Month: February 2020

DIY: Rally Armor mudflaps 2020 Outback Onyx XT installation

I was super stoked when Ral­ly Armor final­ly released mud­flaps for the 2020 Out­back!! I’d been wait­ing since I bought the car in Novem­ber 2019. Rokblokz had them weeks before Ral­ly Armor, but I the RAs looked so much nicer. As soon as they became avail­able, I bought them and BOOM, in 3 days they had arrived. Here, I doc­u­ment my install of the Ral­ly Armor UR mud­flaps for the 2020 Sub­aru Out­back Onyx XT. *Please note that I am by no means any sort of expert about cars or how to repair or alter them. I’m just an aver­age car own­er and like the way they look.*

Writ­ten: 02/29/2020

Rally Armor UR

Front Mud-flaps

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Turn the wheel towards the direc­tion you’re work­ing on to free space
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My car came with the OEM mud guards, so that was­n’t cov­ered under the Ral­ly Armor instruc­tions. I assume with­out the guards, there would be clips instead of screws secur­ing the lin­er and trim

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Under­side of the OEM guard. Remove the screw to remove the guard. I used a screw­driv­er for this

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Ini­tial­ly used a screw­driv­er, but found a ratch­et­ing wrench much eas­i­er. A ratch­et­ing sock­et would be even bet­ter
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Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey
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The inner­most screw was too deep for my non-sock­et wrench, so I used the reg­u­lar side
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And off comes the guard
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There’s one clip left to remove
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Small flat­head to pop the thing out

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And remove
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Pull back the lin­er (some­how a bunch of leaves got into mine)
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Because mine had the OEM guards, there are already poly­gon clips (?) where the screws thread­ed. Remove all 3 (2 out­er­most and one on the inner towards the mid­dle of the car)
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Clips that came with Ral­ly Armor
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Side by side of the ones for the OEM guards and the Ral­ly Armor poly­gon clips
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Direc­tions say to mount them onto the met­al, one upper and one low­er. It did­n’t say any­thing about how the trim is attached there too, so I just slid it in behind
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Same for the top. The direc­tions say at an angle, so I fol­lowed the image, but then doing the oth­er side lat­er, I real­ized it does­n’t mat­ter how it’s angled. So then, I just copied how the OEM clips were angled.
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Shove the lin­er back into place behind the met­al and plas­tic trim lay­ers (mine was stub­born and need­ed a firm shove/fist) and line up the holes. My clips would move around, so make sure it’s still lined up.
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3 wash­ers and 3 screws. Two 1.5SS long screw and one 1SS short screw
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Spac­er 0.25SP
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On the inner­most mount, take your INS5 fas­ten­er and pop it into the hole. Don’t push the pin thing inside the insert (make sure you’ve removed the OEM clip if your car came with the guards)
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Pull out the thing.
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Per instruc­tions
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Add the 0.25 spac­er
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So here, I had a lot of trou­ble get­ting the short screw to seat in the INS5, so I end­ed up swap­ping out one of the long 1.5SS screws for the short 1SS. Worked like a charm.
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Voila
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Don’t for­get to reat­tach the under screw. I don’t know if it makes a dif­fer­ence, but I don’t like the idea of leav­ing it emp­ty.

Rear Mud-flaps

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First thing is to remove the OEM guards just like in the front. There are two screws on the out­side towards the wheel
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There is one clip under­neath
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This one was an absolute beast to remove. I slid my thin flat­head under the mid­dle part, then eased it out, hav­ing to switch to a larg­er flat­head, and even though it came out, the rest was stuck in the car, so even­tu­al­ly I had to use pli­ers to pop it out. I tried to not break things, but I had to use a lot of force in the end.
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There’s one more clip near the wheel on the inside. Good luck if you have big hands. Some more bit of force and POP it comes out.
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Time to remove these two above where I removed the 2 screws hold­ing in the OEM guard
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Push the inner riv­et pin in to unlock it
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My thin flat head here again to ease it out. You could use a plas­tic pry tool, I guess. My low­er one was extreme­ly stub­born, while the upper one came out with­out any prob­lems.
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There she is
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Next step is to put the stick­er on the back of the met­al brack­et. Then, it goes on the under­side of the car in an emp­ty hole on the under trim, with the met­al brack­et’s threads point­ing towards the front of the car. It will be where the inner por­tion of the mud­flap will secure
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Here’s the tricky part. I used a sock­et wrench, a short­er sock­et and then a deep sock­et to try and do this
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Slide your­self under­neath the car. I put the sock­et over the lock nut (set it up per the instruc­tions with the machine screw). The nice thing is that the sock­et wrench’s han­dle (on the right side of the car) just hung out against the car while I tried to tight­en with a screw­driv­er until I could­n’t go any­more with this set­up
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Then I switched to sit­ting up, and you can’t see if from this crap­py image (Every inch of me was freez­ing at this point) but I’m hold­ing a reg­u­lar fixed wrench on the almost tight lock nut and then using a screw­driv­er under the car to tight­en it up. I’d leave it a lit­tle loose at this point so that lat­er you can still move the met­al brack­et around for posi­tion­ing the mud­flap. Just don’t for­get to tight­en it lat­er.
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Time for the 3 orange clips. Thank good­ness for some­thing easy
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Make sure to remove the OEM clips first. The top two go between the trim and the met­al (don’t wor­ry about the upper­most hole. It needs to stay emp­ty for easy maneu­ver­ing of the trim)
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The bot­tom-most clip goes over the trim. I had a hard time slid­ing it on with my freez­ing fin­gers, so I just put the flat­head inside the orange clip to keep it open and then eas­i­ly slid it over where it need­ed to go
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4 wash­ers, 1 lock nut, and 3 skin­ny screws. Don’t for­get the lock nut’s wash­er! Screw­driv­er and sock­et wrench time. It’s a tight work­ing space. Leave them all loose until you posi­tion it all right and then make sure to tight­en every­thing up. Don’t for­get the riv­et pin clip and the large clip under­neath the car!!
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All done!! Snazzy!! 🙂 Go around and recheck placement/positioning of the flaps. It’s nice that it’s so easy to do. Make sure not to over­tight­en any­thing!

