pontoontodd

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.

We replumbed the brake lines before we left. Just used stainless braided flex for everything. That didn't require many fittings which also gives it fewer joints to leak from. I've always wanted to try a cutting brake on this car so we put that in. After a lot of discussion it seemed that mounting next to the parking brake was the best solution. You can definitely lock up either rear tire on a loose surface (grass or gravel), and occasionally dry pavement when you really lean on it. It definitely works, but it definitely slows the car which is often not desirable. If the car had more power it would probably work better. Turns in sharper rather than swinging the rear out as normal handbrake operation would do, so that's usually good. If the front end is pushing on a loose surface it helps turn the car without having to let off the gas. Overall probably not worth the time and money to put it in.

One of the projects we finished before going to Kentucky was this receiver tire rack. I've wanted to do this for a while and this seemed like the simplest way to carry four tires without putting them on the roof. Diagonal tube is 2" x .12", horizontal is 2" x .06". I didn't want to block the license plate or brake lights. It is just far back enough that you can still open the hatch. We discussed a lot of different ways to do this before we came up with this layout. You can even comfortably stand between the hatch and tires when you're getting stuff out of the back.

Trip report from last weekend at Black Mountain off road park in Harlan County, Kentucky: We drove the Outback down to Cincinnati on Thursday morning, got to our friend's place with the Toyota buggy around 2PM. Helped him swap out the dead battery on the Toyota, put the seat and belts back on, and loaded it up. Got to camp at twilight, swapped the tires and pulled the bumpers off the Subaru and tried to hit the trails for a bit. The Toyota wouldn’t start so we charged the battery for a bit and then headed out. After about five minutes they said we should head back, the Toyota was barely running and showing 9V. We pulled the alternator and belts off back at camp. Alternator had only 130 ohms from the + terminal to ground. He had supposedly spent two hours winching some guy out of the woods the last time he ran it. I woke everyone up Friday morning at 7AM so we could go to the parts store and get an alternator. Fortunately we were able to find one. The electrical plug was slightly different but it seemed to work all weekend, in fact going up to 16V if he didn’t have the lights on for a long time. The only trail into the park from where we camped that was still open was marked red on the map (most difficult) and had some very steep and long climbs. There was one climb we could not get enough of a run at and could only get about halfway up in the Subaru, so both days they had to tow us up in the Toyota. A low range would have been great at this place. There were a lot of trails that were very narrow with a steep drop on one side. Our friends in the Toyota would often discuss how far down it was until we would be stopped by a large tree if we went off the side. One trail had a large freshly fallen rock laying on it that didn’t allow a lot of room to get by between it and the slippery, muddy ledge. We were able to drive by in the Subaru but with much less room than they assured us we had. Since we had to (and could) go much faster than the Toyota on hills, we would often stop at the top and wait for them to catch up. One time we came to a large clearing and there was a family standing around by their side by sides and atvs and seemed entertained by the Subaru. We went over to talk to them and they immediately offered us some moonshine from their jar. We sipped on that, the Toyota pulled up, they had some moonshine and beer. My buddy later commented that if we hung out with those guys for a few more hours, everything would look like a Subaru trail. Not too much farther up the trail was the helipad at the top of a mountain. We watched the atvs and Toyota go up and tried to figure out what the best line was. About 1/3 of the way up there was a ledge that I slowed down for the first two times and didn’t make it all the way up. At one point I realized the AC was on so I turned that off. After the first or second try the guy who gave us moonshine told me I should try it in low range... The third time I stayed to the right of the ledge, which was rougher overall but I was able to hold my speed and get to the top. Most of the trails were rocky and therefore hard so the water holes were not a problem. After a while we got confident and I decided to go through the middle of a ~100’ mud hole. I had the passenger side tires up on a muddy strip and the driver’s side quickly sunk in to the windows. I kept the throttle wide open and we were just creeping through at a very slow pace. We both thought we were going to be climbing out the windows and swimming for shore for a minute. We started to pick up a little speed and barely came out the other side. Realized we had the AC on the whole time, which actually might have helped since the fan was probably acting as a prop. In this picture you can see how deep we were: At one point we were trying to get up a rocky trail and I misjudged our ground clearance and hit a big rock(s) at speed, which dented the exhaust and cracked the skid guard. Tried to take it easier the rest of the day. Eventually we got to the end a trail in the southwestern part of the park and had a long (but not too steep or rough) climb back up the mountain. After a few minutes I noticed the temp gauge was all the way up so I pulled over, turned on the heat, and popped the hood. The coolant was boiling in the overflow and the fans weren’t running. After it cooled down we drove the rest of the way up and let it cool off. Figured out we had a blown fuse and replaced that and the fan kicked back on. The scenery was amazing. I pressure washed the car as soon as we got off the trails and we swapped out the wheels and tires and put the bumpers back on. Drove home the next morning with no incidents but we did probably consume more oil than normal. This picture is a bit extreme as the rear end is heavily loaded. We do have the front and rear sitting about in the middle of the travel, which makes it sit higher in the front than the rear. We got about 6 hours of video so it will be a while until I have that edited down to Youtube length.

