How a Geologist Built One of the Most Capable Subaru Foresters in America

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to this week's episode of the Dirt Subies Podcast. We have an absolute heater for you this week. We got Brant Kaiser on the podcast. If you follow him on Instagram, he goes by Jackie Rue. He's a very thoughtful dude and very... knowledgeable. I wasn't sure if this would be something that he'd really be interested in doing, but he came on and decided to kind of lay out his build and sort of share how he was able to take like a grandma grocery getter and turn it into an absolute trail machine. And he has done some crazy things in that car. Like I absolutely am shocked every time he puts out trail footage. Before we get into that, i need you to do me two favors. Number one, If your real estate agent absolutely sucked and the only thing they could find for you was a rock and you've been living under that and you have not yet heard of the Subia New Podcast, make sure that you are following that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever. Raf's just got a ton of episodes over there for you to binge. There's like over 200 episodes. So go check that out. Actually, i was on his show recently. I'm episode number 219. So you can check that out. And then also, if you're watching on YouTube and you're not yet subscribed to the channel, or if you are listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or another podcast platform, if you could do me a favor and follow the podcast, And then if you're really feeling generous, leave a review.

Speaker: That would be the sickest thing ever. And it would make my 2026 just absolutely fantastic. Let's go ahead and jump into this interview. I hope you guys enjoyed as much as I did. Okay, real quick, though. I got to make sure I get this right. Is it Kaiser? Is that your last name? It is. I'm so proud of you for knowing that. Well, I just, I thought about it and I was like, I bet this guy gets Kaiser all the time. All the time. And that's probably not even remotely right. So we got Brant Kaiser on the podcast today.

Speaker: And what is your Instagram? Can you let everybody know? It is ah Jackie, double underscore Roo, R-O-O, just Jackie Roo. Hit them with a double underscore, brother. I love that. ah I am super stoked to have you on. um Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, we've never talked before. i mean, maybe we've exchanged comments. I got a bunch of different Instagram accounts that are related to Subarus, I'm sure we've actually conversed, but this is my first time meeting you.

Speaker: And you've probably got one of the most capable Subarus in the United States that's not been converted to a different platform.

Speaker: that Yeah, I've been building it for my needs as I go. i Dude, I love it. Before we jump into anything else, man, let me just ask you to kind of give us a rundown of what you know what's on the car.

Speaker: Oh my God, I have a whole spreadsheet going here. Well, dude, let's let's let's go top to bottom, brother. All right, well, let let me pull it up here so I can actually get a full list going. Um, on my, uh, Instagram bio, I've got the link to this spreadsheet that I've been using. I put links in there and everything. So folks can find all this stuff.

Speaker: I saw that. It's a Google doc, right? Uh, yeah, yeah. Just, um, yeah. Google sheets. So tires are Toyota open country, AT3s in two 25, 75, 15.

Speaker: The wheels, one of my favorite things on there. These are, um, European Audi pepper pots, the 2003. Yeah, man. Pepper pot posse. Yeah. No, they're great. They're only 12.7 pounds each.

Speaker: And I mean, importing even with like the import fee, which is like 100 or 120 bucks or so, yeah know they go for 20 euros over there. I don't what that is conversion wise, but I got a set of five of them delivered to my door for 700 bucks.

Speaker: Dude, let's go. it's And I'm so glad you mentioned that early on because that's one of the things I was going to ask you about. This is just kind of talk about the pepper pots, but but you said 12 and a half pounds?

Speaker: ah Yeah, 12.7. so That's all people need to know. I know, right? So that plus those tires, which they're like 28.3 inch tires, it's only 1.6 pounds heavier than the stock wheel tire setup.

Speaker: And it is noticeable. Did you have any issues? I mean, I know there's a lot of hammering involved and some trimming. Did you have any? No, not at all. No, no. I have those WRX alloy lower control arms. So they moved the front wheels forward by three, seven inch.

Speaker: no and then i don't know what the name for this part is but the little stub that bolts onto the back of the lca going into the bushing if you flip that over and rotate it about its axis like take those two bolts off and flip it over and then bolt it back in allegedly it gives you another half degree of caster i don't know how much more that helps so i've been told i've never measured it but did that um So yeah, no, the only kind of trimming I had to do was just trimming the fender liner over the pinch weld. All my pinch welds are in stock configuration, no one been hammered flat.

Speaker: I just didn't want to do that because I'm no engineer and I don't know any better. so I was like, let's just keep them the way it is so this thing can stay reliable as best it can. You know, it's funny that you say you're no engineer because I was going to pick your brain about what you do for a living. And one of my guesses was going to be engineer, but that would have been way off. I might have should have been at this point because like I wanted...

Speaker: keep kicking myself for having never taken any kind of engineer classes, but, uh, I'm a geologist. I'm a environmental geologist. I do environmental compliance for a landfill company now. No kidding. Okay. Okay. We got to put a pause on this other stuff. How the F word did you get involved in that?

Speaker: Uh, I mean, it started out just in middle school where i was just digging up rocks in my backyard. I grew up in downstate New York, about an hour North of Manhattan. So lot of metamorphic rocks around there, a lot of courts in my yard. I was near,

Speaker: a quartz mine location really. So there's a lot of rose quartz in my yard. I was just digging that up, collecting it and then got to high school and there was an earth science class. I was like, great, let's take that.

Speaker: And I was just kind of hooked from there and I knew what I wanted to do. just wanted to stay in that i didn't know what I wanted to do with it, but that was just, don't know, that trajectory of my education from there. I mean, explored petroleum. I spent a little bit of time in the natural gas industry doing mud logging on gas rigs.

Speaker: Found that I didn't like that one bit. That was like, Man, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. graveyard shift on a gas rig. No thing. Yeah. I mean, it paid pretty good, but I did not want to do that the rest of my life. i like Yeah.

Speaker: Trade your soul for dollars can only go so far, man. Pretty much. Yeah. um Went to grad school. I came down to Charlotte, North Carolina for grad school. Did you go to UNC?

Speaker: Yeah, UNC Charlotte. Cool. Cool. Yeah. My, uh, my sister graduated from UNC. Um, trying to think 2009. So it's been a minute, but okay. Yeah. I started there in 2011. Okay.

Speaker: good Um, okay and, uh, that's where I met my wife who's also a geologist. Yeah. No, I, I lucked out. I got a round about her for a second. got I lucked out with, with, with this one. Like she's a geologist.

Speaker: Her mom's a geologist. Her sister's a planetary geologist. Like I found the right family, man. Like I can do it. rock nerd out with them oh all the time i was just gonna say nerds unite brother seriously man it's so rad when um you know i mean you don't have to have anything in common in that area with whoever you marry but when you do that's definitely sick because they they understand like why are you bringing home rocks all the time what are you doing and what you know i mean when we're backpacking we're going to stop and look at the same rocks and talk about the same things and like here just put this in my backpack let's shift some weight around so i can carry that one you gotta take this home

Speaker: That's so sick. Okay. Sorry, man. i I took you down a rabbit trail there, but yeah, sorry. Continue continue with the with the mods, dude. Let's hear them. Well, su so those, the wheels and tires, you know they're they're plus 33 offset, so I don't run wheel spacers on them.

Speaker: um But I do have a set of snow tires. beck i I've never had snow tires. Even growing up in New York, I ran all seasonals, and she got me for my birthday one year, or for Christmas, I forget, my first set of snow tires. So I run the 2003 WRX wheels because they're light and they fit on snow tires. And for those, I have 20 millimeter wheel spacers just to make them because they they come in five millimeters from stock to just kind of what's funky.

Speaker: Yeah. And then for suspension, I'm running the very first set of the Raceworks GZ coilovers. Like before they were even thinking of making them, they they did this promo on Facebook pages and they were really doing a promo for their Overland coilovers.

Speaker: which were not the inverted ones that we're seeing. They were just upright front and rear overland style, which is only six inches of travel. And when I said yes and took them up on the offer for the promo, I didn't actually quite know that.

Speaker: So then I went and measured the stock travel on my car and it was like five and three quarter inches of travel stocks. I'm like, I'm not going to pay all this money for coilovers if they're not going to give me any extra travel.

Speaker: they said, well, let's go back to the drawing board here and and we'll get back to you. So, you know, they had my money already. And there was, I forget how long the wait was, but it was a a little bit. And they said, all right, we got something.

Speaker: Let's do this. Let's do these guys, which will give you eight to 10 inches of travel. I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it. Let's go. So I don't know. i don't want to take credit for that. You know, I have no idea how much.

Speaker: My hesitation was motivation with them to actually make long travel coilovers, but here we are. Sick. I'm still running them. i've um I've rebuilt them a few times. Well, I learned a little bit about coilovers. Like my rears, I'm getting a little ahead of myself with 24 hours of Appalachia, but before I did the very first one of those events, my rear started leaking out the top seal on the rod, and they were leaking bad. Like I was just doing a final check on the car the night before driving out there, and then take a picture and send it my co-driver.

Speaker: And they're just covered in oil. i'm like, Dan, what's going on here? Cause Dan's a rally driver, like straight up competes in stage rally. okay And he's like, your coiler leaking, bro. was like, well, that it's like, I guess you're just going to run them on spring. So whatever. So we do that.

Speaker: Ended up getting second place in that in the full size class. We'll come back to that one though. um And then when I get back and take them apart, get the rebuild kit from race works, found out that they were half full of oil. Like all the oil, most the oil had leaked out the top of them.

Speaker: um But it was because the dust boot had come out of place, like the little clamp that they on them. Yeah, I just didn't type i didn't clamp it on tight enough. So in all the mud that I was going through just before that event, yep, just got in there and worked its way in, busted the seal out.

Speaker: So it forced me to learn how to rebuild them. And once I did that and did it wrong, didn't bleed the valving properly, so they were bouncy as all get-ups, as you can imagine.

Speaker: And, um, I mean, that got me down a rabbit hole of, all right, how can make these things ride better? Like without changing the valving, without getting too far into stuff that I don't know how to do, but I don't have a shock dyno or anything like that. And even if I did, i don't even know what I'm looking at when they give like a dyno curve. What is that?

Speaker: I have no idea. That's something I've done kind of recently was swap the oil out. I think they started that like seven and a half weight and I went up to 30 weight oil and that made a huge, huge difference in damping and ride quality.

Speaker: And, um, It's still like, you know, i can get some bounce at lower speeds, even with the dampers maxed out, but on the highway, it's nice. It's okay stiff, but it's not bouncy. It's great.

Speaker: So i was going to ask if you're, so i like most people and like you, when even after you bought these don't know anything about coilover technology in terms of the internals and that type of thing.

Speaker: ah When you put that, you said 30 weight. Yeah, 30 weight oil. Okay. Does that allow it to um not thin out as it heats up? Or what's how does that what's kind of the mechanism for how that improves the ride? Or if if you dug into the mechanics of it?

Speaker: Yeah. so like the what you were talking about with... The viscosity, the dynamic viscosity as it heats up that has more to do with the additives in the oil and brand of oil itself. And honestly, the oil that I'm using, i think it's like Beltec or something like that. Just what I found on Amazon is i was messing around.

Speaker: coming to find out might not be the best quality oil was oil. Like I got it through my brother who does rally cross. I got linked up with a guy who actually tuned suspension for a living. and he was like, he just got to go with AMS oil. So next time I open them up, I'm going to do that. Their stuff is, their stuff is good across the board. Yeah. And said, am it just holds up to a lot of heat cycling. Like more than I would do. It'd be something that our proper rally car desert bomber would do like Milton. He would want to use AMS oil if he's not already kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: But, um, having a higher viscosity oil just, you know, it adds more drag on the valving. So it's similar to messing with shims and adding shims to your shim stack, just slowing the fluid down, going through the shims.

Speaker: So it adds damping without actually changing anything mechanically within the coilovers. And, um, it's something that i can change easily, like here at home. Um, I think the biggest obstacle for folks wanting to do this on their own is having access to nitrogen to recharge these things when you're done.

Speaker: Because that like, I did not want to pay 500 bucks for ah nitro just the nitrogen setup. And that's even before buying the nitrogen itself. That's just for a little tank with a no loss valving setup. didn't want to do that.

Speaker: But I got really lucky because right when I started doing this, we just so happened to get a nitrogen tank at work for our landfill gas flares. Let's go. yeah And these things take like no nitrogen whatsoever. So i just go over there and just like unhook the hose and hook up my little adapter and just charge them that way. That's perfect. Yeah. And so that was something else, though, I found out. And this is off I found all this out digging into like, what was it? Grassroots Motorsports.

Speaker: had posts, I forget how old it was, like 2016, something like that. That's where I found that about the oil viscosity and playing with that. And then they mentioned something about nitrogen pressure also, but looking at guys who are building their own free runners, talking about them mounting their coilovers. Like I was going into everything. like Everyone who's using coilovers for off-road, because we're kind of in a weird spot with Subarus with off-road coilovers. Like most folks running coilovers are using them for speed.

Speaker: And yes, that's what coilovers are for really is for speed. Cause you know, exactly. lot of fluid volume. Yeah. So I was wondering the same thing too, with coilovers, like, what's the point? What, what, what makes coilovers special as opposed to like coil spring, strut bodies, things like that. Why does the narrower wrap spring make a difference?

Speaker: Went down a rabbit hole with physics and it's, you have less mass that's being moved in the spring so it can rebound faster. So one way to slow these things down is they do make adapters. just won't fit on our cars to have a wider diameter coil spring, like a five inch, six inch diameter spring with more windings in it.

Speaker: So the load is spread across more mass, heavier mass. So it will re rebound slower. And that's kind of how most stock cars are set up. okay So, you know, if I was just daily driving this thing and just rock crawling it, maybe...

Speaker: these things wouldn't be the super best option in the world. But now that I'm finding myself in 24 hours with all action events and like kind of not really rallying, but kind of them, they are perfect for that. Yes. um yeah was an nice with shine Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: But nitrogen pressure makes a huge difference. Like I don't know what they came with stock. I want to say it was probably a hundred PSI just based on what it sounded like when I popped the the seal on the bottom bullet check valve.

Speaker: But I refilled them with 150 PSI the first time and realized that i to achieve the same resting rod height, like at rest, I had to use like a quarter inch less spring preload than before. So was like, okay, let me on to something here.

Speaker: I rebuilt them again with 20 weight oil. This was before I went to 30 weight oil and then tried 200 PSI. Like, okay, I have a half inch less preload to get the same rod height. Hey, Raceworks, what's the max safe pressure I can run on these things? And they're like, let's just say 220. Like, all right, 220, let's do it. I did that. 220 it is. Yeah. And like three quarters of an inch less preload than where they started out. And that helped a lot with ride quality also.

Speaker: It's been a learning experience. Yeah, dude, that's that's how it is when it comes to coilovers. Are you currently in the market for a lift kit for your Subaru? Or have you put a crappy Amazon or eBay lift kit on it and realized maybe you shouldn't have done that? Well, if you're in the market for that or skid plates, ditch light brackets, molly panels, any kind of other off-road Subaru stuff, make sure that you check out today's sponsor. Anderson Design and Fabrication. They are offering you guys a 5% off deal. If you use code DIRTSUBIES at checkout, all you got to do is go to their website, awdadventure.com.

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Speaker: can you explain two things for people that are listening? um The nitrogen, what where do you install the nitrogen when you're doing a rebuild? And then can you touch a little bit on preload?

Speaker: Yeah. So the nitrogen, i mean, the Raceworks GZs that I'm running, the fronts are inverted, the rears are upright, right? So the rears are the first ones I rebuilt. So there's a little check valve in the bottom. You have If you can imagine in your brain, you have the strut body itself, which has all the threads on it for the little collars that are just preload.

Speaker: And then there's the top seal that the rod comes out of, and that's held in by a little circlet. And then all the oil goes in there. And then there's a little floating piss and a little disc set at the bottom of the oil chamber, which can move up and down, which separates the nitrogen chamber from the rest of the oil. okay And then on the bottom, the very bottom of strut body for the uprights,

Speaker: is just a threaded valve. It's a threaded plate that goes into the bottom and there's a little rubber check valve in there. It's not a Schrader valve. And that was another challenge was, you know, I'm in Charlotte, we've got some shock dyno producers here. We've got shock therapy. We've got a lot of autosports people who will recharge cord lowers for you, but they all use Schrader valves.

Speaker: And they had never seen these things before, like this kind of rubber check valve. And they didn't want to touch it because they didn't want to screw it up. Even though the rebuild kit that RaceWorks sends you comes with a little adapter. It's just a jam adapter. You have to like physically hold that thing in there and there's nothing keeping it in there. So when I'm rebuilding these things, I'm holding the coil over in my left hand and like putting all my weight into it with the right to fight the pressure that I'm putting in there and hold the the little trigger down and wait for the pressure to equalize and then finally get tired let it go and then do it again just for good measure to make sure it sets the right pressure. um Dude, that's wild. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a little bit of arm strength. I'm sure I can figure some kind of like system to get it locked in place. So it's not such a pain, but they at race work said they went with that as opposed to a Schrader valve because they've never heard of that style of valve leaking.

Speaker: Whereas when I was researching nitrogen pressure, Like ah Jeep guys, for instance, going out to Moab with all the heat that they deal with out there. They talk about losing pressure over the course of a day.

Speaker: Oh, absolutely. Cause just those little rubber seals inside the the core of the trailer valve. Yeah. That'll, they melt, especially, i mean, entire applications more. So if you're, if you're doing some sketchy reseeding of beads, but I don't know.

Speaker: Yeah. I don't know. I imagine coilovers get hot out there. They do. I've, I've burned my finger on my coilovers in these 24 events. That's insane. And I'm not even pushing them that hard. I'm not doing like proper rally stuff. Like the fastest we're going is 65 because the speed limit's 55 and it's not a race. It's a rally and you they don't close the roads and all that. um But yeah, so those guys are carrying around nitrogen tanks with them like on this rail. And again, I didn't want to do that because it's like 500 bucks just for that kit. Maybe one day, but nah. So that was a nitrogen. And what was the other thing you asked? Oh, preload. Yeah.

