Help please with Legacy front struts.

[4123]

Hello,

 

I have a '90 Subaru Legacy. It had the lift feature for raising it up and down for offroad use. Last month, the front struts went out completely. It now has totally ridged suspension in the front and is not drivable. I would like to replace the front struts with non raise-able struts maybe from a different year Subaru. Is this possible?

 

Thanks, Ron

[Subruise]

it is my understanding that you cannot run air suspension on only half the car. you either need to convert all four corners or replace with air struts, then the rears will likely blow up too. but yes you can use struts (at least) any gen1 (89-94) legacy. hth, and welcome aboard. RV

[4123]

The mechanic in my town thinks that if he plugs up the air lines that went to the front struts that that would suffice. Do you think he's wrong? Thanks, Ron

[idosubaru]

if you air up all the struts then disconnect them - yes you could be fine as long as the leak isn't in the front strut air bag itself. which often it's not - it's usually an oring, solenoid, or compressor/drier related.

 

fronts should have an air line on the top....follow that to a solenoid. simply disconnect the electrical connector of that solenoid and you've essentially deactivated the strut...as long as the solenoid itself or the orings at the air line between the solenoid and strut aren't the cause of the leak.

 

i've done partial conversions to coil over and left some air struts in place and operational. simply required two things:

leaving a solenoid connected to the wiring harness connector so it still has that in place and there was a simple process of grounding a pin at each strut or something like that for the height sensor - basically it tells the computer that that strut height sensor is where it's supposed to be and it won't continually try to air it up. i forget how i did it but it wasn't hard at all.