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Here are some simple ways to improve the handling of your car without having a massive budget. We’re talking specifically here about the Impreza models, whether it’s an STI, a WRX, or a non-turbo. If you’re looking to dramatically or just simply improve the handling of your car so you can have a bit more sporty feel and a bit more fun, the trend sometimes is to fit a front strut brace and a rear strut brace because they look snazzy when you lift the bonnet and have a look inside the trunk or boot of your car.
The unfortunate thing is whilst they look good; they are not necessarily the first thing that you should fit to your Subaru. The best-value way of upgrading your Subaru is by getting down underneath the car and actually starting at the back. Depending on what year model you’ve got, this can be affected by some of the components.
Basically to make it easy for you to understand, the rear sway bars that change the stiffness of the body roll or resists body roll are factory fitted on the front and rear of your Impreza and are connected to the suspension by a series of links that move through an arc as the suspension travels up and down. On some models it’s a plastic link, on other models it’s a stiff, ball-joint style link.
On the rear if you’ve got a plastic style link which is relatively easy to identify, you need to replace that with either a spring steel or an alloy style replacement link, which is quite easy to source from MRT Performance off their website. Effectively what this does is takes the stretch and the movement of that joint out of the equation, so therefore when your suspension goes up and down the more travel is not absorbed in the replacement part, but taken up by the sway bar.
What that effectively does is increase the rate of the sway bar and puts more load on your suspension as you go around the corner, therefore making the sway bar work better and obviously reducing your body roll. The similar thing applies on the front. Some models have a plastic link on the front; some have this type of solid joint with bolts, a ball-joint type knuckle assembly.
If you get down underneath you can have a look, but to make it easy typically the early model Subarus up until around ‘01, ‘02, had the plastic style links front and rear. So you’ve replaced the rear sway bar links and the front sway bar links with new snazzy alloy ones, they look great, and you’ll feel the difference straight away. The next thing to do as you want to invest a little bit more in your suspension is to change the rear sway bar.
You don’t start at the front, you actually start at the rear, because by stiffening the rear sway bar, it effectively reduces the under steer in your car. By going to a stiffer rear sway bar you can reduce the under steer of the front and the car will be a little bit more fun to drive, and it’s actually quite dramatic in the way that you can feel it.
Typically we recommend going to an adjustable rear sway bar because the small added cost in having the adjustable feature gives you a long-term ability to effectively fine tune that sway bar to suit your preferred driving style instead of not having the other alternative.
Brett Middleton has over 10 years experience working on Subaru’s and has transcribed all his knowledge into the Subaru Performance Handbook. His company, MRT Performance has modified and serviced more Subaru’s in Australia than any other workshop.
There is no other Subaru book like it! Get a valuable insight into Subaru models from just about any country.
Bonus chapters available for instant download at http://www.subaruperformancehandbook.com
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