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Ari's POS Lifted Outback Daily

45K views 504 replies 16 participants last post by  jkp 
#1 · (Edited)
I didn't think I would ever feel like a journal for this car would be justifiable or needed, but seeing as it has been taking over my other journal this is probably a good idea.

Actually, this isn't a good idea... Now I kinda miss the way the car was before I messed it up lol


Anyway, I bought this thing back in 2009 or something. It is a 1996 Impreza Outback 2.2l manual, had about 200k miles on it at the time and probably has atleast 60k more now. It was bone stock and unmolested, pretty clean for what it was. I was only 15 yo at the time and wouldn't get my license for two more years, but I got it for cheap since it didn't run to well and the previous owner kinda gave up on it. But after replacing the MAF sensor the car was all good. Tbh, I didn't know anything about Subarus, I even disliked the Imprezas alot because "everybody has them and they all look the same" or something along those lines. Little did I know how much they would grow on me. But after replacing the MAF sensor the car was all good.

This is what it looked like when I got it, excuse the pic quality... I only had a 2mp cellphone camera and some childish photoshop edits




A while after I got the car the headgaskets blew. After fixing them the car started having overheating issues shortly after, me and my dad thought we might have messed up during the gasket install or something and decided that the car wasnt worth putting more work/money into so I drove it like that for a year or two after getting my license. Ended up finally completely ruining the engine by letting it overheat to much/to often, only to realise the issue was a bad radiator... By then I liked the car way to much to let it go, and despite having to add coolant to it regularly all that time it had served me well. So, I bought a cheap ej22 replacement engine and got it running again. Since then it has been doing good.

And now for the visual part. Shortly before I got my license I bought a wrecked 99 Impreza turbo (basicly a wrecked shell with no driveline), orginally intended to use parts from it to make the Outback cooler but then that thing turned into a project car... To get that done I had to buy a parts car for teardown. So, the Outback got facelift headlights, grille and hood. I felt like that helped the look a little.






Very soon I swapped out the crappy oem seats for some really comfy 1st gen Legacy ones, made such a difference to the whole car! After that followed some dumbass teenager mods such as cut springs and diy front spats out of a wrecked bumper. To be fair though, it looked alright. Looking through these pics makes my kinda miss that look... And it was pretty clean at that time too





Then came the matte black hood, I was so happy with the car like that



And here is a random pic with the 17" wheels that were to go on my GC which was done by then



One winter I messed up the pre facelift bumper by parking on a hill of snow, it was 3 wheelin and all lol.





I replaced it with a facelift L bumper of one of my parts cars





Even being lowered, this thing was awesome in snow! Obviously, I did get it stuck every now and then but I always had a shovel in the car and managed to get it loose by myself most of the time







After some times getting into trouble for it being to low I ended up doing the right thing and install un cutted springs again





At this point, the car was way to multicoloured for my opinion so I decided I wanted to change the colour. I guess I could say it wasnt really a good decision but I decided to paint it with a paint roller... Somewhere around this time I put stock springs back in so it would be usable during winter. I also happened to get free trunk wings from a buddy of mine, those really did do some good










Now, this looked good at first but since the paint didn't have a clearcoat, and I didn't put one on obviously since I used paintrollers, this shiny clean look didn't last long. And by now the whole thing is peeling pretty badly and so on.

Having fun in the snow




Next mod was a custom bash bar/light bar. Really enjoyed making this















Then I mounted these xenon fogs my dad had laying around the shop
















I've had so much fun with this thing over the years... Managed to get stuck once (more often actually but you know) and almost slid into a ditch full of knee deep muddy water lol




Aaaand, now we´re catching up. This brings us to this fall. I started wanting to lift the car, took the 15´s off and borrowed some WRX wheels from my blobeye to start with. Also threw on a spare v6 grille I had since a fat goose broke the other one... These two pics show how shitty the paint is, looks good wet, not so much when its dry...






Also here are a few pics from this winter before the lift





As for tires for the car, I had my mind pretty set on the Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs, mostly for the aggresive thread and the fact that they were pretty cheap'ish too. Ahead of me was some fab work and more waiting on parts than I assumed...




