pontoontodd

Replaced the head gaskets. A lot of the black rubber was worn off. After we got the engine back in the car it wouldn't start. It would sort of fire but didn't run. After trying a few other things, I took the timing belt covers off to double check the belt alignment. I realized I'd used the arrow on the crank pulley instead of the barely visible hash mark to line the crank up. Fortunately it had retarded the crank ninety degrees so it doesn't seem to have hurt anything. This is the first timing belt I've installed wrong like that and I was very relieved that the engine ran once I lined it up and doesn't seem damaged. While the engine was out and apart I put a new (to me) oil pan on it, replaced the valve cover gaskets, put in new spark plugs and re siliconed the boots. Bores looked good, could still see the crosshatching and ring gaps appeared to be .020-.030", so we didn't touch the bottom end. Seems to run as well as before if not a little better. Another strange thing while we had the engine out is that the car has been sitting for a couple of weeks with doors open, etc so the battery voltage was a little low. We replaced the HVAC control and tested that out. Seems to work but the door sticks near the middle of the travel so sometimes the motor can't push it past that point by itself. May have been the problem all along, I never re tested the old controller. So after doing that we turned off the ignition and the fuel pump kicked in and started pumping gas all over the floor. Did it to my friend and then I did the same thing later. Now that the battery is charged and everything is hooked back up to the engine it's back to normal. While the engine was out it was a perfect time to put in a new condenser and bigger radiator. The stock radiator support seemed very weak and bent out of shape, so we started by cutting that out. Purposely made the brackets for the bottom of the condenser so they can bend when things move. This shows the mounts for the grommets for the radiator and condenser, I also cut some notches out of the tube and boxed them back in to clear the tanks. Had to mount the radiator as low as possible to get the hood to shut. Grommets (and engine) installed. The fans I got were too short. It think they might be for a normal Legacy instead of a turbo. Welded some tabs to the bottoms of them to make them work. Painted them later. The radiator I used is for an early 90s Legacy turbo, which doesn't have a radiator cap. Apparently the stock little pressure tanks tend to go bad so it's cheaper and easier to just buy an aftermarket one. Welded some brackets on to steel pipe plugs that go in either end. Also had to move the hood latch. Here's everything painted and put together. The car runs much colder now. Hard to say how much of that is the head gaskets and how much is the radiator. I haven't had the OBDII on it yet but it probably runs 70 degrees colder than before. It rarely gets up to the middle of the gauge. I'll probably make a panel soon that blocks off the radiator under the bumper to protect the condenser and radiator from sticks, etc and keep it from running too cold.

One who's never driven one on the street.

That's obviously what most off road racers do. Totally impractical for a car that's mainly driven on the street though. FWIW, there are some race series that require AC. It's proven that if you can stay at a comfortable temperature, I think around 70F, you will make fewer mistakes. Equipment operators are 20 or 30% more efficient with heat, AC, and a comfortable seat and controls. I've heard Dakar racers talk about how having the cockpit well sealed, dust free, and air conditioned really helps. That's not to say that for a one day desert race it's worth having windows and AC.

Considering the evaporator probably hadn't been touched in 17 years and 200k miles, I think it will probably stay clean for a while. This car is primarily used for driving around town, road trips, and trail riding, and the AC is very nice for all of those things. Also, in a completely enclosed car with a firesuit and helmet on, it gets pretty hot. I would imagine really hot if it's 100+ outside. I think the only AC component that weighs more than a pound or two is the compressor. The refrigerant probably weighs as much as the condenser or evaporator. I could see removing the AC for engine cooling or fuel consumption purposes though.

I think a lot of it slowly accumulates from dust clinging to the condensation when the air's on. So unless you had an actual cabin air filter, a screen probably won't do a lot of good.

This is what the AC evaporator looked like. This is after we cleaned it as best we could while it was still in the car a couple months ago.

