pontoontodd

We did make longer front control arms, but you wouldn't have to. Rear links are all stock. The struts involved a lot of fabrication and machining. They are inverted struts. I know this is a long thread, but you can either look back through it or look up inverted struts to get the idea. We did start with 2" smooth bodied Fox reservoir shocks but we had to machine the shafts and do some other things. You can buy long travel inverted struts from a few companies who sell them for rally racing. We are planning on making a few sets fairly soon. I've been getting quotes on custom springs. I want to make new housings with a better bushing setup for this car, and we'll probably make a set for my friend's Forester and at least an extra set of fronts for a second gen Outback once I start on that. So we could make you a set, I'd have them professionally welded and painted, but even making enough parts for four or five cars they'd be $4000-$5000 for a set of four struts.

I've always wanted to try a set of the Heri axles but can't seem to find someone who actually sells them. Do they seem weaker than OEM? Curious if/how/where you broke them. Mainly we just leave the stock axles in the cars. We've replaced quite a few boots now, usually when they just start to leak or tear. I have been replacing my front axles as they go bad with the FWD early 90's Legacy axles, but they're hard to find now. They had bigger CVs and center bars. But I think the only CV we've actually broken has been an outboard cage in one of those FWD axles. Seems like the travel is more limited by inner CV plunge than the angles.

That Delphi MAF sensor that lasted a few months was new from Rock Auto. I didn't realize it has a 12 month warranty, thanks for mentioning that, I'll see if I can get a replacement. More on the H6 cars soon, I'm going for the 01-04, they're cheaper, seem to be more common, and sometime between 2005 and 2008 they switched to CAN bus which probably makes engine and trans swaps much more difficult.

Also, any thoughts on the MAF sensor? The one that just failed was a Delphi that I put in just before the Vegas to Reno, so it has seen some dust but has only been on the car about three months.

Wife and I went camping over the weekend with the Outback. We were on a lot of gravel roads but nothing challenging this time. Before we headed back the engine started running really rough and the car was bucking violently. I unplugged the MAF sensor and it ran OK the rest of the weekend. A little rough and stalled occasionally but we made it home fine. So thanks again to Uberoo for that tip! I didn't have the spare with me and the only parts store we stopped at wanted $200 and had to wait a few days to get it. I replaced it with a used one when I got home and it ran fine today. I had good luck today at the pick & pull. Got a mass air flow sensor, wiper fluid bottle with pumps and hoses, gauge cluster, three wheels, and some little pieces. Anyone know how to roll forward an odometer easily? I found this post: http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/38259-speedometerodometer-quit-cruise-still-works-vss-or-speedo-head/?do=findComment&comment=308126 but it really doesn't explain what to do.

That would be a long drive for a 100 mile race. I'll check out their schedule next year, whether we go there, CO, or TX, it's a long drive. Thanks for the heads up on that series, it's good to have options. There are some 100 mile woods enduros much closer to home that we might be able to run, but they usually don't allow cars with glass. And it's really not the same as a desert race.

Sounds like the course near Columbus is 8.5 miles and 6-8 laps depending on class? Not sure that would be worth the trip for us. I was thinking the 200 miler, but it sounds that course is smoother. Our thought is to hit one or two that are as long and rough as possible early next year to really put the car to the test. One of the courses in Texas is supposedly really rough and they usually do a 200 or 250 mile race there. I'm just thinking if it's cold we wouldn't get a decent test of the cooling system. I definitely appreciate the offer to help at V2R. I don't think there's any way we could put together a group of volunteers to do what Baja Pits does. They have mechanics at every pit with fuel, tools, food, water, welders, etc. Also, there are no chase trucks allowed on the course. It would actually be a decent race to watch if you picked out a couple spots to hang out at for a couple hours each.

