. One of the biggest improvements I wanted to make to the struts was to ID grind the housings for the bushings. The last few times there has been a lot of hand sanding to get the shocks to slide into the bushings, the bushings would slide out of place, etc. Now I just press the bushings in to the step with a spacer in between and the shock slides in, shaft goes out the hole in the bottom, much easier. Assembled on the left, parts and ID ground housing on the right. Rear struts fully assembled. Put them in and the new springs make the car sit about 3" higher than before. So now it sits above the middle of the travel rather than below. Drove it around a bit, the ride seems about the same as before. Another plus is you can buy these rear springs in 25#/in increments. I realized once I'm done with this I'll have a full set of strut parts and springs that are in decent shape, just need shocks and front control arms. If someone is interested, PM me and maybe we can make a deal. Or maybe I'll replace these shocks for the V2R and I could sell a complete used set.
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Here is where the bottom of the jack comes out the floor. To mark the center on the plate, I turned a point on a screw and threaded that in. Held the plate up and hit it with a hammer. Here is the plate tacked and bolted in place. Turned up a cup on the lathe so the bolt head would be recessed. Welded that and some of the strut parts. On the left are the front strut mounts and spring perches, in the middle are the rear spring perches/strut mounts. This way I could weld a little on each to try to reduce warping. Did a test run before I painted it. On a hard surface it basically just lifts by the weld on the bottom of the cup. Hopefully it won't bend too much on a soft surface. Leading edge is behind the bolts for the cage so hopefully it won't catch on anything. Warped a little when I welded it, so I had to bend it some before painting it to try to keep it from catching on things.
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That's quite a machining job on the heads, never seen that done before. Is there enough piston to head and valve clearance? Rough rule of thumb is 1mm piston to head cold, at least make sure it will turn over without the head gasket in between. Probably want more if the engine is stressed.
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Here is the gunk that was in the oil pan of the "new" H6. Soaked it in solvent and spread it out on the towel on the left and didn't see much metallic stuff, so hopefully not a big deal. I've driven it a few more times and it seems good. I messed with the turn signal wiring for a long time and they work now, but I don't think I really changed anything. Maybe one of the connections wasn't tight or had a little corrosion on it. Power windows need the keyless entry unit plugged in to work. The FSM shows two wires jumped together without the keyless entry, tried that but they still didn't work. So I'm leaving it plugged in for now. Been meaning to look at the wiper mechanism for a while. We have the wipers and the panel under them off to mess with the wiring, so I decided to do this while that was off. The bushing at the motor was shot (right). Good one on the left. I'd hoped to use one from the 2002 sedan parts car (motor and layout is different but bushings appear to be the same). Can't figure out how you'd reuse these, it seems like after you get them off the rods they don't snap together or anything. After a lot of screwing around and reading other people's solutions online, I used a bushing with four tabs on the outside. I've had an assortment package of wiper bushings lying around forever and didn't want to wait for a new rod from the dealer or get one from a junkyard, but I should have. Soaked the bushing in hot water and then hammered it into the end of the rod with a big punch in the middle of the bushing. It's far from pretty but I don't think it will come out. The next trick was getting the ball snapped back in. Managed to get the end of the rod over the edge of the hole in the firewall so I could really push on it and snapped it in. Bolted everything back together and they seem to work slop free. I would definitely recommend just getting the rod from the dealer even though it's $30 or $50.
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Try Bearing Headquarters. They seem to have lower prices than Motion Industries, etc and the guys at the local store are pretty good about finding things. Bearings certainly go obsolete. I have had bearings ID and/or OD ground as needed to fit special applications like what you're talking about. Sounds like fitting 6005 bearings in is a good option.
