Ruby Rhod, a 2018 Subaru Outback 2.5

[Snerk]

Hey y'all! New to OB and new to Overlanding in general.

This is Ruby Rhod, my 2018 Subaru Outback 2.5, a vehicle purchased jointly between my spouse and I as a platform to carry us on off-roading, overlanding, camping adventures. After years and years of us both driving small, low hatchbacks we felt like it was time for us to get something a little more capable. Especially with the world how it is these days, finally getting in to activities we've long wanted to do is becoming more and more justifiable. Nothing says social distancing like camping in the middle of the forest, right? :^)

We purchased this car used a few weeks ago and promptly got to work. It was purchased through my employer (a Honda dealership) and I got them to toss some money in to the deal for wheels, tires, and a lift kit. As the car sits now, it has 17x7.5 Sparco Terra wheels and 235/65R17 Yokohama Geolandar G015 ATs. I also have a LP Aventure 2" lift kit for it that has not been installed yet, but will be soon. Like, within a week or two.

Our current plans after the lift are, in no particular order:
1. Skid plates, probably from Primitive
2. Bull bar / light mount, probably from Rally Innovations
3. Design & build a pull-out kitchen and storage drawers for the back
3. Figure out / probably fabricate a roof rack setup

The kitchen is probably priority number one. My spouse has a degree in culinary arts and really likes the idea of having a "proper" kitchen while out camping, something organized and predictable so they can find everything. I like the idea too and we're already starting to draw up plans, we'll likely be taking some carboard and figuring out the drawer layout soon.

Anywho that's that for now, I don't know how often I'll be able to get this thread updated but I will whenever I have some progress to show :)

 

[Snerk]

Got my lift kit from LP Aventure installed last night. 2" lift, the car is notably higher (big surprise) but not wildly so and still drives like normal, which is what I was hoping for.

The LP Aventure kit is nice, it feels like they put more thought in to it than some of the other options out there as it includes all kinds of little spacers and brackets and whatnot to help ensure that brake lines and ABS wires and such don't get caught or experience too much tension. Install time was about four hours in my driveway with a buddy, though we were also dragging our feet and working on other stuff at the same time too.

Especially after seeing some of the gashes I left in the underside of the front bumper during my trip to the Mendocino National Forest, I'll be happy to have the additional clearance. :)

 

[Chad C]

Oh hey Michael. I see you're on here now.

 

[Downs]

 

[Snerk]

Oh hey Michael. I see you're on here now.

Yup! A local buddy is on here and I knew of it's existence, seemed like a good place to be :)

 

[Alfonso Rojas]

View attachment 163352View attachment 163353

Got my lift kit from LP Aventure installed last night. 2" lift, the car is notably higher (big surprise) but not wildly so and still drives like normal, which is what I was hoping for.

The LP Aventure kit is nice, it feels like they put more thought in to it than some of the other options out there as it includes all kinds of little spacers and brackets and whatnot to help ensure that brake lines and ABS wires and such don't get caught or experience too much tension. Install time was about four hours in my driveway with a buddy, though we were also dragging our feet and working on other stuff at the same time too.

Especially after seeing some of the gashes I left in the underside of the front bumper during my trip to the Mendocino National Forest, I'll be happy to have the additional clearance. :)

Nice! I have a 2017 and love it! Did you ride trails at stock height for awhile? If so, how did it perform? I do want to get out there and drive the car to its capability, but don't really want to lift it if i don't need to. Whats your thoughts on this?

 

[Snerk]

Nice! I have a 2017 and love it! Did you ride trails at stock height for awhile? If so, how did it perform? I do want to get out there and drive the car to its capability, but don't really want to lift it if i don't need to. Whats your thoughts on this?

I took it out twice at stock height and honestly aside from smacking the front bumper twice (which left some small gashes underneath, but nothing at all bad), it did great. Definitely go and see what it's capable of first, there's no sense in paying for the parts if you don't need it. At least from a practical perspective.

 

[Alfonso Rojas]

I took it out twice at stock height and honestly aside from smacking the front bumper twice (which left some small gashes underneath, but nothing at all bad), it did great. Definitely go and see what it's capable of first, there's no sense in paying for the parts if you don't need it. At least from a practical perspective.

