Sway bar questionaire, mon freres...

Gonna make a thread for this to hopefully get a little more traffic on the subject (had posted it in my personal thread).

Anywho, I've got an issue with my front sway on the WRX ('03 wagon) and am looking for advice. The right pass. side end link is at an angle that makes it look like it's pulled to the driver side slightly. The driver side looks as if the sway bar itself has twisted somehow and the end link is actually resting on the lca. Apparently it's been handling "fine" since we got it, as I've never had any crazy mishaps and it's had to have been like this since we got it, but just noticed it recently while under the car.

I'll post the pics of said issue below, but will get all of the questions out of the way first.

1. It's a daily driver and will never get tracked, however, everybody with a WRX knows it's fun to get "spirited" from time to time. Will I benefit drastically from an upgraded sway bar and end links or should I just source a stock used one and call it good?

2. Have been cramming sway bar info lately. Apparently what causes the understeer on these cars is the bigger sway in front, smaller in the rear. So it's "suggested" that you put in the same front and rear. If I were to do this, I'd go with the most basic upgrade and do 22 mm's front and rear. Does this sound logical?

3. If I do decide to upgrade, I obviously need to replace the front first, as it's currently messed up, but I can only assume that putting an even larger one up there before upgrading the rear would make the understeer even worse, correct? Like undriveable bad?

4. Everything I've been reading says if you upgrade the sways, you should upgrade the end links at the same time to get the most benefit out of them. Again, logical? Mandatory?

5. Rhetorical... Why does all of this stuff add up so fast? And why can there never/hardly ever be used wagon-specific parts around?

Yet again, thanks for the help.

Pics:

 

You don't feel anything weird at all? I can definitely feel my bad endlinks/bushings.

 

Not really having anything for reference, no.

 

Not sure what is wrong with your sway bar without seeing it in person I guess. I'd like to say it's upside down, but I don't think that's the case.

To answer:

1. Yes, larger sway bars will make a noticeable difference, even 22mm f/r. Do you need them for just spirited driving? Absolutely not. You won't be pushing the car to the max outside of the track, and if you are, you're driving like an ass and you'll have more benefit from stickier tires anyway. That being said, some people just like the tighter feeling and responsiveness with bigger bars.

2. For a dd on stockish spring rates, Yes, match the front and rear size. 22mm should be good.

3. No, it will not be so bad that it is un-driveable. And there is much debate on whether or not a bigger front sway bar creates understeer. Yes, a larger sway bar technically creates less lateral grip, but it does help to maintain dynamic negative camber, which helps lateral grip. There is a fine line, and it truly depends on your whole suspension setup (spring rates, dampening, tires, alignment, etc). Long story, short, you'll be fine if you do front first and rear later. Your steering inputs will be much more responsive too (before you get to the limit of your tire grip anyway).

4. Logical, yes. Necessity, not really, but you won't realize the full benefit of the bigger bar without them. And stock ones can snap with a bigger bar.

5. Haha, welcome to modding cars. Leave it stock and don't mess with it! Be happy with what you have! That's hard for us car guys to do though. And yea, wagon parts are unfortunately more rare.

 

Oh and my final piece of advice/disclaimer... Don't take modding advice from just one person. Do your research, consultant multiple people, and decide what is best for you.

 

1. If you enjoy driving, then yes, an upgraded swaybar will make the car more enjoyable. Upgraded endlinks won't have much of an impact on an otherwise stock car beyond the fact that they won't break when you put on that larger bar.

2. BWAHAHAH. Seriously, i laughed out loud at this. Anyone who can attribute the understeer in a WRX simply to "a larger front swaybar" has absolutely no clue how suspension works.

Breaking it down, the reasons the WRX understeers are two fold
1) It has a ****ty, nose heavy weight distribution (61/39) with the engine waaaay out past the front wheels (byproduct of AWD, can't be helped)
2) Gawd awful macphereson strut geometry. The car's rally use demanded something with alot of travel, so the geometry were designed around that. A byprodut of this is that when you actually load the car up, the camber on the front outside wheel goes positive, reducing the contact patch and overworking the outside shoulder or the tire.

now, with those fun tidbits out of the way.. there is no silver bullet for "fixing the understeer"

When I built my WRX for STX autox, i found i actually had the best results with a larger front bar(a goddamn huge 27mm btw). My logic behind this was:

1) You're adding the roll resistance to the wheels with the most weight. WRXs will raise a rear wheel if you look at 'em wrong, and big front bar will help keep that ass end planted.
2) Limiting that terribel suspension travel. Remember how i mentioned the **** geometry? yeah. by stiffening up the roll resistance at that end, it will take signifigantly more load to put the camber of the front tire in a place that sucks.

