Andyjo

noah, on the 96 you can just slap some forester parts in, for a suspension lift. I used the struts from a 98-99 forester i believe.

Impreza rear wheel bearings suck. I have the same car, and i've replaced them twice in 2 years (once a summer...). I finally had them swapped out with legacy bearings and haven't had a problem since. Oh yeah, and that car is an off-roading machine! you can do almost anything in it.... or something

WOW! AUSTIN, YOU'RE MY HERO :headbang::headbang::headbang:

man.. they're hard core.... i showed my subaru those pictures and it started to leak oil from the headlight....

So one of my friends isn't so smart.... and managed to back his jeep into a pond. Luckily we had my subaru, and a truck In parrell..... After some tugging, and sliding sideways towards eachother we managed to yank the heep out of the frozen pond. A video can be found at: The Setup: http://69.202.146.141:78/bcoc/andy/new/7spmilesstuck/100_1597.MOV The Pulling: http://69.202.146.141:78/bcoc/andy/new/7spmilesstuck/100_1603.MOV

I was talking to Austin the other day about this, putting an LSD in an impreza, and it was concluded that the newer foresters all have lsd's(?) and that they would most likly fit in an impreza.... If i could find a wrecked newer forester.. and rip the diff out... that would be good, but i'm not going to go looking for one until i know if it'll fit or not thoughts?

it could be the inside of your windshield that's dirty, mine does that, and i have to clean the crap out of the inside.....

do you have the yakama bars on your factory rails? if so then i'd be a little sketched out about it, on the other hand, if you have gutter mounts, with a foot on the roof, load that sucker up! Thule spec is 165lbs, which is BS.... i've had well over 300lbs on my racks before and they held fine (loaded up box, 2 touring kayaks & 2 bikes)... there may be some marks where the feet used to be.. but it held. Although i am having issues with the racks now.. ie: having to hold the feet on the car by rachet strapping them together across the car Factory racks always scare me...

very nice, good times were had, yes? and yeah, how to you manage to dent the fender when your wheel sticks out further than the fender...

what... why would a skid plate alter your speedometer reading..... not at all

That's what people told me, and look! my subaru got taller!

man... i need to get my impreza up on 3 wheels now... that's sweeeeett!

My impreza has the problem all the time, fender wells fill up with snow, and the entire rig shakes like it's on self-destruct mode, so i just give the fenders a good kick or 2 before i get & and go. I've also had the inside of the rim fill up w/ snow, causing some severe vibrations (much like an un-balanced wheel... funny thing aye?). So if you ever see me on the highway with an ice pick under my car, you'll know what i'm doing...... oh, some other stuff that gets funky when i play in the snow is that the engine compartment will FILL with snow.. that's always an adventure to clean that out, and on the bottom, inbewteen the heatshields & exhaust turns into a massive block of ice... sometimes it even encases my exhaust... yeah it gets cold up here

Where'd you get the chip? I seem to get about 28-29 with the forester strut swap, no difference yet.. but i also run around with the full roof rack, kayaks, the box.... and touring tires, haven't ordered bigger tires yet, i think springs will be next.

I'm talking both swaybars... i was joking around with one of my friends who has a lifted cherokee, and we descided to do a flexout... he won.... stuffed the tire right up into his fender... whereas my subaru just sort of tried to roll over.

Austin, lookts great! and those are the same tires i'm going to throw on when i get the forester springs on this bad boy... didn't even need the spring compressor for the impreza springs on the forester strut... hmmm.... Tonight i've also descided that i really need better off-road tires, we went for a night climb, down some sketchy logging trail, all that heavey sand type stuff, lost traction alot on the way out.. but i guess touring tires do that

Bearings, because Imprezas have ************ for bearings... have them replaced with legacy bearings, there was a service bulliten about it somewhere...

The problem i'd have with that is getting the swaybar cought on stuff.. since it's still attached, just waiting to drag or cause trouble

Yay! i belong here now!! :grin: Vrrmmm!!! just forester struts, no springs yet but yay!

I just lifted my OBS, just forester struts (still impreza springs :-\ ), and i noticed that my swaybar makes a 'pop'ing noise when it's being stressed... should i just rip the thing(s) out of there? I know you can get a little more travel in off-road situations.. as a plus, but what about daily driving w/ it not connected... I'll get pics & a writeup about the OBS lift when i get a chance

Forester suspension won't get you 4" of lift.... maybe if you used your struts and a set of scorpian springs... but then you're limiting your down travel, and that's no good. I'm working on getting my obs lifted.. just looking for springs.. got the struts..

i drew up some plans for mine, haven't made it yet. I'm going to build a box out of sheet metal, and channel it down the engine bay, so there's some through passage of air, and plop a cone filter right under the scoop. I'm also thinking i'll get some metal screening (fire place style) and put that on the scoop, so i dont' get bugs & crap slamming into my cone.

i put a subaru badge on my friends blazer

i think thule makes special mounts for subaru side rails... Difference between round & square bars: not much some people say the round bars are more aerodynamic.. but there's such a small cross sectional area on them that it doesn't really matter. From an engineering standpoint, the round bars shoudl have a higher second moment of inertia (they'll bend less easy). Both companies (thule & yakama) use galvanized steel... and you don't really have to worry about bending them.. unless you load up your rig like i do I've only really had experience w/ thule products, but one of my friends at school has an awesome yakama setup, 4 bars on his jeep, a box, ski & kayaks racks... amungst other stuff. I guess it's all a persanal preferance thing.

I throw like.. 35mpg in my tires and get amazing milage Avid touring tires are pretty sweet for highway driving... i also found my milage spike when i threw in a new air filter. Fuel filter might also help it out. oh, and on my road trip i did a small experiment, doing 65-68mph gets AMAZINGLY better milage than 70-75mpg... soo i guess it's how you drive, right?