Speaker: So preload was something i did a physics dive on this really wrap my head around preload. Um, spring preload should really only be adjusted for when your car is at rest. And after you've driven around a little bit, wherever it settles out, that's what I'm going to call resting height.

Speaker: And like, that's when there's, when the car has all the weight you want in it, where is the rod going to be in in relation to it's like maximum minimum travel. You either want it right in the middle,

Speaker: as assuming that you have like the available suspension travel without suspension components, limiting travel for us on the SG foresters in the rear down travel is stopped when the lateral link bolt contacts the trailing arm.

Speaker: So that's, so you're limited by, i think it's, I might be a little bit off on this. It might be 2.75 inches of down travel. Okay. Stock. So then, you know, we have eight, I have eight inches of available rod travel in the rear.

Speaker: So it doesn't make any sense for me to set the resting rod height at four inches. I want to have all that compression available and yeah only have like 2.75 or three inches of droop. So I want to have five compression, three droop.

Speaker: So I want to set my preload such that when the car is at rest, there's five inches of rod sticking out or actually six inches. Cause you have the bump stop up there too. Yeah. Yes. And in the front you're, you have the lower control arm that contacts the subframe and I still have the subframe on there. Cause that's part of my front bumper setup. And I'm not going to, I know you, a lot of folks remove that cause like, Oh, it doesn't come the Japanese versions or whatever.

Speaker: Um, but it's, it's part of my builds, part of my skid plate. Um, And it keeps the car reliable. Like that's part of the build ethos of this car is model as much as I can, but keep as many stock parts on there. Cause it is so nice being able to service this thing out of a salvage yard. Dude. Yes. I was just talking about that. I posted a game boy that I had just, uh, finished.

Speaker: on Reddit and I took a photo of it in, in the front seat of the car and somebody was like, Oh, that's sick game boy. But, uh, what kind of Subaru is that? Literally what we talked about, you know, he was like, Oh yeah, I've got a, an NASG. was like, Oh, me too. He's like, yeah, i just love being able to go to any pickup part and get a starter. I can get literally almost anything for the car, like right there, dirt cheap. Yep.

Speaker: Not even off your car, off an Outback, off an Impreza, off a Legacy. Exactly. You're almost guaranteed to find the part you need. An alternator, you can get them off Maximas of some years. Yeah.

Speaker: Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so back to preload. like you know there's With linear rate springs like the Swift Springs, I'm sure, i don't know anything about FlatOut, honestly. like People ask me about them, and I'm just yeah assuming they're the same as RaceWorks instruction-wise, and they give you linear rate springs.

Speaker: um there's this equation called Hooke's law. um F equals negative KX, where F is your spring force. K is the spring rate in whatever spring rate you want, pounds per inch or kilograms per, I don't know what the metric one is, is America. And then X is your distance.

Speaker: So your spring force, if you corner weight the car or a corner, you just measure the load on each corner of the car, that's your spring force that you're targeting for rest. Let's just say it's, I don't know,

Speaker: 200 pounds and for sake of argument, let's say is a hundred pounds per inch spring rate, then you want to target 200 pounds of preload. So you would compress it two inches. So your negative K, which is your spring rate, it's negative because you're compressing the spring.

Speaker: So spring rate, 100 pounds per inch X, two inches, two times 100 is 200. That's your spring force. So that's the equation that I use to figure out what You know, you can just adjust it blind. You don't have to use that equation. You can just adjust it blind, but you'll be adjusting for like hours. Yeah. Adjust it trying to get it right around. Let it settle. See where it is. Adjust it some more. Realize that like one quarter inch of preload is not going to equal one quarter inch of ride height adjustment because the springs aren't 100 pounds per inch. like Yeah.

Speaker: Mine are 175. Most folks are running 200, 250. Some people are running like the guy, like don't know what Milton's running, but the guys who are jumping on a lot are probably upwards of 300 pounds inch. Yeah. Hopefully they don't bottom. out Yeah, I know. Right.

Speaker: um but then they're not going to have a great ride quality on the road because these springs are so stiff. Exactly. There's always a trade off, man. Right. And so my sprint, my coil overs came with two fifties just to try them out. Cause I had no idea what I was doing the beginning. And the racer was like, just try two fifties, see how they feel.

Speaker: And I realized that at crawling, I could never get them to flex out. The car was too light. it would yeah pick up the entire car and they'd compress like two inches and that was it. So then I did some research trying to figure out, all right what's the stock spring rate on my Forester? And that information is exactly nowhere.

Speaker: Nobody lists it anywhere. not was going to ask if you facties gonna ask if you manage to find that because I always struggle to find goofy stuff like that. I did it experimentally. i um I weighed a solid cinder block that I had and one of those solid cinder blocks is 33 pounds.

Speaker: So my my wife helped me with this. We took three of those cinder blocks and stacked them on top of each other. I took apart one of my old struts, had the spring resting on the driveway just upright.

Speaker: And I was balancing these three cinder blocks, 99 pounds on top of the spring. And I was like, Becca, measure how far it's compressed. So we can figure this out. And I do that for the front and the rear.

Speaker: And for my Forester, it was 180 front, 188 rear. Okay. So the closest that was available from Swift, just in the increments they offer was 175. And I was like, how with that, I can just preload it out from there. um But in case I did want to get a lot stiffer, i guess, spring force, you know, they recommend 14 inch springs because that has nine inches of available compression. I went to 16 inch just so I can play with more preload if I wanted to because that has like 11.1 inches available compression. So you got to think when you're looking at that chart, it says how many inches of compression it has, but how much of that are you eating up with preload?

Speaker: And then what do you have left over? So I didn't want to deal with that. So I have my 14 inch springs are still sitting on a shelf in my shed, never going to be used. Probably. Someone can have those. Hit me up. Instagram giveaway. pretty Yeah, I know, right? They're all scuffed up and whatnot. Does your Subaru's engine bay look like crap? Mine definitely does or did. I recently, in the last couple of years, purchased a full set of engine bay caps for ah my daily driver. And then I purchased some other ones for my Forester from Melee Design Firm. They have full sets or you can buy just the oil cap if you want to just dress that up but they're billet aluminum they're small batch so again not every broccoli head with a wrx is going to have these and they look pretty thick i'm using the wrinkle red powder coat but they have them in all sorts of other colors that you can choose from and if you use code dirt subies at checkout you'll get 10 off pretty much anything in the store and that would really help us out to continue making these episodes for you and it would help out a small business. Melee Design Firm is the epitome of a small business. Mitch over there is absolutely grinding and crushing it and I can't say thank you enough for his willingness to sponsor what we're doing over here. So go check that out and let's get back into this freaking heater of an episode. Can you remind me real quick, spring rate is essentially the amount of force required to move that spring one inch. Is that the is that how that's measured?

Speaker: One inch per inch. So going back to like a hundred pounds example, the first inch requires one hundred pounds to do that. The second inch requires a hundred extra pounds. So 200 pounds total, okay three inches of 300 pounds. So it it's a linear rate, but it's a progressive amount of force that's required.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. That, that makes sense. Yeah. See that. So this is something I'm really glad you're on here because I always learn something. Cause this is just something I've never had any reason to really dig into. mean, I don't carry a lot of stuff in the forest or I don't.

Speaker: Nor I keep it light as light as possible. Yeah, same, same. And I'm not doing high speed, ah you know, off pavement stuff typically. um So I'm glad you're here. oh thats Perfect.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have a lot of engineers in my life too, that I can ask like my buddy Nigel, like, hey, Nigel, I'm trying to figure this out. What, what equation am i looking for? He's like, Oh, this is the equation you're looking for. Like, thank you. I would have no idea.

Speaker: i just researching the words that I need to know to find the equation that I need. Like, for skid plates, the amount of time it took me to figure out that what I'm looking for is flexural or modulus to figure out the bendy force, the bendiness of materials, like bendiness index numbers. That doesn't bring up anything. not Everybody, every, if you got a buddy named Nigel yourself, that is the most engineer engineered name I've ever heard. And it's perfect. yeah oie is shout out niel Great resource.

Speaker: Before we move into the other mods, can you talk about the AT3s a little bit? In my opinion, that is one of the best all-around all-terrain tires. I really like it. I think they're affordable. They do everything they need to do.

Speaker: What's your experience been with them? Yeah, so I mean, I went to them just like everybody else does for the lightweight. Um, but I didn't initially run those. So like when I first did this build, my inspiration was, i don't know if you're familiar with the power of your brains guys out of West Virginia. Absolutely.

Speaker: That is where all of this started all of this started with them. to a degree, I was kind of modeling my build after them. They're where I learned about the VTD differential. Um, so the tires I started out with were the general grabber AT2s in two 15, 70, 16, back when I only had two inches of lifts running a Subi lift Oz lift kit.

Speaker: Um, And I just did that because I didn't know where else to start. was like, okay, these guys run it and they're doing these crazy trails in West Virginia. So let's just go with that. Yeah. Come come to find out those sidewalls are only a quarter of an inch thick after I popped them a few times.

Speaker: Right. So yeah, exactly. So I wanted to find something that was a little beefier and a little lighter because I found that they weren't so super light. I had this whole spreadsheet going of tire sizes and tire weights and rotational masses and like all that to try and figure out what I wanted.

Speaker: And they just worked out for price and and the tread, but something I found out. So again, I picked the Toyos for weight, but when I got the Toyos and put them side by side with the grabbers, I realized the grabbers, the tread is a full inch wider than the Toyos are. Toyos are a bit more bubble, but the the sidewall blocks and the Toyos are a lot more aggressive than the than on the grabbers. So for like any kind of mud, it's slight, but it's noticeable, I think anyway.

Speaker: Um, I also went for Toyos cause they're available everywhere. I don't, from discount tire with their certificates and I've used that quite a few times. Me too. Yeah. but The two 25s aren't a super common size, but they have them, they can get them pretty quick. I mean, I've got six tires and rotation now for that very reason. So I'm never down out of five tires to rotate in.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, Yeah, so those guys, and the Toyos went through a redesign maybe a year or two ago where the tread block spacing got a little wider. So they're a lot better at ejecting mud now. Like the first set that I got wasn't so great at that. They would, especially around here with some of the Carolina clay and silty clay that we deal with, it'll just stick onto the tire and make them into just mud donuts.

Speaker: Yeah. Especially at UR sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's not so great. But these these ones are are a lot better now with the wider treads. Gosh, I've never been there in the winter. You guys get snow? you got to chase it. You got to go find it. Okay. The mountains will get snow. The mountains have snow right now. Um, that's how I like it. I don't want it to interfere with my life, but I want it there. If I, if I'm in the mood, yeah, no, they're i've taking them in the snow one time. Cause I, I mostly wheel with, um, this overland group kind of out of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, central central Appalachian mountain overland camo.

Speaker: Um, So they do a winter trip every year. I'm going going on that second week of ah a second weekend of January. And like the snow gets like at least six inches deep. Most times usually eight inches a foot, something like that. And you think for champs. That's the perfect level.

Speaker: Okay. It is. Yeah. Good. but You got to air them down a little bit. You got to like, I didn't air them down just because i was playing around with them and I did get some just like stationary spin happening, but you take them down to like 20 PSI, 25 PSI. great.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. Not so good on ice. but nothing Nothing is good on ice, man. Well, so on the second trip that I went on with them, I took my snow tires.

Speaker: And we we went down this hill near the Canaan Valley. And, um, cause I was just testing out these snow tires cause I've used them a few times. And the biggest thing with snow tires I've noticed is stopping ability. it's huge difference. Oh, absolutely. That's the whole point.

Speaker: Yeah. So we come to this hill that's probably like a hundred feet long, maybe a 20 degree, 25 degree is pretty steep. That's, and that's a grade, bro. It's a grade. It's a grade. And there was a turn at the bottom and there was a ditch along the side and all the guys with mud tires were like sliding down the hill, going sideways, going into the ditch.

Speaker: And I'm just like, man, I'll throw this thing in first gear and just glide down it. And let's jam on the brakes and see what happens. And I stop. I actually stop on this hill. Yeah. Are they... So are those studless or studless tires? Yeah, they're studless. They're just the general Ultimax Arctic 12s.

Speaker: Yes. Dude, studless snow tires... I shouldn't have said nothing does good in the ice. Studded and studless snow tires are an absolute game changer. it gets cold out here and definitely got snow tires on the wife's car.

Speaker: um But yeah, as far as off-road tires, nothing's going to do good. No, no. And, you know, I follow like Engineering Explained on. Oh, I love that guy. Yeah, yeah. and he He's a tire nerd.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. He's great. he He went over like what it what it takes to get the 3 PMS rating and there's the ICE rating and it's really not that much. It really isn't, man. There's a reference all season tire that they compare them to and all you have to do to get the 3 PMS is stop 10% shorter for the same vehicle load weight.

Speaker: It's not a lot. That's not going to save your life. You know, I tell people all the time, you know, you you definitely want to see that rating on the tire just because you never know when you're going to get caught in something.

Speaker: But I always tell people there's no replacement for a dedicated snow tire. Like if you really think you're going to go out there and not, you know, put yourself at risk or other people.

Speaker: without something that's dedicated, you're, you're in for rude awakening. Yeah. And I went with those generals cause, um, I have have a buddy, Kevin Bowman here in Charlotte who used to work for continental tire and, you know, general is just continentals.

Speaker: yeah Yeah. That's what I've heard. Yeah. And I come, so they're a German company come to find out that they focus their, um, polymers and their compounds on wet traction specifically, all of them.

Speaker: So like when I was, before I was getting into off-road, like my second Subaru, which was the same Forester, but a 2007 in silver, it got totaled. But a week before it got totaled, I had, i just put a set of DWS-06 on there.

Speaker: And I was so excited to finally test these things out. That's such a good tire. attractction Never got to use them. Well, I can tell you from experience that is one of my favorite street tires or, or you know, tire that's not focused for off road. That's literally one of my favorite tires. Looks good. Handles fantastically. We get rain like crazy where I'm at.

Speaker: um Yeah, that's. We actually need to talk about that. You got to tell me about that, about that car and what happened to it. Oh man, it's a, it's a stupid, sad story. I was just pulling out of the neighborhood. We were going, my wife and I were going to dinner. We hadn't out to dinner in a while, got all like dressed up and had reservations and whatnot. And then pull out of the neighborhood. And this kid looking at his phone just goes around a corner way too fast. And the hitting us was the last thing he did. Like he came around a curve curve too fast.

Speaker: It was a reverse bank curve. He lost control of the car. The rear end kicked out. He overcorrected. His front end dug into the ditch on his side of the road. He spun around. And by the time he hit us, he hit us from head on with the rear passenger side of his car right behind my shoulder. So head on from the side. What? The way he was spinning at us.

Speaker: What kind of car this guy driving? A Camry. So he just got the most glorious Camry dent, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dude. how do you How do you oversteer in a Camry, dude? Because he was doing like 45 miles an hour or six, or i don't know. I think it was 45, but he was looking at his phone and just... Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, because when he hopped out of the car, i wass like, oh, I blew a tire and his phone was in his hand. The first thing I do is go take photos of all his tires inflated. yeah His mom was so pissed at him. But my rear driver's side tire was in probably at like 35 degrees or something like that. And the the cop was like about to give me a tow or just call a tow truck for me. I'm like, I'm not even a mile from my house. I'm driving this thing home. Yeah. And it it made it. you get the horsetle turning No, I didn't. Cause I had to get like insurance, had to take it. And so I yeah buy another car.

Speaker: Nothing. I want it. The adjuster was a VW guy. So he was like, you got those tires. So the paint on them. I'm like, I'm really hoping to get those tires or like something for him. I'll see what I can do. don't think anything came of it, but he he was a cool guy.

Speaker: Yeah. And you said that was an 07 SG? That was an 07 SG, a silver one. Her name was Misty. I name all my cars. Hey, there you go. I've never named a car. I'm always like, ah, the blue car today or whatever. But I just treat my cars horribly, so I can't give them names. I like that my cars treat me well. Yeah. yeah maybe i should maybe i should adjust my strategy there so i'm guessing you just were like okay this car's sick i'm gonna go get another one of these is that kind of what happened because you ended up with an ll bean right yeah my very first car 2002 outback bean trim yeah and

Speaker: yeah and so I loved, you know, the Ella bean trim is whatever. It gives you this weather radio that nobody uses, yeah but the heated mirrors, I, the heated mirrors are the biggest thing for me. Heated seats were pretty cool too. i like that.

Speaker: Um, and so after that car, that car died of rust. Cause again, I grew up in New York. Yeah. God, I i missed that H six. Um, and I kind of offered that a little bit before I knew what I was doing and got it stuck a bunch.

Speaker: Um, So then I got the Forester and, you know, this is going to sound dumb, but I like the side view mirrors a lot more because they're a lot bigger. So I can see more out of them. Dude, that's not dumb at all, bro. Yeah. And there's a lot more headroom because i'm kind I'm not tall. I'm like six ones. I'm not short. And then the moonroof was a huge thing because that old Outback had the sunroof front, moonroof rear. And these cars have the full moonroof. That was really nice.

Speaker: And the 07 was a premium trim. So it had the heated seats, heated mirrors, heated windshield, everything. And I use that all the time, even when it rains. like Oh, dude.

Speaker: Game changer. You don't even need snow. Yeah. The heated mirrors will just get the spray out of the mirrors. And so I was looking for a premium or an yellow bean sh trim because my 02 Outback had heated mirrors also. But come to find out, the yellow bean forester does not have heated mirrors.

Speaker: ah Really? supposed Yeah, it's supposed to. Unless mine are just busted. There's no extra button for them. okay like According to the manual, the window defrost button is supposed to activate them, but i it's's it's never happened. The heaters never come on if they're in there. I've not taken the mirrors off to see if there's a plug or anything like that.

Speaker: Yeah. I don't know, but I kind of joke, like I combined my first two cars. I got the yellow bean shrimp and the green from my Outback, and then the Forester part of the Forester stuck around. And now I have this thing.

