long travel Outbacks or making Subarus faster and more reliable offroad

[el_freddo]

Wow, that’s some damage to the outback!  

Will the plan be to straighten out the front end and go again or reshell the setup again? 

Cool that the flat towing went well. Over here in Oz we’d get hammered hardcore if we were found towing like that. Our laws state that the towing vehicle must be 1.3x the weight of the towed vehicle. So you can’t flat tow a like-for-like vehicle. But you can often tow one on a car trailer… We’re so backwards like that, and our authorities are complete Nannies about towing weights and vehicle weight limited etc.  I swear our ADRs require lower weight limits than other markets. Anyway, I digress. 

Glad you got it sorted. Cool little solo day trip it seems! 

Cheers 

Bennie

[pontoontodd]

10 hours ago, el_freddo said:

Wow, that’s some damage to the outback!  

Will the plan be to straighten out the front end and go again or reshell the setup again? 

Cool that the flat towing went well. Over here in Oz we’d get hammered hardcore if we were found towing like that. Our laws state that the towing vehicle must be 1.3x the weight of the towed vehicle. So you can’t flat tow a like-for-like vehicle. But you can often tow one on a car trailer… We’re so backwards like that, and our authorities are complete Nannies about towing weights and vehicle weight limited etc.  I swear our ADRs require lower weight limits than other markets. Anyway, I digress. 

Glad you got it sorted. Cool little solo day trip it seems! 

Cheers 

Bennie

I have to look at it closer but yes my current plan is to cut out and refab the lower radiator support from scratch, probably 2x4x1/8" wall rectangular tubing or similar.  Might increase approach angle a bit and probably be stronger.  Then finagle the hood latch/upper rad support back into place.

Right after it happened I thought about just buying another rust free car and swapping things over but I think it will be easier and cheaper to repair this one.

There don't seem to be many laws regarding flat towing, certainly not much enforcement if there are.  I can't say I recommend towing something as heavy as your tow vehicle without brakes but we've done it a number of times now.  It has become increasingly common over the last 5-10 years to see two or three cars hooked together driving down the interstate, likely all purchased at an auto auction.  There are stories that people operate trains of up to six of these cars with more than one powering the assembly.

Trying to rent a tow dolly from Uhaul on the other hand took some finagling.  The van I used is a 3/4 ton, we've towed a 20' enclosed trailer with it.  Eventually talked to one guy who helped me figure out which options to tell them I had so their system would let me rent a tow dolly to tow a FWD wagon, I definitely wasn't going to tell them I was going to be towing a Subaru.  And the tow dolly has surge brakes, so definitely safer than flat towing from a braking perspective.

That day trip was great, every time I take it off pavement I'm reminded that the first gen Impreza with EZ36 is like a cheat code as our friend A said.  Didn't bother airing down, never had to use the low range or even lock the center diff, never got stuck.  Also reminded me how many trails there are in the UP.  My GPS log is up to 5400 miles of unpaved trails up there.  There are definitely some repeats/overlapping trails so let's say we've been on 3-4000 miles of unpaved UP roads but I would guess that is about 1/4 of the unpaved roads/trails there.  The one loop I did I probably would have turned around where (or before) that picture was taken it was getting so overgrown but I was still following a trail on the GPS.  The other area I wound up in there were no roads anywhere on my map for miles yet quite a few roads/trails I was exploring, some of them quite wide and smooth.  "Connected the dots" too as we like to say - go off the end of one road on the map and wind up on a different road on the map miles later.