pontoontodd

They definitely make the car a lot more fun and durable. I'm happy to see interest in these but keep in mind the shocks and springs alone are close to $2000. Then we have to modify the shafts, make housings, assemble bearings, seals, etc.

They are Fox 2.0 smooth bodied reservoir shocks. I had to modify the shafts to attach to the bottom of the strut housings, which I made from scratch. You might want to wait until we've put some more miles on them, but I would definitely be willing to build you a set.

Painted the exhaust and fuel cell and got that all together and hooked up. Fired it up a few days ago. Still have to put the rear suspension back together, including replacing a wheel bearing. Started mocking up the long travel front struts too, so far so good.

The bottom frame is painted and loosely bolted in. I should have welded it as much as I could while it was in the car. I had it tack welded pretty well and did all the welding off the car and it distorted a bit. The exhaust is all tack welded now, just have to finish weld that and I plan on painting it since some of it is not aluminized. I plan on angle cutting the outlet/tip so it's less likely to get packed full of dirt when backing up. In the picture below you can sort of see the little brackets that mount the middle of this frame to the bottom of the stock subframe. Below you can see where it will bolt into the stock tie down points. You can also kind of see the support running across the middle of the fuel cell. In the last picture you can see how this frame ties into the rear bumper. Also welded a receiver on the bumper. There are some gussets on the backside of the bumper not visible in this picture. Mainly more painting and reassembly left now. I also have all the parts and made most of the brackets and tabs for the front struts, so I'll start on those soon.

Finally have the fuel cell support / diff protection and rear bumper welded, just needs paint. Most other aspects of the fuel system and exhaust are figured out now and mostly done. Should have shocks next week so I can make the front struts and get this thing back on the road (and off).

Good to know, I'll probably leave it all in for now but might wind up doing that.

Made some progress on the back end of the car in the past few weeks. 2" angle iron to support and locate the fuel cell. Plan on at least bolting these to the floor. Thought about welding them to the floor originally but probably won't. Also originally planned on adding two pieces front to rear, one bolted to either side of the fuel cell, but probably won't. Filler tube is about the same level as the angle irons. Plan is to cut some big pieces of foam once we have the other lines in place to put the floor on. I'll just put the stock cardboard and carpet in for now, eventually would have to make something out of sheet metal if we go desert racing. Still have to add a return fitting, probably on the fill plate. Rear bumper was easier to make than I thought it would be. Sticks out farther than the stock steel bumper. Easier to back up to a tree, etc without worrying about blowing out the rear glass. Easier to throw a recovery strap around it too. These side rails stick out a little past the rear fenders and taillights. It's too late to keep the fenders from being dented, but at least should protect the taillights when I slide into a tree. Stock plastic bumper cover fits over it like the front one. Just have to add a few caps, weld, and paint that. I'll probably gusset where the 2" square tubes (that go into the frame rails) come out and connect with the 4" tube. Unfortunately the 3 gallon cell I had wouldn't fit so I got a 1 gallon fuel cell as a surge tank. Mounted a Walbro 255lph pump I had from another project to it. Routed the exhaust over the rear crossmember. Plenty of room for the muffler where the gas tank used to be and not much room where the fuel cell is now. Right now the front of the skid frame attaches to the rear subframe mounts and the rear attaches to the tow hooks. Working on making brackets to connect the middle to the tapped holes by the lateral link mounts on the rear crossmember. Originally had it mounted to the holes near the front of the rear diff in the picture below but got rid of those for a couple reasons. One, we could move it up an inch or so. Two, that normally flexes relative to the rest of the subframe so I'll probably cut the points off those mitered joints for clearance. Probably add some tabs where those mounts are to keep this from bending up too high. Also plan on adding some type of connection(s) from that tube behind the rear diff up to the angle iron under the fuel cell and some support in the middle of the bottom of the fuel cell. Plan on adding a few tubes welded to that tube between the tow hooks and bolted to the rear bumper. How should I finish the exhaust? I thought about a downturn or side dump. Leaning towards angling it down some but have it come short of the angled tubes I plan to add. I've packed the stock exhaust with dirt a bunch of times when going backwards, but it sticks way behind and below the stock steel bumper. Plan on welding a receiver to the bottom of the bumper tube. Departure angle should be slightly better without the hitch, diff should be more protected from backing into things, and lateral link mounts are much better protected. Anybody have a diagram of how all the fuel tank vent hoses connect to the carbon canister, etc?

Why not just cut off that whole overhanging piece of fender at this point?

I like your idea of bodywork. Are the tailgate and rear lights going back on, or is the back going to stay like that? The + $$$$$$$$ answer is active suspension. For you to have zero body movement you'd need infinitely soft springs with infinite preload. Since that's not practical, you'd want very soft springs with a lot of preload. The downside is that you'll get more body roll and the ride height will be very load dependent, but for what you're doing that's probably not a major issue. Rising or dual rate springs would help. If you have more details of the suspension layout and spring placement I could make a suggestion.