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Got an engine from a junkyard that supposedly had 80k miles on it. We swapped it in yesterday. Only took an hour and a half to get the old one out, then we spent about three hours swapping stuff over and another few hours getting everything hooked back up. On the engine we just got the oil pan was bashed in, some of the short coolant hoses at the bottom front seemed to be leaking, one of the coils was bad, we replaced all the spark plugs, the crank pulley was missing a chunk of rubber, idler pulley wouldn't turn, and we put on the flywheel/clutch. For a few seconds when we first started it there was a clattering noise but ever since it's run smooth. It had been drained of oil, power steering fluid, and probably had some air in the fuel lines. At 1000RPM idle you can't see it running except that the belt is moving. At 600RPM you can see it bobble a little bit. There was some crap in the oil pan but didn't seem like anything metallic, so I'm just going to change the oil and filter a couple times before Texas. Seems to pull a little harder than the old one even. After we'd run it a bit (exhaust all new), no smoke, no obvious leaks, coolant doesn't seem to boil over. It's pretty quiet with the new exhaust, intake hooked up, and no big holes in the firewall. Cruise control worked, even shut off when I hit the clutch or brake pedal. No turn signals or lights, didn't bother looking at that yet. FWIW, I don't think the fans run unless you let it sit and idle for at least a few minutes. I think it had to get to 199F, then they kicked on for less than a minute and it was under 190F.
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Walker Valley off road video
pontoontodd replied to Torry33's topic in Old Gen.: 80's GL/DL/XT/Loyales...
What video are you talking about? -
Fit up a couple 1.5 x .065 6061 aluminum tubes and had them TIG welded for the upper radiator hose. Used 1.5" silicone elbow for the radiator end and 1" x 1.5" for the engine ends. Figured this way both sides should flow freely into the radiator. The water neck on the passenger side is very close to the cam cover. It's difficult to get the hose and hose clamp on at the same time. When the other engine goes in I'll have to clearance that. Two sets of strut housings tack welded. One for my 99, the other we'll put on my friend's Forester. If you look close you can see some of the part numbers laser marked, that was convenient. Fully welded, going to the grinding shop today for ID grinding. In a couple months I'll probably be making two more sets of fronts, one for my 2002 OB and another for a different guy's Baja. Going to take at least one shock/spring off the parts car before it goes so I can look at getting more travel out of the multilink rear.
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Not really. It has nine bolts holding it on. The forward most one will probably be very difficult to rip through the tube it bolts to. Mainly it will be pushing the car up, so the bolts and tabs won't see much load in that case. I imagine we'll eventually bend the radiator support tube and/or the crossmember, but where do you stop?
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Just jealous and giving you crap, don't worry. Got the skidplate almost done. Needs paint, but it's cold and rainy today, plus I will probably add some tabs to the sides to mount some pieces to protect the exhaust. Hoping I can re-use the sides of the one we made last year. I've thought for years about making something out of 10 or 12" wide C channel that would cradle the oil pan for good bending strength but have about 1" more ground clearance than the rectangular tubes we've been using. Something like a 10" x 2.5" x .24" C channel would have been about equivalent bending strength to the rectangular tubes we had under the car, but 2.5" tall sides would not have fit. Then I figured if I made the whole thing out of 4130 I'd have twice the strength with similar weight, and 2" tall sides should be adequate. Got a few pieces cut out of 1/4" 4130 while they were doing the new strut top mounts. Here is the big rectangular piece bolted into the front crossmember. In the first picture you can see the line where it will be bent. This is how I fit the sides and the ribs. Goal was to have about 1" clearance from this skidpan to the engine, especially since you probably can't get group N engine mounts for the EZ30. I had the sides laser cut out of 1/4" 4130 also but had to do some clearancing. This is after some milling on one of them. Here is what it looked like tack welded together. Added some 1/8" thick ribs near the middle and near the bend, again leaving about 1" clearance to the engine. Figure this is the part of it that will really be taking a beating, like hitting big rocks with a 4000# car at 40mph. Milled a slot across the rectangular plate to make it easy to bend. Had to do a little more clearancing but fit pretty well. You know you're making a heavy duty skid when you're milling it and the 1/8" thick ribs look thin. Here it is with the mounting tabs tacked to the radiator support. Maybe if I make another one of these down the road I'll recess the bolt heads, but this way they're easy to get at and cut off if required. Welded some little strips on in front of them to keep rocks from completely smashing them. Everything fully welded. Added some strips to the sides where they're short. Figured that's the mostly likely place it will bend, not that these fully compensate for cutting down the sides.