I bought my tickets for Expo East over the weekend. I got the full experience package. I’ll be going 2 up on my 2004 GS Adventure with my wife. The toddler and dogs will stay out home with visiting grandma on duty. Another couple will be joining us 2 up on their 2017 GS and we have a guy, his wife, and kid in their JKU. We will partially be using him as support vehicle.
Coming from Pensacola we are about 500 miles or 8.5 hours away. For time sake we will highway it there. For wife’s sake we will do it over two days and hotel it on the travel days. Currently the plan will be to make it just past Atlanta the first day and finish up with a short 3 hour ride to arrive in the morning on Friday, the first day. We are hoping that there will still be a big enough area on the campground for us to camp as a group; camping arrivals are allowed beginning Thursday evening.
This past spring I was concerned about possibly getting stuck on some rutted dirt roads going out hunting in my wife’s Impreza. That is what prompted me to think about 4x4s again. But I also want an airplane in the next year or two so I think the 4x4 will be put on hold until later. In hindsight I wish we had bought the Crosstrek, however we had the Titan so it seemed surperfluous as it was a couple of grand more.
I was thinking that if the Impreza just had a bit more ground clearance and better tires, it would do enough of what I want. Over the weekend I did some digging on the net and I appears as though you can do about a 2-2.5” strut spacer lift on the Impreza to clear 205/75R15, about 27”, General Grabbers. The net result is about 4” of extra clearance, or just about 10” of total clearance. Add some Primitive Racing skids and I think I would be in good shape. I found a build thread on ExPo of pretty much this exact thing.
Primitive makes a few other things for the Crosstrek, but unfortunately there is just enough of a difference between the Impreza and the Crosstrek that they won’t fit. The amazing thing is I can do the lift, new wheels and tires, and skids all in for under $2500. I spent $1100 just for new tires on the Titan!
The whole family (me, wife, kid, and two dogs) pretty much kills the internal space so we do have a Yakima Skybox up top and a hitch hauler, but we might keep our eyes peeled for a used SylvanSport Go ... the factory is only 20 minutes from REEB Ranch so we might check it out.