Speaker: Well, you know what I've found? I've found that there... um is a lot of times no rhyme or reason as to how Subaru did things. Like I'll find i believe all sorts of stuff. It's like, you know, the, Oh, that this car just didn't come with that thing. There was like seven of these cars in,

Speaker: 1997 that never had this one feature they were supposed to have or or whatever. And I got it right. Yeah. Yeah, right yeah dude. And even now, you know, that i know now the trim packages, you know, you can add all these weird options, but, uh,

Speaker: Yeah, that sucks. But i will say this about the L.L. Beans. They always had the most sickest grandma colors available in them. like Oh, absolutely. Dude, I was just talking about this and the um like the Brighton wagons from the mid-90s and then all the L.L. Beans that had that like granny green that was like a light green.

Speaker: Yeah, that my Outback color. Yes, that color and then champagne that Subaru did. Sickest, ugliest colors. Everybody hates on them because they look like grandma cars. but I'm like, that just means the car is like ready for me to ruin. like let's i Yeah, exactly. Get give me that granny color, man. like I'm never going to get pulled over.

Speaker: I mean, let's go. Yeah, the only downside I've found like when I was putting my snorkel on... Because i you know, there's that anxiety. cutting the panels. Exactly. Yeah. You were trying to find another one, right?

Speaker: Can't do it. Cannot do it. Yeah. Those do not end up in salvage yards. Like the silver ones, white ones all day long. So I did end up finding a silver one and just like working out my stencil on that off the car. And that was very helpful. there you go. Like if I screw this up, I'm screwed kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. You have to do some paint.

Speaker: paint shop stuff. Yeah. but the car looks good, dude. Your car looks super sick. I love it. I mean, like you who cares about looks, but if they're there, it's a plus. I kind of do.

Speaker: Kind of. I want it to look. I started out thinking I wanted to make it stock plus. And then once the snorkel happened, it's like, it's it's all downhill from here. That's out the window. yeah Okay. Let me, let me ask you about the, um, about the snorkel. You know, we we were kind of talking about mods and of course I got us off on a bunch of rabbit trails, but with the snorkel, yeah, with the snorkel, um, can you give just quick overview of what you put on the car?

Speaker: And share, you know, because I think in a lot of cases, most people don't need them, but the stuff you're doing, great idea. Plus you're doing all this, you know, 24 hour stuff where you need clean air from up top. Can you talk about the whole snorkel thing a little bit and school us?

Speaker: Yeah, so like you know most folks have the the snorkel that runs down. It's the Pajero snorkel, I think, that runs down the entire quarter panel. And I just i didn't want that because just messing around at UR, I've had a few close calls where a rock or a root come within like a half inch of that part of the quarter panel. So i wanted that clearance. And I just didn't like the way it looked.

Speaker: So i ended up getting two snorkel kits. The first one was from an NK Pajero. Really? Um, yeah. So that one, it's not the the part that you see is not what I use from that.

Speaker: I, that was what I wanted to use first. It has like the little tiny bit that runs horizontal and then it dives into the fender. But when trying to fit that, I realized that the turn inside the fender didn't have enough room to fit in the voyage base that Subarus have.

Speaker: So I couldn't really use that. It's a little too big. Um, So, I mean, it is kind of flattened and sandwiched, but it's just too far forward in the fender to actually fit.

Speaker: and But I did also realize that if I could find a way to move it back towards the cal sum, that it would fit under there. And then i've also found out just by like serendipitous that the, the turn, the 90 that goes into the air box for the NK Bajero kit,

Speaker: perfectly slides in to the airbox hole. Heck yeah. With no sealant whatsoever. Like it's a press fit. I had to like turn it. little time I mean, I put some, dielectric grease on it just to get a seal on it, but it's like you, you shimmy it on in there and it just kind of bows the airbox just a little bit and to hold itself in there, no problem. So I've seen also got a zip tie holding it in there just so it doesn't wander its way out.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. But so the part that you see is from a gen two forerunner. Okay. Okay. Yeah, but so when I got the Gen 2 4Runner snorkel part, I realized that the the hole that goes into the fender is only 1.75 inch diameter.

Speaker: whereas So I didn't want any kind of intake restrictions. So I measured yeah every orifice going between the airbox and the throttle body. And I realized I need to make this thing two inches at least.

Speaker: So me wanting to not have any restrictions because my brother tunes cars or he used to work for National Speed on the dyno tuning cars. And what oh, yeah, no i can go like I can go on a tangent on what he's done with his car for a second. He's got a supercharged 2.5 RS and he built the supercharger kit himself with a Mercedes and three hundred supercharger. And so when he was tuning it, he realized that every degree of turn in the intake right above the throttle body made a noticeable difference on the dyno.

Speaker: So to me, that means, okay, if I'm going to make a turn, a make as few turns as possible and B make them as wide as you can so that you're not slowing the air down anyway. yeah I was going for, you know, the, the tightest restriction I want to be two inches, but everywhere else in that snorkel is a three inch hole all the way up.

Speaker: And, um, So I had the turn from the air box. There is that NK Bajero 90 HDPE. And then from there to the part that meets up with the exterior portion of snorkel is 2.75 inch flex hose I got from Amazon.

Speaker: So I can squeeze it and just put that on with hose clamps so they won't come off. And then, so there is that hole at the bottom of the four runner snorkel the exterior part i had to drill that out you know it was a little like for lack of better term a nipple that would go in that would go into the fender i drilled that out with a hole saw okay yeah and i was struggling to find a way to connect that to the turn piece from the pajero and i ended up just using a piece of um like i think it was two two and three quarter inch or three inch rubber jammed it in there and seriously use great stuff to seal it up And it doesn't leak. It passes the smoke test. I mean, I haven't filled the thing up with water, but it's it doesn't leak. And I mean, when you're doing these water crossings, if you do the bow wave properly, you're going to get a trough right there anyway. So you really shouldn't be having that problem unless you stop for some reason. Yeah.

Speaker: Hey, could you, um, could you kind of share a little bit about the whole water crossing thing and also the other benefits of a snorkel? Because you say the word snorkel, people just think, oh, it's for going underwater. Uh, but there's a ton of other benefit that you get out of it.

Speaker: Yeah. So, when I was doing a research on snorkel head types, you know, that brought me to a lot of Australian off-roading videos and they do a lot of really nice pressure tests where they have like anemometers and transducers that they put inside the air box, various parts of the intake manifold to figure out like what, yeah, like what different kind of snorkel head actually gives you a benefit and which ones actually um cause restriction or or whatever. And they go over this and they say the primary function function of a snorkel is for dust reduction.

Speaker: Because you're going to get the air intake higher up. So your heavier particulates on a dusty road are going to settle faster. So your stock intake being lower is going to drink up both the heavy ones and the light ones and go to your air filter and tire it out faster. Yeah. And anyone listening who has ever been to Uari on those trails, they know what the Uari dust is all about.

Speaker: You got to bring like multiple air filters with you. You're going to spend weekend out there. You don't snorkel. I've seen videos. I've never been, but I've seen videos, dude. Yep. Yep. And it's made a huge difference. and I also learned that if you turn the snorkel head around backwards on the trails, it also helps because you're creating a low pressure zone. If you're going fast enough, but like when you're crawling, you're not going fast enough to create that little low pressure zone back there. So it's, yeah, some people say that, Oh, well you're just sucking it in the back because of that editing effect.

Speaker: Well, when I'm like, on 24 hour event, I have it facing forward. i mean, ah depending on how much mud is going to be, I may face it into the windshield also, but just to keep water out from splashing. But if I am going slow enough, I'll face it back so that even that dust getting high up won't get in there. And I haven't had to change the air filter after multiple days at Uari.

Speaker: I should, but I haven't had to. Like I got one video on my Instagram where I didn't have a snorkel and just took the air filter out and banged it on the ground and dust is flying everywhere. And,

Speaker: those days are gone fortunately but yeah that's the front and like you said cold air intake so i got a scan gauge just like everybody should and um yeah before i had the snorkel my intake temperature was it would get as high as like 130 degrees 135 degrees well i also have like problems with air fluid through the engine because of my skid plate like get into that later okay um but then with the snorkel it Even like standing still at at a traffic light, it never tops 90. Moving around, it's usually like 70s intake temperature. Oh, dude. Yeah, and we're talking to horsepower gains at this point. I was just going to say, I mean, the the hotter the— And there's no way I can pretend to be a physicist or a scientist of of any measure. But you know when it comes to combustion, you know the the colder the air is, I mean, it it's more dense when it's cold, yeah correct?

Speaker: Yeah, it's denser. you're getting way more air into the combustion chamber and you're absolutely going to, I mean, but Dino, you're going to feel it Yeah.

Speaker: yeah ands down I put a, um, a cowl intake on, I have a Jeep XJ. That's an absolute piecer. i was thinking about a cowl intake for a minute, dude. I would love to do one. Cause it's like nothing to get caught on.

Speaker: it's super just incognito, but man, I, I literally felt the difference just from that cowl intake right there. Boom. Could feel it, you know, just felt way better.

Speaker: What turned me away from it on the Subarus was, you know, there's actually a a bunch of little holes there with just rubber seals on that you can open up and plumb them in that way. But they're so narrow and so small that in order to get the equivalent, like, diameter to keep the air intake the same diameter whole way down, I'd have to drill three or four holes and, like, pump a little manifold in like that. I didn't want to deal with that.

Speaker: And then I was worried, well, what if, because I've already done water crossings where water's come up over the hood and into the cowl and drained out that way, and then what do I do? Yeah, that's that's the only thing. you know With the Jeep, I don't get into crazy water, but yeah, I haven't.

Speaker: In that thing, it's just so stupid and ridiculous. It's up.

Speaker: It's on 35s. If I get water up to the cowl, I got other problems. You got problems. The guy who got me in into off-roading, my trail daddy, Jay May. ah Yeah, he he drives a lifted JK Rubicon.

Speaker: Oh, dude. He was the one who, he was the first guy, like, I was just, like, putzing around talking about, like, man, I could just off-road my Subaru. And he was the first guy who said, you should totally do that. Who didn't say, just you should just buy G. And and dude all this is his fault.

Speaker: Jay, if you're listening, this is all your fault, man. You know, it's so funny you say that. So I have a friend that he just passed away about two months ago. Yeah, man, I'm sorry. And oh I appreciate it, man. that This one actually hit me hard. I don't have a lot of emotion typically, but this one was rough. um But Kyle, RIP the homie, you know, of course, Kyle doing Kyle stuff.

Speaker: He had a lifted 4Runner with 529s and on 35s, ready to get ignorant. And same thing with him. He was always like, let's go, dude. Bring the Forester. And I'm telling you, all the i you've probably heard me kind of rant about this a little bit, but there's such a... um i don't know what the right word is, but...

Speaker: Subaru owners, it's almost like they just have this thought that like, it's an us versus this thing, an us versus them thing against like, you know, four by four owners. And I'm just like, dude, I've had the most fun with other drivers in, you know, real four by four. So that's really cool. Cause they're bigger. They can pull me out. Yeah. I mean, you do that to some degree. You do have to make sure you're with a group that has the patience for you, especially if you're new, like you're learning, but Jay, like he is a phenomenal spotter. He, yeah.

Speaker: taught me how to spot myself pretty much and how to drive my car, like how to, a left foot brake modulates and work open differentials. That was so critical for driving these cars. Yes. dear Yeah. What to think about with in terms of armor, just based on how he took me to URI right after I got the lift on the car. And he's like, so based on what I'm seeing, you need your rock sliders.

Speaker: Okay. Let's do rock sliders. And that, that is one of the most fundamental changes to the car in terms of the way you can wheel it. And not just bolt-on rock sliders, but mine are welded on and bolted on.

Speaker: Yeah. They're quarter-inch steel. If someone's thinking about rock sliders, I do recommend the quarter-inch angle iron or angle steel because you can basically hit a rock at 20 miles an hour.

Speaker: And nothing. Literally nothing. And nothing. And I'm not exaggerating when I say 20 miles an hour. like I've hit them harder than that going straight. like Sideways, lateral force, probably like seriously five, six miles an hour. Not even a thought as to whether they were damaged. like I can...

Speaker: Look at an obstacle. going to slam my slider on that rock and that rock like it's part of the plan. I'm not worried about pivot off of this, pivot off of that, teeter off of that, all of that. Yeah. Okay. Well, let me ask about the rock sliders then, you know, ah we haven't even scratched the surface of, you know, your mods. Um, when did you do those and did you fabricate them?

Speaker: I did not fabricate them. Those were done by two different shops. I always tag Blackbeard Outfitters. That's my buddy, Danny Arbor. He did most of the work, but the original angle iron was welded on by a Tar Heel four-wheel drive center Albemarle, I think, near Charlotte here.

Speaker: And it's a three inch on the bottom by four inch up the side. I was going to do three inch by three inch, 316 because it was lighter, but we held it up the car. And once you take the rocker panel, uh, plastic cover off. It kind of looks weird because the three inch vertical section does not go all the way up.

Speaker: You have to either paint it or it just sticks oddly below the door a little bit. Yeah. You really need four inch leg up there. And they didn't make the place I was getting to steal from. They didn't make one in three sixteenth inch.

Speaker: And, uh, the guy at target was like, you're going want quarter inch anyway. If you're going put rails on this thing, you're going want quarter inch. So I'm like, our all right. Yeah. is there is a In the front, on the underside, there is a stock bolt hole that was just not utilized. It's just there. it' just a captive nut in there. I forget. It might be M10 or M12. So you bolted into that.

Speaker: And then on the back, the Dan calls it a mustache bar, but it's like a, I don't even know what it is, a differential creatter cradle outrigger or something.

Speaker: Okay. I don't know where that connects to the side. There's that little bracket. Like if you do a subframe drop kit, you drop this thing on the sides and there's two little M6 bolts right near the outside and there's brackets connected to that. So we wanted to have bolts on the bottom so that we could put the nerf bars on the sides and protect against rotational stresses.

Speaker: Like if I slam down on the bar itself, it's not going to rip off the bottom. Yeah. I did not hammer the pinch weld over. Most folks are to do that because you do gain like three quarters of inch of clearance, but I wanted to be able to teeter on rocks and you know, there's other stuff that hangs lower, like those little, the not body rails that go down the bottom, those things yeah lower the, um, the exhaust hangs down a lot lower than that.

Speaker: So I would rather hit those sliders first and protect those things than have more clearance on the sliders. Cause like, what am I, I'm not trying to not hit the sliders, you know, exactly.

Speaker: That. And like you said, that's part of the plan. You use them as a, as a tool. And then across the top, there's four eight inch welds spaced out. It wasn't welded across the entire top.

Speaker: And then there's just some kind of like silicone sealant across the top. And then they're, they're just, I think they're powder coated or spray on powder coat equivalent, that kind of thing. And I just spray paint them. And then, so Dan welded on the bars afterwards. Okay. and but But those, the bars made the biggest difference. Cause like, i mean, sure. The functionality mostly comes from slamming down vertically on them.

Speaker: But I was still worried, you know, our doors bow out a little bit and I was still worried about just missing the angle on and then ding at the bottom of my door on a rock. And so he put those bars on there and they only stick out like maybe a half inch more than the body is. Cause one thing I've learned wheeling with camo on some trails in the Hocking Hills, Ohio is just how much of a benefit having a narrow car is like, we got to take different lines, but we can squeeze through stuff. We can like get around trees in certain ways. We can,

Speaker: I wanted to flex. I didn't want to have those little bump outs to the back that I can catch myself on. Cause I, we don't really need them. You know, unless your tires are sticking out, what are you trying to bump off of? Yeah, man. And it's so funny because that, that's like one of the biggest selling points for me of taking these things on the trails is they really are way smaller, you know, especially when you compare them to, you know, something with Dana 44 is like that, like that Jeep JK,

Speaker: And you've got, you know super low offset wheels are sticking all the way out. It's like, right With Subaru, it's like, oh, I could fit in, in your, in one of your ruts. Yeah. We're we're doing like Samurai and Jimny stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah man um what are some of the mods on your car that are um not visible to people that you know because i'm i'm guessing you've got all kinds of stuff that if somebody just looks at a photo of your car they have no idea it's on there but provides a lot of uh utility like i don't know ecu relocations yeah either yeah did the ecu relocate you know the ecu is in the

Speaker: worst The kickboard, I guess. The worst place possible, Literally in the worst place. So it's in the glove box right now. Lost little bit of glove box space, up but whatever. The real magic for this car comes from the differential setup, for sure. So there's a torque locker in the rear. But...

Speaker: but and i Just had the stock MPT center differential in there for a while. And then I grenaded that thing three times. could you Can you explain that? Is that a multi-pack something? What is that? Yeah, multi-plate transfer. so Oh, there we go.

Speaker: Power of Your Brains guys came up with this. Well, don't if they came up with it, but they did the video on the center diff lock mod. Very informative. ah Very informative. I've watched that video specifically. Very good video. Yep. So i I built that, that little switchboard, and was using that. So that thing...

Speaker: basically compresses the friction discs in the multi-play transfer clutch. Let's just call it a clutch. It's not a clutch, let's just call it that. yeah It'll compress them as much as they can be compressed. It basically, like a lot of people on the forums and on Facebook say that if you put the gear selector in one or two, that it will basically lock it. It absolutely will not do that. That is completely false. I've heard that.

Speaker: And I can say from my own experience, doesn't seem like it. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can prove it. You can put the gear in first in a parking lot, lock the wheel all the way one direction. It's not going turn off.

Speaker: It's not going to turn off. It's not going turn not going to lock up. It's going let if you look at the factory service manual, it'll say that the transfer solenoid, sometimes called duty C solenoid, will in first will go as far as the equivalent of 80% engagement at full load.

Speaker: Okay. Never a hundred percent. need more than a hundred or we need more than 80. We need a hundred. Right. Yeah. But again, these are just friction discs. I mean, it's just like if anyone's ever busted open an automatic transmission, you know, between the clutch drums, or I guess it's the planetary gear drums, you have these friction discs and it's just one of those.