Thanks, it's sort of based on what ferp did. I just looked it up, are you talking about the YORR series? Do you know what the courses are like? Sounds like the longest one is 34 miles. Looked like 100-200 mile races on their website. From the few videos I looked at the courses looked fun but smooth. But it always looks smoother on video than in person. Depending on where in Montana it's at, it might be closer than west Texas. Isn't it usually cold in early May in Montana? There are some races in Colorado we're looking into. Some of the guys at the V2R also suggested running a desert race where they run the slower classes in the morning and the trophy trucks and class 1 buggies in the afternoon. That way you don't get run over and the course isn't as torn up. Plan is to do at least one next year before the V2R to put some hard, fast miles on the car.

We made a big skidplate for the front of my car a couple weeks ago. Started with a piece of 1/16" 4130 normalized, I think it was 36" x 42". Cardboard template my friend made up for one side: Trimmed the edges and made some cuts: Bent and tack welded: Bent the rear edge up so it would be less likely to catch on things when going backwards and add some rigidity. Check to make sure the bends look good: Spacers for both sides of the crossmember just outside the exhaust and mounting tabs: One of the mounting tabs welded in place to the tube that runs from the front to the swaybar mount: Drilled mounting holes for the above tabs and spacers and fully welded the seams on both sides. Trimmed the overlap from those seams and welds. It is extremely rigid with all the bends even though it's just 1/16" steel. A little spacer that bolts onto the rear of the crossmember to keep the skidplate off the exhaust: Welded and painted: Installed: Skidplate painted: Here you can see the aluminum spacer holding the skidpan just below the exhaust: side shot: Fully installed, tucked behind the smaller steel panel that goes under the bumper:

THIS!

Made a skidplate for the front end, I'll post up pictures of that soon. My friend drove his Forester over and we were going to replace the head gaskets over the weekend. It's been overheating on him when he tries to drive it on the highway and he has to keep adding coolant. There were all sorts of bubbles coming up in the overflow one time we looked and it was warmed up and running. We took the engine out and got the heads off in a few hours. Block and heads seemed flat and we didn't see any cracks. Head gaskets were missing at least half the rubber on one side though. He took the oil pan off and discovered some metal shavings on the oil pump pickup. They looked like little flakes of bearing material. We decided to tear the engine down completely. The rear main bearing was definitely coming apart and the other ones didn't look great, but probably still OK. The rod bearings were about half worn to the copper and were stuck to the journals. I'm surprised none of them spun. Crank's still pretty smooth but no one in town has bearings. He's going to order some and we'll get it back together. He already has a new timing belt and clutch disc we'll put in. The toothed idler spins more freely than the smooth ones, but it seems like that's normal, is it? Anything else we should do or check while we're in there?

If you cut some of the ribs loose from the underside, I think Scott is right. You can probably just take a torch to one side and let it cool. If you think it's already junk, just play with it. Otherwise maybe you could clamp it rigid on the car in the shape you want and weld it that way, but it's liable to spring when you unclamp it. If you wind up at a wash in the weight savings vs reinforcement, I'd say that's pretty good.

Have you saved all these pieces you've been cutting out? I'd be curious if you weighed them all at the end to see how much weight you've removed.

Well if someone offered me a decent amount of money for the Outback that would certainly change my thinking!

I really don't know how long the engine swap would take. Mechanically we could probably take out the four and bolt in the six in a weekend. I'd need either an H6 radiator or different hoses but I think the wiring would be the most time consuming. Worst case I know of a guy who can trim down the wiring harness from the donor car for $500 so I would only have to hook up a few wires. Six speed I'm not sure, I think the axles are different but I have to check. A donor car would probably be $1000-$1500, six speed about $1200. At this point this is what I'm leaning towards in case you can't tell. In the long run I'd like to do a few more desert races but I don't anticipate doing it for many years in a Subaru. There is a decent looking H6 Outback for sale in CA right now with 130k miles for $2500, so probably $3000ish for a decent car we could build up. $1000 just for cage tubing, we could use a lot of the parts from the 99 but then that would have to just be scrapped, or figure up to another $3000 for seats, harnesses, window nets, fuel cells, pumps, etc. The front suspension is the same as far as I know. The rear suspension in the 01-04 is completely different, so we'd be starting over there. I probably wouldn't do it a lot differently if we did another one from scratch. I think the main advantage would be that we'd have a lower mileage rust free car.

