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Just wondering what upgrade options are available for my Brighton. Want to do the exhaust, and intake, as well as lowering suspension. Is the aftermarket limited for this car or can I go aftermarket for other subies and have them fit. If not ill have to go custom. I appreciate any info and thanks in advance for your help.

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Most stuff for Impreza and WRX will swap in fairly readily. Exhaust will get you louder but does not affect horsepower much. Sometimes better top end but more sluggish from a stop.

 

Coilovers should be the same between Impreza and Legacy. Different tophats maybe.

 

Intake will not help anything.

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A HUGE improvement for the Legacy model is upgrading the rear sway bar. If you have the really small diameter bar, installing the Forester bar (pretty sure it was either the Forester or Outback) makes it MUCH better on even mild turns. IIRC, the rear WRX bar fits but front WRX turbo bar will hit the NA exhaust and would need some sort of stand off to clear or custom header.

 

The factory muffler is heavy and restrictive. Going with a freer-flowing muffler that weighs less along with removing most of the piping to the intake connected right at the filter box and plumbed through the fender. To allow more surface area to hit the air filter, you could cut the bottom out of the filter box with a dremel and cut-off wheel, but leave the rigid supports intact. Can also VERY carefully remove the air filter screen that's impregnated into the rubber. FRAM air filters are typically easy. Since the screen is an actual obstruction, NOT having the screen will improve air flow. I've done that trick for years, on various cars and the filters hold up OK. Just have to be careful to NOT puncture the filter element and any rubber hanging from where the metal screen was needs trimmed so as to NOT get separated at some point and ingested. I've run modified filters for 20k miles and they don't deform. Some companies omit the screen, so that's an option too.

 

Routine stuff like fresh synthetic oils, new fuel filter, plugs and wires, freer flowing single cat, 4.44 final ratio, etc. will all work with synergy to make the car a little peppier. The biggest (FREE) improvement would be to drop curb weight. The front hood is a big weight adder, so finding some rare JDM aluminum hood or going with fiberglass could probably pull 40+ pounds. Removing the rear spare and jack around 35 pounds. Rear seats maybe 25 pounds. Think front manual seats weighed around 40 pounds each, so with 15 pound aluminum race seats, 50 pounds total could be freed up possibly with front seats to maybe more if they have full power. If you can live w/o A/C, compressors often weigh 35 pounds, plus a couple pounds more for the condenser and misc. A/C parts. Ditching heavy 25-30 pound each steel rims will reduce unsprung weight (a very good thing) if you go with some ultra light 16-18 pound EACH 17" aluminum rims (look at tirerack.com as they offer a ton of rims and list their weights- even if just a reference). Mufflers probably weigh 35-45 pounds along with the resonator. Aftermarket mufflers probably weigh around 8-10. If you really want to diet the car, can go with lexan rear quarter glass (check legality) to get the number even lower.

 

That's roughly 250-275 pounds if you diet the car. Most don't realize how MUCH of an improvement that'd equal in real world driving, especially when it also increases MPG and does wonders for lower torque engines + greatly improves handling and braking. I wouldn't be surprised if all those mods shaved a second to 1.5+ seconds off the 1/4 mile times.

 

If you can get the car to 2800 pounds, it'd be a blast. If you can get it to 2500 pounds (extensive weight reduction like removing most of the crap behind the dash, gutting the stereo, lighter bumper supports, lexan rear from back doors to the hatch, remove deadening but can leave plastic and just the carpet as that barely weighs 10 pounds, swap in manual window doors, gut the rear doors if it has them, etc.) it's be fairly quick even running an ej22. Run a WRX turbo'd engine, an EZ30 to EZ33, or even an eg33, and 13's would be *possible* at 2800 pounds, mid/low 12's at 2500 at least, but you'd need to dial the suspension in. These are rough quotes here.

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The only thing forgotten, is the brakes will be a limiting factor in some ways.

The Brighton came with drums in the rear.

 

O.

Drums get a hard wrap vs. discs but when they are in the rear, they are more than adequate as long as they aren't too small. A huge advantage they actually do have over discs is drum brakes weigh less, plus they can be set for zero-drag. Both of which would actually make the car quicker. I've driven high 12 second Mustangs on 2750 pound diets still running 80's drums with no ABS and GT discs up front and the cars stopped fairly well from tons of 80-100 mph blasts (speedo gave up the ghost at the old 85 limit so "how" fast was dependent on how long the pedal was plastered).

 

In a full-on race car, you don't want them. In a street car that's around 3k pounds or less, they are fairly adequate.

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Also worth mentioning with rear drums you SHOULD rebuild them with a new spring kit, shoes, drums, etc. and they'll be at their optimum. Quit often a spring breaks and they do not work as they should, or you have a ton of mileage on them and the shoes are barely touching. When I referenced a previous Mustang, it's brakes were completely refreshed ;)

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