Speaker: Yeah. It's just one of those. So even when you turn the lock mod on, it can still slip, especially if you have a torque locker and you exceed the torque that it can handle. i then it slips.

Speaker: It fails in certain certain ways. Another Jay, Jay Parkinson on High Wheel of, who has an SF, he when his failed, it was just slip and spin. When my failed, it actually like properly exploded inside its housing and there were metal shards inside there everywhere. and that happened three times, seriously.

Speaker: And yeah, so I was like changing, i dropped the pan, was changing the screen, the filter screen or clean that out. I changed the twist on filter on the side. And um I learned a lot of things was kind of learning my way through the automatic transmission, like fluid levels were getting wrong. I had to change one of the sundial seals on one of the output shafts in the front.

Speaker: Like, you know how there's the output shaft seal? So then there's an O-ring seal on the outside of that sundial. Right. That was leaking. so i had to take that out to replace that seal but then i i wiped off one of the paint markers by accident yeah I didn't know exactly how far back to put it in. Cause there's preload on those. Correct. Exactly. And it makes a huge difference. And so look what I'm seeing. Oh, you're not gonna be able to see it, but I'm looking at your Instagram right now. I see a, I see a clutch pla cut. I can't talk clutch back.

Speaker: Yeah. So, so I messed up a bunch of things with that transmission, like sending bits and pieces through it. And it was kind of shifting weird, making weird noises. Um, So I eventually got a VTD on and then also got a new new to me transmission from a car that had been unmolested just to start fresh.

Speaker: Perfect. And at the same time, put in a WRX torque converter. Ooh, love it. I don't actually know if that did anything. It has like a 300 RPM higher stall speed, but I don't know if that did anything, honestly. Okay. But I'm getting off topic of myself here. So the MPT is what comes in most of these cars. Yeah. Again, just friction discs. It can be exceeded.

Speaker: The VTD is a double planetary gear set. And if you ever want to go on a nerdy dive into mechanics, like just look up a video on how planetary gear sets work. They are magic.

Speaker: It is great. Dude, it's this it's the same kind of magic as like, you know, because I just i did a slip yoke eliminator on it. transfer case not too long ago and so i kind of went down that rabbit trail just a little bit yeah it's the same kind of magic to me as doubling your pulling power with with snatch blocks same type of thing we're like whoa who figured this out this is yeah right it makes no sense looking at it but it makes perfect sense it's literal magic dude yeah But so well when a lot of folks, I think, because not a lot of folks have done the VTD swap because it's really hard to find those differentials. Like they're not salvage yards in my experience. You got to find just like I did.

Speaker: Well, Jay Parkinson found this kid who was manual swapping automatic WRX and was just dumping his entire driveline for cheap. So I got it from there for a hundred bucks.

Speaker: Nice. The whole transmission for a hundred bucks. Oh, oh, yeah. And you know, okay, that's what's up. And you know, people are blowing up those transmissions anyways. Yeah, but this VTD was totally fine. um Yeah.

Speaker: And it's a bolt on swap. It is a direct bolt on swap. Nothing else you have to do. i got the TCU from him also, but I haven't used it. I'm just using yeah the MPT TCU. so And I actually ended up uninstalling my diff lock mod because okay ah what I've done is basically just wire or a switch to the front row drive fuse location.

Speaker: That's it. So when I'm driving around town, i have the switch on such that it's in front wheel drive mode and the all wheel drive light comes on. And I've been driving like this for like 30,000 miles. so everyone who says not designed to be like that, no problems whatsoever.

Speaker: cause it also The VTD is pretty aggressive, correct? Because I've talked to Patrick about that. I mean, you'll be chirping tires if it's not in front wheel drive, right? it Or am I thinking of something else?

Speaker: No, no, that's correct. Okay. With most planetary gear sets and automatic transmissions, the way that the transmission controls the difference in the gearing is by controlling how fast the planetary gears are moving.

Speaker: So the control is on the planetary gears themselves. In the VTD, the control is on the output sun gear. The planetary gears, because there's two sets of planetary gears that are connected together, so they can't move independently of each other.

Speaker: They are connected to the driven gear coming from the transmission itself. And there's two little sun gears inside there, one for the forward set of planetary gears, one for the rear set of planetary gears.

Speaker: There's nothing connecting these two. So the friction discs on the backside of the VTD are connected to you know the outside of the drum that has a floating piston on the back. And there's a little pressure pour on the back that pushes hydraulic pressure against that floating piston.

Speaker: And that piston puts pressure on friction discs that are connected to that rear sun gear. I have no idea why you're not an engineer, dude. I like understanding stuff so I can mess with it and not like screw something up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's me. I'm like, let me just break it. I know. Right. Well, i mean, that's what I was expecting to do. So I have a backup VCD in my shed for when break this one doing something stupid. Hey, if you ah want to sell it, let me know. They're hard to find.

Speaker: um But like, you know, driving around town just in front wheel drive mode. the mpttcu i think is sending no almost no power to the transfer solenoid which i think is putting no fluid pressure on the little flu pressure yeah well so all the pressure coming from the back of the tail housing forward like when you put the tail housing on or take it off you'll see this is a little tube that goes from the back of the uh transmission kind of around and back to see if it's the front of transmission pushes towards the front, pushing that floating piston this way.

Speaker: So in front-wheel drive mode, it should be not engaging that MPT. So not putting fluid pressure on it again, I think, cause I can't find this in FSM's anywhere. Right. At this level of detail. Yeah.

Speaker: So we need blingstrom on here, dude. i know' exactly That guy's got all the little wizardry facts in his head. i need I need donut media to do like a deep dive on this or something yeah like those guys. What's that? what was that segment called up to speed or something like that? I don't know.

Speaker: um Yeah, no I love that. I love that. Yeah. But so i also like like I said, I installed the diff lock mod because I don't really need it to lock up all the way just with the way it works is once those planetary gears are engaged, it will transfer all the power through them.

Speaker: Hmm. And a lot of people say that it will only transfer like, you know, 45 front, 55 rear. No, it's always 100% front. When you look at how like 100% of the power iss going to go to the front, you look at how the gears are lined up. There is no slip from the driven gear coming out of the back of the diff to the gear going the front.

Speaker: The front is always in front wheel drive front wheels are never not getting power. It's how much power is getting transferred out the rear. Yeah. But if you're transferring like if you say it's in the 50 50, it doesn't mean that, oh, 50% of the power is now not going the front all a sudden and then yes, going to the rear.

Speaker: It's just that 100% is going to the front and then 50% of the 100% can then go to the rear. Okay. but With the VTD normal drive mode, like my my switch will be off and it's just in normal drive mode in first gear.

Speaker: Remember how I said, if you floor it, it'll give you a lot of fluid pressure. It'll cause that to lock up as much as it will without doing a hundred percent lock. Yeah. So I'll get enough power going back there to get them to spin. but I actually don't, for my use, I don't ever want that thing to be a hundred percent locked.

Speaker: Um, there is this guy who did this same mod in a Forester and took to UR and did a video of ways back Dan Brzezinski. And he has a video of him just crawling out of turn.

Speaker: with the VTD at a hundred percent lock, because if you push that floating piston in all the way, it will properly 100% lock. Um, and he snapped your a rear axle at two miles an hour on a flat surface.

Speaker: Do right. Yeah. So I don't want that. Like the rear axle is the weak point of the car. And I want to keep the rear axle as a weak point because nothing else will break. But I also want to be able to do a ah tight full lock turn mid obstacle with like diagonal wheels up in the air.

Speaker: and have a little bit of slip to the rear, but actually not really any slip. Well, and your front, your fronts are, you know, in all off-roading, I find the front to be the most important, you know, like when I first locked the Jeep up front is what I locked, you know, yeah that's what's, that's what's pulling the car. That's what the engine weight is over. I've always had the best, you know, best luck with that. So that makes a ton of sense.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, With just, just for my own curiosity, it sounds like that VTD would be a headache to run on a, you know, on a daily driver when they put them in WRXs.

Speaker: Does the TCU, um, interact with it in a way to where it's fine for daily driving? It's just that when you bring it over to our cars, they're much more aggressive.

Speaker: it's um Yes, the TCU does control it differently, but also there's not a locker and a WRX in the rear. That's true. The limited slit back there can eat up. Or i shouldn't say eat up, but it's not translating all the torque to both axles like it does for us and ah with, with a locked car.

Speaker: That does make sense. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Yeah. That was just, like i said, just my own little idea that I was curious about there. So that's what what's up. Yeah. And then like the front is just totally stock. I mean, i know I've heard that Cusco makes something that might fit our cars, but they say it's only for manual. Okay.

Speaker: Okay. I thought about that. i mean, it's like 1300 bucks or whatever, just for the right. Yeah. So I would just much rather get better at left foot breaking and modular in that way. And that's been, and that's the part of how you can work the BTD. So well, also, like I said, you know, more load in first gear and if we'll cause it to get more fluid pressure back there and cause those friction to compress and you get the engagement across the planetary gears.

Speaker: And I do that while I'm left foot braking, like, you know, just push the brake harder and push the throttle harder and you'll get the same speed, but with the get up into the engines, not into the the power band. I don't think that's way higher, but you'll get more torque available.

Speaker: If anyone's ever actually left foot brake, they know that you get way more power way faster by releasing the brake pedal than applying the gas pedal. Exactly. 100%, dude. Yep. And then if you can memorize, like the biggest thing for me with off-roading on rocks is memorizing where those rocks are once I lose sight of them and knowing exactly when that rock is going to hit exactly which wheel and letting go of that brake pedal right when it touches the rock. Not right before, not right after, not losing momentum, like right when it touches, i can climb up and over.

Speaker: And then the moment I get to the top of the rock, brake comes back on. Think of the next wheel that's going to hit the next rock and work my way through the obstacle that way. But I'm almost never fully off the brake. Unless they're like high level, you know, four wheel drive people. Most people have never, ever used braking on the trails. And it's super slept on. it's yeah Because like you said, the you get the most ah benefit and control not from applying throttle, but from releasing brake while the throttle's already been applied. And it's like the whole reason why an automatic is so much, i don't want to say so much more capable, but...

Speaker: It is. That's the way that you're utilizing the torque converter. like yeah Yeah, let the torque converter do the dirty work, man. Yeah, you're stashing the potential energy inside the torque converter, slinging it up, making that viscous fluid shear in there. It's designed to slit.

Speaker: i I don't know who came up with the automatic transmission, but I think it's a fantastic invention. wizard. it it It is sick, dude. like Torque converters? like Who came up with that? who Yeah, a fluid clutch, basically.

Speaker: What's that? a fluid A fluid clutch, basically. Yeah, exactly. and It looks like when you cut them in half, they look like those seashells, dude. They're super interesting looking. Right on. um What other ah unnoticed mods, if if any, I know I've...

Speaker: picked your brain a bunch no no there's there's plenty to go through still let's go um so you know di diff breathers obviously is a big one um the rear differential one probably everyone knows about with that you just gotta like tap in some threading and get a little nipple on that um i forget what those numbers are offhand yeah and then the the front differential and transmission breathers that are normally like right on top of the the bell housing just extend the bell housing of the um the front diff and the words, the transmission, just extend those up a little bit higher.

Speaker: And, um, the front differential for our cars, there's a little dipstick location. A lot of people were jamming, like, you know, Matt Chaplin down in Australia had a video or a ah DIY of putting, um, either PVC tubing on it, like using a heat gun and jamming a PVC tubing on there and extending it up that way.

Speaker: I did that and I still found diff fluid leaking around. Like it would spray up and then work its way between ah pipe and around the little collar there. So I just come to find out that a three quarter inch boat plug fits that hole absolutely perfectly.

Speaker: Just those little twist boat plugs. And then you just like take a set of pliers, grab the bottom washer of the boat plug, take the little handle out. And then just jam some tubing in there, like some quarter inch tubing, and it fits in the glove. And just jam that in there and run that up higher.

Speaker: Oh, that's sick. Okay. Yeah. And you can still, like the thing I didn't like about the the piping design was that you had to just stash the dipstick in your car somewhere and put a little cap on it. But with this, like you can just pull the plug out super easy, put the dipstick in there to check your fluid level, or more importantly, check to make sure your, one of your seals didn't fail and you have a milkshake in there for water crossing. So you can change that out super quick.

Speaker: I'm a little, I'm a little dirt bag, dude. ah Literally what I do for those, and I don't do crazy stuff in the Forester anymore. Bro, I used to just like rubber band condoms over those. That's awesome because they still expand. It can breathe. It can breathe, yeah. It still acts as a breather because condoms can get can can get really big. in I love it so much. the Dumbest, dirtiest thing ever, but it works. But it doesn't not work and that's all you need.

Speaker: So then stainless steel brake lines with important pvc underrated underrated it's armor for your brake lines 100 armor and it just keeps them i mean literally soft rubber brake lines you feel that crap in the pedal yep um so there's that and um i did the four pot brake swap in the front only okay i kept the rear as stock Because i don't know if this is actually a thing, but I'm telling myself that I've created a front braking bias so that I can work the front differential by left foot braking. Oh, I never thought of that.

Speaker: Right, yeah. Huh, interesting. okay No idea if that's actually a thing, but that's what I did. Okay. I guess it's working. I guess. I don't know. But mathematically, I have no idea. Seems like it. Yeah. So for for cooling, Mishimoto radiator, i know I'm a shitty, but it's it's worked out fine for me. Well, it's hit or miss. It's hit or miss. yeah When it works, it works real good.

Speaker: Yep. ah Transmission, external transmission cooler, for sure, with a fan on it. Okay. With a switch to control the fan so that the fan can also act as a radiator fan when you need it to thats that's very helpful um my buddy john chamburs he led me onto that one because he is i've my temperatures have been creeping up like you know they they'll get to 213 215 wheeling sometimes um and his were he had never had a problem with him getting over 180 because he's got no levers in his car i've been like delaying putting those on my car also um but you know on a stock car with the splash pan as opposed to having a skid plate

Speaker: there's those little void spaces on the backside of the engine around the transmission. And there's a name for this effect, but those are low pressure spots that will suck air out of the engine bay So with my skid plate covering all that now, i have nowhere for air to go.

Speaker: so I was getting some heat soaking in the engine. So having that extra cooling up front with an extra push fan really helps with that. Even on at interstate speeds, I don't have any airflow through the engine bay. I did an experiment where I basically just rested like a Chick-fil-A napkin, just on like teetering, seriously teetering on one of my lines in front of the radiator right behind my winch.

Speaker: And then when on the interstate, And got back home and it was still resting there. It hadn't blown away or anything. Really? Yeah. And that's just because I've blocked up the airflow through there. so that's why I'm thinking about these hood levers to get more airflow through there.

Speaker: um Even though I have like the little holes on the side of the radiator at the bottom, like exposing the, the thermostat, that's all open.

Speaker: But I guess not a lot of air comes out that way, apparently. I want to ask you about your your front bumper is sick. I love how you have the skid plate integrated into it so well. And then i want to know who built that.

Speaker: And then what type of winch are you running? So the winch is a super winch SR400, just like Power of Your Brains guys said. It seems to be it's light, it's 22 pounds loaded.

Speaker: And with the snatch block, I mean, my car with me in it loaded down with like all my gear and firewood doesn't break 4,000 pounds. It's... Oh, dude. thirty nine I got scales at all the landfills. So I ran across the scales and it's 3920 plus or minus 20 pounds. Okay.

Speaker: Without firewood and without a whole bunch of camping gear with me in it, like for a 24-hour weight, it'll be like 3740. Okay. not a whole lot So winch with like ah a one...

Speaker: Snatch block redirect, that's plenty. That's all you need, dude. Yeah. I mean, in yeah, if you're getting your Subaru more stuck than that, you better call somebody. Yeah. And um so the front bumper and the rear bumper was all built and designed by Dan Yarborough with Blackbeard Outfitters.

Speaker: um ah We wanted to have four points of contact in the front, not just have two points of contact because, you know, a lot of folks when they put on a winch bumper on these cars. They're just pulling the crash bar off the front. yeah And when you pull that off, you realize it is only held on by six M6 bolts on each side. There's not any side.

Speaker: i was talking to, um, don't know why his name's escaping my mind right now, but the, One of the owners of Rally Tech, and he was saying when they were going through all the testing for those hidden winch mount bumpers that they designed with Warn, they were finding that, dude, those those mounting plates from the unibody that are coming off the front... They don't like a whole lot of pressure at all. And you start twisting and pulling them. yeah You total your car real, real easy. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, engineer friends told me, well, if you can design things for sheer as opposed to tension, they're typically going to be a lot stronger. so

Speaker: pull the front bumper off and then realize that behind those mounts, there's actually little square voids that go back into the unibody a little bit. And they go back in there about six inches before you hit something. So I did this post on Subaru Forester.org about like a DIY hidden winch mount that a few folks have found. And this is how I built it. And Dan just kind of copied that design, but made it into steel. I did aluminum.

Speaker: I slid two inch square tube down into each of those voids about five sections, as far as it would go. and then used two M14 bolts, drilled through, there were just subframe bolts I had left over from my subframe drop kit, just from the the front subframe, drilled it through the unibody in two locations on each side and bolted them in that way so that you have these two inch square tubes that are now in shear with not only, there's a spot back there where you have two layers of unibody steel overlapping. So you're not just pulling from one 1 16th thick

Speaker: thick sheet metal, but now it's an overlap. So you have all the spot welds on the front and then all the spot welds that that are connected to that going back into the unibody supporting that. And then those are supported by that, the winch mount aluminum angle, which is quarter inch 60, 61, because it was cheap, I think. Okay. um Those are also held in with two M12 bolts on the bottom going into that square tube.

Speaker: And then one M6 bolt going into on each side on one of those original like crash bar mount locations so that you have three, two to three points of contact flexing and in securing everything in all directions. And the way it's rigged up, it actually kind of behaves like a strut tower brace for the front of the car. Okay.