Nothing broke (as far as I know). There's just a lot of camber change with the short upper arm.

video from a recent test run

Thanks for that tip. Makes sense looking at the input shaft teeth.

While the exhaust was off, I sleeved a major leak and it's much quieter now. The driveshaft u joints all felt sticky so we replaced them all. One of the old cups appeared to have no needles in it. Now that I've driven it a few times I'm glad I did the group N mounts. It only causes a little more NVH than normal under full load, low rpm, in fifth gear. Otherwise unnoticeable. The higher clamping force clutch doesn't seem to have much more effort than stock either.

The 2 x 2 x .120 should be plenty strong. You could run the new rails inside the stock frame and bolt them in from the top like the EJ cars. Weld some nuts inside the new rails, drill holes in the top of the stock rails. Probably best to put some kind of stop in the old rails so if you hit something too hard it doesn't just bend/shear the bolts. Not sure what you mean by 4 chassis rails though.

Reverse idler gear missing about 1/4 of the teeth: Took a couple highway trips with the unevenly worn mud tires and locked up the center diff last fall. Since I mainly drive it on the highway or off road, I kept driving it. You can see the lower gear in this picture welded to the shaft: That broke/pushed the snapring out that holds the viscous plates in, although they were still all in place. Also broke the outer cage of the bearing that supports the center diff, but it was all intact and functional when we took the trans apart. We were barely able to get this sleeve off the input of the trans with a 3 jaw puller. As you can see the base kept chipping. Is this an original part or some kind of repair sleeve?

Alright, that makes sense.

In case anyone is interested, we are now planning on meeting at Rush off road park in KY the weekend of April 25th.

In the chance this helps your diagnosis, I've had a similar issue with my 99 Outback. Normally this happens when it's wet. Since I siliconed the spark plug boots in the heads it hasn't happened nearly as often. Car will run fine until the needle on the temp gauge swings up to the middle. Engine will stall at the next stop (manual). Engine will immediately restart, but runs very rough. Lots of bucking under light acceleration. Seems to run fine with more throttle and RPM. Shut off the engine, even for a few seconds, while coasting or stopped, and restart it and it will run fine the rest of the day. One time I had a long drive home and the restarting trick did not work. The engine would only run well above 1/2 throttle or near idle, which was a PITA cruising on the highway. Reader's digest version - try shutting the engine off next time it runs rough, count to ten, then restart it and see if it runs better.

When you guys talk about "t casing it", how exactly would you do that? Keep the stock front drive and just use the t case to drop the rear drive? Use front and rear outputs of the t case and use some other IFS or front axle? If you're doing that, why not use a RWD trans? Just curious, I've heard a bunch of people on this forum now hint at doing this but I've never seen how they've done it.