2011 Subaru Outback Overland Build

[Stokes]

Day 4-8:

• Front and rear bumpers finished up fab work
• Suspension rebuild finished

At this point in the build, the days started to blur together. We finished up the main structural components of the front bumper and attached an angled skirt to hide/protect the air intake on the passenger side and the windshield washer reservoir on the driver side. The skirt starts wide on the edges and tapers off towards the front. The intent behind this was to integrate the skid plates right up to where the skirt tapers down but I don't think we will have time to get the skids on this build. The fab on the rear bumper is just about finished as well, just need to add the hardware for the tire carrier and license plate. For the actual pivoting point, we found a tapered bearing that makes the motion very smooth.
Aside from the bumpers, we replaced the suspension system and installed the Anderson Design lift kit. Being an east coast vehicle, there was plenty of rust to play with and probably doubled the time spent on the suspension rebuild. Be careful compressing the springs! Sketchy stuff but we had no issues. We ran into a few problems installing the lift kit. In the front it is necessary to detach the front sway bar links in order to be able to get the strut assembly back up into place. Mine were so frozen over with rust we had to cut them off and just get new ones. In the rear, the kit lowers the subframe so its necessary to detach certain points of the subframe. Having the subframe lowered adds quite a bit more articulation to the vehicle. There are six points of sub frame lift in the rear. Definitely a very good quality and well thought out kit.
* Note that the front bumper in some of the photos is upside down, its easier to see the skirt work this way *

 

[Stokes]

Day 9-12:

• Front bumper sanded and painted
  • ditch lights installed
  • aluminum grill installed
• Rear bumper sanded and painted
  • tire carrier installed
  • license plate/plate light installed
  • diamond plated aluminum cut and riveted on
• Sleeping platform reinforced and carpeted with rubber trim

After I finished up sanding the front and rear bumpers they were ready to be primed and painted. We let the paint cure for a full day in the sun and then added the final touches. As I mentioned before, we re-purposed the the fog lights to ditch lights by attaching a small piece of angled aluminum to the housing brackets with rivets and then riveting the angled aluminum to the steel tubing on the bumper. As a design feature we decided to add an aluminum mesh grill to the open sections on the front facing side of the bumper.
To integrate the light for the license plate we just wired it up to the closest tail light and drilled and sealed the light directly onto the steel bumper. We used Power Punch grease to pack the bearings for the tire carrier. Overall install of the tire carrier assembly was pretty straight forward. The last step was to cut the diamond plated aluminum to the correct shape, which I messed up a few times... but we eventually got it on there and successfully secured it with rivets. The plated aluminum really just tied the whole look together.
To finish up the sleeping panels we used a very high strength adhesive to connect the aluminum frame to the Econolite panels. The adhesive coupled with riveting along the support structure made for a highly rigid and sturdy panel. This was covered up by a thin, rugged carpet that we used spray adhesive to bond to the panels. A nice rubber trim was added to the perimeter of the platform to make handling easier and also to protect the interior of the car. A a final measure, we installed threaded inserts to the frame structure of the platform so the panels could be tightened down snug to prevent shifting around while driving.

 

[Stokes]

Day 9-12: Continued

 

[borison]

Looks great.

 

[Stokes]

Here are some before and after photos to compare.

 

[Stokes]

To finish up this thread, here are some photos of the squad doing some trail running just outside of Prescott AZ and other segments of my trip back to Pittsburgh. The night before I left, David made some really great screen covers for the back windows so I can have some air flow when I camp. They are made from some fine mesh heavy duty screening with small magnets adhered to the edges with an epoxy. This way I can easily snap them on and off minimizing the setup and take down steps. In the winch section of a couple of the photos, I was tied up with a pulley attached to the back of the lead truck. My winch line went through the pulley and back to the shackles on my front bumper. This type of rigging doubled the power of the winch to 9000 lbs and pulled my car up with no problems. Going down this section was a little creepy but just went super slow with the brakes. After testing out the build on the trail I think skid plates, rock sliders, and maybe a transmission cooler could really increase the protection and functionality of the vehicle. Later on I would like to bedline the exterior to take care of the Arizona pin-striping and various other projects so I will add to this thread as those projects go under way. Hope you guys enjoyed!

 

[Stokes]

Photos continued:

 

[Battle]

I was going to ask why you went with such a small winch, but with a snatch block, that kind of logic makes sense. Especially if you don't plan on hitting up more difficult terrain. Still, I would want a higher output winch just for durability and reliability. Did yours start to strain after a while, or was it a strong pull all the time?

I had the old style Geolander A/TS tires on a 97 Outback a while back. I really miss those tires - they don't seem to make them in as much car-friendly sizes anymore. Anyway, when I had them paired with KYB GR2s and King HD springs, that car was so much fun in the dirt. I'm kind of going for a similar, yet slightly more adult version with my current 05 Outback. I like the bumpers you made - especially the rear carrier. Following this thread for sure.

Also, how's that CVT off-road? Assuming this isn't a stick.

