Anyone ever replace one of these? Never seen this before, but the one on my daily driver just broke.

 

I have a parts car, the bar looks convoluted, wondering if there's any tricks/tips to this job.

 

Any clue how long this would take, i'm hoping an hour or so?

They're not easy I'll tell you that much. Never done one on a Subaru, but I've replaced a few torsion rods on other cars and it's not easy at all. Keep your self clear of the rod when you;re trying to get it into the adjusting hook, if you lose your grip you might lose something else too.

nice hit, thanks for the warning, i would not have proceeded slowly enough with this!

Not hard at all. I've had them in and out a few times. Just wind them up with your tool of choice and pop it in the slot.

dont know this on Subaru yet, but I used to have a 90 acura legend and it required a special tool to pop the rod in safely

"wind them up", wow that sounds like a bizarre process.

just finished fixing this. i did it all with screw drivers and brute force method. it was fun. just have to get in there and figure it out.

 

take some visual notes: there are two rods, each is slightly different, note which you need. and also note their relation to each other and how you remove them so you can install the new one the same way. mine broke but the pieces still stayed in place. extract them and take note how you pulled it out so you can install the same way. takes some guiding around wires, speakers, and twisting at the right times.

 

when installing i intalled the "pronged" "W"ish end first, snapped it into the center pivot, then installed the looped end (U shaped).

 

it's under some serious tension. i laid in the trunk, feet up in the air holding the trunk where i wanted it...rather than it slamming me in the head (once) or locking me in the trunk (once). get it all in place with the u shaped section above the swing arm bracket that swings and needs the bar clipped onto it. with the swinging piece below the bar you can pry the bar with a screw driver and get the swinging piece to clip right into place.

 

with a huge screw driver (flat blade) it only took like a few minutes....but took me a bit to figure out how to do it.

 

good luck with my on the fly terminology, it'll make sense if you try to do it.

 

LSi sedan and GT sedan bars were different but i installed the GT into the LSi and it's fine. no doubt just slighly different ratings for the spoiler.