Trying to decide whether to swap an H6 in this car or just buy an H6 Outback and make that race legal. Either way I'm planning on an 01-04 OB H6 and a manual trans, probably six speed. In 2005 they went to CAN bus (?) which would make swapping engine/trans much more difficult. They also seemed to make a lot more 01-04 and they're cheaper. Long term plan is to get one for my wife, donor for engine swap, and a complete car for manual trans swap and long travel for me to drive to replace the Impreza. Pros/cons: Swap: cheaper, probably less work Race prep an H6 Outback: More solid body if I got a rust free car. No major wiring issues to figure out (mainly manual trans conversion). I really don't need two cars with cages, it basically makes the car a two seater except for small people or short trips, and can't recline the front seats. I could steal the fuel cells, pumps, and some other things out of the 99 and scrap it out, which seems like a waste. If I keep the 99, even just as a street car, I'd have to buy another fuel cell(s), pumps, etc. Probably close to $1000. If I wanted to race both, I'd have to get another pair of seats, harnesses, window nets, probably race radio, etc. $1500-$2000. Anything I'm missing? Would it be better to race prep an H6 rather than swap the engine into mine?

Is there any good way to compress the tensioner when installed? If you put everything together but one sprocket is off a tooth and you need to loosen the belt to move that, there has to be a good way to do it. I've pried up slowly with a prybar until I can get the pin back in. It works and I've driven the car since, but I'm afraid that might damage the belt. Not a lot of room or good visibility with the radiator in place.

Are you talking about the hoop we run in the back of the car for the races? That's so when we get nerfed the hatch doesn't get destroyed. Our limiting factor on travel and tire clearance is the springs. We're already pushing them almost to coil bind and they have no preload, so there's no good way to move the spring perch up without using a shorter spring and losing travel. Taller tires would be nice, more ground clearance would be good, should improve the ride quality too, but the current gearing is already barely tolerable with the tires we have. I wonder if we'd start to wear out or break axles faster too.

Engine was dripping coolant from the water pump area, so I got a water pump and new timing belt and we replaced those yesterday. Seems to have cured the leak so far. Might have just been the water pump gasket. Not too bad to do in the car.

Rerouted and replaced most of the fuel lines, rewired and mounted the pumps on top of the fuel cell. Put different color zip ties on each hose for future troubleshooting, that's already come in handy. Used Gates 225psi fuel hose which seems to kink more easily than other fuel hose I've used, but works. Any suggestions on a good 3/8" hose for fuel injection? The pumps definitely make more noise now that they're in the car, but once you're moving you can't really hear them over a little tire and wind noise. The power wire to the fuel pump that used to go to the top of the stock fuel tank is questionable, light gauge to begin with and slightly corroded now. I should probably run a wire from the fuel pump relay to the back of the car sometime. Ran it a bit, everything seemed good, then went for a test drive around the block and when I got back there was fuel spraying out the bottom of the car. It was coming out the gasket on the surge tank. My first thought was that the overflow hose from the surge tank was a little kinked and maybe that was causing the tank to build up pressure. Wanted to replace the gasket and shorten the studs so I took that all apart. Then I realized there's still a check valve in one of the bulkhead fittings designed to keep the gas from coming out the vent in a rollover. That must have closed and kept the fuel from going out the overflow. So I removed that ball and snapring. That might have been a small part of our problem before, the pump flowing through that little hole in the side of the fitting was probably heating up the fuel a bit.

