Pleides

Welcome to Portland! Lived here my whole life and very little out there compares. Hopefully I'll see your wagon around.

Man, to each their own but I think it might be the ugliest car I've ever seen since the Aztek was released. I know the running gag is that the newest style of WRX is ugly, but I've never felt so strongly about a car's looks than the new WRX. Granted, I haven't driven one. I've heard the OEM tuning on them is greatly improved over the FA20dit.

Man, that's a rough loss of the cars. Congrats to your daughter though! As they say, alcoholics don't run in the family - they drive! At least, I'm guessing that's what happened at 3 in the morning.

My friends who I'm staying with felt like I had shot them point blank when I told them we'd kill for a Commodore in the states since the Chevy SS got axed. I landed in Adelaide for a few days' stay and then my friend and I drove to Melbourne. He's an Adelaide native. Quite liked both cities. Melbourne reminds me a lot of San Francisco. Adelaide is a bit of an eclectic mix of Portland and San Diego and its own city. Melbourne's car scene was unreal. I'd never seen a Ferrari F40 before and saw 3 in 24 hours there amongst an LFA, Carrera GT, XJ220, and so on.

Replying from Melbourne, There are wagons everywhere here in Australia. I would probably not continue to own an LGT wagon if I had the options they have here. With that said, until Caddy CTS-V 6-speed wagons make sense financially (they are super expensive, so probably never), it'll likely stay with me. I'd really, really like a Boxster. Depending on if I want an auto or manual then I would consider a Jaguar F-Type. They're not practical, though, so it would have to be a second car.

I'm off for a trip out of the country here shortly and realized I'd be without my car for two weeks and became a bit sad. I've had the car for 5 years now and it's taken me many places and I have many memories with the car. It would be incredibly difficult for me to sell it. It doesn't hurt that interest rates are super high right now and my car still runs and drives fine, so the desire for a car with a loan attached to it is minimal. I've got a 6-speed sitting in the garage waiting for a rebuild so it can go into the car. I'm always thinking about the next thing I want to do with it or to it. These cars are quite old now. I joke that my car has a quarter million miles and is old enough to vote. Why do you hang on to yours? I just love mine too much to let it go. Perhaps if I have kids in the future and need a safer car or something I'll think about replacing it.

Put the car in 5th at 40 MPH and floor it. If the car gets rev happy and doesn't go anywhere then there's your sign. Someone who's DIY'd the job will have to chime in on where the inspection cover for the clutch is, but I'm pretty sure you can inspect the guts of the clutch assembly without dropping the transmission.

Perhaps the alignment guy was looking to introduce OP to those new bluetooth camber bolts?

Hey man, just going through the regular life of a track car, I guess! It doesn't surprise me that unsprung components of all shapes and sizes wear out from track use. Cornering forces with sticky tires are no joke! Glad to hear you made it out alive and that the car will be good to go for the next track session

Does the car have mods and has it been tuned to account for those? Unless you have a spare shortblock lying around, I'd recommend you have someone watch you like a hawk when attempting to tune the car. Do a proper vacuum leak test before messing with the ECU as well. You likely have at least one vacuum leak if the hoses haven't been touched under the engine bay after 18 years. When checking under there, look for a Cobb or Grimmspeed boost control solenoid, if you don't mind reporting back if you see one. Going 40 MPH in fourth gear and sending it is lugging the engine - you should be in second or third. It is possible that your clutch is letting go if the car is revving higher but not going. If you're on the original clutch then it's absolutely time to change that thing. Never seen a member here get more than 120K or so out of the factory clutch and dual mass flywheel these cars come with. I'm on my third clutch at 250K.

If you don't mind ordering more parts, get a 3/8" Delrin spacer for the rear and the effective travel of the spring is dropped, thus raising the spring rate. Many of us wagon owners do this because, with the exception of Swift springs, most are made for the sedan and cause the rear to sag. Did you buy stock springs from Subaru? I can't imagine that, if your local inspections fail for lowered cars, that OEM springs will cause issues.

I'm curious what exact date you purchased your Konis? My suspicion is that Konis as of pandemic era have declined in quality. Both my fronts had some sort of severe failure by 30K miles. I'm driving the car with them right now having warrantied the right front, but the left front doesn't rebound much anymore. There's the potential that you didn't cut the strut housing correctly. I had a shop install mine, so I would have assumed that they did that job correctly, but who knows. If the housing is cut too short then that will cause issues. I actually suspect this is why my front right failed so quickly. For the front left, I think she's just defective. The thing isn't blown. The right front was leaking. See if you can take the strut off and watch the actual strut move up and down in its housing. if it's not moving completely straight (perhaps it shimmies a bit or has side-to-side movement like mine both have had), then that'll cause noises and premature failure. For me, the front left squeaked for about 10K miles before it just stopped rebounding.

I so desperately don't want to deal with the maintenance of an air compressor in my suspension system without a warranty from an OEM like BMW or VW.

