jamal

I have a similar problem and I'm about 80% sure it's a tie rod (on the side I ran into a curb awhile back). It only happens when I'm turning right or accelerating moderately hard. Otherwise it's the steering rack itself or bad bushings. I'm going to start out with the tie rods since I have some extra ones and they're the easiest things to replace.

here's a good wheel bearing information thread: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=987976 NTN is the main supplier and the only one I knew about.

Don't use wd-40, get a little packet of caliper grease at a parts store. Detach the caliper bolt, swing out the caliper (you'll have to wiggle it to push the pads back a bit), and slide the caliper off the pin. Then clean off the pin and get some new grease all up on there. If the piston itself is sticking, you should probably have it rebuilt/replaced. A seal kit is like $20. The part number for that might be this: 26297FA001

Yeah that's what I do. You need to call in the morning.

Buy a civic?

That's what you're supposed to do.

the hub is the piece the wheel bolts to. The steering knuckle is the thing that holds the bearing. You can't get a new complete assembly, but you can probably find one used in a junkyard. That's what I did, and it lasted me a year. I just had a new bearing put in for $230.

Turn In Concepts, a vendor/suspension expert on nasioc, is running 3.4 degrees of front negative camber on their project car/daily driver. They say that with regular rotation they had about an extra 1/32 of wear on the inside of the tread at the end of the tire life.

then you didn't have 0 toe. And um, I would expect tires on an auto-x car to not last long. I, along with many others, have 2 degrees or more front negative camber without uneven wear. I suppose if I didn't drive down windy roads fairly often I would get a little extra wear on the insides. When I only had -0.7, I had extra wear on the outsides of my front tires.

Fronts bolt right on, but your wheels probably will not clear them. The problem isn't the diameter, the caliper is actually a bit shorter than the 02-05 WRX caliper which uses the same rotor. It's a lot thicker though and hits the inside of the spokes on subaru 16x6.5" wheels. There are however plently of 16 and even 15" wheels that will fit over them, including the 98-01 Impreza 2.5rs 16x7" wheels. For the rear Kartboy sells an adapter bracket. They don't bolt on since the calipers bolt directly to the backing plate which is pressed into the spindle. In fact, any front brakes from any modern subaru (except the svx, 05+ STi rotors, and probably tribeca) will bolt onto any other subaru assuming the wheels clear. For the rears, sliding, subaru 2-pots, and brembo 2-pots all have different methods of attachments, but any sliding rear caliper will work. 00-04 Legacy and 05 LGT rear discs are the biggest bolt-on oem brakes and are not-vented/vented respectively. Both use 11.3" discs and the same size piston.

Only the GT limited sedan in 00-01 had them, and then all GTs after that. The 05+ GT has even bigger 12.3" discs.

you have the 10.7" discs that are on the 2.5RS, 91-94 turbo legacy, and 1st gen foresters. So, for 15" wheels. The brakes that actually require 16" wheels are the 11.3" discs on the later Legacy GTs, outback, and WRX.

Oh, I forgot to mention the most important thing: Tires. Tires are what make you stop and turn. You can have a $15,000 coilover setup, and it's still going to handle like crap if you put junk all-seasons on it. A tire that grips is softer and will not last as long. A tire that lasts 50k miles is going to be pretty hard and not grip too well. I'm on my 3rd set of RE92s in as many years. They last about 10k miles for me. I've done quite a bit of work to my suspension, and now the tires are the weak link. Next spring I'm going to put down the money for a good set of performance summer tires.

-2 degrees of front camber won't go through tires if you go around corners with any frequency. Plus you've got -1.5 in the rear. Generally you want a little more negative camber up front than in the rear. My tires wear completely evenly by the way. It's not "my theory" on lowering the car. It's what happens to the tire and suspension geometry as it goes through it's travel. Here is a diagram of the camber curve on an STi, which is close enough to other cars to be applicable: As the control arms move away from horizontal in either direction, the balljoint moves closer toward the center of the car on it's arc of travel, which increases positive camber. You can see from the curve that at stock height, you'll gain negative camber, to a point, on the outside wheels in a corner which will improve grip. If you lower the car, you're giving yourself less travel before the camber goes positive. This is just what happens with a MacPhearson setup. Wishbone and multi link suspensions can be designed to have a much better camber curve, but a macphearson setup is easier to package, durable, and has a good amount of travel. Body roll isn't a function of height, it's a caused by the moment arm exerted over the distance between the roll center and the center of gravity. The roll center [axis] is the point [axis] that the car tries to roll around. The lateral force due to cornering is exerted through the center of gravity. So the distance between them multiplied by the cornering force is the roll torque. As the suspension compresses the roll center moves down, away from the center of gravity, which increases the roll moment.

