Lifted Subaru Baja

I have been a Subaru nut for as long as I can remember, and in addition to owning exotics I have also owned quite a few Subarus and have always really liked their trucks and performance cars like the XT and STi. Needing a truck for light hauling such as pinball and arcade games, and general winter weather commuting I finally got around to picking up a Baja. Being based on the Outback wagon it has a mixture of truck and wagon features with a mixture of the advantages and drawbacks of each. But with Subarus being very adaptable and allot like lego blocks when it comes to parts interchange between models and even generations you can push the vehicle closer to either role you wish. Some lower the truck, drop in a warmed up STi engine at 4~500Hp and push toward the car angle. I went the other way toward making it more of a truck by improving the hauling and off road capabilities. With a 4 inch lift and some other supporting mods what I ended with was the same tire size as the Wrangler Rubicon, 4 more inches of ground clearance due to the 4 wheel independent suspension, and of course trade-offs such as not having as good approach and departure angles. So depending on what your agenda is, loving or hating off roading Subarus, you can "prove" it to be superior or inferior to a benchmark off roader like the Wrangler. But what it is for sure is different.
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Oh, and here is a stock one for comparison;
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Subaru has always been a difficult identity, within their own walls more than anyplace else. They develop a line of niche cars that are doing fine then about every ten years they decide that they want to be Toyota or Honda and kill off the niche stuff and try to go mainstream and then eventually fail and rebuild. They also seldom listen to what the fan base wants. With the Impreza it was;

Give us the STi and WRX
-They gave us the Rs with 1/2 the HP
Give us the STi and WRX
-Ok, they will make a few WRX but they aren't sure it will sell, they sell like crazy
Give us the STi
-Ok, they will only make a few; they sell all that they can make
Give us 400hp instead of 300hp in the STi, we love the design
-Subaru changes the design

In the 80's they made the BRAT and the XT which were unique and fun, they killed them and made only station wagons for a few years.

As to the Baja's usefulness, it does what I need. I don't haul quadrunners, a winter's firewood, or pull a horse trailer. What I do is need to haul a single pinball or arcade game which fits nicely, maybe an airplane engine, some tubing or spruce that might be 5~8ft and the passthrough or tailgate drop does that fine. It has a hitch and I can tow a few thousand pounds in a trailer if need be, which I do once a year at arcade auction. And in the winter or playing off road it absolutely brings a smile to your face.

 

Back in the 80's I had an 86 Brat, nobody was modifying them. By 2000 a few guys had done 4 and 6 inch lifts with one guy doing 8 inches and adding a transfer case. I went all in and did 12 inches and dual transfer cases, retained the Brat 4 wheel independent suspension too, powered by a supercharged Subaru 6cyl in place of the 4cyl. It was a wheel standing monster. I wish I had the time to do an all in project like that with the Baja but I needed it for winter and needed to keep it practical for my uses.

Here are a few snaps of the 82 Brat I built, you can see how much bigger it is next to one with a 6 inch lift.
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And that is allot of lift and tire because this is what they were like stock, and even stock they were like a Willys jeep in that they looked unassuming but could go just about anywhere

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"How's the axles hold up in the brats? I had a 93 ranger with 36" tires, and even with upgraded axles and still managed to break them.
Cool cars though. Who builds the lifts? Or do you have to go full custom? "

The BRAT was full custom that I did, had never been done before and to my knowledge nobody has replicated the effort. The Baja was a kit fabricated on a per order basis by SJR lifts, sort of a cottage industry thing. The axles hold up pretty well on both, they wear faster at the increased angle but nothing crazy. The Baja axles I expect to get maybe 50~75k miles on, time will tell. The BRAT axles were astonishing given that they were turning 33's in place of 185 70 R13s and having 400Hp shoved through them instead of 85Hp, I broke a few of the stubs that connect them to the diffs. That is Subaru for you, tough as nails.



"very cool ...i missed at first the SC 6 cylinder engine, that's interesting

i think with the 2.5L n/a engines (SOHC) the guys are installing STi cranks, and 2.5 turbo piston/rods, then turbo ....they say are good for about 400 hp "

Subarus are like lego blocks, many combos. However a stock STi engine is good for 4~500HP from its stock 305 with no internal mods. There are tons of combos of blocks, heads and cranks and a 5~800Hp build is pretty common. I am pleasantly surprised by how well the truck has responded to the tires, power is down a tad but not much, about equal now to a stock Jeep or Toyota pickup. The SC 6 is going to be pure fun.

 

The six I am swapping into the Baja is used in the Legacy wagon and the Tribeca, it is a 3.3l that is only one inch longer than the standard 4cyl and is a stupid easy bolt in.

The one I put in the BRAT was the ER27 from the XT6 that I did to be as over the top as possible. Fitment was a nightmare, it is so long that it came within an inch of the front bumper and I had a top mounted radiator with a hummer style grill on the hood. Then I SC'd it just to take it one step further. It was the most illogical way to put that kind of power in the truck and was done just for the wow factor. Funny enough, 16 inch wide swampers with their soft compounds make amazing drag tires up to about 80 when the shaking becomes too much. I could really skunk people off the line though with that truck. If you wanted to be practical just bolt in an STi engine and tranny and be done with it in a weekend. There is a fellow in Australia who did that about ten years ago, did the whole STi suspension and driveline too. The problem with BRATs, even the ones in the desert, is that they are all turning to dust. Mine was rust free in 2000 but by 2009 it was rusting from the inside out, literally the unibody where layers of metal were joined would just come apart from the inside with rust. The 80's Subarus are all rust buckets which is why you never see them on the road, and almost all of them I saw in the junkyards had a good drivetrain and suspension.


This guy did what your thinking of.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enMDCVKVjUc[/ame]