You could use electrical conduit (EMT) instead. 1.5" conduit is almost exactly 1.75" OD, you can buy the bends and straights and tack weld them together for your templates. If you want to stick with the PVC, you can get elbows that will probably be close to a tubing bend. A quick search shows Home Depot has these for $3, they're called long elbows: http://www.homedepot.com/p/1-1-2-in-PVC-DWV-90-Degree-Spigot-x-Hub-Long-Turn-Elbow-C4807LTHD112/100347073 You can chop off the outer part of the collars to make it fit flush with the inside of the car if that's a concern.

So I drained the coolant and pulled the radiator and condenser out so I can replace the condenser and test fit the Mishimoto rad. It'll make engine removal much easier too. This might have been hurting the cooling system performance. Between cleaning the stock rad up and replacing the head gaskets we'd probably be safe, but who's to say the radiator won't get half plugged up during the V2R. Might as well have as much cooling capacity as possible. It looks like the Mishimoto rad will fit with the first gen Legacy fans. Even looks like the fans plug right in and rad hoses probably fit. Looks like I'll probably need an overflow can w/ cap, didn't realize the Legacy turbo had a remote cap.

So I'll probably just do the Felpro head gasket kit and replace the spark plugs. Going to order new heater hoses too since the one blew out. Do I need to replace the head bolts? Thermostat (Subaru), water pump, idlers, and timing belt all have less than 20k miles on them. Anything else I should replace while it's out and somewhat apart?

After talking to our friend who's done a ton of them, at the moment I'm just planning on doing head and valve cover gaskets. Quite a bit more work and money to do the bottom (middle?) end. Didn't see any JDM 2.5s in a quick search either. Not excited about the wiring, etc to make the H6 work this summer.

You would definitely be safe milling out the part that goes in the spindle or slotting the wheel pilot. Most of the weight savings is probably in making the wheel flange star shaped though. Are you even going to be able to do that after adding six more holes to it? It will make the flange weaker too, but it would probably still be strong enough. Also, since wheel bearings and hubs are a wear item, you'd have to do this every time you replaced them. Same with the brake discs. I personally don't think it would be worth the time and effort. I saw something where a guy CNC milled small block chevy block castings and took 30-50 pounds of iron out of them and they were still reliable. So that kind of thing is feasible, just a question of how much time you want to spend on it. You could clean 100% of the undercoating off your body and save quite a bit of weight there.

