1991 RC recovery mission - "Rebel Scum"

underscore

Well-known member
I've seen these ones advertised as being for the 02-07 WRX so they'd probably work. You could poke around some Subaru forums and see if anyone has used 02-03 on an 04-07 or vice versa to know how close they are. They take a bit of modifying with a dremel, a knife, and a heat gun to make them fit so you should be able to do the same to anything with vaguely the same shape.
 

underscore

Well-known member
The weather was nice enough to steal the garage from my wife for a couple days so I swapped out the alternator for a reman'd Denso for a Solara. They have the same rated output but the Solara has the slightly newer style plug so I made up an adapter harness and now in a pinch I can use an alt from pretty much any mid-80's to early 00's Toyota car. Even when it was working the old alt would fluctuate voltage a lot while driving, swinging from 13-15V, so far the new one seems to be rock solid at 14.6V all the time so it seems like it was a good call to swap it even if the old was wasn't totally dead. I also changed the yellow tint on the foglights to let a little more light through and reseal one that was getting water in it.

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And then because I'm basically a 14 year old with bills I installed this.

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underscore

Well-known member
Long story short, I've been trying to get the front and rear ride heights to sit equal with each other and I'm not having much success. I've got a 0.5" spacer up front and a 1" spacer in the rear but the front sits higher, even with nothing loaded in the trunk. I've gone and loosened and reset all the control arm bolts at ride height to ensure nothing is being preloaded one way or the other. To do this I've got the tire off and the swaybar disconnected, loosened the bolts, jack up the hub til the jack stand just starts to get loose on that corner, tighten the bolts.

Where I'm having a problem is the rear swaybar. I've got a Whiteline swaybar with GT4 Racing endlinks and when I hook up one end, the other end is out by an about an inch. I've ensured both are being connected to the same (middle) hole on the bar. Both links are the same length. Both links are being installed in the same orientation. The distance from the top of the strut to the endlink mounting hole is the same on both struts. As far as I can tell the swaybar must be twisted somehow? I can jack up one hub to get it connected but I'm guessing having it preloaded isn't going to be good for handling. I don't want to have to wrestle it out of there but I'm not sure how else to verify if it's defective or not.
 

underscore

Well-known member
A little late posting this up, but pre-event team photo for TBird.

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I also took it for an alignment because the toe was visibly out after changing the ride height so much. They told me they couldn't align it because the balljoints were bad, so I took it home, ordered new balljoints, and started taking things apart. The balljoints seem fine to me (they only have 14k after all) but the drivers front strut mount that had a tiny bit of play in the bearing a little while back is now quite sloppy so I think that's the real cause of the play. I'm not very happy with a brand new KYB mount being worn out in a few thousand km so I might just grab two new Mevotech ones and put them in instead.

I also got a flat at the event and now I have to decide what to do for tires. The three good tires are at 6mm now, new is 8mm, so they might be close enough to just get one new tire and call it good. The problem is that these tires are now discontinued (I'm not overly happy about Michelin changing models in 3 years either) so a new one might be hard to find anyways.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I got the new strut mounts but before I install them I want to sort out the weirdness with the ride height. When I first put in the 1" spacers in 2019? or so the car sat level and it was great. After doing a TSD event the rear hunkered down and won't go back up. I've emptied the trunk and reset the control arms a couple times and it still sits only 0.5" higher than stock.

To try and at least get the car to sit level I took a spacer out of the fronts so they now have a 0.5" spacer. Reset the control arms, settled the suspension, etc and the drivers front still sits at 1" above stock and more concerningly the passenger front is 1.5" above stock. I've measured it front a couple different points in case the fenders are wonky and it's the same, 0.5" higher on the passenger side. I don't think the springs are side specific but I pulled both struts out (they look and measure identical) and swapped the whole assemblies so now the drivers front strut is on the passenger front side of the car and vice versa and the passenger side is still 0.5" higher. I slapped them in loosely so the swaybar is disconnected at both ends, the control arm nuts are loose, etc.

As far as I can tell the only things that control ride height are the strut assembly, the strut tower, and the knuckle. By swapping the struts and having the same result that should rule them out so I'm at my wits end. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here or how I can fix it.

Any help is greatly appreciated before I go insane.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I stripped the front strut assemblies apart and found that the passenger damper seems to be bad, it's not totally blown but it's way easier to compress than the drivers side, it comes up way more slowly and it doesn't extend fully on its own. I also found the bearing in that mount has a bit of play too, not as bad as the drivers side but I'm glad I ordered 2 new ones. I'm not very impressed with KYB at the moment, that's 1 bad damper and 2 bad mounts in under 10k km. At $50/piece that's not good value either. I should probably pull the rears too and see if they're bad as well.

 

underscore

Well-known member
While waiting for the struts to show up I swapped back to stock motor mounts and crossmember bushings. Overall I was happy with the poly mounts and aluminum bushings but since the car gets used for long drives a lot more now I wanted to try and eliminate some cabin rattles. Hopefully this helps.

While I had the struts apart I went and pulled out all my spare suspension bits to make sure I grabbed the right springs when I swapped back to stock suspension. The good news is I did. I was also under the impression that all 5th gens had effectively the same front springs, but that's definitely not the case. On the left is one I pulled from I think a 90-91 USDM GT. On the right is the spring that came in my RC. It's visibly shorter and feels noticeably stiffer than the GT spring.

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The new inserts were a smidge loose in the housings so I tossed a couple washer under them and they fit nice and snug now. I had the usual headache trying to get the strut shaft to stay in the notches in the stupid spring plate thing but in the end I got everything bolted together and back in the car.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Today I got the car back from the alignment shop, I brought it in yesterday but it wasn't holding an alignment so they ended up keeping it overnight and finishing it today. It handles a lot better but the ride height is still fucked. I put new strut inserts in the fronts, swapped the springs left to right, and removed the front lift spacers. The rear still has 1" of spacers on top of the strut mount. Stock is 14 4/16" all around.

Right front 14 15/16" (11/16" higher than it should be)
Left front 15 4/16" (1" higher than it should be)

Right rear 14 10/16" (10/16" lower than it should be)
Left rear 15 2/16" (2/16" lower than it should be)

The left rear is the only corner that's roughly where I'd expect it to be. Everything else is completely out of wack. I have no clue what could be wrong or who to even ask about this.

Hard to see with the dark paint and shit lighting but:

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MaTot0f.jpg
 

underscore

Well-known member
It's back in the garage again to try and get a few things done before a TSD event next weekend. I pulled the stereo and intercooler ECU to get down to the door ECU. I opened it up and there's nothing visibly wrong but I might try replacing it anyways to see if that solves my sporadic battery drain. For now I'll leave it out and just live with having manual locks for a bit.

The part number on the box is 85980-20290, I'm not sure what the difference is between the different ones but they're still available new for the low low price of $300 lol. I think I'll try a used one first.
 
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