pontoontodd

If your steering is wobbling, the first thing you should check is the u-jointed steering shaft that connects the column to the rack. You may have to remove it to tell for sure if it's bad. At a minimum watch it while someone else rocks the steering wheel back and forth slightly and watch if you can see any slop. Not super hard to replace. I had an old VW with dried up steering u joints that was sloppy enough to cause the wobble you're talking about. Another thing I had to replace on my car was the rack. You could rock the driver's side of the rack up and down in the housing a signficant amount, say 1/16" of an inch. It should be rock solid. More difficult to replace but not too bad. You should also check the inner and outer tie rod ends. Pretty easy to replace if you have the right tools. Check the lower balljoints and wheel bearings too. A lot of those components were in need of replacement when I got my Outback but haven't had to be replaced a second time, even after a lot of off road abuse. The best way to check all this is to jack the front end of the car up and rock the tire by the top and bottom. If it is at all sloppy, try to see if it's the balljoint or wheel bearing that's moving. Then rock it in a steering motion (front and back of the tire). You can really only see the outer tie rod but should be able to tell if there's any slop in the steering system. Watch the steering wheel through the windshield to see if you have any slop. If everything is in good shape, you should not be able to feel any slop in either direction. If you have enough time on your hands, remove the front struts and remove the front springs (make sure to do that safely with spring compressors). You will be able to tell if the struts are bad if there's no resistance up or down or if they have any slop side to side. Check that the springs don't have a coil broken off too.

He still has the Geolanders that came on it. They still have decent tread but they're obviously not very good in the mud. It was super slick, the Toyota with street tires might have been worse.

Video from our last off road trip:

Thanks for the advice on the clutch cover. I'll try the hose thing if it happens again. Definitely agree on the mudflaps, I could see removing the disc brake dust shields too. Not sure I agree on the timing belt covers, I suppose I should pop one off and see how much stuff is in there.

I think the main cause of the clutch slipping was mud in the pressure plate. I cleaned some of it out and the fingers came up: You can still see the machining marks on most of the friction surface. Disc and flywheel still looked good too. Is there a dust/splash shield that covers the bottom of the flywheel for these cars?

More than I'm willing to spend, although it is low mileage with rear diff and axles. Good to know that option is out there.

That would be great. Easily the biggest handicap to car ownership around here. What do they use near you, sand?

Here's a little trick I figured out that might help someone down the road. I got the nut off the top of the shift linkage bolt but couldn't break the bolt loose. I was starting to round off the hex head. I put the nut back on so I wouldn't damage the threads and put a big socket over the bolt head and pressed it out with a c clamp. If you learn nothing else from this build thread, you should learn never to buy a car from the midwest.

Good to know. How expensive is expensive? Once I have the bad one out and a good one in, I'll probably look more seriously at setting it up with a low range or other mods. Also, how common is trans breakage when offroading these cars? I've heard of guys street racing them breaking first but not off roading. I'm going to keep driving the suspension as is for a while, but so far I think long travel struts in front would be much easier and cheaper than the a arm setup with almost as much travel. I'm hoping the higher clamping force will make the clutch last longer. Hopefully I'll just get a little more wheelspin and less clutch slip when starting. This trans is out of the same year Outback so I should be good, but is there an easy way to check the ring and pinion ratio without taking the trans apart? Next question: We did tear/wear out a brake hose in the rear. There was clearance for it to go up in an upside down U between the tire and strut/reservoir. Then that clearance got filled with mud. I've been thinking about replacing all the brake lines for a while. One of them rusted out last fall and had to be fixed. I should probably reroute them on the suspension with this added travel. The ABS has never worked and takes up space and adds a lot of plumbing. I've always wanted some kind of cutting brake or functional handbrake. My thought is to just run braided stainless -3 from the master, tee to the front calipers. Then run a line from the master to a cutting brake (single handle, left rear, right rear) and from there back to the rear calipers. I could put in two hand brakes and have four wheel independent braking capabilities. Rock crawlers often do this so they can lock up both fronts by pushing both forward, both rears by pulling both, either rear by pulling one, etc. That would cost hundreds more dollars and require a lot more plumbing. Do you know what fittings I would need to do that or where would be the best place to get the fittings/line/etc? I think the Subaru master is 10mm x 1.0 and the calipers are all just banjos.

The auto would definitely be better for crawling, or going to that park we went to Sunday. As you can probably tell I don't have a lot of interest in going super slow. The suspension is almost all bolt on. We'll see how it holds up, but I'm definitely interested in building suspension kits for sale if you have the $$...