I have to thank you guys for hounding me about the head gasket issue or looking at some other cause of the overheating. I've checked several times, even used the head gasket leak tester. Over the weekend we drove down to the Smoky Mountains. At one gas stop I left the engine running and looked in the overflow bottle and saw tiny air bubbles coming out the overflow hose. Maybe one every few seconds, 1/16 or 1/8” diameter. So the engine probably has a bad head gasket. Temps were in the 80s all weekend, had to run the rear fan quite a bit of the time on the way down, AC running the whole time. I had to shut off the air going up long grades a few times each day the whole trip. We met up with our friends who brought their street legal woods buggies down to do some sightseeing and hit some trails. Saturday we circled around Smoky Mt National Park mainly on paved roads, some of which (32) were miles of switchback turns. Not really my thing but I practiced using the turning brake a bit trying to keep up with them. That paved section of 32 was the only time I struggled to keep up. We did get to a one way road (Heintooga Round Bottom Road) that leads down to the Cherokee reservation. At the top a Jeep was heading down so my friend decided we should wait and use the bathroom so we wouldn’t be stuck behind them the entire time. Then a guy in a Subaru Crosstrek headed down the trail. Then a girl in a Mazda came flying in and shot down the road like she wasn’t even going off pavement. Then someone else in a late model VW headed down. That road was pretty fun, a little rough but driveable in basically any street car. Fortunately everyone we caught up to (all the cars we saw head down plus a few more) moved over to let us by, which was not the case on most other roads. We passed the Subaru shortly after starting but it took us a while to catch the Mazda. We weren't going super fast, just running a decent pace. For five or ten minutes after we passed the guy in the VW he was keeping up with us, then we got to some rough sections and never saw him again. We stopped in Cherokee for ice cream. Started heading back to Gatlinburg and stopped to watch the elk. They wanted to head back to the campsite to clean up so I decided to loop back on the Blue Ridge Parkway and hit the one way road again. Ran it a little faster this time. We did come across a native American family driving an 80’s monte carlo up the road the wrong way. Got back to the elk crossing area and took some pictures. We put on about 200 miles that day. Sunday we met them at the campground again and went to Max Patch, which is a 360 degree view of the Smoky Mts on a big grassy hill. Rode some interesting dirt roads down from there, probably the roughest trails we were on that weekend, again could have probably driven them in a stock Subaru. At one point we stopped in a parking area to use the bathroom and a minute after shutting off the Subaru coolant started steaming out from under the hood. The stock heater hose that's still in place had burst in the middle. I was able to reroute the hoses going to the rear heater core to just bypass the stock heater core. Fortunately we didn't need heat and got kind of lucky that happened in such a convenient spot. So I obviously need to replace the head gaskets. I have and will read up on this, but what else should I check or replace while the engine is out and torn apart? It's going through a quart of oil every 500 miles or so. I think it would make sense to hone the cylinders and replace the rings and bearings. Should I get reground cams? Should I replace the timing belt or oil pump? Is there some 30k mile $1000 JDM engine that would bolt in and plug in? How much work is it really to get an H6 to run in this car? One of my friends does have a 2.5L from a first gen OB sitting in his barn but I think it needs head gaskets also. I'm still going to replace the condenser and evaporator since those are both beat up and dirty. I'm going to see how well the thicker first gen legacy radiator and fans fit too, probably still try to make that work. It's nice to have some extra cooling capacity in case something gets clogged up or we develop another head gasket leak or something.

Here is the vented hood we tried. Started by cutting a U shape. Cut out some of the ribbing under that section. Bent it down as far as we could while leaving about an inch of clearance between the flap and the accessories. Tack welded in some pieces of sheet metal on the sides. Welded and sanded it. Still in the primer / sanding phase. A few days ago it was 80F so we did some cooling system testing. Unplugged the radiator fans for better consistency, removed the air dam, covered the rear heater core, and taped a piece of cardboard over the vent in the hood. My friend brought his bluetooth OBDII plug and loaded the app on my tablet. The temp gauge doesn’t register until the ECU says about 110F, then gets up to the bottom of the thermometer (middle of gauge) at 150F and stays there until it gets over 210F. 230F is about the top of the thermometer picture, almost 3 / 4 of the way up the gauge. So the gauge is very non linear. It did seem to normally register a rise in temperature slightly before the ECU but they otherwise followed each other consistently. Going up the highway at 65mph with the AC on the temps only got up to 200 or 210F. By this point the cardboard had blown off the vent, it clearly had higher pressure underhood than above. On the interstate at 80mph the temps crept up to and stabilized at 230F with the AC off. We put the air dam on, didn’t seem to have any effect. Then we taped over the hood vent more securely this time. It may have increased the temps a couple degrees being blocked off. Perhaps with the fans on the vent would be more helpful. Then we removed the cardboard from the hood vent and the rear heater core. Without the rear fan on, it lowered temps to 226F. With the fan on the temps immediately started dropping, going down to about 210F. We were then able to run the AC and the temps went back up to about 226F. So the hood vent and air dam seemed to do almost nothing. The rear heater core without fan was good for five or ten degrees, with the fan it dropped temps about 20 degrees. Turning the AC on raised the water temp about 15 degrees. After that we put the stock hood back on. The next day driving around town in 87F weather with the AC on full blast and the radiator fans plugged back in it ran at the bottom of the thermometer except for one time it started to creep up a little bit, maybe 220, and then went back down. Never turned on the rear fan. The day after that it was in the low 80s. We drove the OB out to our friend's test area outside of town at 60-65mph. AC on the whole time, temps at the bottom of the thermometer. We took the Subaru out in his yard and beat on it pretty hard. Everything was quite overgrown but I was hitting some of the little jumps faster than I think we have in the past. After a while I noticed the temp gauge was at the top of the thermometer so I turned off the AC and turned on the rear fan. After the temps dropped I turned the AC back on. When we headed back on the highway I had to have the rear fan on most of the time to keep temps at the bottom of the thermometer. AC wasn’t blowing very cold on the way home. Last year we were able to drive down to the off road park on a 90F day, beat on the car all day, and drive home, all with the AC on full blast the whole time and no rear heater core and no overheating. Then in TX during the race at about 70F we could only run the AC a small percentage of the time by the end of the day. The next few days down there in the 80s we had to run the heat quite a bit to keep the car from overheating. Now we never have to run the heat but occasionally have to run the rear fan if we want to run the AC in the 80s. So even without using the rear heater core it's better than it was in TX but not as good as it was last year. Next week I'm getting a new AC condenser and evaporator. They're both pretty beat/dirty. I'm also getting a 2" Mishimoto aluminum radiator for early 90's turbo Legacy and used fans and overflow bottle. Seemed like the most likely thing to fit and hook up.