Have you seen swingset steering on off road trucks? Pretty complicated, but you can get whatever geometry you want that way and move the rack too if that helps. First picture I could find: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/general-4x4-discussion/1909993-basic-ifs-bump-steer-tech-4.html#post28932561 Maybe you could make it simpler by putting the rack in the stock location and fabbing up a trapezoid. The top of the trapezoid would attach to both ends of the rack. The bottom could be at the right width and location to minimize bumpsteer. No idea if something like that could fit around your trans, etc.

This is what the underside of a Subaru Outback looks like mostly stock for reference: We did find a couple of things upon disassembly. One was that one of the weights on the front of the subframe was gone and the other one was about to fall off: Those are some kind of tuned mass dampers, right? There were also cracks at the bottom of the stamped crossmember on the body above where the subframe bolts onto the stamped frame rails. These appeared to be mainly due to corrosion. Picture is blurry but you get the idea. Disassembly was a lot easier than I expected. Really only ran into a few badly rusted bolts. Pile of parts removed: Here is our blank canvas: Cut a big hole where the spare tire and muffler used to be that just fits the 22 gallon fuel cell. I have an idea for a low profile fill neck. It hangs a little lower than the trailer hitch but it's closer to the axle. Plan on having a frame underneath it, possibly tying into or replacing what used to be the gas tank guard, probably with a tube right behind the rear diff to protect that too. Leaning toward removing the stock bumper and hitch and making a fabricated bumper for the rear and welding the receiver to it. I might paint the can black so it doesn't stick out. Unfortunately the small fuel cell I have will not fit so I have to find a different surge tank. Any suggestions on surge tank and external pump? Can the stock pump be used externally or will it overheat? I thought about mounting a stock pump/pickup in the surge tank but I'm a bit concerned about the wiring. I have seen two wire bulkhead connectors so I guess I could use one of those. Also, can anyone find a diagram of what exactly all these vent hoses do? There were at least three from the top of the tank to that black box and one to the front. The manual I have doesn't explain all of them.

For instance, could you run a tube from the right side of the firewall or your top "frame rail" to the left side of the bumper? That way it would brace the bumper side to side.

I don't know if it would clear your engine, radiator, etc. but it looks like it would be good to add a diagonal to brace the bumper laterally.

One of the things that happened in Kentucky when I hit a big rock too fast was some damage to the right front control arm mounts. As you can see it bent the aluminum bracket so I replaced that: Also damaged the front mount: So I got that back into shape, welded the crack, and turned up a slug and welded it on to reinforce the hole:

I think you're right, although I'm not sure exactly when or how this has been happening. It seems to just gradually get worse. When we first built it the upper arm mounts would shift on the subframe, but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore. We started to bend at least one rod end but that hasn't happened in a while. It's possible the outer part of the arm is bending or the bracket on the spindle is moving but it doesn't look like it. All reasons to just build front struts for it. The other thing on the top of my list now is the fuel tank / fuel cell. The current tank really has to go. It leaks when it's anywhere near full which is annoying at a minimum. Despite replacing the siphoning mechanism (which I tried from two different cars) with a transfer pump, it still occasionally starves out of fuel on hard right hand turns below 1/2 tank. It's much better with the pump than it was with the siphon, but still annoying. My current thought is to cut out the spare tire well (which can't hold an oversized tire) and hang a 20-30 gallon fuel cell there. Put a flat piece of sheet metal in the "trunk" to cover it up. The main thing I haven't figured out here is how to run the fill neck. Most of the standard tanks have a center fill. I already have a 3 gallon fuel cell laying around I'd use as a surge tank where the stock tank / pump is located. Already have the transfer pump. I'd probably run an external fuel pump. More flow than stock might be good for future power adders but low noise and high reliability are my priorities. So here are my questions: If I use a standard fuel cell where the spare tire well is, how should I route the filler? Anyone know of a standard 20-30 gallon fuel cell with the fill neck somewhat near the side? Is there a high pressure pump that I can mount and plumb externally that's fairly quiet and super reliable?

The spring perch mod definitely fixed the noisy rear suspension. We've been tuning the shocks a bit, mainly adding a lot of damping in front, but it still needs more. I even let the guy who's helping us tune the shocks drop the front end of the car with at least a foot of air under the front tires I've become so confident in the suspension. For lots of reasons I think struts in the front would be better. I think we could even gain an inch or two of travel. I recently fixed the exhaust I smashed in Kentucky. This picture doesn't show it well but it was probably flattened to about half its original diameter. One of the wires for the front O2 sensor was broken and another one broke while I was splicing that one, so hopefully those are conducting electricity now: Had a 1.75" u bend lying around so I spliced part of that in:

Some SUVs with the tire on the back are easily totalled in a minor collision because you're now destroying your rear tailgate, etc rather than just the bumper. Something to keep in mind when building it at least.