Speaker: So it prevents all everything. Yeah. Everything is self-supported. Yeah. and And so what Dan did was work with that design, replace those two aluminum tubes with steel And he used a one and a half inch, 120 wall Dom's tube steel that slid into those two inch square tubes.

Speaker: Again, bolted in through that in two locations so that, and then that was tied in to the forward bar that went around the front. And then you have the skid ramp tubes that go down to the bottom. And then we kept the front subframe on, but cut it off a little bit like behind the radiator and welded on some plates there.

Speaker: so that you can bolt in to the front in two locations on each side because I wanted to make the entire front bumper removable for service if needed. yeah But still be able to tie end into the body in four locations. So now my subframe is the, all those bolts that go all the way back on the subframe from that yeah u bar, which is not really U bar, those are all supporting the bottom of my front bumper.

Speaker: I wanted to be able to be like snatch strapped out by some kind of four runner or something and not worry about anything off. Yeah, I think you succeeded. I, so I have, you know, cause you never know how they're mounted when you, so when you see people's photos and stuff, you have no idea if it's barely hanging on by a thread and if it's actually ready for recovery or if it's done correctly, like what you've got going on.

Speaker: And then also, if you're getting pulled out by someone, you have no idea how good they are at recovery until they start pulling on you. Like, why are you going 10 miles an hour right now? Like easy pull. And maybe they're using a recovery strap that has zero stretch. Exactly. And all of a sudden, the front of your car is like 20 feet in front of you.

Speaker: Dude, I find pretty often that people just have no idea what they're doing. I agree. when When you run into people on the trail, it's I hate to be this guy that's trying to tell people what to do, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Right now, I'm like, hey, just give it a quick bump. Or, no, I don't want to use your your tow rope. i Here's a kinetic rope. We're going to use this.

Speaker: Why are you hooking to your snowball right now? Oh, dude, dude. I, yeah. If I see that stuff, I just leave, man. If I'm not like all under the cars you stuck, I'd rather be stuck than dead or watch you be dead, you know? Yeah. Or I'll see people, man, that's, I, I witnessed this. I had no idea that this had happened. And this is, this was actually what prompted me to never trust another person's recovery.

Speaker: Um, We were pulling out actually an SF Forrester, the homie Justin, and the person that set up the recovery, they just looped a recovery rope with a D-ring on the end of it around one of those open hooks that's on the front of a Nissan Xterra.

Speaker: God. Dude, gave them a good, heavy snatch. And bam, that thing came right off the hook and went through his back windshield, landed right behind the driver's seat. And I'm like, man, we almost just killed the homie. We're leaving now. I'm like, we're getting no more wheeling today. Bye.

Speaker: Dude, if I don't really drink, but if I had been drunk, it would have sobered me up real fast. like Oh, yeah. Okay. let Let me ask you this.

Speaker: Any crazy trail stories or crazy recovery stories that you could share with people? Yeah, not so much recovery stories. Like I've been, I've had to recover myself once, um, with the winch because I blew out my center diff and was in front wheel drive mode and like dragging myself an obstacle. So. An obstacle that I could totally get up if I had a a functioning center diff. I think I've broken four rear axles at this point doing stupid stuff. Some of it's on Instagram, some it's not. like So the the Jeep badge of honor trail at URE is Dickie Bell Trail. And I tried climbing that. That's one of my reels.

Speaker: It's pretty steep. It's a lot steeper than it looks, you know, like ah like every video is. I can see in your videos how insane the stuff you you hit really is, dude. I mean, I know some of the people out here in the Northwest...

Speaker: think they get down but i'm like man you got to go look at this guy and what he's doing it's the rocks and mud in combo out here like when it rains that you are especially or anywhere like kentucky man kentucky like i've only been dude did one 24 hour event out there it didn't get any of it recorded but that that's some wheeling out there well was gonna ask do you know who uh dex jays is doesn't ring a bell no i think it was dex jays he builds jeep xj zjs and wjs like cherokees and i'm pretty sure i could be totally wrong but i'm almost certain that he did a trail run at uri not too long ago and he was just showing like oh yeah here watch this just even with like

Speaker: 37 inch boggers who's ever whoever's jeep they were in they're just sitting there spinning tire just just the mud is completely different man a lot of folks say it's the clay that gets you and i mean you know i'm a geologist i'm gonna throw my my two cents in here like clay will stick to your tires but clay is actually cohesive clay is not slick clay what the property is it sticks to itself so Just like snow.

Speaker: Right, yeah. Snow sticks to snow. Right, so clay will stick to your tires and fill them up, and then you know the friction coefficient of clay on clay is less than rubber on clay, so in that way it's slick.

Speaker: But if you ever feel wet silt, just straight silt, it is straight up soapy. It is very, very slick. we That's what we got at Uari. If Dex was filming something, showing how slick it was, was like, okay, okay. Like i guarantee this will humble people real fast. You know, you can watch a video like, oh, I could run right. And I see that stuff all the time. Oh, my, my forerunner would just tear through that. No, you wouldn't.

Speaker: ah you You got to manage your momentum sometimes. Well, in the, the washouts, bro, the stuff you send that SG through literally blows my mind.

Speaker: You know, I'm just like fudge. Like I could take a nap in that ditch. Like that's crazy. i was It was pretty deep. That one. um i mean i edited that video up a little bit to like match the audio i was using i tried a three it was the third time because you know the expression goes as slow as possible as fast as necessary from like some old land rover driving school or whatever and that was the quote i used in that video so i was working my way up to speed and on the third try i got it but yeah know that and it was it looked like it was dry in the bottom but it was kind of muddy in the bottom not like super wet or anything but it was slick like

Speaker: When I was, when I would try it and not make it, people would say, oh, he's backing down. I'm not backing down. I'm sliding down. Like there's no, there's no reverse going on here. It's just all gravity taking me back. But so going up Dickie Bell on a camo trip, when I had a bunch the camo guys down here, i was trying up to go trying to go up the middle line of Dickie Bell. Cause like, if I'm going to go up that thing and record it, I'm not taking the bypass. I'm not taking the easy line. I'm going right up the damn middle of it.

Speaker: And um I was trying to get up this one little S curve switchback that sometimes on is called the falls. And There was one loose rock on the right side, on the passenger side, and I hit that with the the rear locked up, and it shockloaded that axle and snapped it, like right in the middle of the trail. And so I'm having to back down this obstacle. It's like maybe 200 feet of the trail, back and down to the bottom so I can swap the axle out.

Speaker: And I wanted to try it again, but I only had one extra axle with me. So that's why I now carry two rear axles at all times. Cause you know, I want to try it again. I know where i broke it. like I learned something, but what if I break it again, again, I've never wanted to be the guy blocking up the trail. Cause I've heard people like always complaining about the one guy who breaks down holds everyone up at URI. So like in my driveway, I'm practicing changing axles to get it down to some reasonable time. And like, if nothing goes wrong, 25 minutes, a half hour,

Speaker: for a rear axle, no problem. Now at a different time at URE, Allville Drive Fest, not this past year, but the previous year, we were just going down, I think, Falls Dam Trail, going back to camp, not even an obstacle at all, just a section of trail that had loose boulders, like, i don't know, one or one foot wide boulders.

Speaker: And I somehow kickflip a boulder up on the driver's side front wheel. This is also one of my posts. It kickflicks up and sticks itself to the subframe, catches the inside of the tire, rips the rear of the tire out, pulls strips the threads off the ball joint, pulls the hub out of the lower control arm, and then rips the axle out of the front differential. de The inner theer joint comes apart, so the stub stays in there, but the inner joint comes out.

Speaker: So now have to replace that axle on the trail in the middle of the trail. I did see that post. I'm looking for it right now. I saw that. Yeah. that is absolutely So now like whenever I'm driving over just loose rocks anywhere, i have like so much anxiety, like hit these rocks straight. Don't hit them on the side. You don't want yeah to flip into these rocks up. Cause like, what if that happened at like three miles an hour and I just happened to feel something really wrong and jam on the brakes? Like what if I kept driving I didn't somehow shear a brake line apart. That stayed in place.

Speaker: I was going to say, that's one of those trail fixes that's not easy. i mean, even if you carry extra brake lines and extra blake brake fluid, you've got to re-bleed the brakes now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I hope you've got a buddy. Yeah, exactly. One that doesn't hate you. And that, I mean, I'd practice changing a front axle, but that took like two hours to do just because I was getting tired. Like picking, you know, my coilover will droop farther than the LCA will reach. So I have to unload the spring and then fight the nitrogen pressure, pick the coilover up in the hub up to try and get that thing back in to the LCA. And also at the same time, thread in the outer stub of the axle into the back of the hub.

Speaker: and i was just so tired and my arms were just like trembling and shaking but i could not get that stub lined up into the hub yeah no matter it took me two hours to finally do it and then i didn't have an extra ball joint so i you know i carry some the the threads are ah or stripped but they weren't stripped on the stud of the ball joint it was the castle nut that stripped off oh yeah just pulled it right off right i'm never using a castle ever again because you know because of the castle nut, you're missing some threads around the castle sections of it. So now I just use the one with the nylon lock nut, but I just so happened to have this random ass nut in my tool bag that was the perfect thread size, but not only that, but you know how some of those nuts in the car are kind of like oblate. They're not perfectly round, but they're a little bit.

Speaker: they They pinch them at the top. is that what you're talking about? The threading. So the the bolt itself is not actually around. It's a little bit. ovular oval, like an oblate spheroid kind of thing.

Speaker: i bo on um They come like that on camber bolts for a rear suspension. Okay. Yeah. You know how you can't finger thread it on all the way? yeah it can suck It's because it's not perfectly round. So it's like a way of of having a built-in thread locker. had one of those.

Speaker: i don't even know where it came from, but it was in my bag and it fit. So I buzzed that thing on there and it held it on to get me back to camp and get me back home. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm almost sure they, they slightly crimp those nuts to do exactly what you're talking about. That would make sense. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's how they work, but yeah, you're right. The, the, the nut on the, on the camber bolts is like that, I believe.

Speaker: And, um, I have a ton of those in my, in my parts bin, cause I was looking for one that wasn't like that. And how I was like, how do I have only these? This is pissing off. so there was another time two winters ago on the the winter camo trip no this is last winter on the winter camo trip we went up union springs trail in virginia and i've been up that trail before unassisted no problem but this is in the snow and if anyone who knows that trail will knows that trail there's this uh one obstacle that some people call it tree hugger where there's a little bit of a ledge you got to go up with a tree on the right if you do it wrong you get slammed into that tree on the right um lately folks have stacked rocks there and that was kind of a bummer but

Speaker: In the snow, everything is a little bit different. So I go, you know, I lock up my differential and I go to go up that thing and I just get stuck right in the middle of it. i'm like, I've been up this thing before, no problem. What's going on here? And I have to and winch up and keep on going and, you know, not thinking anything of it, finish the trail, no problem.

Speaker: Go keep wheeling the next day. and this is when the snow is like a foot deep or so. And eventually i start overheating the transmission because i'm not getting an airflow. My AT oil temp light is starting to flash. This before had the fan on the car. fan The fan was on because of this.

Speaker: um And when I'm trying to do diagnostics on the car, the guy who's saying, Hey man, they're looking at me from the passenger side and they say, only your front driver's side wheel is spinning right now.

Speaker: Your rear wheels are not spinning at all. And your passenger side wheel is not spinning at all. So I was like, okay, that's kind of weird, but yeah whatever. You know, I drive home, no problem. And then I get in my driveway and find out that I have snapped the axle stub off of one of the rear axles.

Speaker: I would have had no idea if I didn't take the axle off to replace it. I got a video of that on Instagram also, where I have just a little stub coming off. I was i was just going to say, I saw that post also. Yeah.

Speaker: So that was like and a ninja axle break that I would have had no idea of But that also told me like, you know, what's, yeah. What's the point in getting like drive shafts, 500 horsepower axles, you know, they're just upgrading the axle shafts, but the stub is going to be the same.

Speaker: Yeah. so if the stub is the weak point here, then I'll just stick with my $30 salvage yard axles. Yeah. Replacing those. And you kind of want to leave certain things as the, you know, the weak link in the chain.

Speaker: Oh, absolutely. Something that's easy to replace dude. And that's cheap. Because I see people all the time talking about like, oh man, I'm going to do chromoly axles, but they're running like a Dana 30 and like a Jeep TJ.

Speaker: And it's like, cool, your axles are going to be fine, but now you're going shear your ring and pinion. You know, and you're running 488s, which have only one one tooth of contact at any given time. You're... Oof. Yeah, you're... a Dude. Yeah, big oof.

Speaker: Big yikes, dude. You know, those Porsche 930 axle conversion kits are out yeah there. Big money. Sure, I'll get better travel out of it. But if I can just left foot brake all the time, what it doesn't really matter.

Speaker: yeah And I'd rather have a $30 axle that I can just throw on there, and no problem. Can I ask you some questions about the coilovers? Yeah. And not really about them, but like...

Speaker: you know If you've heard me talk, I typically tell people it's unnecessary for most people. For like 95% of people that are like, I'm just trying to, because let's face it, 95% of lifted Subaru drivers are not doing even a quarter of the stuff you're doing.

Speaker: Yeah. You know, cause, cause for some people, uh, a long travel coil over on a Subaru is the right thing for some people. It's not, um, you know, in a lot of cases, people are going to be like, oh, great. Now I got all this extra stuff I got to worry about with these.

Speaker: And I didn't really need these to begin with. Um, do you have any thoughts about that? Can, can you maybe give some guidance if some, if somebody might be the right candidate for doing that upgrade? Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. I agree that they're they're definitely not for everyone. I mean, other folks have touched on the adjustability, which is a pro and a con, because it takes a lot of time to dial it into the way that you like it.

Speaker: yeah And um they are, because of what I was saying before about how the springs are set up and the lower mass in them, they are lighter. That's a big thing. They're significantly lighter than coral springs. and springs And the strut top spacers being made of steel, those weigh something too. But many folks might not care about that.

Speaker: um but they're going to be stiffer just by by the nature of them to a degree, unless you want to do what I did and like play with the oil inside. yeah But they're meant for speed. you know like That's something I notice. is the way Dan, again, being a rally driver, and my brother, Doug, who's also a rally cross driver more than anything, they've taught me the same thing. If you want to make potholes smoother, go faster.

Speaker: Go like over 45, 50 miles an hour, and then you just glide right over them. And if you have coilovers, the big thing with coilovers is they're going to come down a lot faster than Corolla Springs will because there's less mass for those springs to move. So they'll come back down faster and you're going grip faster. Like on a track setting, for instance, if you're going over a bump at, let's just say 80 miles an hour.

Speaker: You want that wheel back on the ground as soon as possible. and That's what Corolla Springs are great for. For folks are daily driving, like you know there's a comfort to worry about and then Sure, long travel could keep your wheels on the ground more in theory. But like I said earlier, the down travel on these cars is limited by the way the suspension is set up.

Speaker: So unless you like, you know, take out your stuff from the front, TSS fab, or you notch your trailing arm like the Power of Your Brains guys did to actually get more down travel in the rear, you're not going to be able to use it. You'll get more compression out of it.

Speaker: But just learning how to left foot brake and use a locker, all that, you're going to get the same ability out of it. Yeah. um I think, yeah, I mean, I think going with what my buddy John Schimburski did, uh, rally tech set up might be, or just keeping it stuck and doing shut top spacers like a two inch lift or even a four inch lift with a subframe drop kit and taller shut top spacers.

Speaker: I mean, I forget with this dude's name who drives a red Forester in Australia, who it's a manual. Uh, I don't remember the stuff that he does is absolutely insane. I mean, he doesn't have coil overs or maybe he got petters at some point, but I mean, it's just the subie lift Oz kit. Okay.

Speaker: Um, ignition off road, that guy, uh, Jordan, he had a subie lift Oz kit for a while and he did some crazy stuff too. Like, I really think that coil overs are good for speed. Like what Milton, those guys are doing out in the desert.

Speaker: Definitely. That's coil over territory for sure. Um, But just like dirt roads and even if you're dirt road bombing, as some people say, like if you're actually doing that, when there's the possibility of oncoming traffic and you're being a responsible human being and not trying to kill someone going to church on Sunday, come the other way, you're not going 60 miles an hour on these dirt roads. You're doing like 40 and feeling good about it. And yeah your suspension is still going to be stable at that. The stock suspension, no problem. Maybe just get, you know, our cars are 20 some years old now.

Speaker: get, get some new KYVs. They're probably worn out. Get some new springs. They're probably worn out. Like exactly. You'll be fine. Yeah. That's, that's kind of the philosophy that I've had on it. I'm glad you mentioned the, um, the suspension design because I see people all the time say, Oh, I want long travel. I want long travel. I want long travel. And like you said, yeah, in theory, that's great. But your CV axles limit the travel. Your, um,

Speaker: whatever you call that, the the front control arm and that weird subframe part on a lot of Subarus, all of that acts as a bump stop. Yep. sure Your stock suspension can almost travel just as much as a $3,000 set of of coilovers. Yeah. When you go out on the trails, you're you're literally...

Speaker: going to gain more capability just by doing the stuff you've talked about, learning how to left foot brake, learning how to select line choice a little more efficiently.

Speaker: That stuff's going to really make a difference, but you're 100% correct. I always tell people if you're doing anything that requires speed on non-pave, well, and it's it's beneficial on pavement, but Dude, especially when you're heating up that, heating up that fluid rally cross stuff, stage rally. I mean, people are doing stage rally. They already know better, but.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. There's a place for it. But yeah, I 100% agree with everything you said. And I think the stuff you're doing, bro, like is so insane. i mean, I was just, the last time I was at Uari with ah John Schimberski and this other guy, Michael Ward, we were talking about that around the campfire. Like if I didn't find myself doing these 24 hour of Appalachia events,

Speaker: I don't think the coil overs would have been a hundred percent worth of it for the way I was driving. Like, yeah, I do use the compression with like rock, rock crawling. As much as you can say what I do is rock crawling that you are. And that's, that is the benefit that that you you get with these cars is you will get more compression out of them.