Right, 05 rear struts fit, it's the fronts that don't. The 05 has better hubs and bearings, and up front the knuckle is bigger so the struts are too big for other cars. The actual amount of suspension travel (stock springs vs. lowering springs), will only effect when the struts hit the bump stops. With a car lowered 2", the negative camber will only decrease with compression. This is because of the geometry of the a-arm, ball joint, and strut. When the control arm is horizontal, it pushes the hub slightly farther away giving more negative camber. After that, things go the wrong way. It doesn't matter how the car is lowered. -0.5 degrees of negative camber is not that great for handling. with an inch of compression it leaves you at about 0 deg, and on top of the body roll means you're cornering on the outside of the tread. You should really shoot for 2+ degrees if you want the car to handle well. Keeping the tread flat on a corner means you're using all of it's available grip. I went from -0.7 to -2 degrees and it made a drastic improvement in how the car handled. I also have -1.5 in the rear. I have 04 STi suspension, so I also had some issues with camber. For the rears I bought aftermarket camber bolts and up front I drilled out the knuckles and milled the struts to use two sets of the big oem bolts. The ones in the bottom hole are positioned to max out negative camber and can't be rotated. roll over point? Do you mean roll center? Because it actually moves the roll center farther from the center of gravity which increases body roll.

They would have to be 04 or earlier. 05+ STi front struts don't fit any other Subaru. Also lowering a car 2" is going to do a lot of harm to the handling, because of the camber curve issues I mentioned. By lowering the car that much, you've pretty much negated the benefits of the higher roll stiffness.

Actually it is. Thanks to the poor camber curve, it takes very little for the front tires to be forced onto the outside edges while cornering. Reducing roll has a significant effect on improving grip. Adding a huge front bar will improve front end grip and can reduce understeer because the better contact patch overrides the added weight transfer.

PDM-racing sells a lot of whiteline stuff. Also check out Racecomp engineering and kastle's korner. So, anyway, springs and swaybars are the only things that actually reduce body roll (unless you could somehow make big changes to the suspension geometry). First, get a whole set of something. Stock STi struts since like 1998 have been inverted, so if yours aren't inverted you don't have sti struts. GR2s are also not even close to equivalent to them. WRX suspension isn't that great and the springs aren't that stiff. Also you should avoid springs for a non legacy wagon. They will cause rear end sag. You'd probably have the same problem with 04 sti take-offs. So anyway, a good setup might be KYB AGX adjustable struts (find them on e-bay), Whiteline control springs, solid endlinks from kartboy or whiteline, and some swaybars. Swaybars are the best way to limit roll and will do a lot to improve the handling. The big problem with Subarus is the way the camber changes under compression due to the suspension geometry. For about the first two inches of travel you gain a bit of negative camber (good). Then for the rest of the travel you lose negative camber (bad). Negative camber means the tire stays flat on the ground as you corner and grips better. For our cars it doesn't take much for the tires to roll over onto the outside edges, which doesn't get you much grip. So, you want to do all you can to limit roll, and get an alignment with the maximum amount of negative camber (the max in stock adjustment range won't hurt your tires). The biggest front bar I have seen is the Whiteline BSF19X, which is 22mm. The biggest rear bar listed for your car is the BSR19XZ, which is an 18-22mm adjustable bar. However I don't see any reason why the BSR17XZ, which is a 20-24mm adjustable bar, won't fit. For cost, you're looking at about $1400 with an alignment assuming you install this stuff yourself (it's pretty easy). AGXes ($400), Control springs ($260), 22mm swaybars ($400), and solid endlinks ($200) will completely change how the car feels and handles.

