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Last weekend, to decompress from my holidays, my girlfriend and I decided to go for a long Sunday drive in the Celica and search for some snow, rare site around Phoenix. Originally I wasn't planning on doing any off roading, but changing our minds is what expedition travel is all about, right...

I see it too, and understand the appeal. I'm guessing the fuel economy went to hell though. My Celica, even with the 4.10 gearing pushing 27" A/Ts around gets fairly pour mileage, 20-24mpg, instead of the 30 plus it use to get. But, when you want a car to look a certainly way, something have...

Prodrive, the team that ran the WRC Subaru rally team is going to be campaigning WRC in the Countryman starting mid season of 2011. -Jon

Been a while since I update the build progress. I haven't done that much since the front struts and strut tower bar. But this weekend I changed out the driving lights for 6" yellow, for better visibility in dusty conditions, which I would encounter often if I work more rallies. I also...

I built up a similar car starting back in 1998, 1500SP, bus boxes on a bus swing axle/torsion housing welded into the Beetle chassis, ball joint front end converted to 5 lug w/ '67 drums. That car was a tank, but if you beat anything hard off-road, you will hurt it eventually. I chipped the...

Beautiful country side. One of these day, I'll have to go back to Australia for a long visit. -Jon

Welcome. Wish I lived closer to SoCal, would enjoy exploring the back country out there. Being an adventurous Subi owner, I'm sure you've already seen this, but maybe not. http://www.sjrlift.com/ A few inches of lift, some more non-pavement agressive tires and you might just make it to a few...

Over the top styling... Interesting!! LOL Most anything can work, if you're willing to beat it up. -Jon

Damn-it, now I really want one... Too many dream projects. I'll keep with the Celica for now, it pretends to be a pretty good mountain goat too. -Jon

I've been dreaming of getting an AMC Eagle SX4 and modernizing it a bit. That one looks great, but somehow, I'm thinking it's had a LOT of work done to it, maybe a solid front axle swap to begin with... Very nice. -Jon

"Yes how could this project go this far w/o a snorkel!?" Someday...

As part of my cars ever changing progress, this weekend I decided to build a welded version of a strut tower bar. I used some .090" thick sheet to cap the towers, adding a lot of reinforcement to the tops to take the abuse I plan on giving it. I then cut out 4 identical flag shaped brackets...

I crewed for a few cars, mostly for the Tacoma pick-up I helped build last year. Volunteering is great, but hangin out with friends all day is damn nice too. -Jon

You could install spacers on the front, strut springs are like any other spring, just a bigger pain since you'll have to disassemble the whole thing to put them on. The extra pressure on the spring when reassembled is what would give it lift. You end up giving up some droop for more...

I just got back from a rally outside of Vegas, Seed 9, in Jean NV. I took the Celica up for the suspension engineer from Bilstein to see our handy work. The struts he came up with for me, custom valved, worked amazingly well. I took him for a 3 or 4 mile ride down a very rough powerline road...

It's a sickness. I love making cars(vans in your case) do things they aren't expected to do. The cheapest lift would be simple coil spacers installed above the springs. If the 30" tires fit, sounds like you would have just picked up an inch or two there as well... -Jon

I finished the strut install tonight. The special spacers I had to machine for the bottom, after fitting last night, had to be machined down 1/4", to get full thread engagement on the retainer nuts. The strut turned out to be 1" taller than the stock ones, which includes 1" more travel. And...

After runing course closing for the Prescott Rally, a bit more work needed to be done. A friend of mine gave me the race seats out of his road race car, didn't like the color, but what the hell, they match my harnesses. I also am in the middle of upgrading the front struts to stronger, better...

Thanks. I'm having a great time with the car. The idea was to make it as useful as possible in all situations. I need to take it camping soon, now that summer is starting to break it's grip on Phoenix. -Jon

Found another good picture of us assessing how quickly we could pull this Subaru off the side of the berm. Heavy sweep in the red truck behind me, Mike G., myself and the car owner talked it over. We got her back on the road using two trucks, one at each end to keep it from slipping down the...