Those tire patch kits with the little rubber ropes, rubber cement, and insertion tool work surprisingly well too, but it's good to have a way to air up then. I vote for rear swing out.

After checking over the long travel there are a few things that should be improved. Overall it's held up well considering how hard we've been beating on it. The front has a bunch of minor issues, most of which would be solved by going to long travel struts. We might even be able to get more travel than the a-arms that way. It would certainly be cheaper and simpler. The rear has always been noisy and I think we figured out why. The top spring perches are just bolted to the body which is not square with the strut. I briefly thought about that when we were building it but didn't realize it would be such a big deal. There is about a ten degree difference between the angle of the top perch and the strut, which causes the top spring to bend outward when compressed. This has worn some flats in the coils and has been wearing out our wiper seal retainers. It even broke one apart. Ten degrees didn't sound like much but it works out to about 3/4" over the width of the perch. Bolted back up to the car without the spring and compressed it most of the way and it's within 1/8" of square now. Hopefully this will solve the wear and noise issues in the rear.

For some reason that's not in the 2015 BITD rulebook. Sounds like it would be a good fit. Class 3000 is a spec Ecotec class, maybe that's replaced 3100.

If I did a desert race in a Subaru it would be to try to finish within the time limit, not to be competitive. I did talk to BITD and they said we'd probably be in the 1800 class (the sportsman equivalent of class 1 / 1500). We might be able to run in class 7100.

I'm at a crossroads now. I think this could go a combination of three ways: Trail riding at offroad parks Expedition / car camping trips Desert racing We've done a fair amount of trail riding. It's fun, pretty cheap, relatively low risk (you can walk out if necessary). It's also the easiest thing to get a bunch of people to go along with since it's usually a day or weekend trip. We've been around most of the off road parks within 500 miles of here now and that will probably start to get old soon. #1 mod if we keep doing that would be a low range. I took some measurements when we had the trans apart and I think I could make a high / low range and front / rear / 4WD selection mechanism in place of the center diff in the tailhousing. A 2:1 low range and 4WD would make this thing nearly unstoppable, and let us crawl when we'd like to. I'd really like to do more expo style trips. Car camping on dirt roads if you will. It's hard to get many people to get enough time off work at the same time to do these, and it's a good thing to have multiple vehicles and a bunch of people along for entertainment, splitting the driving, navigating, etc. The trips to the UP we've done have been fun and we're trying to figure one out this summer. I might do one in October/November in Arizona also. Biggest mod for that at the moment would be a bigger fuel tank, or at least one that doesn't leak when it's full. We've always wanted to do some desert racing. Vegas to Reno, Baja 1000, Dakar. In the Subaru we'd just be trying to finish within the time limit. This would definitely be the most expensive option. We've been seriously talking about running one in Texas this September. Their races are about 200 miles long on a 20 mile loop so it's not as involved as a big point to point desert race. At a minimum we'd have to put in: fuel cell(s) - I would put a rectangular 20-25 gallon cell in place of the spare tire well and we'd have to remove the stock gas tank, maybe put a ~3 gallon surge tank in its place. cage harnesses race seats There are also a lot of relatively minor things we'd need, like different lights, sealed battery, driveshaft hoop, possibly added door latches and we might need a SEMA bellhousing/cover. It would also make sense to put in a dust filter for the engine and a fresh air fan for our helmets. Not to mention a solid rear bumper for when we get nerfed. Yes, I've seen the thread on advrider (http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=845950) of the guy who finished the Mexican 1000 in a Subaru. He is part of the inspiration here. We talked about getting a rust free car before we do all this work to it, but it might make more sense to just do it to a car we have first. Could always use the fuel cell, harnesses, seats, etc in a more solid car later and probably build it better using our experience with the first one. A strategy we discussed to get the most bang for the buck would be to build a few cars similar and stick together and carry our own spares. That would drastically reduce the cost of chase trucks, etc and/or the risk of being unable to fix the car in the middle of the desert. I've sort of been focused on the expo style trips, and to some extent could keep modifying the car to do all three, but it probably makes sense to choose one or two to focus on. Let me know your thoughts or if there's something I'm overlooking.

The camera is mounted on the front bumper so it might look faster than it is. We were going fast when we could though. He did say he should have aired down but we never did. I'm not sure what pressure he was running. It was trailered there and back and I had a valve core removal tool, so there was no reason not to air down some.

video from our trip to Kentucky:

It would definitely help with that, although with the long travel that problem hasn't occurred. Some rock crawlers use two so they can lock any combination of brakes.