The Haynes manual actually has some good info on this. They have the pinout for the heater control (the thing with the pushbuttons on the dash) and mine appears to be completely dead. No continuity between any terminals in any setting. Fortunately the fan and AC switches still work. There is also a mode control motor above the gas pedal screwed to the HVAC unit. It looks like this and has a brown wire harness plug going into it: It has an arm coming out the back (passenger side when in the car) that actuates the flap for vent/floor/defrost. You can test it by applying 12V to the two pins on the end nearest the middle of the box. One polarity moves CW, the other CCW. Mine seems to work. At the moment I just pushed the arm this controls to the vent position by hand. AC is weak as always but at least it's coming out where I want it. When you compare this to the super simple, cheap, lightweight cable that controls the hot/cold mix it's almost comical.

This is one of the modified front spring perches. Struts are all back together and on the car. Definitely seems quieter than before with tight bearings, hopefully they last longer than the small bearings. Really hoping these bushings stay in place. Another thing we did recently was a change in the fuel cell foam. My wire cage for the fuel level sender didn't stay in place, the blocks of foam still moved around and kept the float ball from going down into the fuel. So I got a piece of foam big enough for half of the fuel cell and we cut a window in it for the float. This foam is pretty stiff so we had to cut a couple of pieces out of the outside of it to fit it in the cell. We put them back in place in the cell. Seems to work for now, again we'll see how long it lasts. One thing I could use some help with is the HVAC. Since I've bought the car it's occasionally been hesitant to switch between defrost/floor/vent. Usually it eventually goes where you want it. Recently if I switch it to defrost or floor it stays there and I can't get it to come out the vents. I'd had it switched to vent for a while and it eventually started coming out them. A couple days ago I switched it to floor and now it won't go back to coming out the vents even after driving it a few times. Advice?

These are the new housings and spring perches ready to be painted. Painted, reassembled, and ready to install. Still plenty of sidewall clearance with the new mounts and definitely more tread clearance too. Hoping the new bushings stay in place.