I ran the car with that huge front bar for awhile, without upgrading anything else (besides tires). It felt signfigantly more planted. Yes, it still understeered. It's a subaru. It will always have understeer problems (remember that weight distribution thing?) but it had a signfigantly higher limit before the understeer became a problem, and exhibited no snap oversteer. It felt very balanced, and was easy to drive.

As i built the car up, i always maintained that heavy front bar bias.. only going up to a 24mm in the rear, frequently left on soft.

So with all that said:

3. No, it won't be undrivable. It will actually be quite enjoyable even with just an upgraded front. I would suggest ordering and upgrading just the front first and giving it a try. The rear bar is very easy to do later.

4. I wouldn't say "the most benefit" as much as i would say "won't break". The stock ones are plastic, and have awful bushings. I've seen more more than a few aged ones (03 would count as aged) snap with agressive driving on the stock bar. You're going to signfigantly increase the load on them by upgrading the swaybar, so moving to something more solid is reccomended. But if you're strapped, it's possible to get away with stock ones for awhile.

5. Car stuff man, it's a balanced, engineered snowflake of stuff that's "reliable enough". Once you start messing with things, other things move out of their tolerance ranges.

Your pictures look odd though... was the car on the ground when you took them? jacked up? jacked up one side? Usually that kind of angle/loading is only seen when both arms aren't parralel.. or something is bent.

 

Yes, weight is on the ground in the pictures.

Thanks a ton for all of the explanations on things. I think maybe the best route as of now would be to just do the front and see what happens, whether it be a stock replacement or even that little bit bigger aftermarket. Either way, sounds like I'll probably get a noticeably better ride than the current fubar'd setup.

 

Thanks @Shane86 for chiming in...figured you would! Glad to see that my sentiments were in line with yours...maybe I've actually learned a thing or two about subarus. Scary thought!

Funny side note...want to see some snap over steer? It can be done in a subaru, esp with cold tires:



And as I recall, your STX WRX could also exhibit some pretty exciting snap oversteer lol.

 

Smooth progressive oversteer in a WRX? LOL WUT?

Just your luck though.. GRM just reposted their article about swaybars, how they work, etc.. very good read from my brief skim.
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/lean-less/

 

Yea, it looks like you have a narrower sway bar than those control arms were designed for. Not sure exactly what combination would cause that without using Sedan or even STi control arms...as the wagon is the narrower track. But I'm not sure on the exact combinations there.


I agree with sheen, it looks like the passenger side mount on the control arm is twisted.


While I do agree with Shane, that the sway bar isn't the problem that causes the understeer. It is a somewhat effective band-aid. It won't actually give the car more grip, or make you faster, but it will FEEL a little better, which for your average street car is all you're going for. Personally, I like to put a smaller front sway bar on (or remove it entirely).....but I'm weird. I also like to raise the ride height (and therefore the roll-center, changing the moment-arm....etc. etc.)

 

Good eye. I never would've noticed something like that. What other pictures would be helpful? She's just sitting outside in the garage. Unfortunately, the car came with a salvage title and had some shady a$$ body work done on the front end by the guy that was selling it. Didn't really see it at the time of purchase, but that's irrelevant at this point. Needless to say, I guess anything is possible when it comes to prior damage on this thing. If the control arm(s) are in need of replacing, at least they look like a relatively easy job. I have to get it aligned now, so maybe check into this further before doing that.

How would I know if I have the correct or incorrect LCA's on there? I would assume if somebody had put sedan parts on here my camber and overall track width would be way off, which I don't think it is.

With the damage that was on the bottom of the front bumper, it makes me thing they somehow ran something over that only made contact with the bumper and the sway bar.

 

I think that Sheen and Chux might be on to something...add in the fact that it had some shady front end damage and repair, here is my educated guess: It's very possible that the last guy replaced either one (passenger side) or both lower control arms with sedan lower control arms - because he didn't realize the wagon and sedan control arms are different.

The sedan control arms are one of the main parts that provide the wider track for the sedan. If he did in fact use one or both sedan lower control arms, your sway bar would be too narrow, and probably look like your passenger side photo. That could also jack up the angles on the driver side too.

Here's what I would do...see if you can get your hands on a wagon lower control arm(s) and see how they compare in the length to the ones on your car

 

Alrighty. I've apparently misplaced or donated my ramps at some point, but got the car sitting on an old set of wheels for the time being. I'll go take a bunch of pics and upload them in a bit.