Here is the best picture I got of how smashed the exhaust was. Not terrible but probably not good, and pressed up against the power steering lines. You can also see where I had to weld shut the hole/crack we got during the race. For the time being I picked up a header from the junkyard that was lying under a Forester. Cut out some copper gaskets for the flanges. Have small tubes inside of those joints as well to minimize leakage. This is all the exhaust that's on the car right now and it's quiet enough. Eventually I'll run it to the back, probably get rid of this muffler, and have one near the back of the car. Going to make a skidplate out of 1/16" 4130 under the Y pipe and crossmember. Got it mocked up out of cardboard and have the piece of steel, just have to get around to making it. Probably have some spacers under the crossmember to help keep the exhaust from getting crushed. Really leaning towards the H6 swap though, so no sense doing a bunch of exhaust work yet.

Most recreational Subaru off roading I've seen has been closer to crawling than high speed running. Rally / rallycross is probably more similar to what we're doing, but those courses are usually fairly smooth. So I think the market for Subaru suspension built for what we're doing and the number of people who will pay for it is pretty small. I know what you're talking about with the mid and long travel kits for trucks, most of the guys trying to do budget pre running or whatever you want to call it are used to doing that in trucks, not in cars. Is that because they're inherently better suited with actual frames, more ground clearance, and bigger tires, or just because that's how they've done it for decades? We just thought since Subarus seem to ride better over rough terrain compared to any truck or SUV we've been in (stock vs stock) they would be a better starting point. I think one thing keeping people out of that end of the market is that it isn't just making wider arms and selling shocks and springs that fit. You have to make struts, which are just inherently more complicated and specialized. Given the right volume the price shouldn't be much more than shocks, but it's hard to get there. Maybe with the increase in popularity of Subarus now and with models like the Forester, Baja, and Crosstrek, more people will start going what we're doing with them.

Back to brass tacks. We went through the struts, wheel bearings, ball joints, etc and they all seem good. Parking brake shoes are worn way down again, pretty sure that's just from sand and dirt getting in, we hardly ever use the parking brake. Since the battery has top and side posts and we had the positive cable come loose during the race, figured it'd be a good idea to add some short jumper wires to tie into the side posts: I had started to fabricate a new handle for the hatch when my friend suggested I see what the dealer wanted for one. Turns out it's only $25, if this one lasts 17 years I'll be happy.

Definitely wouldn't try an EA dual range. Apparently we don't NEED low range, but it would be helpful at times. During the race (with a flat tire) and in the UP in really soft sand, there have been a few times where it's nearly impossible to get started because of the gearing/tires/engine torque. With the current engine closer ratios might be good, there were a few times going up grades during the race that third was too tall and second was too short. Like you say though, more power/torque solves all of those problems. I've talked to a few people who build EJ engines and it sounds like it would be about $4000 for not much more power and torque than we have now. Our friend recently finished swapping an EZ30 H6 into his four seat street tube buggy (had a Rabbit 4 cyl) and tells me I should go that route. Probably the main question there is whether or not to upgrade to a six speed at the same time. Thanks for that info, unfortunately none of that was ever sold in the US, so they're hard to find with any ratios. I do have a line on a 4.11 with 1.59 low range though, if we don't do the H6 that would probably be the way to go.

Don't worry about jacking the thread, sorry I didn't reply to this earlier. Fox is such a big company making shocks for everything from bicycles to trophy trucks, if they think they'd only sell a few sets of Subaru shocks/struts a year (and they're probably right), why would they bother? I don't think we've ever seen any other Subarus when we go to off road parks or exploring off pavement. I think what would make them more willing to work with Subaru people is if those people actually bought parts from them, which it sounds like doesn't happen. I guess this guy was just doing donuts in their parking lot just inside the entrance and not trail riding. There are often a lot of people with trailers there so it might have been dangerous, I don't know. I'm sure if he was out in the park somewhere no one would care. I think you're right about just using a standard EJ low range trans.