Since we'd bent the spindle brackets on the rear struts and had plenty of tire clearance at the sidewall, I got new plates cut to bring the strut body out a little and shorten up the tabs. Also boxed in the bottom. At the same time it seemed we were hitting coil bind with the rear springs and had almost no tire clearance at the tread. I doubt we could have even put a new tire on and had it clear. One of the progressively wound springs we were using is on the top of the next picture. You can see it limits our travel a bit since the coils on one end are close together. In the middle of the picture on the strut is one of the new springs we're using. Since there are fewer coils (at least initially) it should stiffen/lift the rear end a little bit. The bottom spring is one of the new ones that hasn't been cut yet. Since these springs have a little bit of play and I don't want them to rotate and pinch the reservoir hose, I welded some beads on the perch to keep them in place. Hard to see in this picture but also welded some little tabs on so the hose fitting limits the rotation of the shock, rather than the hose rubbing or pinching. Putting small hoses on the rear now. Another problem is that the bushings we're using don't seem to stay in place. Most of them were slid down in the housing, even though we now have screws below them to hold them in place. They also would not slide over the shocks. So they seem to be shrinking somehow. Again, not the best picture, but this one was even split. Before I started modifying all this I thought about just making new housings and keeping these for spares. I would have had to buy a shock or two, and didn't really want to do that. Ultimately I decided not to because I thought I would be able to reuse the bushings. Since I'm trying a different kind of bushing, spring, top cap, and hose, I kind of wish I'd just left these together and put together a completely new set.

One thing I'm changing while we're going through the struts is swapping out the top caps with some that have a bigger bearing. The fronts were both badly worn and don't have as much time on them as the rears. These also have a smaller hydraulic port which matches the smaller hoses we're using now. The bushings I'd made before (bottom) were super too since we're using 12mm bolts and the old bearings have a 1/2" hole in them. The new bushings are easier to make and should hold up a lot better.

My wife and I went up to the UP over the weekend, just did a little sightseeing, hiking, and canoeing. After recently driving to Texas and back a five hour drive seems like nothing. Took the Outback which right now has the stock struts on it while I'm fixing the long travel. Figured we weren't going off road for a month or two so I've got the city boy tires on it. You probably know where this story is going. We decided to go to the Keeweenaw one day. Just south of Hougton we saw snow in the ditches and in the woods in Trimountain and a few other places. North of Hancock I tried to head north a couple of times, just finding dead ends. The second one along the Gratiot river was a slightly rough and rocky dirt road. Managed to get a flat RF tire near the end of the road, someone driving the other way warned us we had a flat tire, decided to just drive to the end and fix it there. We walked along the shore a little and drove back to the highway. Found a gas station with compressed air and plugged the bad tire (sidewall and tread) and aired it up. Those tires are super thin compared to the mud tires. Around Allouez we headed north along the shore up to copper harbor. On the way we were going to stop at Cat harbor to walk on the small sandy beach and noticed a Chevy S truck that was sunk into the sand. We pulled up and could clearly tell they had been digging for a while since it was almost two feet down into the sand in the rear, so probably 2WD. I told them I had a strap and they cheered. I didn’t know how much effort it would take so I hooked the strap to both his front tow hooks and around the rear bumper of the Subaru. They asked if I wanted the Jeep that was there to do it but I figured we could get it with the Subaru. I think I even had the left tires on dry pavement. We pulled them out with minimal effort. My wife said one of the women said something about how they were saved by a “little Subaru Outback”. Drove to the end of highway 41 and when we turned around saw the sign for Miami 1990 miles. Drove south to the southern shore and followed that down to Gay, Michigan. Saw some ice on the rocks on the way. Drove by the Gay bar and drove onto the beach. This beach is miles of mine tailings so it's legal to drive on. It's impressive how much ore they must have dug out of the ground and processed. I never thought we were going to get stuck but the stock struts really took the fun out of it. One of those things you don't realize how good it is until you don't have it. Just trying to keep up enough speed so I wasn't worried about getting stuck the car was bottoming out pretty often. Could have probably gone twice as fast without issues with the long travel, with that and the mud tires would have had no concern about getting stuck. Probably would have spent a lot more time checking it out, always a disappointment to drive that far and then have to limit what you do because of what you brought, even though that wasn't the reason for the trip. Between that and the flat tire I decided it's just not worth the slightly reduced tire cost and noise to run the city boy tires. Also, the stock struts have absolutely no damping. It doesn't bottom out as harshly as I remember, but part of that is probably the city boy tires soaking up some of it while the mud tires don't flex much. It's most noticeable cruising down the highway, if you hit a little dip the whole car just oscillates a couple of times.