Speaker: As long as you have soft enough springs to allow them to flex that much for how light our cars are, which is like one of the things that guys who are doing desert jumps aren't going to do. Cause you know, like I said before, 250, 300 plus pound per inch springs,

Speaker: It's just not possible. Yeah. Unless you make the car like 6,000 pounds. And at that point you got transmission issues. Yeah, exactly. You're going get almost no up travel with a, you know, spring that heavy. We're pretty heavily in agreement on all that stuff. Cause you know, the, the average person that is in the market right now to buy a lift kit, they've never even swapped springs out of a McPherson style strut.

Speaker: Yeah. And you know, they've never done that, which is only a fraction of kind of the, The technical ah skill and knowledge that that has to take place if you're really going to get the full benefit out of coilovers.

Speaker: you know i All the stuff you were talking about with coilovers sounded like, yo, this is like wizardry over here. ah Which I understand it, but it's like, oh, this is stuff I've never even... really dug into. And, um, lot of times people, it's like, they're, it's kind of like buying a Ferrari to get groceries, you know, for, for a lot of folks. It's like, yeah, the Ferrari is worth every penny, but it might not be what, what, what people need.

Speaker: Well, ah I want to brag on these 24-hour events. do some Yes. Do some promos for Jed on this a little bit. he Let's go there now, dude. Yeah, let's. So the 24-hour events that you're doing, how long you been doing that?

Speaker: What does it look like? Just kind of lay that out for us. So these started out as a ah bet with Jedediah Smith He's with the organization Backroads of Appalachia. If you're familiar with Hillfest or Drift Appalachia, it's the same organization that puts those on.

Speaker: um Sick. And someone bet him that he could not go across the state of West Virginia on only dirt roads in under 24 hours. um So he put a route together that goes from Seneca Rocks on the east side And I mean, obviously you're not only on dirt. You have to connect these dirt roads with some pavement.

Speaker: Just like the Pacific Crest Trail. So it starts in Seneca Rocks, goes down to the south side of the state through Thurman Station, and then goes up and ends in Point Pleasant at the Mothman statue.

Speaker: Right on the Ohio border. Yeah. got to talk about Mothman. Don't let me forget it. All right. Yeah. um So that was the very first 24 hours of Appalachia event. And um i didn't I wasn't even a part of Backroads of Appalachia. I hadn't heard anything about it.

Speaker: Dan Yarborough, though, the guy who blaed outs who built the armor in my car, you know, he he does stage rally. So he's, you know, BOA is involved with the Ohio Forest Rally. Yeah. So he heard about them and he just sent me this post one day, Jed saying like, this is something I'm to try and do.

Speaker: We're going to see how this goes. And that was the very first one. And that was two years ago. And Dan's like, you and I got to do this. You and I got to absolutely got to do this. I will co-drive with you. 100%. had never done anything like this in my life.

Speaker: I'm like, cool. Okay. And this is when I was saying that I had those coilovers that had half the the shock oil in the rear. Yeah. Yeah. This was that event. Um, So it was in, i forgot if it was the last weekend of February or the first weekend of March, something like that.

Speaker: There was snow on the ground at high elevation. and Oh, shit. Yeah. so you know, it wasn't there wasn't that much for obstacles. Like we went through the Canadian Valley, which if anyone's familiar with that area, there's like two obstacles there, kind of.

Speaker: But it was all covered in snow. But the idea is that there's no entry fee, but so the events are set to benefit two charities that they select, like Children's Home Society of West Virginia, and I forget the other one that is often used.

Speaker: And your entry fee is encouraged to be $50 to $100 per participant, like driver and co-driver, towards one of these charities. BOA doesn't collect any of that money. It goes straight to the charity. like The charities are there at the start. You hand them the money.

Speaker: Get a receipt if you want to write it off, whatever. So there was a full-size class. They made a Subaru class, like specifically for the first event, because they didn't think it was finish at all. Yeah, but I was going to say, dude, Subarus are the perfect car for this.

Speaker: Kind of. Like, based on the route that we saw, I'm surprised. Like, all the Subarus did finish, but some of them bypassed some of the water crossings, I think. But there was a full-size class, a Subaru class, a side-by-side class, and a moto class.

Speaker: Oh, moto is crazy. Those guys are the true legends. 24 hours of scrotum bashing. yeah They're, they're, they're great grandkids are feeling it and they're not even. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, so, you know, they've worked out the release schedule and all that throughout the events that have happened like since then, but.

Speaker: um we were released in order of tire size. And so the Subarus were at the very end. It was bigger tires first, trail brake through the snow and whatnot. And smallest tire size last.

Speaker: And it was mostly just dirt roads, like country roads, no obstacles whatsoever. But then we got to, I think, is it Somerville or something like that? I don't know. kind of like South...

Speaker: Western West Virginia, where I got some video on my Instagram where water's coming up over my hood, blocking out the headlights, something like that. Like there were four or five more crosses back to back. Yeah. So that got pretty deep. I didn't have a snorkel during that at all, but we were having problems like, you know no mechanical problems, but I was having issues where the car would electrically would just die. Like occasionally.

Speaker: Some moisture. going find out afterwards that my battery terminals like were loose. Not that I didn't tighten them all the way. Cause I actually did tighten them as far as they would go. But the metal of the terminal connectors themselves had just worn out so that I couldn't tighten them tight enough.

Speaker: But we would just stop and like turn the car off, turn it back on, it would go again. And we'd get 50 miles down the road, do the same thing. So we were having those kind of issues. I just had this issue.

Speaker: Yeah. so i mean all But anyway, quick on that, the solution to that was those little cam lock. Lever terminal connectors that are like 10 bucks on Amazon. Those things are incredible for that. Yeah. you can adjust them.

Speaker: Yeah, they've got that screw. It's like a screw thing with a latch almost, right? You just, boom. Yeah. Yep. Okay. But that was, pretty like I said, that was my first event of any kind like that. Like Dan and i are are just trying to stay awake as best we can. I have anxiety and I was stressing out hard. had to swap out with him. I'd never had any anyone else driving my car before. So like, yeah even though like of all people to drive my car, Dan, like the guy who built the armor on the car, the guy who rallies Subarus specifically, like this is the guy to do it.

Speaker: And I was just like tense the whole time trying to co-drive for him. I couldn't really give him rally notes. I was a little bit. I'm not used to doing that. Yeah. And then doing that for like 21 hours, we ended up finishing in 21 hours, six minutes, I think.

Speaker: So even we've got first in the Subaru class, but there were only six, were only six cars in the Subaru class. But our time was second to best of full-size vehicles. Let's go. Yeah. I knew it. I knew it. Yep. The only guys who got faster than us, I think they broke the speed limit quite a bit.

Speaker: like their max speed on Gaia, I think it was like upwards of 80 miles an hour in some places. i don't think they made as many wrong turns as we did because at night, like when the dust is up there and you're flying through with Gaia, like sometimes you miss a turn. And some of these roads, like on the base map of Gaia, they don't exist. Like it's just the line that you have, the route you're given. I was like, is that a road? Is that a trail? And like,

Speaker: some of the stuff didn't even look like a road. And we come to find out by the end of the race, or not a race, by the end of the rally, we were telling ourselves, yeah, this is totally some shit that Jed would do. Oh, that is that where we're going? Yeah. Yeah. Jed would make us go down. yes And that was actually the route. So you never really knew what he was going have you do.

Speaker: So that was the first event. And then that was such a huge success that they did a second event that was a loop as opposed to point to point that started to end it in Hinton, West Virginia. It was called my bloggers delight.

Speaker: And, um, A few more obstacles on that one that we didn't have any issues with because I'd done most of them with the guys at Camo. I'd been over all those obstacles already, so I was kind of familiar with them. But I did bash my rock sliders in a few places on that. And we finished that one in just over 17 hours. Again, second place in the full-size class.

Speaker: Nice. Yeah. um What are the rigs that beat you those two years? So there's this guy, Eric Miller, who races and wins Ultra 4. at King of Hammers. Oh, dude.

Speaker: Yeah, I lost to him. I don't care. That's fine. I'm not competing at that level. I can't compete at that level. Like, he had an 80-gallon extra gas tank in the back of his Jeep, so he wasn't stopping for gas. like Yeah, I'll take that, L. I'll take that, yeah.

Speaker: And a 20-year-old Forrester, I'll take that. Yeah, dude. Was he in, like, a JK? Yeah. Built-out JK on, like, or 40s or something like that. Okay. And he was just...

Speaker: Cruising like this was his element. This was his thing. And he has won most of the full size classes from or events from there. And then the last event that year, the finale was in Kentucky on the Daniel Boone Backcountry Byway and sections of the Kentucky Adventure Trail.

Speaker: And that was the first time I'd ever been in Kentucky. Dan couldn't make that one. So okay my brother Doug hopped in as co-director for that. And Doug had never been off road in his life.

Speaker: Never done any of this shit before. And like i said, I've never been to Kentucky. He never been to Kentucky. We didn't know we were getting ourselves into for this event. I knew that since Camo had been out to Kentucky, a bunch of seen a bunch of their videos, I knew mud was going to be a huge factor in this, not just deep water crossings and rocks.

Speaker: Yeah. so I was a little worried about that because, you know, with aluminum, it's got a high friction coefficient against pretty much everything. And you'll lose momentum if you hit a rock or hit mud the right way, something like that.

Speaker: So i was like, all right, what can I do to make this a little more slick? And I ended up looking at what ultra four guys do and rock bouncer guys do. And they use HDPE as skid plates. Yeah.

Speaker: And yeah, they use ultra high molecular weight, HDPE as skid plates. Um, But then you have like a tight framework of tube steel behind it, like one foot space, two inch tube steel and one inch thick ACPE. And the idea there is that it's not as rigid. It actually flexes so they can hit a rock and bounce off it and glance off it.

Speaker: So I went over to a polymer shapes, which a Charlotte location. Went in there. i's like, Hey guys, do you have like a four by eight sheet of one eighth inch HGPE? I'm like, what in the hell for? I want to put a skid plate on that. Cutting boards. And they're like, that's awesome. Yes, we do. And it was like 65 bucks for this thing. So I put this HGPE sheet on my skid plate and go out there and we're going through mud. That's like up to the doors.

Speaker: And the car will just flop into a mud hole. I'll feel the tires settle down, find the bottom mud hole not moving. And then all of a sudden we just start moving. Yeah, no, the the friction loss on that was incredible. Like I was able to do awesome powers maneuvers while resting on a rock on the middle of the skid plate, like dragging back and forth, not damaging the skid plate at all, just like scoring up the HDPE on it and going through creeks that were, i mean, the banks were probably like eight, nine feet high. i would just ram the car up the side of the bank and get up Sometimes I got up. One time I had to get winched out. Like, I don't know how steep it was, but I remember Doug having to climb out the side of the car and he was stepping off the top of the B pillar and stepping on the windshield to climb up the bank to get to the winch to find a tree out there to pull me up the rest of the way of the bank.

Speaker: And we eventually got up, but we ended up DNFing at night when I sliced a tire on a rock. And we were only seven hours into that event. I think we were in like third or fourth place at that point, though. Plenty of folks had already broken down at that point. We hadn't even gotten to the Rocky section yet. only have four tires.

Speaker: I can't break another one. I didn't have glue tread with me. Haven't tried that before. So we just DNF'd ourselves at that point. Now I have six tires. I'm never letting that happen to me again. Did you get did you ah did you have to order more pepper pots?

Speaker: I had to order one more. okay Okay. If you order one at a time, it's real expensive. Like it was, I think it was a 200 bucks to get that one here. Whereas like the batch of five was 700 bucks. Yeah. But so then we went in the following year trying to do the Seneca rocks one again. And they ran from in reverse from Mothman to Seneca rocks.

Speaker: And I guess I had been kicking it too hard at URE and Kentucky and all that. Cause about maybe two hours in, The driver's side, lower control arm, rear bushing, the one that has the fluid filled in it, the captive nuts ripped out of the unibody. So Doug hops out and looks and he was like, this and Dan was in his car behind me. And Doug was like, so this is the end of the rally. And we have to find a way to get towed off the trail right now. Like we're in the middle of the woods, like between two water crossings, we're not getting a tow truck out here.

Speaker: So we're trying to think what the hell can we do? And I realized that there's, we can use, the sobi left ah subframe drop kit to like ratchet strap this thing in place.

Speaker: And I get off the trail and drive six hours home like that. Dude, ratchet straps are slept on. Everyone needs to carry ratchet straps and bailing wire. Everybody. i Yes. I carry two ratchet straps at all times in my rigs.

Speaker: ah Always man. Lifesavers. yeah but but these like doing this for 24 hours i mean it's 24 hours if you screw up because if you if you're out there for after 24 hours they make you abandon the route and come back to the rally point because they don't close these roads down like public traffic is still on them all day all night and that's why like you're really not supposed to speed yeah you're going through neighborhoods you're going through hollers you're going like through people's front yards like You gotta be safe. Like the eyes of the world are upon us in terms of the motorsports world. Like don't screw this up for everybody else, guys. yeah So it's not a race, but you know, you getting there faster, you you do get more bragging points. yeah So um it's just a different kind of driving for sure. Cause you're not just going for speed. You're like, I gotta make it. I gotta finish.

Speaker: I gotta not break down. Or if I do break down, i' gotta to be able to fix myself. Like there was one guy, the first event who had a ball joint snap and he was stick welding it back together in the middle of the trail kind of thing. Like, Yeah, that that kind of stuff.

Speaker: That's sick. And anyone can enter. There's, i mean, they have, so they say that the minimum tire size is 29 inches, but I'm always there at 28.3. And I say I'm rocking 28. It's like, just to show everybody up pretty much.

Speaker: there's nothing wrong with that hey and if you measure most 35s they come out to 33 and a half so there you go there's always some wiggle room just hit the sidewall with a sharpie 29 inch or which whatever right okay yeah that kind of stuff um you know The Oregon Trail Rally is is pretty prevalent out here, and I know a few people that compete in that.

Speaker: and that really is if if you're not a Subaru team driver, the whole goal is we just, we just don't want to DNF. We want to finish the race, you know, cause it's, yeah, it's cool if you win, but if you finish, that's pretty sick, you know? Yeah. That's the, that's part of the challenge for sure. yeah Okay.

Speaker: So you got to tell me about Mothman. What, what is, you said Mothman rock. Is that what it is? Uh, it's point pleasant is the town and there's the Mothman statue. Okay, yeah. Which is where the start line or finish line is, depending on where they run it, which year they're doing it.

Speaker: Okay. ah What is Mothman? So Mothman, I'm going to get this wrong, and everyone at Point Pleasant is going to hate me for this, probably. That's okay. That's okay. It's local lore, local legend. You can look up the statue. It's just this like silver-clad statue of a guy with like a moth head, costume with the wings and everything. And I think nick there was some... like woman who was being chased by some guy or something like that, the Mothman, I'm abridging this harshly, like jumped out the bushes and like saved her. And it was, and it was like ah a local vigilante kind of thing for a little while. Okay.

Speaker: And he just became famous for the area and folks latched onto it and it became a tourist attraction pretty much. That's actually pretty sick. Yeah. So one of the traditions with the Mothman, if you see a picture from behind him, he's got these magnificent butt cheeks.

Speaker: Oh, really? Oh, yeah. and and you can Let me zoom in. It's a it's a tradition to like stick a quarter in of the book.

Speaker: I see it right here. And I love how the wings spread just enough so you can see the gluteals. ah That's lit. Have you ever experienced anything weird in the forest? Because I've heard about all the crazy Mothman lore. You ever experienced anything weird or paranormal?

Speaker: I mean, no, like the weirdest thing that people will experience, I think is not knowing that what they're hearing is a Bobcat for the first time. If you've ever heard of Bobcat, it sounds like a Banshee or like the first time I heard it on a field trip, I was like, was there some like woman getting raped throughout the woods yeah screaming continuously? Like,

Speaker: Should I be getting out of my tent right now and like chasing this or like what's going on here? It it sounds like someone's screaming, like a blood curdling scream. And if you don't know what that is, like now it's like, oh, it's a bobcat.

Speaker: That's not even a danger. It's it's a little kitty cat. Like they're not going to come by. They don't want anything to do with us. Yeah. Close by because we're in our tents not making noise anymore. um That's about it.

Speaker: I mean, nothing really too exciting. No no Bigfoot, nothing like that. Dang. No hearing my name being called through the trees. Right. None of that. No, you didn't hear anything kind of thing. What do they call those things? There's skinwalkers, but the one that...

Speaker: Oh, maybe it is just a banshee. I can't remember. Skinwalkers is one thing. like I love that stuff. There's a lot of lore surrounding the Appalachian Mountains because it's one of the oldest mountain chains on Earth. The Appalachians are older than the continents. They are from the time of Pangea. like The Scottish Highlands and the Atlas Mountains in Africa are the same mountains as the Appalachian Mountains.

Speaker: so They've been around for a long time. Older than the dinosaurs. Yeah. so There's people who say that there's things that predated the dinosaurs that just never left because the place where they lived has been here the whole time and there's been nothing.

Speaker: That's where a lot of the lore comes from, I think. Like about a 45 minute drive from where I grew up. If you look on a map of all the Bigfoot reports, yeah there's a hot spot. like Literally the most that are that take place of people saying they had an experience is literally right there, all within like a 50-mile radius in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Speaker: and i I have no idea what I actually think about any of that stuff, but I think it's super enjoyable and entertaining. yeah i mean There's like stories from i think the Choctaw tribe that talk about these large fuzzy dude creatures that they went to war with early on. Yeah.

Speaker: Long before any white people got here. Yeah. Fit the description of Bigfoot. And I mean, it's just, ah there was no written language at that time. It was just verbally passed down. credence to it in some way. I was never like, oh yeah, I totally believe in any of this stuff. But what first actually made me think, well, maybe these people are actually not crazy was when I started hearing people talk about how there were all these accounts in different Native American tribes of like, wait, you don't know about this? Everybody knows about this. Like, are you stupid? Yeah. Or even skinwalkers, you that's like a big, big, you know, Native, Native American thing. Yeah, like was it a myth they were using or was it an actual story that happened? Like, you know, they've been around for 10, 15, 20,000 years. Like, seriously.