Alright, time for more advice wanted. Long story, and eventually I'll at least put up some video, but we went to an off road park yesterday that was all rutted muddy trails. On the plus side, the long travel seemed to work great and we even went over a rock pile that I never would have attempted before. After hundreds of starts/stops and a bunch of pulling people out, my clutch was starting to slip. Then near the end of the day I broke reverse. Not sure how, it just suddenly didn't work and made bad noises. Fortunately we were able to drive home but the clutch did slip a few times just flooring the gas pedal in fourth or fifth gear. So I need a new clutch and trans. I was looking at the Exedy HD, specifically 15801. I think I've found a trans not too far way for $350, I will probably just get that and then try to fix this one when I have time. I would really like lower gearing and/or locking diffs but that's probably not something that's going to happen in the next couple weeks. Thoughts?

The long travel definitely helps. Even with the 1.5" lift on the stock struts it was able to get up that 5' steep hill and the Impreza can't though. It does ride much better than the Impreza now. We definitely would have bent some struts on the Outback if we had driven it that hard on the stock suspension. And that Bronco has some city boy tires so that was holding him back some. We've done a little more tuning since then and the front is great now. Plan on going out Sunday to see how well it does in the mud/dirt, maybe some small rock piles. We have a bunch of other ideas on the front ends. One is to have a more solid lower rad support and have rails that connect either end of that to the bumper and then down to the swaybar mounts. Also instead of the rectangular tubing under the oil pan something like a 10" C channel that could sit up higher and surround the oil pan. If I did another one from scratch that's how I'd do it anyhow. How were you thinking of tieing it into the crossmember? Right now it bolts to the middle of the crossmember behind the oil pan. Any ideas on a shorter radiator or raising/tilting it for better approach angle? Something like a Cherokee rad and fans would be good but they're too wide. I've seen someone put the rad and fans on top of the engine but with no hood.

The oil pan is badly smashed in again. So bad this time the oil pickup tube was bent up a bit (found that out when trying to put a good pan on). The guard was bent up and the engine must be moving around quite a bit on the mounts since the valve covers appear to be rubbing on the crossmember slightly. The rubber in the engine mounts has been cracked for a long time. I got group N engine mounts, expensive but hopefully they will keep the engine in place better. Changed the guard a bit to make it easier to remove, farther from the oil pan, and a bit stronger. Hopefully it isn't too low now. Eventually I'd like to put a piece of 10" C channel under the oil pan.

We might meet some friends at little Sahara in OK the weekend of April 11th to check out the dunes. We also might go to Black Mountain in KY, possibly instead of going to OK, sometime in April for some trail riding. Let me know if you're interested in either. It would be good to have more Subarus join us.

We were trying to break the suspension on Saturday and couldn't. This isn't how I plan on driving it normally, just figured it would be best to find the weak links close to home if there are any.

Good call on the wire and switch. Speaking of starters and alternators, should we worry about having one of those fail? We beat on the car hard on Saturday and didn't bend or break any suspension. Got some good video too so hopefully I'll have that edited and posted in a few days.

Thanks, I should be able to get some good video today so hopefully I can post that soon. What I could still use advice with is this. For our longer trips, what sort of spare parts should we take? Considering these cars have 200k+ miles on them, should we be packing cam/crank sensors, coils, injectors, ???

Thanks, glad you like it. Plan to get back on it today. Fabricating is just a hobby although I've done a fair amount of it. I do some machining at work but it's not my main job.

Five speed manual. I assume it has the original gearing. I know the rear ring and pinion is 4.11.

Glad you like it. The upper arms are a little questionable but there is a lot of 1/2" steel plate in them and they seem to be holding up well so far. The upper arm mounts need to be reinforced a bit though. It would have been much simpler to go with long travel struts in the front but I don't think we could have gotten 12" of wheel travel that way. I really want to get some good video of this in action but unfortunately it will be a few weeks. UHMW on the belly is a good idea. I don't really have much interest in crawling though, or many places where it's needed within 500 miles of here, so probably no dual range. I have lot of other ideas, but an M62 supercharger is pretty high on the list. I've seen a few clean installs with a TMIC.

Drove the car a few times now and it's already much better than before. It can use some tuning, especially in the front, and there are a few minor issues to work out, but overall I'm happy with it. Probably be a few weeks before I can get good video up.

Full droop: This is current ride height. Front is sitting about 2" too high (trying to get both ends to sit in the middle of the travel and about where they were with the 1.5" lift and stock struts), but the rear is about right with these springs.

Rear inverted strut construction Had to ID grind the initial springs to fit over the strut body. The springs we're using now fit without grinding. Had to clearance the wheelwell for the strut body, shifted it away from the spindle for tire clearance, and it swings in at full droop, so first I notched the bottom of the "frame rail": hammered the crap out of it and welded it back together: Strut body with camber adjustment: Long travel (11" at the strut) vs stock (8"): Installed:

Nests from laser cut parts: Front end construction:

Thanks. We're doing inverted struts in the rear now and everything is in double shear. Most of these pix were just mockup, checking clearances, bump steer, etc. I am nervous about the CV life, but I guess we'll find out. Should sit about the same at ride height but obviously flexes more.