The dirt collecting there means it's a low pressure zone, which should be pulling air out of the car through the heater core. It could fill the thing up with dirt I suppose. I had also thought about some kind of steel tube under the car to run pipes/hoses through. Keep coming back to the driveshaft tunnel, not sure how well I could make it fit there and I'd have to attach it to something. I'd also thought about something just alongside the stamped "frame rails", I think it would have to be pretty thick tubing to survive there. Not a bad idea to tie it into the frame somehow. My plan is once the vented hood is done to go out on a hot day and tape off / unplug various openings and fans and see what really helps keep it cool. Need to either get a OBD dongle to use with the tablet or some kind of actual temp gauge too.

Good point on finding an H6 for that price. Haven't really started looking very seriously but that does seem to be a cheap one. Any advantages/disadvantages to second vs third gen Outbacks?

Looks like a decent car. At this point I'm thinking something with lower miles and a 2005+ for the bolt on front wheel bearings. Although I guess I know I can just put them on an older car, especially since I probably won't care about ABS.

Still trying to decide what to do about the radiator. At the moment I'm leaning towards the Mishimoto for 91-94 Legacy Turbo. The tanks, inlet, outlet, and mounts look the same. Expensive but probably worth it. I definitely have to replace the condenser. Waiting a bit on both of those, no sense getting them beat up and dirty before the V2R. Didn't see a good place to put the heater core in the front. I suppose it could be mounted to the hood itself but we'd have to do some testing to see how we could get air to flow through it. It would certainly make the plumbing a lot simpler and safer. One of the main thoughts behind the heater core in the hatch is that it should stay pretty clean. Still working on the vent in the hood. I'll post some pictures eventually.

I'd suggest a small Lincoln MIG welder. I've had a weld pack 100 for about twenty years now and it still works great. It runs on 120V AC like most inexpensive welders in the US, so I'm not sure what an equivalent model would be for you. You will definitely want to use inert gas and solid wire. You can get a gas kit if it doesn't come set up for it. The cheapest way in the long run here is to buy a bottle (75/25) and then have it refilled. I bought the largest one they have and probably get it refilled about once a year, sometimes less often. You can still get a small bottle if you need to move it around a lot. I made up a filler out of fittings from McMaster (not sure where you'd get them) to hook one tank to the other to refill the small one with the big one since it's fairly expensive and a hassle to get the small one recharged all the time. If you're going to do that get solid fittings that are rated for the pressure you're dealing with. It's cheaper to buy the larger spools of wire (I think they're 11#) but if you don't use it often and it gets wet/moist the wire can rust and cause all sorts of problems. So if you don't use it a lot get a small spool of wire. For the weld pack 100 I normally use .023" wire. That welder can weld very thin and/or rusty/painted metal surprisingly well. It's of course ideal to have clean metal to weld together but some things can be rushed or can't be cleaned. That welder can weld up to about 1/16" steel very well. You can weld thicker steel with it but you should do multiple passes at the least. I also have a power mig 180C. That's what I normally use now. It is the cheapest 220V welder Lincoln sells here and is MUCH smaller than their other 220V welders. I use .030" wire in that one and you can still turn it low enough to weld .030" thick steel. It's definitely good for 1/8" thick steel and does fine on thicker stuff.

How/where would you suggest doing that? I was originally going to run them in the driveshaft tunnel but I was afraid they'd get snagged or smashed, plus running alongside the hot exhaust would sort of defeat the point. Why would I put heat shielding insulation around the metal lines? The whole point is to reject heat. We even discussed running some of those finned aluminum lines, but they'd probably have to go on the roof or something. If nothing else this way I can find out how much it drops temps to have that heater core and fan in the back.