Awesome, yes will do! I'm heading up to Mt Shasta next Saturday - Tuesday. I hope to find a bit of something up there. It is a family camping trip, so I doubt I'll get much time on a trail, but I'm definitely going to look for one.

 

[Trigger T4R]

Ha! Good name. Love that movie!

 

[Snerk]

Awesome, yes will do! I'm heading up to Mt Shasta next Saturday - Tuesday. I hope to find a bit of something up there. It is a family camping trip, so I doubt I'll get much time on a trail, but I'm definitely going to look for one.

Nice! I should head up to Shasta while the weather is still nice, but with MNF basically in my backyard and it being just so damn expansive, I could probably go many, many times and still find new things. :)

Ha! Good name. Love that movie!

thanks!

 

[Snerk]

Working on designing a pull-out kitchen for the Subie.

The design constraints are that it has to fit with the rear seat folded up, and it has to fit with the cooler on top.

I designed a model in SketchUp that I'll be using for making my cut list.

The idea is that the main box and first drawer section will be made of my 3/4 pine plywood, and the outermost section will be an HDPE cutting board from my local TAP plastics. Each of the drawer slides are 24" full extension slides and the overall depth of the box is 36". This leaves a small cubby area for stuff like spices or a lighter for the stove.

Our next camping trip is in two weeks so it'd be nice to get it finished up before then. I'm gonna go make my cut list now and possibly bust out the table saw so I can get to work. Currently I have 6x 48"x32" sheets, so I should have more than enough to finish up the project.

According to my SketchUp model, I should just have enough room to hold my Coleman stove with everything packed up and closed. Though I may have to slightly modify the "feet" of the stove to reduce it's overall closed height. Hopefully not, but I suspect cutting 1/4-1/2in off the bottom of the feet won't be that big of a deal.

 

[Snerk]

Small photo, but the first part of the build, the outermost box, is done. And it fits as intended.

Next up is to build the inner drawers. I only have one day off this weekend so we'll see how much gets done, but I'm optimistic that it'll be done before our camping trip next weekend. :)

edit: eventually I want to find a better cooler that fits entirely within the footprint of this box, too. I found one that was close, but due to the angle of the hatch it would have cost me an inch of vertical space in the box itself. It's already going to be a tight fit and I don't want to give up more space in the box than I have to. It's already pretty small due to the vehicle it's in and any smaller would basically be unworkable.

 

[Snerk]

Oh hey, I'm bad at posting updates.

On the camp kitchen: It's almost done! I've been doing little bits and pieces here and there. Both drawer slide sections are in, and I just need to do some final fitment cuts to make room for the stove, then take everything apart and paint it. I'll get a picture when it's done, since it doesn't really make much sense to post an in-progress picture at this point anyway.

On the car itself, I ordered and received a set of Primitive Racing 3/16 aluminium skid plates. Primitive is a little shop out of Tigard, OR that makes these really sturdy and pretty damn affordable plates for a buncha Subarus. I got a set of three, one for under the engine, one for under the transmission, and one for under the differential. I installed the engine plate today and I'm pleased, will likely put in the differential plate tomorrow. The transmission plate will have to wait for me to put in my transmission mount insert, since the Subarus tend to get a bit of driveline wobble after you lift them.



Although I don't intend to do anything too hardcore in this car, it'll be nice to know I won't turn it into a paperweight on some unexpected rock or branch out in the woods.

 

[Sputnik]

Looking good Snerk. It’s getting that Softroading the West vibe with the pull out kitchen. Very clean so far.

 

[Snerk]

Thanks! Donald was actually the inspiration for it as well.

Did a little bit of work this morning, got my Rally Innovations bullbar mounted and my Rough Country light bar on top of that. This light bar has an amber "DRL" to it as well, which I'm going to wire up on the foglight circuit, and wire the main beam on the highbeams. Too hot now to bother wiring stuff in the middle of the day, but I got all my supplies and will be wiring it all up once the sun goes down.




In addition to that I'm also hoping to make a little more headway on the "kitchen", it's almost finished -- next thing to do is to take it apart, sand it and paint it. I'm painting it black so it'll blend in with the back of the car a bit more. More pictures of that once it's finished, should be this week :)

 

[Snerk]

Well it's a shit picture but the kitchen is "finished". I put that in quotes because there are still some little things I'm going to want to add and change, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it.