Speaker: i always think that stuff is sick. Like, just because it's just entertaining and like really intriguing to me. So I don't care if it's true or not. I just like it. Yeah. We got plenty of folks who think they see Bigfoot over here in the UR. He's.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. There's big festivals over here. Okay. I have no idea. Yeah. get that too. I totally misspoke earlier when I was talking about that Dex J's guy talking about the mud. He was actually at wind rock. I don't know okay how I got that mixed up, but it sounds like the same type of, and, and by looking at your videos and his same, same type of thing. I think that's like huge. It's, I mean, it's the same kind of setup. I've never been, but that's,

Speaker: Considered the hardest wheeling in the east or east of the Mississippi. It looked pretty crazy from his videos. I got to get out there at some point, but it's like five, six hours from me, and there's so much other stuff closer. It's just hard to put. like That's a long weekend to get out there. There's got to be five, six days, folks have said, to make it worth it. and I just don't really have that time, honestly. like This isn't the only thing I do. My wife and I like to backpack and camp. Yeah, it's the same for me, man. Where I grew up, it was like...

Speaker: look, I live 30 minutes from some of the sickest off-road trails in the Pacific Northwest. Why would I ever make a four-hour trip to Moon Rocks or to, you know, up to the, you know, boat ramp at Elby or whatever? Like, I don't need to do that. I could literally go right up the road, you know? Yeah. So it's kind of a blessing and a curse.

Speaker: To Joshua Tree or Moab, like that's 30 hours, 36 hours from me. if If I was a multimillionaire, i would you know just load my rigs up onto a trailer and have somebody drive them out. but Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I don't have three weeks to go mess around and probably break stuff and cut my trip short. I'm good. Like, Oh cool. Now you're, now you're stranded in Moab. That's sick. So I started a small business making quick disconnect and links for the rear of my car. Just like, okay honestly, it's just, I don't, I've only sold like five sets, but it's really just like, so I can write off the mileage for my 24 hour events. Honestly, like I'm not trying to make too much money on or anything like that. Um, I haven't found a really good way to do the front sway bar disconnects yet. That doesn't like get in the way or isn't a pain to use.

Speaker: And honestly, I wouldn't recommend anyone use these, the rear disconnects unless they have coilovers or if they have the front sway bar connected. Cause if you've ever, if on stock suspension, if you have the front disconnected and the rear connected, you can fishtail it pretty easy if you're like in a panic break situation. Um,

Speaker: But they work really, really well. I mean, it's it's pretty easy. It's just bent steel plate with holes drilled that goes in the bottom of the ah the link location on the control arm. And it uses the SH stock end link. So it's really cheap parts. What's your mechanism for disconnection?

Speaker: It's just a a square latch pin, a three inch square latch pin. Yeah. Okay. Oh, dude, that's rad. Where can people find those actually? Because I'm all about letting people shout out with the stuff they're doing. I'm only on Facebook and I do everything like through QuickBooks. So it's just Rocky River Overland.

Speaker: Okay. And I have on there like the models that it fits. It's mostly just the older models. There's like the SG Foresters, SFs, all the Bajas it'll fit. And I think it's like O2 to... 2007 outback it'll fit.

Speaker: Um, but it's really niche. Like, you know, most people, if they're going down this route, they just delete the sway bars entirely. And I get that, but yeah I keep my, my rear sway bars connected. Like my front is off the car completely.

Speaker: It gets in the way it it'll, the front sway bar, even disconnected will contact the tie rods at max droop. Absolutely. Having it on there. Yeah. Um, but with how stiff the front is with the coil overs,

Speaker: the car is stable on the highway, even in panic braking and turning with the rears connected. And it behaves less like a boat because like with, you know, 175 springs on there, it sways a little bit.

Speaker: But folks who are running coilovers with 250 or 300, they won't have that problem. So they won't even need to think about these things. They delete the rear sway bar entirely. But yeah, that was just something that,

Speaker: It was just one of those things where I was just lying under my car, staring at it for like an hour. Like there's gotta be a way, there's gotta be a way to do this and not make it cost like $200. And a handful of folks who are running him are happy with them. But again, it's not a lot of folks are gonna want them. bro admittedly um Yeah. I had no idea you were doing those. That's super I really advertise them too much. Cause like I said, like not a lot of folks are going want them. It's like, ah it's like a halfway point a lot of people's builds, but I mean, the folks who run them like them.

Speaker: Do you have an Instagram? For him? No, not specifically. I've mentioned him in one post on my Instagram. I know. If I can ever figure out something for any of the newer Subarus, because, you know, there's RallyTech disconnects. Yeah. Those...

Speaker: When I'm designing quick disconnect end links, I want them to be pretty serviceable, very easy to use, cheap, and with no failure points. Yeah. And I also don't want them to make any noise. No noise at all. Yeah. These rear ones don't make any noise at all. That's one of the things with them. It's very tight fit, but they're also very easy to get on and get off.

Speaker: Yeah. I've got some ideas for the fronts on the newer cars, but working out production, I just don't know these things. If someone knew more about like machining production that is not requiring a batch of 100, Yeah. Knowing how to use CAD. Like i don't know how to use CAD.

Speaker: Me neither. Not yet. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, I'm limiting myself on what I don't know, I guess. Will you make an Instagram though for those that way I could share them? Yeah, sure.

Speaker: Cause there's still a huge community of us that are, I mean, the SG is going to become one of the most off-roaded Subarus before long, in my opinion. Like it's, if it's not all already of those platforms, like it's, uh,

Speaker: You know, at least for people that are actually off-roading, you know, overlanding is a little bit different and God bless those people. But it's not quite the same as taking something that's 20 years old, just beat the brakes off of it. yeah And I don't blame them, dude. I would not want to beat up $35,000, you know, whatever. But I mean, like like we were saying earlier, for something that is as capable as it is and has Savage Yard serviceable, like the parts are as cheap as they are, it's as easy to work on as it is, as trail serviceable as it is.

Speaker: Like, if you're going to break something, this is the car to break. What do you think you have in this car money-wise? if you feel I know exactly how much. i have a spreadsheet. want to keep track of it. You know what? I should have known. I should have known. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: um just shy of Excluding the cost of the car, just shy of $13,000. Okay. And that's including custom work and parts and everything. And that's over, what, five years?

Speaker: Five years, yeah. Yeah, dude, you know what? That sounds like a big number to people probably, but I'll tell you that i'll tell you right now that like, the people I know in the FJ 80 world, like the Toyota land cruisers, straight axle swap, Toyotas, all that stuff. I mean, those dudes, they, they probably got like 70 K in the car after, you know, buying the thing off-roading is expensive. And if you, yeah if you've got something that's been able to do the stuff you're doing 13 grand in mods, some the best stuff is not bad, dude. That's and like, you know, some of the the comments I get from real off-roaders who like

Speaker: It bruises people's egos just seeing what I do sometimes. I think it's hilarious because I'm never trying jab at people, but you can buy to your differentials. I'm like, I'll pay $75 at Salvage Art for a new diff.

Speaker: The whole thing. Not just the ring and pinion. Not just the carrier. like The diff out of the car. Bolt it in. We're ready to go. Transmission, $300. Engine, $400. Seriously. Who cares?

Speaker: Alternator, $30.

Speaker: what's the problem here? And they're so, you know, you said that they're very serviceable on the trail and you were not wrong. The, um, the most recent episode that, uh, that I released with Dan, um you know, we'll talk about that.

Speaker: Oh dude, that guy is such a, he's a good dude. If you ever, or in Arizona, I would definitely stop by and say, what's up. I need to make my way back out there. But that dude is so full of knowledge. Like I, yeah, he's forgotten more stuff in the last five years than I will probably ever know.

Speaker: I love that expression. Yeah. We talked about that and, um, you know, they get such a bad rap because they're weird. There's not a lot of, you know, Porsche Boxsters. Yeah, those had a horizontal engine.

Speaker: But man, aside from the spark plugs being in somewhat of a tight spot, everything is easy to change on these cars. Yeah. Alternators, boom. He even said it on there. Everything's on top. So like yeah one of the things that was a problem for some of the folks during the Mothman since it's in the winter is, you know, alternators on most of these bigger rigs are on the bottom.

Speaker: They're on the side and they're blocked by the frame rail. Yeah. So they get water, they they get plugged up with mud. They freeze. if you If you kill one or like knock a wire off of it somehow, you're getting under the car and disassemblers have to change it. Ours is right there waiting for you right in the middle.

Speaker: And it's like a few bolts. You literally just have to undo the tensioner, zip the long bolt for the tensioner way up, slide the belt off. And that's if you have a dude, it's so easy. Yeah. You know, like, okay, yeah, you unhooked your battery. Big, big deal. And you got to pull the fan or the yeah belt shroud off. But that's.

Speaker: nothing dude if you get those little like cam lock terminal connectors then this thing the battery is not even a thing it's just like boop done dude exactly you know hey will you send me after this will you send me a link to the to the ones you bought specifically yeah if you have it in my build bio but yeah i'll definitely send them oh you got them dude that's right i'll just i don't know i might if i don't i should have them on there because that's like a critical mod i think for most people Dude, I need, because the thing is, is those, those, uh, terminals are just not good. The cable terminals from the chassis on Subarus. Yeah. You know, our cars are old, but they just are not that good of, of quality in my opinion, after having this problem with multiple Subarus. Yeah. I agree. Any mods that you want to do to the car that you haven't had a chance to do yet, or even just the thing's pretty freaking built, but let's just say you had a blank check or something.

Speaker: What are some things you would want to do to the car? If I had a blank check, so I've tossed around the idea. Portals? No, not not portals, but like I really would like to run 29 inch tires. Okay.

Speaker: Okay. But what's keeping me from doing that now is power because like these 28s are the top of the power-to-size balance that I think I'd want. So I'd either need to find a way to get more power out of the engine, but that's eating at reliability, or I can H6 swap it that's That's the thing. like you know Do a proper H6 swap with a proper harness merge. Do it the right way so that it behaves stock so that I can like actually service it If something goes wrong, i don't know what I'm doing. I can take it to a shop and say, this has a six cylinder in it.

Speaker: Just treat like a six cylinder car. It's a 2003 Outback. Right. Treat it as such. That's what I would want to do. Yeah. Like the hard way, not the easy way to make the dashboard, make all that work. Otherwise, what else would I want to change about it? Really just get a little more power out of it.

Speaker: The reliability is there. like that That's the biggest thing with these 24-hour events that I've noticed is you've got to keep it reliable. like There is people who are sort of losing wheels, who are losing axles, who are like their alternators are exploding, their power steering pumps are failing. and like you know I can carry all those parts. i can replace all that.

Speaker: Most people are just driving their car to the coffee shop or to school or whatever. They have no idea... when you subject a car to extreme conditions, you really see what they're made of.

Speaker: You know, 24 hours of driving that'll expose weak points real quick. You know, brake fluid boils, your your clutch starts to wear, you know, all these different things that you would never do.

Speaker: So, and so that's, you mentioned brake fluid. One of the problems that a lot of the full size rigs were having with these much larger tires is they were having their brake, not even the brake fluid, their brake pads were wearing out before they would finish the event.

Speaker: so much much So much heat from the rotational weight of the wheel and from the weight of the vehicle, they're having to stop that. I have run every single 24-hour event on the same brake pads.

Speaker: Yeah. So far. i haven't changed them yet. They're not even halfway worn yet. Like, keeping yeah the wheels light, keeping the vehicle light. um Guys are constantly having to, like, mark their ah their suspension nuts because they're going to rattle them apart going over these potholes on these trails.

Speaker: I've never had one come loose, you know? Oh, Independent suspension. Independent suspension. Yeah, dude, independent suspension is not good for rock crawling, but it's sick for going fast. Yeah, but because it's not good for rock crawling, it's that much more fun when you can make it do these things. Exactly. ah Like, why would I want, I had a reel about that. Why would I want to get a reel for that for? It's so much more fun making this thing do stuff. It is definitely not supposed to do. Yeah, you you've probably heard me say before, it's that same sensation of it's way more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow. You know, like, yes, yes, yes. Really like pushing the piss out of a Subaru on a trail that another Subaru has never been on is a way better feeling than when I'm crawling the XJ up some stupid rock garden. You know, it's but you know it can do.

Speaker: Exactly, exactly. if you're trying to make it challenging, you got to do something silly. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So let's say somebody is, let's say they they're in the market for a Subaru or they've already bought one and they want to start taking it off pavement. Let's say they got 4,000 bucks.

Speaker: What would be some of the first, you know, um real needle movers? Cause again, i think you're probably one of the most intuitive and thoughtful people when you're doing modifications, just the stuff I've seen from you. Oh, thank you. Oh, you're, and I mean that.

Speaker: Um, so I think you would probably be the right person to ask, you know, and you watch power of your brains, like those same type of people, they're looking for stuff that's going to work. They're not like, Oh, I want to get these because it makes my car look cool.

Speaker: And that's fine. You can mod your car to look cool. But what would be some of the, um, first things that somebody who's maybe not super mechanically inclined, or there's just trying to get out there and get started? What, what would be some of the mods you would tell them to to start trying to pick up?

Speaker: Well, four grand will get you a long way, especially in these older cars. Absolutely. For for the older cars that have the 4EAT and even the 5EAT and not the CVT, I would say, you know, two-inch lifts, just a spacer lift, skids, tires, obviously, just I think 28-inch is the way to go. If you got a six-cylinder or a turbo, you can do 29, think.

Speaker: i think with lightweight wheels. And when I say lightweight wheels, don't mean necessarily getting these pepper pots, like just those 2002 WRX wheels. They are everywhere. They are so easy to find. Those are only 16 pounds, I think, right? Yeah, that's right. 16 and a half pounds. Yeah. Why that stuck in my brain, I don't know. Was it from that one Nazioch thread, the master wheel thread?

Speaker: No, it's because I had a set on an SF a while ago, and I think I weighed them at one point. yeah And they were, yeah, 16 to 16 and a half, depending on the wheel weights yeah that were stuck on them. So all that right there is about $2,000 worth of stuff.

Speaker: And well, and then a torque locker, which would put a like $2,300, something like that. Um, even if someone's not mechanically inclined, if you're willing to turn a wrench and you've got a torque wrench, you can do the VTD swap. You can do it. It is bolt up. Like you're just pulling the tail shaft of the transmission off and that's it. boop There's no other mods. There's no other mods at all. The hard part is fine. The VTD. That's it.

Speaker: Um, Like I said before, I don't know if the WRX4 converter is worth it. Like Dan swapped one into his car and he didn't notice the difference at all. I just did it for the hell of a bitch. I wouldn't recommend doing that because then you're like splitting the case and all that. Yeah. Yeah. paying the ass And I mean, like I said, after all that, you're not even at $3,000 rock sliders.

Speaker: do rocklirs Let's go two rock sliders that, I mean, even if it's not even the bars, even if it's just finding someone who can weld and who can actually weld onto really thin unibody sheet metal, um, just get that steel angle on there.

Speaker: And because you're trying to set the car up not to not hit things, but to survive hitting things. Yes. To intentionally survive hitting things. Yes. And, um, and then get yourself,

Speaker: two spare rear axles and one spare front axle. They are, for most of these cars, there's some differences on some years, but for most of them, they are symmetrical on each side. Very interchangeable.

Speaker: The part number is different. There's like an A and a B and like there's a little groove in the axle or something like that to differentiate them. But I've used both on both sides and never had anything leak. Perfect. doesn't It doesn't matter. You don't have to keep track or anything like that. And then i wouldn't even say a snorkel and just the the breathers are like change, you know, yeah just do that.

Speaker: and And that's it. Carry an extra air filter with you. I was going to ask, where would a set of of good gauges for monitoring temperature and then cooling mods come into play for most people that are you know running some sort of an automatic transmission, whether 5 or So, you know, i did all the cooling mods up front just like as a preventative thing. But seeing what John Schimberski, he's a Subaru Offroad Adventures on Instagram and Facebook.

Speaker: He's running the stock. Okay. Yeah, you know him. Yeah. So he's running the the stock radiator, stock thermostat. I think he's running a stock thermostat. I would not get an aftermarket thermostat. Keep it OEM. Yes, agreed. He's just running stock radiator. And he has an he has a transmission cooler.

Speaker: that's in line with the cooler that's in the bottom of the stock radiator but unless you're turning like larger tires i don't even think you need the transmission cooler but for gauges just get a scan gauge it's 200 bucks and so he actually figured out that you can a lot of people on the nabisco forums and the old forester forums say that you cannot get our cars to read transmission temperature through the scan gauge you can there is a code if you have the 14.5.3 firmware update, the most recent one, whatever that is, that number may be wrong. There is a code that will let you read transmission fluid temperature. He is running it and he gave me the code and it it works. Yeah. So you don't need any extra gauges.

Speaker: Scan gauge two. yeah Okay. I was going to ask if it was scan gauge two. That's what's up. And you know what, man, those things are so sick, especially for the people in the CVTs and, and even new Subarus, cause they don't give you a needle. They just say, Oh, now you're effed.

Speaker: you know You just get the warning light when you're when it's too late. yep it's such a you know For some people, they might get neurotic about it, but I just think it's such a vital thing to be able to see when you're starting to get into muddy waters. See, when times are starting to move, not when it's at your oh shit point already. Exactly. like time to Time to take a break. Yeah. And I wouldn't spend a ton of money on a radio. like i mean I've got a Midland 275 with a ghost mount. I have it like dead center on top of the car just so I can get that big old ground plane.

Speaker: But on these 24-hour events, I pick up so much radio chatter with that thing because it has such a great ground plane, such great reception that it's annoying. Like I thought about moving it to get worse reception because there's some guys on there who, you know, everyone's on the same channel for recovery purposes, but there's some guys who are like think they're tour guides or something. And they like, we'll not shut up. Like i keep the channel clear. This is an event. I hate that.