I borrowed these old worn out tires to test fit and try to realise what needed to be done to fit them






And then the new ones showed up.














I decided to run them studless to have the option of using them during the summer too. Instead I had them "micro cutted", which are alot of really fine cuts across the thread to give better grip and cooling to the tire, supposedly it also makes them quieter and what not.










Then the fabrication started. I made my own 3" tophat spacers with camber adjustability







































Welded both front tubes shut and threaded the holes. I know the welds arent 10/10 but they definetaly should do. The worse one is the first one...










Grinded to be flat




And then test fitted on the bottom plate in the car to see which way the holes need to face




And tacked together for now





Next up, bolted top and bottom plates together and aligned them properly by measuring at each bolt. Then I drilled the top plate through the tube to have the adjustment holes at the right place
























I realise the welds could be better but I'm pretty sure they'll hold just fine














Test fitting to see wich way the adjustment needs to face




Final steps




And "all" done!















Completely finished at this point




Then came the actual install. Had some near misses with the rears, had to trim the bolts a little bit




Both sway bars are out, didn't bother to do some fabricating to get them to fit so I run the car without them. Doesnt feel half bad at all. I wouldn't even choose to have them in if I could honestly






Looked like shit, rear camber is way off, front is good surprisingly, rear tires are way front in the wheelwell and its quite alot higher in the rear... I couldn't mount the tires at that time cause I only had 25mm spacers which I thougth would do, but the rear needed way more for the tires not to hit the spring perch.

So to sum up the lift, 3" camber adjustable custom tophat spacers ontop of alloy 3/4" spacers without a subframe drop. 3 3/4" in total.











Shortly after I made trailing arm spacers and mounted them, got the wheel about half an inch back in the wheel well














I then remembered I had a tire pressure monitor system that I got for my birthday a few months back. I always kinda wanted to use it with the new setup. There was one sorta "flaw" about it and that is that the sensors mount on the outside and use a nut to secure them. That means I couldn't really add or let out air without having to grab tools and spend some time on it. So, I bought some extra valves that have threads on them. I drilled and tapped for two extra valves in each wheel. One to permanently mount the sensors on and another that is only closed off with a cap to make letting air out easier.














Aaaaaand now finally, actually mounting the tires! I used two 25mm spacers in the rear and two 15mm in the front. Orginally only bought a set of 25mm and thought it would do. When I realised it didn´t I ordered a set of 15mm and planned on running a total of 40mm all around. That didn't work in the rear so I needed all 25mm to be used in the rear...






At this point stuff finally got interesting!






















Some cutting/hammering/welding needed...
































But the outcome was well worth it. As of now, the fenderwork still isnt done yet but the car is driveable and in 90% everyday scenarios rub free










I then swapped in a dual range tranny from a partscar I had. It's got the same 3.90 ratio I had already. Didn't take many pics during the job tho...

Removing from the parts car



New clutch installed



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And then that dual range goodness!






Also, after removing the fender liners I had water issues....



And fixed with the intake piping from the white donor






Making more room in the front



Before



After




And first proper test with the dual range, which happens to bring us up to date










I also have some stuff in the mail. Gonna be mounting two work lights on the roof on each side and one under the top wing for reverse light.






The lateral links are already here and will hopefully be installed soon so I can finish my wheel alignment which currently consists of alot of positive rear camber...

 

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#39 · (Edited)
That's not rusty at all!
Oh you guys don't see behind the bumper cover... Weirdly enough the quarters aren't the worst part, quite bad on the drivers side tho. But the area behind the rear wheels is completely rotten, its just open right into the trunk [emoji849]


Edit: Some pics so you realise. Might not be all to bad looking at it in pics, but it is quite bad though lol


Right side




Left side






It's probably not to bad to fix, atleast I plan on looking into this when I'll have time to deal with it

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#46 ·
Today I was gonna hook up the ac compressor to have it ready for converting to air pump. Unfortunetaly, I got the wrong belt tensioner so it doesnt fit the bracket... This is all just old stuff from cars I've parted out so I should have the right tensioner somewhere. I went to look for it earlier but only found another ac compressor bracket, that happens to be the correct one for the tensioner I had lol. So I'll just swap the one I put in out for the other one I found and that should be it.