 

Also, for your Friday entertainment, I'll throw in a few pics of when I rebuilt the front end last spring. Having worked at a body shop the last 3 years, I'm actually quite impressed that they managed to shape that lip that "well" with that much mud. Effing insane. I was actually pretty mind blown at the time trying to figure out how that was cheaper and less time consuming than just replacing the bumper cover, which actually wasn't even that expensive directly from Subaru. Anywho, hope you guys can get some laughs from this.

 

Alright. So did a photo shoot in the garage just now and hopefully they help. If not, I can go back out. I don't know how the pic hosting on here works yet, so I just attach 'em with html coding and made them clickable for full res.

First set of susp. pics are "loaded", second is "unloaded". One thing I noticed while under there with a little more room is that the driver's side just seems to be pushed back. Like maybe it was hit on the corner underneath and the sway bar bushing mount was the pivot point for the bend. One other thing I noticed is that there's more clearance between the subframe where the sway bar bends backwards on the driver's side. The pass. side is damn near touching or has a very little gap, almost like the bar is "slid" or pulled over towards the driver side. That would explain the pass. side end link being pulled over, I think.

One other thing I forgot to mention in this thread that I made note of when I posted it before, is that the driver's side bushing has a chunk missing out of it at the top, and the rear bolt isn't snugged up how it should be, resulting in a slight gap between bushing clamp and frame. That was actually what prompted me to check into the sway bar as a whole, as I was browsing online for new bushings to replace those front ones. Figured new bushings won't really help much if the sway bar is junk, and if I get an aftermarket sway bar than those factory sized replacement bushings won't do any good either. Long story short, I scrapped the idea of purchasing and headed here for assistance.

Anywho, on with the pics.

Loaded



Sway bar bushing



Driver side end link area. Sway bar is rubbing the LCA, and has a visible flat spot from doing so.


Unloaded




Close up of pass. side LCA, end link mount. I think the previous kink that was mentioned might have been a shadow? Looks more normal with your eyes right at the thing.



Frame horns, behind bumper mount. Seems fine to me. Didn't really look messed up or tampered with when we had the front of the car apart either. Had help from a guy that's been doing body work for 25+ years and he didn't notice anything out of place in that area.

 

I'm almost willing to bet that those are sedan LCA's. That would be the "easiest" fix for the problem (getting the right LCA's). I would see if you can pick up some wagon LCA's and compare. Or, you could also pick up a sedan/STI front sway bar and put that on or compare. You should be able to find one of those for cheap.

I think the only thing you need to go from the sedan front track to the wagon front track are the LCA's, but there's a chance you might need the lateral links too. Don't quote me on this...just spit ballin' here.

 

You would likely need the inner tie rod and the CV axle as well as the control arm.


I noticed right away in these new pictures that those 2 parts on the driver's side look new....

 

I just had both replaced 2 days ago. Inner tie rod ball socket was shot and CV shaft was clicking recently.

 

I have oem sedan wrx sway bars if you want to compare or whatever.

 

Still waiting on my poly bushings to come in but was itching for a reason to work on the car today. So went ahead and pulled the sway bar off the front this afternoon. She definitely got hit by something, as you can tell by the pics below. Also, took the left side bushing bracket off first and one end was slotted, making for easy removal. Figured "Hey, that's cool and convenient." Pulled the right side off, it wasn't slotted. Judging by the look of the slot (didn't take a pic), it almost looks like it was torn off of the bolt, as if whatever hit the sway bar had enough force to rip the bracket off of the frame rail. Pretty nuts. Had the car aligned Friday morning and they didn't seem to have any issues getting 'er straight, so apparently the chassis must be alright.

Anywho, here's some pics of the old bar and the "new" old bar. Picked up a used one from a yard down here for $25. Had some extra single stage leftover from a semi last week at work so figured why not. Cleaned all the rust off and turned it white.

Pass.


Driver

 

This is All good info thanks.
On my 2010 non turbo Forrester I'm gonna be replacing my Sway bar bushings and stabilizer bar end links. Never don them b4 but should be fine. After I get these installed I'm gonna have shop install lower ball joints then do alignment. I'm impatiently waiting for my Amazon parts to arrive.
Any other words of advice for me.
(Did you use torque wrench for spec?)

 

You'll be fine. It's pretty straight forward, just removing stuff and putting the new stuff back in.

Only advice I can think of is have the suspension loaded when doing the end links, it'll be much easier to get them connected to the sway bar.

Also, not like you'd be planning to go back in there anytime soon but I always clean my bolt threads with a wire wheel and then anti seize them before reassembly, in hopes of making next time easier.