 

[Stokes]

I was going to ask why you went with such a small winch, but with a snatch block, that kind of logic makes sense. Especially if you don't plan on hitting up more difficult terrain. Still, I would want a higher output winch just for durability and reliability. Did yours start to strain after a while, or was it a strong pull all the time?

I had the old style Geolander A/TS tires on a 97 Outback a while back. I really miss those tires - they don't seem to make them in as much car-friendly sizes anymore. Anyway, when I had them paired with KYB GR2s and King HD springs, that car was so much fun in the dirt. I'm kind of going for a similar, yet slightly more adult version with my current 05 Outback. I like the bumpers you made - especially the rear carrier. Following this thread for sure.

Also, how's that CVT off-road? Assuming this isn't a stick.

Being a smaller car, the curb weight is roughly 3600 lbs. so we are able to get away with a smaller UTV winch rated for 4500 lbs. In addition to the winch, using a pulley system actually doubles the power to 9000 lbs. So that is more than enough to bring the vehicle up some technical terrain. When we did the winching that's seen in the photos we used both the pulley system and a direct line, the winch performed wonderfully. No bogging down or straining, kept the car at a nice constant speed.
That sounds sweet! So far I'm very happy with how the tires handle in the dirt. I appreciate the compliments!
The CVT is great going uphill but it is geared far to high to be able to do any engine breaking for the down hill sections. So that makes me nervous about overheating the breaks and or damaging them. I may check the manual to see if there is any kind of "tow mode" to do more compression breaking at least.

 

[nasko]

Sweet, sweet Outback. I really like what you did with it.

 

[Kato0070]

To finish up this thread, here are some photos of the squad doing some trail running just outside of Prescott AZ and other segments of my trip back to Pittsburgh. The night before I left, David made some really great screen covers for the back windows so I can have some air flow when I camp. They are made from some fine mesh heavy duty screening with small magnets adhered to the edges with an epoxy. This way I can easily snap them on and off minimizing the setup and take down steps. In the winch section of a couple of the photos, I was tied up with a pulley attached to the back of the lead truck. My winch line went through the pulley and back to the shackles on my front bumper. This type of rigging doubled the power of the winch to 9000 lbs and pulled my car up with no problems. Going down this section was a little creepy but just went super slow with the brakes. After testing out the build on the trail I think skid plates, rock sliders, and maybe a transmission cooler could really increase the protection and functionality of the vehicle. Later on I would like to bedline the exterior to take care of the Arizona pin-striping and various other projects so I will add to this thread as those projects go under way. Hope you guys enjoyed!

WOW LOOKS AWSOME LIAM AND DAVID!...GREAT JOB!!...URSA LOOKS PRETTY HAPPY WITH HER NEW HIGH RIDER DIGS?

 

[dman93]

As an ME and formerly Subaru owner I’m usually skeptical of Subaru builds, which try to turn the vehicle into somethings it’s not. With skid plates, but otherwise stock, my Forester was pretty good offroad, but as a stick shift I realized that I wouldn’t get much clutch life if I tried to improve its crawling capability. So I used it mostly on desert two track and it fit that role well. Skid plates give you far more confidence to attack the occasional tough spot you don’t have the gearing to crawl through.

All that said, your build is very impressive and the bumpers are great! I was amused to see you use the term Cardboard Aided Design. Early in my career (in the seventies) Computer Aided Design was pretty much limited to aerospace and maybe automotive. So we frequently used cardboard and joked that it was our CAD. In fact, we would make scale cardboard models for simple structural “analysis” of large sheet metal fabrications ... obviously you can’t determine stresses, but deflections and mode shapes of complex weldments (we used hot melt glue) could be visualized under various bending and twisting loads, helping to locate gussets and stiffeners.

 

[Stokes]

As an ME and formerly Subaru owner I’m usually skeptical of Subaru builds, which try to turn the vehicle into somethings it’s not. With skid plates, but otherwise stock, my Forester was pretty good offroad, but as a stick shift I realized that I wouldn’t get much clutch life if I tried to improve its crawling capability. So I used it mostly on desert two track and it fit that role well. Skid plates give you far more confidence to attack the occasional tough spot you don’t have the gearing to crawl through.

All that said, your build is very impressive and the bumpers are great! I was amused to see you use the term Cardboard Aided Design. Early in my career (in the seventies) Computer Aided Design was pretty much limited to aerospace and maybe automotive. So we frequently used cardboard and joked that it was our CAD. In fact, we would make scale cardboard models for simple structural “analysis” of large sheet metal fabrications ... obviously you can’t determine stresses, but deflections and mode shapes of complex weldments (we used hot melt glue) could be visualized under various bending and twisting loads, helping to locate gussets and stiffeners.

Thanks for your comments! I couldn't agree more about the skid plates. They were next on the list but we unfortunately lacked the time to fit them in. The cardboard worked surprisingly well! Our angles were accurate down to a few minutes on the first try. So it definitely saved some time and minimized the "eyeballing".

 

[Cyrull]

Great build! I have a 2010 OB and looking at the same with my bumpers. How did you end up protecting the windshield washer reservoir?

 

[justbecause]

Would you recommend the excel Gs?
I've got to change my shocks and I'm feeling sticker shock looking at most of the outback options.