Speaker: We got like, there's a dog in the road. I'm calling out like guys, dog mile three 75.2. Don't hit it kind of thing. And there's other that kind of stuff out too. Like, Um, so like I would just get, don't know what that Midland radio is offhand. It's like the black one that everyone gets. It's like 50 bucks or something.

Speaker: Like you're not trying to, for most of the events that you're doing, even on group rides, maybe if you're in the desert, this is different. You're trying to talk to someone a hundred feet away from you. And yeah you probably don't want to talk to someone three miles away from you. Cause like in most cases, you know, this is not Australia. We don't, we don't like to do in Australia. We're not putting miles between our rigs. It's, you know, Most times you're trying to keep eyes right ahead of you and right behind you. You want to see those rigs and yeah any, any radio will work.

Speaker: Like just get a handheld and mount it in the rig somewhere. And then if you want to get a hard mount, then do that. Also, I mean, I run a CB as well as a GMRS and I got the CB first just because I thought this everybody use and then found out that no one, nobody at all.

Speaker: That was like a secret that I haven't really told you about with any 24 hour events. Some people will get held up by truck traffic on these back roads and we're like, uh, Columbine traffic, okay like a farmer moving their Columbine through. Oh yeah. They sometimes use CVs and I'll be like, Hey, low boy driver. Hey, Columbine driver.

Speaker: Is there anyone behind you? is there anyone coming up behind you? Can we get rigs through here? And they'll say, no, you're good. Or yeah, actually I'm waiting for someone. And they're at this point right now, I'll radio to them and tell them to wait for you guys or something like that. That's happened like twice.

Speaker: So I would say don't waste your money on a CB. Maybe one or two of the most overrated things that you see people putting on their Subarus right now, where you just, you see it and you're like, ah, another one.

Speaker: Uh, I'm not a fan of rooftop tents. ah ah Like that on one, on the last Ohio 24 hour event, um, knocked the rooftop tent off yup on a low hanging tree. yeah And, um, so I've not slept in one. So if you like it, just ignore me.

Speaker: Yeah. But, On a lot of campsites, finding a spot that's perfectly level or level enough so that you don't feel like... If you've ever slept in an unlevel location, it's it's weird. Even if it's five degrees off, you're going to end slouching downhill, sliding downhill throughout the night. It's heavy.

Speaker: It kills gas mileage. Yeah. But if you like it, you'll like it. And just tell me to go to hell. i don't know. Well, and some people actually use them, but I agree, man. There's so many people that use them once a year.

Speaker: it's like, well, you just burnt $500 extra gas in the last six months having that thing. Yeah. And it costs you four grand. Clean them off, drying them out. Like, yep.

Speaker: Just general maintenance, like a ground tent. I would not recommend one of those. Oh, that's one thing that I don't like either. Those gazelle tents. Okay. They're cheap, but they're also heavy and they don't pack down very small. And what are they? If it's a gazelle tent, I've never used one. what the heck is that? You've definitely seen one. It looks like ah a giant orange cube. It's like big in the overland community. If you want to have a ground tent, okay they pitch very quick and they're very spacious.

Speaker: but they have an integrated rain fly. And if the rain is coming any direction except straight down, straight you getting you're getting rain inside of the tent. I've camped with a few guys who use them and they're just like, yeah, you got use cots inside to stay off the ground. Otherwise you're getting water on you. And then I also think like people chasing the biggest tire size. Sure. It looks great, but I mean, unless if you're trying to climb much of anything, run out of power, you're running out of power, running out of gas, like you're, you're,

Speaker: bringing heat to the car where it doesn't need to be heated up. You're going to wear out your axles faster. Like, well, I was just going say, I'm running 29s and I tell people all the time, don't run this tire size. Yeah. Yeah. Just don't. I know you guys are going to do it, but I'm telling you, you, you don't need to, you know, it's, you get way more benefit out of being able to turn your wheels than you do a bigger tire, you know? Yeah.

Speaker: And like said, picking the line. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything else, like, you know, Everything else is just preference. Build your own rig, build the way you like it. It's important to when you park your car to turn around and smile at it and get that feeling like, and then use it the way you want to use it. Like don't build it the way someone else has built it just because you think that's cool. If you're not going to use it for that, like this is not a cheap hobby.

Speaker: Not at all, dude. You don't have the money to be, to be satisfying other people's preferences. Right. Yeah. So I guess that's another thing is like, like you were saying earlier, don't just go out and get coil overs.

Speaker: Because you think you need yeah Work your way up to it. like Back yourself into a corner on it. Yes. you know and i The thing for me, why I'm so adamant about that, of telling people, hey, you probably don't need this, is because I've heard so many people say, I want to lift my Subaru, but I want to do it the right way.

Speaker: it might not I got a gripe with that. like du it placess Because these aren't four by four s And so you would understand that most yeah because the spatial lift is the wrong way to do it for this with a four by a four by four. is A hundred percent. Whether it's a coil spacer or a body spacer, horrible idea on most in most applications on a body on frame.

Speaker: But on these cars, it's not even remotely the same thing. Right. As long as you get one of the quality ones like at eighty ADF or SubiLiftaz, or there might be another one that has the category correction in them.

Speaker: RallyTech. Any of those guys, it's going to drive the same, if not better, than Stockheight. Yeah, and it's so hard to beat OEM Subaru suspension in terms of reliability because I'm finding that so many Subaru owners um are very clueless to how off-roading works. Off-roading breaks stuff. Off-roading introduces a lot of complications in to into your maintenance routine.

Speaker: It just adds a lot, whereas people in the 4Runner community... Jeep community, they know that every time they go off-roading, probably going to break something, you know? And so I'm just always telling people like, I know you are probably going to buy this and be pissed that you find out later, oh, i have to rebuild these every 40,000 miles or, oh, yeah like, oh, I i broke it. Well, of course you broke it. You just sent your car through a rock pile, dude.

Speaker: Okay. ah Most important question. Has anybody ever told you that you look like a Ironman, Robert Downey Jr.? What? No. I've got, no um, no. I had, um, uh, what was that NASCAR driver's name? Jimmy Johnson's pit crew approached me and said, you know, you look just like Jimmy Johnson, right? Like what? No. Now I got to look. Oh, now my phone's restarting itself. I guess I can't look anything up. That's stupid. Yeah, that's funny. And it may be just because we're, we're over, uh, you know, a video call, but yeah, dude, you look like a Iron Man, bro. You're like ready to get down. Maybe it's just the lighting. don't know. Okay. That's what's up. That's funny. And then you did mention, um, anxiety earlier.

Speaker: ah is that something that you deal with like pretty regularly? Yeah. Um, especially lately, like I've had, um, problems with like panic attacks lately, but oh dude that, um, yeah and just learning what that's actually like for the first time, but that that' kind of been a strength in my build, I think, because i have anxiety about using my car all the time. So I've built it so that I've either, right. Well, either overbuilt or make it easy to fix. Like either want something to be protected to where can't break or when it does, i know how to fix it. It's easy to fix, cheap to fix,

Speaker: And I've done it before. Like I've practiced it in my driveway. Like, you know, I know that not a lot of folks have places to work on their cars, but if even if if you buy like an old Forester or an older Outback and you go to wheel it like i I do think it's, there's value in just completely disassembling suspension, get every bolt loose, take it out, lube it up, put it back. Right. You don't want to be fighting rusted hardware on the trail. You want everything to be stupid easy on the trail.

Speaker: Yeah. If you can't do it an auto zone parking lot, you're not going to be able to do it on a, you know, 15 degree angle, messed up trail. And actually it's always going to be the worst location. Oh, okay. murphy's gonna jack um Let's go Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, I, Don't use, people love high lifts. I don't think they have any place for Subarus because they're super heavy. So I used to use a bottle jack, but it's heavy. And I found that depending on what your lift height is, if your tire is flat or say your wheel totally falls off the car, you then can't get the bottle jack under the car to jack it up if it's too tall.

Speaker: Oh, that is true. I haven't run into that. Okay, put me on some game here. I need more ideas. Yeah, where i go spiral jacks. Okay. Okay. Stock or F-150, Ram, Chevy, Silverado.

Speaker: this is their stock jack. It's only about, don't know, six, seven inches tall. And it's a gear driven telescopic jack. Yeah. Like 40 to 60 bucks on Amazon. Or you can just steal one out of a work truck or something like that. Like I did. And it'll lift it 17 inches. You just put a little block wood under as a base and they're super light, super reliable. Don't need any maintenance.

Speaker: And I combined that. I carry, um, two other scissor jacks, the stock scissor jack in the car, not for lifting the car, but like, So for my coil overs, you know, they droop farther than the suspension will droop. So sometimes I need that jack to, yes, lift up the hub. So I'm not fighting it to position it.

Speaker: And then I have how I know. Yeah. And then I have another larger truck scissor jack, like a 5000 pound truck jack, just in case I got to lift something else up. Like, say the car is falling over. I can't get the spiral jack under there.

Speaker: Scissor jacks are light and they're slim and you can get them under in really tight spaces. um ah John Schaversky uses, what's the AGM scissor jack. It's like a much, much larger scissor jack that you can put it, you're not supposed to, but you can put an impact on it and it'll jack the car up faster than anything out there. okay They're large and they're kind of heavy, but they're also pretty nice, but very stable and get wheel chocks.

Speaker: Yes. Don't yeah plan to find the perfect rock. That's not going to slip. Like get the really high angle rubber wheel chocks. They don't weigh that much. They're pretty cheap and get two of them.

Speaker: They're 14 bucks, bro. I just bought a set, you know, and, and the thing is people don't take into a, you know, they see this stuff on Instagram and they think, Oh, this is just a fun, hot. No dude, we're playing with heavy equipment.

Speaker: And if you're stupid, you can die and end up on a t-shirt. Do anything you can to not get under the car. Like when you're changing axles, for instance, I used to use a slide hammer because I don't want to get under the pry bar to get it out. I found, I saw an ad on Instagram for this little like breaker bar, little hook attachment that you can just stick on the side of the axle.

Speaker: Just pop them out. Oh, I love that. Now I don't have to carry a five pound slide hammer in the car anymore. but you're never getting under the car. Like as much as you can avoid getting into the car, cause you know, you can take all the precautions in the world.

Speaker: Somehow that car can slip and now you're toast, you know, and you're in the middle of nowhere. You might be by yourself. And even if you got somebody there with you, you don't have all the equipment to rip a car off somebody and your head's probably already crunched.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like, like I was saying with like anxiety being a strength, like always think about what's the worst that can happen and prepare for that. Like, Yeah. Always carry water in the car for either drinking or cooling or. Yeah. That was one of the things with the 24 hour events. I researched like what do 24 hour Le Mans drivers do to prepare for these things? And they say the number one thing is to drink more water than you think you need to. Like, yes, you're going to have to pee, but you're going to lose performance and focus from being dehydrated.

Speaker: Yeah. And that's going to cost you way more time than like having to pee a few times. Most people hide it well. I hid it. I had crippling anxiety as a kid. um But a lot of people deal with it and panic attacks, dude. And it's crazy because you can't control it. It's not like you're it's not like you're thinking I'm worried. You just it's like ah your body's just doing it.

Speaker: Exactly. And your body's having a response trying to keep you safe, but it's like you're having a short circuit of some sort. You got any advice for people on how to deal with this? Because there are people out there, man. They're really, um they're going through it, bro. It sounds like you found a way to use it.

Speaker: to your advantage but yeah like when an actual when i'm getting to the point where there's like a natural panic attack i do have beta blockers for that and there's ohh nice yeah just just the weak ones though like 10 milligram per panel all kind of thing and that's been very helpful but like i've learned there's breathing techniques you can use like that um, stimulating the vagus nerve to try and calm calm yourself down. Wim Hof stuff, bro. Yeah. Yeah. You, you breathe in and then you like the full breath and you breathe out through purse lifts. So it's like labored breathing out and you do like, you know, five in five out five in six out five and seven out, that kind of thing.

Speaker: And actually count. Don't rush the counts. Like you're trying to keep the focus on just counting and you're putting pressure on the front and back vagus nerve and it's making your heart rate drop a little bit. Your anxiety go down a little bit.

Speaker: That helps for like, low-grade anxiety, if that makes sense. um Therapists told me about that, found that very helpful. um And then, I mean, for me, just like building away my concern, frankly. yeah Like, oh, yeah, one way to do that can still totally happen. But let's be ready for it in every possible way I found because I still deal with it occasionally. My biggest thing. I mean, when I had when I was a kid, it was so bad I couldn't eat and almost didn't sleep, which is why I'm so small.

Speaker: I'm six feet tall, but i'm I'm tiny, dude. Like if you look at my bone structure. I'm i'm i'm probably like, if they dig me up someday, they're going to think I was a female, you know, it's that bad. But ah I did find that that whole thing of finding a logical way to kind of, whether it's preparing for those things that, you know, you're having anxiety about or whatever, logic. and, um, reason for me was like actually thinking about like, what's the worst that's really going to happen. And if that happens, how much I'll survive. Like i can make this work and I'll be okay. It doesn't really make it go away. Like in the moment you're saying, I'll fudge, but it, it did help a little bit, man.

Speaker: I got, i got tons of, um, empathy for people dealing with it it's it's it's a rough yeah rough thing deep water crossing still terrify me that's the one thing because i'm always thinking somehow my car's gonna get stuck somehow it's gonna die i'm gonna lose exhaust pressure exactly oh yeah moving water is a whole different thing i'm just thinking about like especially in like these 24-hour kentucky events like mud holes are the biggest thing like There'll be parts of the ah the rally course at night that go through, and you just see nothing but trees and tread marks, and they go into puddles. But is that puddle six inches deep, or is it four feet deep? And that happened that happened to a few people. Like, they yeah sank their entire engine, had to be dragged out the back, and they were pulling their spark plugs and turning the engine over to get the water out of the cylinders. Yep.

Speaker: Yep. I've done that. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You have done that. Unfortunately I did do that. Yeah. But again, you just prepare, you just prepare for, yeah you know, fortunately I had all this stuff on hand to do that and literally still running that car right now. No problem. Yeah. Runs like a time, you know, when you're sitting on the toilet, take that time to research one of the things that you're worried about. Just figure out, you know, someone has had this problem before and has figured out a way to fix it.

Speaker: Yeah. Or if they haven't, they're like, do this to avoid doing that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Well, dude, I've eaten up three hours of your night. I appreciate the heck out of you, dude. This was a ton of fun. And like I said, you are definitely one of, you know, your, your build is sick. It's good to actually finally meet you.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I've always, I've been a massive fan and, It's rare that I see people actually doing this stuff where they're proving, yeah, my Subaru can go pretty much anywhere a 4x4 can. I see people say that, but I don't see people proving it You're one of the few people where I'm like, dude, let's go. you know, like you and Milton and there's a few other people out there that are doing it. And so it's super sick to get you on here and pick your brain. um

Speaker: Remind people of your your in links where what's the name that they can find that under? It's a Rocky River Overland. like I got a Facebook page for now. And my email Rocky River Overland one at Gmail dot com.

Speaker: I monitor it, but if I don't respond to you immediately, just message me again, pass me a little bit. I'm sorry. I'm trying. And can you real quick, uh, give a quick, uh, just ah a short overview of which models, you know, that those are going to work on.

Speaker: So they're going to work on for sure. All SG 2003 to 2008, unsure of SF, but they should, um, all Baja and 2000 to 2007 Outback, I believe.

Speaker: Okay. Nobody's put them on Imprezas yet. Not yet. Um, I don't, just because I don't know anyone who really offers Impresos like that or would want that kind of application because the SHM links are a little bit longer.

Speaker: But because they're longer, it'll work for stock height up to four inch lift because it works for mine. so And all that information is on the the Facebook page. Perfect. You'll know you're in the right place because my car going through a mud hole is the cover photo. let's go cool well yeah like i said i i some people i find are um hesitant to shout their stuff out but that's actually it would make my day if people made money off of talking on here so i'm happy to send people over there so um anything else before we jump off that um we didn't cover that you want to shout out you got a youtube channel or anything

Speaker: I mean, I do, but I don't really use it much. It's called Where the Trail Takes Me. I've put one video on there that anyone's watched, really. It's just a bunch of Subarus going up this road, Hurricane Creek Road, that may never open again in North Carolina. Yeah, Helene did a number it. They love to shut stuff down, man. They love shutting stuff down and not opening it up.

Speaker: Yeah, so I mean, I don't really post too much on there. It's it's just too much time. I'm not that serious about it. Yeah. Oh, so this is kind of random and late in the episode. I guess one thing that I think folks shouldn't do is maybe don't hard mount a solar panel to your car. Because, well, I mean, this may not be a thing in the desert as much, but at least on the East Coast, like i've I've got a solar panel that powers a fridge, like a battery is in the fridge. I don't have an external battery or anything like that. But being able to chase the sun around the campsite with a solar panel that you can move around.

Speaker: That is brilliant. that. Because not going move your rig the whole time. Like, especially if you've got rooftop tent, once you set it up, you're planted there. So if you're really trying to use it, just get like a 30 foot cable and you can move the the panel around if it's got a kickstand or not. And I never, I would have never thought of that because I've never had any real desire to go track down a ah solar panel. Like I said, most of my trips are pretty short, you know, usually one night. Okay. Good tip. I like that. I like, and that's, I see people doing that all the time. They're gluing them to their hoods, which, which is fine.

Speaker: But yeah, if if you like it, go for it, but it's going to ruin your pain. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. ah Absolutely. Well, dude, thanks again, man. Mr. mr Kaiser, Mr. Kaiser as, there you go as, as it's pronounced. Is that, is that German or?

Speaker: uh german and austrian okay okay sick dude and italian and irish and all that i'm a classic yeah same here bro i don't even know i was born in west virginia though so it's funny you're right on you're doing all that stuff out there so but dude thanks again man this was an absolute pleasure i appreciate you uh let me eat up your whole friday night yeah thank you for having again this is a great honor dude