The HDPE cutting board has some mass, so I need to put in some kind of strap to keep the whole thing closed while driving. The base for the stove could probably be thinned down a bit or just made better. The hole where the tripod support goes needs to be cleaned up a bit. But overall I'm real happy, it's nice to have a pull out kitchen setup that we'll be able to use anywhere we go with no more than a minute's setup time.

And just in time, too! The spouse and I are headed down to SoCal this weekend to go check out Joshua Tree. We're still baby overlanders so we'll be staying at a campsite and likely not doing much off-road driving as we'll be down there solo, but it'll be a good opportunity to test the kitchen out, test the small changes to our gear and our planning -- the hope is the only things we'll need from outside sources are gasoline and toilets. On that last note, we *do* have a bathroom setup that is as-of-yet untested, but should work out well.

On the car, I've also been figuring out how to turn the center console into a charging station -- we have a few external batteries, my GoPro charger, and will be bringing our iPad for Gaia as well as our cellphones. The Outback already has four USB ports in it -- two under the radio (one is data for android auto) and two at the back of the center console, but it also has a cigarette lighter plug inside the console. I'll probably be getting one of those Anker 4-port cigarette lighter USB adapters so I can hook up several external battery packs and the GoPro battery charger all at once. It'll be nice to have that stuff charging up while we drive around and not having to think about it.

Let's see... what else. Oh, the light bar is wired. It's bright as hell. I was initially concerned about light output being sufficient from such a small, single bar -- but it's great. Rough Country Black Series, claims 18k lumens and I believe it. I'm excited to try it out in the dark in the desert this upcoming weekend.

 

[OverLamb24]

View attachment 173882

Well it's a shit picture but the kitchen is "finished". I put that in quotes because there are still some little things I'm going to want to add and change, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it.

The HDPE cutting board has some mass, so I need to put in some kind of strap to keep the whole thing closed while driving. The base for the stove could probably be thinned down a bit or just made better. The hole where the tripod support goes needs to be cleaned up a bit. But overall I'm real happy, it's nice to have a pull out kitchen setup that we'll be able to use anywhere we go with no more than a minute's setup time.

And just in time, too! The spouse and I are headed down to SoCal this weekend to go check out Joshua Tree. We're still baby overlanders so we'll be staying at a campsite and likely not doing much off-road driving as we'll be down there solo, but it'll be a good opportunity to test the kitchen out, test the small changes to our gear and our planning -- the hope is the only things we'll need from outside sources are gasoline and toilets. On that last note, we *do* have a bathroom setup that is as-of-yet untested, but should work out well.

On the car, I've also been figuring out how to turn the center console into a charging station -- we have a few external batteries, my GoPro charger, and will be bringing our iPad for Gaia as well as our cellphones. The Outback already has four USB ports in it -- two under the radio (one is data for android auto) and two at the back of the center console, but it also has a cigarette lighter plug inside the console. I'll probably be getting one of those Anker 4-port cigarette lighter USB adapters so I can hook up several external battery packs and the GoPro battery charger all at once. It'll be nice to have that stuff charging up while we drive around and not having to think about it.

Let's see... what else. Oh, the light bar is wired. It's bright as hell. I was initially concerned about light output being sufficient from such a small, single bar -- but it's great. Rough Country Black Series, claims 18k lumens and I believe it. I'm excited to try it out in the dark in the desert this upcoming weekend.

Project looks like it is coming along great! You have done some of the upgrades i have been considering for our 11’ forester XT. How has the ride been on the 2 in lift? Do you have factory tires?

 

[Snerk]

Project looks like it is coming along great! You have done some of the upgrades i have been considering for our 11’ forester XT. How has the ride been on the 2 in lift? Do you have factory tires?

Ride is fine, it has a bit more sway due to the height (increased CoG + roll couple) but it's not at all bad. If anything, the additional height is a little more confidence inspiring to bomb over stuff on-road like freeway transitions or driveways.

Running Yokohama Geolandar G015s. the stock Bridgestone Duelers suck. I bought the car with 34k on it and the stock tires were already done for.