I mean, hey, it's not 3" all the way through, but I love my Borla. On my wagon I did have to have Surgeline weld longer exhaust tips on it. They cut the tips off, welded some pipe on, then welded the Borla tips back on. Sounds the same, but way less boomyness in the cabin from the exhaust being fit for a sedan and not a station wagon. I really strongly recommend the Borla. It genuinely isn't loud. If you have the windows up, it doesn't even give you a ton of Subaru rumble which is a frequency range that is just quite loud. You have to seriously rev the car out to get my car to a point where it will do hearing damage to someone right behind it. You don't get maybe 5000 RPM in my car in this video before the mic dials the gain back a bit so it doesn't clip the audio. Oh, and power? I made 322 WHP on this dyno when my 1050X injectors were installed to supplement the VF52 at 19 PSI. I'm sure it's not a huge restriction unless you have some STI location turbo and a FMIC and plan to make well beyond what I'd consider a daily drivable level of power.

Do you have the pillowball mounts for the Teins still? Might be interested.

8 inch wide wheels.

My car is on 235/40R18s in the second picture (summers) and 225/45R18s in the first (winters). For 9" wide wheels I would run a 245 at minimum to avoid stretch. The wheel wells are not huge on this car and you will need around 2 degrees of negative camber to fit those wheels and tires with the kind of drop my car has. I rub at full turn trying to remove myself from tight parallel parking spots.

I think most people are using the King or H&R spring sets with this car, which is what they've valved for, as I understand. The rears are still going strong on my car, so I suspect that might not be the issue, but I may be wrong. On a stock car, IMO an 18" wheel with appropriately-sized tires makes the car look like a monster truck. Just dropping the car half an inch will help with that on 18s. I think my car with the H&R springs looks awesome with 18s on it.

I guess my concern with the shock dyno example is that a set of four struts should be within a few % of each other in performance, not one or two failing a shock dyno out of the box. I would like to know I'm buying something where the tolerances aren't that wide and the parts are quality. As you said, there aren't a ton of options out there for these cars unlike the other Subaru counterparts, so you're stuck with what you can get. I do have Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires on the car right now and those do a great job. Sorry to hear your set was bad, too. I'm wondering if later Koni kits used lower-quality parts. When they work, they work amazingly. They were more comfortable than my blown KYB struts by a mile and I never had compliants from passengers. The body roll was a little bit much given the softer springrate of the H&R springs, but not abhorrent given the era of car we're talking about here. I'm still undecided on the strut options. Ultimately, I now live so close to work that I don't worry too much about the mechanical bits of the car getting me A to B, but I like to put nice stuff on the car so it lasts. I feel a little bummed about the Konis not lasting all that long. If anybody here has more insight to using H&R springs with Bilstein B8s, do let me know. They're the only other decent-quality non-coilover shock available for our cars that I know of if you plan on lowering the car.

Hey Andrew, I've spent quite a bit of time in BCs. My biggest issue is that, like many Taiwanese coilovers, the quality shock to shock varies quite a lot. I know the internet has a tendency to bring out the complainers about a product, but the number of people with BC BR or similar rebrands (ISC, Godspeed, etc) have a set with at least one shock failing a shock dyno is too high to me. I like my Koni and H&R combo apart from the longevity, and roads where I'm at are quite smooth. I don't beat the heck out of my car and they were installed professionally. I also worry that, given how many parts are leaving parts factories since COVID with subpar build quality, I would like to avoid stuff that used cheap parts anywhere 3 or 4 years ago, as you know the quality has likely gone down, the price has gone up, or both for many auto parts. I've been in a few BC BR cars and they're comfy enough, handle OK enough, but you can tell that the valving in these things don't rival a $1000 strut and spring pairing, namely when rebounding over small bumps in the road. It's also not really a great sign that they spent any money or time engineering a shock for our chassis when they use a stiffer springrate for the front than the rear for our cars. I'm somewhat considering a Tein Flex Z set, only because I know Tein can engineer an OK shock and manufacture at scale enough to bring the price down to a reasonable level while maintaining OK quality from Japan, but I'm still leaning towards KWs or RCE T1s. Nobody seems to complain about those two, and I'm sure they'll last longer.

You should check that your shocks in the front rebound and compress straight up and down (no side-to-side movement inside the shock tower). Both of my fronts failed within 30K or so.

If you haven't done this install yet, I'm in Beaverton and have the Koni and H&R springs set on my car. I love the combo, but I would never buy Konis for this car ever again. Too many failures of the front struts for my liking.

The 260 between the KW and RCE? Neither come with top hats, I believe. KYB is the OEM, and the KYB Excel-G is the OEM replacement strut. I got my top hats from a Subaru dealer (wanted the squishy ones to prevent more road noise than I already have) and I'm sure they cost about the same and are probably even the same part.

I'm thinking the same, although the RCE T1s are currently cheaper and are similar, as I understand. Can't find enough stuff online comparing the two of them.

OEM. The car has been lowered for a sizeable chunk of that mileage, to be fair.