Just upgraded to 37" tires!

[ljvsnyder]

Looks good, you should challenge the boyfriend with an off road adventure and he can drive the Subaru. Make sue you take plenty of recovery gear, you will be towing him a lot. From the looks of the 37's you may need to upgrade those fenders and chop the bumper.

[Timmy]

Looks good, you should challenge the boyfriend with an off road adventure and he can drive the Subaru. Make sue you take plenty of recovery gear, you will be towing him a lot. From the looks of the 37's you may need to upgrade those fenders and chop the bumper.

Oh believe me, if he actually OWNED a vehicle, I would. Really nice kid, but honestly, he was riding with us and made a comment that Subaru's were made in German. I told him "I hate to burst your bubble, but Subaru's aren't German. You know what a Rice Burner is right?" Well, you can imagine the rest of the story.

Yep, fenders and bumpers on the list. I've actually been prepping for 37" tires for a while, and I was going to do fender and bumpers before the 37" tires, but the opportunity came up so I jumped on it. I can't really go banging around off-road right now because I know I'll rub on the fender. When I back up and turn sharp, the bumper rubs. So... I'm going to get the new bumper here pretty quick to at least take care of that.

Fortunately I already have the Teraflex rear tire carrier, so at least I don't have to upgrade that, but I do need to go get a new 37" Toyo mounted on my spare as it is still holding my 35" Baja's. Why in the world people only buy and sell 4 tires at a time on craigslist is beyond me. A complete set to me is 5 tires. Oh well, saved enough money by buying on CL to save on the cost of a new spare ;-)

[KaiserBill]

I've got to say the Subaru Rally WRX Impreza from the mid-1990's was pretty unstoppable in FIA Rally course. Obviously, the Rally car isn't designed for crawling over obstacles like a lifted Jeep is but then again you probably would be doing a 120-130mph on an unprepared surface like the Impreza can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTrBxVtQbe8

However, the best of both worlds-- Current 7 time Champs of the Dakar the KAMAZ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FcEuuakWPg

It can do a 130mph in the open and crawl over rocks too...


I do have to ask one question like the kid if you are doing mostly highway driving why get the 37's? If it is just for the looks okay. You'll need to get a pinion puller for the pinion gear. As for gears get the best ones you can afford. Make sure they have a lot of contact between the teeth when they mesh. That way you will distribute the torque across the complete surface of the tooth. That is important cheap gears tend to have less contact area and can easily damage the teeth under high torque loads.

Here is the truth about gearing a truck-- you really need more than just a change in differential gears. You really need to change the gearbox gears as well. But no one does that-- unless you are a rally racer. Because you need to change the torque rise between each ratio to really get the best performance for your vehicle. The charts for tires and differentials only give you an approximation of the normal performance of your vehicle with the stock stuff. Since I don't care about top speed too much-- I always go for mechanical advantage. I would pop- 10:1 differential gears into the truck if I thought it would give me the Earth moving performance I wanted in 3 feet of snow or mud. But that is me.

[UselessPickles]

You really need to change the gearbox gears as well. But no one does that

No one does that because it's not actually needed. Transmission gear spread impacts how you make use of the engine's power as you accelerate and shift through the gears. Changing tire size has no impact on this relationship at all. If the transmission is already matched well enough to the engine's torque/power curve and the general intended usage of the vehicle, and it's not a racing transmission with reconfigurable gear ratios, then any benefit of optimizing the transmission setup to your personal preferences is not going to be anywhere near worth the cost/effort for anyone without very deep pockets.

Then again, if you have a configurable racing transmission, you probably already have pretty deep pockets, and also a vehicle for which there exist after market racing transmissions.