I also had some time to mess around and explore the flex capabilities of this thing



















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#49 ·
Yes thats what I meant, although it might not have a tank to feed at first. Probably won't really have a hard time keeping it lubed, but I will need to lube it every now and then before usage. Thats just done by spraying some lube into it so I'm gonna need to run some sort of oil catch on the line from the compressor. My dad had the same setup in his Toyota and apperantly that worked very well

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#54 ·
Swapped the brackets and installed the tensioner. Now I need to find the flanges for the inlet/outlet to be able to hook up air line and filter to it. Also need to hook up a switch to be able to activate the pump when I want






Also, I tried doing a diagnosis on the check engine light by connecting the green plugs under the dash but the light would just flash constantly with out any pauses. Anyone know why I won't get a proper code?




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#55 ·
One thing I forgot.. My lateral links took a crap, pretty annoying honestly. The heim joints have developed some play and are really noisy and rattle ALOT... Now I knew this could happen and people have reported these going bad. I wasn't scared of trying them since they did good in my GC. Of course the Outback is driven in worse conditions with frozen snow on the streets which makes for really rough bumps but I did think they would last a bit longer lol.

It's not the end of the world tho, these joints can be bought. However, I think these are all in inches and inches are a really confusing system so I haven't got a clue what I need... Another option would be cutting the joints of and welding the ends of the stock links onto them, which I think would save me alot of headache, that is if the replacement heim joints would just continue failing.

Here are the measurements if someone could possibly find me new joints. The bolt holes are 12mm and 14mm.





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#57 ·
Thanks man, that would be awesome!

My dad told me to weld onto the outside of them so that they would get tighter, but I don't know if the design of them would make that work. Would definetaly be a worth quick fix tho since they are really loud and annoying now

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#59 ·
Took a few pics last night trying light painting. I've done this once before with my GC but that turned out alot better. I only spent about 10-15minutes outside and my fingers were already numb when I took the last pic so I didn't really focus on doing this well, just wanted to practise a bit.. Will definetaly be playing around with this more, maybe try to catch some stars in the pics too








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#60 ·
And also I'm kinda getting tired of the rear tires poking out so much so I ordered a set of some cheap universal flares to see if they can cover them. The front fenders might stay un flared.

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#68 ·
Posibly, but honestly it seems like I should have lubed them cauae the look kinda bad. But mostly, one of the rings that seems to support the joint gas come loose, maybe its just cause the joint developed play and the banging got it loose but idk

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#69 ·
First pair of leds came in today. These are somewhere around 30w I think, spot lights. I'll have to wait for the other pair to figure out mounting but I think I'm gonna go with the orginal fog light area, and then mount the bigger ones on the bar closer to the big fogs






Now the car has been annoying for as long as I remember in a way that it tends to randomly lose power without starting to misfire, just doesnt deliver full power. Never bothered me enough to fix it since it just happened sometimes. As of lately it hasn't been as annoying, just really fucking annoying... And obviously the heavier tires aren't helping... So every morning when I drive to work it tends to struggle keeping as much as 90km/h for some time. After work today I went out and started it up, it idled at 1500rpm for a few seconds and then completely died. It did that a couple times until I held it at 2000rpm and reved it alittle, seemed to be good but then started misfiring and struggling to idle. When I drove it on proper throttle, fine, let go of the gas, horrible. Drove it home like that and checked the codes. Turns out its the MAF sensor. When I took it out to clean it I realised that I'm using parts from two different air filter housings so they don't seal properly. The lid/MAF housing was full of dried sand like dust/dirt so no surprise that the MAF was bad. I tried cleaning it with brake cleaner and whatnot but nothing worked.

I managed to borrow another one, but tomorrow I'm gonna see if some junkyards might have the sensor and the correct filter housing parts. Amazingly none of my partscars (3 current and 2 already stripped and thrown away) had MAFs so no help there... But I'm guessing this will sort the random powerloss and the dirt has just been slowly building up in the sensor, or atleast that would be really convinient.






This is after I tried rinsing the housing with tar remover and hot water so you can imagine the dirt in the sensor




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