Mechanically all Subarus are pretty much identical, so many things will swap between cars. The 2nd gen Impreza (02+) and 2nd gen Legacy (95-99) have basically the same chassis (the Legacy is a bit longer). Any transmission/motor combination will physically bolt into pretty much any other car. If you were to take a WRX 5-speed gearbox, I think it would swap in directly and work with your clutch, axles, and rear diff. Or you could use the WRX axles and diff without a problem. There's the issue with pull-type vs push type clutches and I don't know what has which and what it takes to get one to work with a car that had the other type. R180 is the bigger rear diff found on the STi. All the other cars have an R160 (except for 1.8 Imprezas). Axle stubs are different so you can't use R160 axles in an R180. Also I think there are different R160 variations and LSD axles don't work in a non-lsd or something. Anyway I'm pretty sure an MT WRX has a 3.9 rear diff so it's not a problem anyway. The viscous coupling/center diff are integrating into the transmission. So either way, you just attach the prop shaft to the back and it's all there. And actually, since an auto Impreza driveshaft is the right length for a swap into an impreza, it leads me to think an auto Legacy driveshaft would be the right length to put a 6-speed into the Legacy. No, I haven't done this or anything like it really. I just, um, tend to know about things. More than you could ever want to know about dccd and the sti driveline: http://wrx.dicknogs.net/techdocs/dccd/

You should go with a 5-speed. Okay anyway the front and rear differentials obviously need to be the same ratio. Your rear diff I believe is the same. Otherwise, swapping in the rear differential from an STi is a whole other project. Firstly, it's bigger and the splines for the axles are different than those for an R160. So, you'd need custom axles made. If you wanted to use the R180 axles, you would have to swap the whole rear end, which means lateral links, axles, and brakes. That would widen the track and mess up the brake bias because the STi has those fancy Brembos. You would also have messed up alignment settings. Not cheap either. You also may or may not be able to re-use your front axles. Otherwise you need some custom made. The 6-speed doesn't have a viscous coupling. It has a fancy center diff that can vary the amount of slip it allows either automatically or manually (DCCD stands for driver controlled center differential). The STi uses various G/yaw/steering/etc sensors to determine the optimum amount of lockup for the center diff. ABS and the handbrake are also incorperated into things too. Without swapping in basically a whole STi drivetrain and ECU/TCU you will not be able to get it to work right in auto mode. You can however rig up a circuit with a potentiometer to control it manually but that's not a great idea. The 6-speed swap will cost at a minimum $3000, and probably more like 5-6 grand. A used 5-speed can be had for less $1000 and bolts right in. Did you read the link I posted earlier?

if you really wanted you could run 20's provided you have the right offset and bolt pattern. http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html Use that to figure out what tire size you need to keep the overall diameter the same. For example, a 205/50-16 and a 185/70-14 have about the same diameter but the 16" tire has a shorter sidewall. This: http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible.html Explains how tire sizes work if you didn't know.

No, R180, but you can use an R160, you'll need to have driveshaft made (extended) and get a 6-speed transmission mount. Search nasioc for 6-speed swap. A few people there have done it. like this guy who even sort of has dccd. It's a lot cheaper and easier to get a 5-speed though, and it's not like you'll be breaking gears on the 5-speed, which is why most people do the swap.

If anyone is really that concerned about a few psi difference, drive for a few miles and measure the inside, center, and outside tread temperatures with an infrared pyrometer. If the center is cooler than the edges, you need more pressure, if it's hotter you have too much. Anything between 29 and 40 is going to be fine in most cases. I run 36f/34r on 16" Potenzas. Also on a sedan it's best to have a psi or two more up front because of the weight distribution. Lets also not forget how Ford put dangerously low pressures on Explorer door plaques for comfort.

I can barely figure out what you're saying. Could you maybe take a few minutes to form a series of coherent sentences? Yes I would expect a bit more noise if you replaced the tops. You took out some of the slop in the suspension, so more noise/vibration/harshness is going to be transmitted to you. I would not think it would be very much though. Struts shouldn't make a huge difference, but now instead of bouncing up and down and doing whatever it feels like, all the unsprung weight is actually being controlled by something directly attached to the body. What struts did you get? And why not the GR2s? They're like the cheapest replacements you can get, and they're decent.

ouch. On the plus side, you could buy a base 92 impreza and swap in the driveline. And yeah, you have to hit something straight on pretty hard to get the airbag to go. My sister rear ended someone in my car and totaled the car she hit. No airbag.