In Conclusion

Per­fect­ly doable for an ama­teur like me. I start­ed at around 10ish and fin­ished up around 1:30pm. Grant­ed, I had help about 1⁄3 of the way through and I ran into quite a snag with the inner­most mount for the front mud­flaps, not to men­tion some time to real­ize that with the OEM guards you have to remove all the clips that came with it. I also did not under­stand the place­ment of the INS5 or .25 spac­er. My help had to, well, help me and then it all made sense. Then there was the issue of the 1SS short screw not seat­ing into the INS5, and then mak­ing the deci­sion to swap one of the 1.5SS long screws with the 1SS short screw (since there were two hold­ing the out­er por­tion). The back was only tricky with the stub­born clips and mount­ing the met­al brack­et.

I hope this post will help shine some light on the instal­la­tion. I end­ed up email­ing Ral­ly Armor and sug­gest­ing per­haps chang­ing the front screws to all 1.5SS long screws, or bet­ter yet, just skip­ping the INS5 thing and mak­ing it poly­gon clips like the oth­ers and how Sub­aru installed the OEM guards. Seems over­ly com­plex for no rea­son. Maybe it’s for flex­i­bil­i­ty? I don’t know.

Enjoy a tru­ly qual­i­ty prod­uct and a badass look to your Out­back!!

Dyna-Glo Vertical Offset Smoker

Who: Total n00B here!! I have nev­er used a smok­er before in my life, only propane grills. I’ve nev­er start­ed a fire before.

Why: I’ve been want­i­ng this par­tic­u­lar smok­er for a looong time and FINALLY, I got it!

What: The Dyna-Glo ver­ti­cal off­set smok­er. It’s cheap! I bought mine under $200 on Ama­zon. Giv­en the extreme afford­abil­i­ty of the unit, it does require a few mod­i­fi­ca­tions before get­ting going. I bought a high heat sil­i­cone for smok­ers to seal up the lit­tle holes and a smok­er seal for the door. It still leaks a bit, but I just keep chas­ing them around.Today was the first day I cooked with it! Before, I sea­soned the thing and WOW I am a super new­bie. The short of it, though, is that I deem it a success!So, here are some pics:

Awe­some gloves
Because I have no oth­er choice but to use it on my deck, I decid­ed to get a PVC pro­tec­tive mat and a heat shield to direct the heat away from the deck.
Lump char­coal — burns longer
Char­coal bri­quettes — burns even­ly
Chim­ney starter sit­ting in a small portable grill
Start­ing to ash over
I just used a reg­u­lar old lighter
The fire box with hot coals and a foil cov­ered pouch of wood chips (when I cooked, I just threw the chips right on top of the coals, no foil)
2.5 hours of smok­ing two chick­en leg quar­ters, brined overnight and dry-rubbed.

Con­clu­sion: I still need more time to mess with it, how­ev­er, I’m real­ly hap­py with how it turned out. My prob­lem right now is how to main­tain the tem­per­a­ture which seems to drop quick­ly. Then again, I was using it in 30–40 degree sun­ny weath­er and giv­en that the cheap met­al is very thin, I’d need to insu­late it if I want­ed to use it reg­u­lar­ly in cold weath­er. When it was sun­ny and warm, the smok­er worked great! It’s a good thing I start­ed with easy things (pota­toes, chick­en leg quar­ters, 2 burg­ers and hot dogs) and did­n’t need to have the unit work­ing for a long time. Even then, I had to do TWO chim­ney’s worth of coal.

Hap­py! 🙂