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Comments
The only issues we had were with disconnecting the airbag wires, which were an absolute pain to unplug, and with the plastic bolt-covers in the rear floor. It seems the 04 covers wouldn't go back on the 02/03 seat track to hide the bolts, no biggie.
One thing I can't remember, though, is if my "Fasten Seatbelt" light used to come on if I didn't buckle the drivers belt with the car running. The airbag and seatbelt lights come on as normal when starting the car, and shut off correctly after a few seconds, but the seatbelt light doesn't come on if I unbuckle it. Maybe that's how it used to operate, I can't remember.
I only drove the car a few miles yesterday, so I can't comment on the long distance comfort of the 02 seats compared to my 04's...but I'll put a few hundred miles on the car this week to find out. My initial impressions are positive and I think these seats are going to feel much better than the original ones.
Brian
-juice
-Dave
Brian
http://users.sisna.com/ignatius/subaru/mods
utahsteve
Hmmm two plugs on the '04 driver's seat. I'll crawl under the '04s to check when I get the chance.
Might be an odd seat from a "oops we ran out of regular ones; we'll just put a heated one, they won't know the difference" ;-)
-Dave
The 2002 WRX seats I bought and installed didn't have the seatbelt anchors on them; I had to take them off my 04 seats in bolt them on. Maybe earlier WRX's didn't have that cord running from the seatbelt?
Is it possible that the seatbelt is wired to sense whether the driver is belted in when the front airbags deploy? I know some cars have "smart" airbags that deploy at different forces depending on whether you're belted in or not. hmmm (again)...
Brian
-mike
-Dave
infinty 6.5 inch component spkrs for frnt and 4 inch component for back
Blaupunkt San fran cd72 receiver
Rockford fosgate 5 channel amp
Now I need to find an installer in north jersey...
Also, what is the best way to fix dings in the car...do it yourself or are there any pros who do this?
-mike
has anybody heard something about coolant/radiator leaks on 2003 WRX? It becomes the common breakage on newer 2,0 WRXs, if to believe what people wrote on some European boards. I am curious do 2,5 WRX's radiators (btw, are they the same as 2,0's?) suffer from something similar to this, or the problem concerns the Japanese assembled vehicles only? Thanks.
~c
-Dave
~colin
Don
Took a look under the hood and found fine coolant spray around the air filter housing. It seems that the radiator was leaking slightly where the plastic and metal meet.
Took it to the dealer and they replaced it (with the same thing) under warranty.
Another time while autocrossing (usually a Miata, but took the Suby Wagon out this time) and I got heavy into the ABS and just about missed two slalom gates because of the brake pedal pushing back at me. That is a really weird feeling, glad I got to experience it at AutoX and not on the street.
As an aside, I pulled the ABS fuse and ran my two fastest runs with it disabled...
I'm hoping better tires and maybe some Koni adjustable struts will help me tame the wickedness that is WRX ABS...
After going to track school, I can now avoid accidents easily by steering around obstacles rather than just stopping.
-mike
Some of us live in places where there could be snow on the road 6 months of the year (the rest offer poor sledding ;-).
-Brian
- It does increase the stopping distance, but was under the impression that the difference in breaking distance between today's ABS breaking systems and the ones without ABS is virtually nil.
I remember seeing an article with two identical cars, one with and one without ABS, and they were extremely close in terms of stopping distance.
Heck, cars today with ABS break much quicker than similiar cars of even a decade ago without the ABS.
What do ABS brakes have to do with cars breaking much quicker? ;-)
DaveM
Not sure if your question in #4937 was for me, but in the install writeup note that I started with the base speakers, so I can't say how the upgraded ones are vs. the Infinitys.
The aftermarket speakers are definitely an improvement over the stock ones. We noticed much better sound, and that's with the stock HU. Upgrading that would improve it yet again. The stock speakers are pretty cheap. I doubt the "upgraded" ones are a lot better, but that's just educated guessing about OEM speakers.
utahsteve
Thanks for the response. Yeap, the 'upgrade' speakers and amp/sub are not worth the money. If only I could find a place to install an amp where it won't be in the way...
Don
Hi quality aftermarket speakers, like the Infinitys should have cleaner sound and better musical component separation (being able to tell which musical instrument is playing what).
With that being said, unless you go with a subwoofer you will not get the bass response that the upgraded system in the WRX produces.
If you do mount a subwoofer into your WRX, it will most likely take up much more room than the current sub in the upgraded speaker system since that one mounts under the passenger seat.
Just depends on your preference - clarity vs. bass, how much you want to spend, and how much room you want to sacrifice.
Replacing the head unit seemed to have the biggest affect on sound quality, FYI. This is assuming your car has decent speakers to begin with (in my '95 Camry, they actually were decent).
I'm relieved that this seems to have cured my one major gripe about the car -- if it didn't, I was considering selling it. So the good news is that my WRX feels great, but the bad news is that I'm running out of justifications for a new Legacy GT or Outback XT!
Brian
Impreza (except RS) - 2001
Legacy (except Outback and GT) - 1999
DaveM
Has the mounting of the seats been as solid and easy to adjust as the originals?
Really an easy swap, and completely worth it for me...it's amazing how a simple $300 modification can transform my opinion of the car! On a petty note, I LOVE the blue/black fabric on the seats, especially with the WRB exterior.
Brian
After a lot of bantering they decided to tell me that it was not under warantee, but while of course it is partially my fault for not asking and just assuming, they never made any mention of it either. I call up subaru and they tell me, that it's up to the technician who diagnoses the problem as to whether it's defective part or not, and since it's an outside mirror it must have been hit and not defective. They actually had the gall to tell me that it must have been hit it can't possibly be defective. I asked them about the strut they replaced about 6 months ago, and that one can be defective, but the mirror can not. What kills me is that if I KNEW they weren't going to cover it, I would at least have tightened the four screws myself and not paid them $85 an hour for the priveldge of letting them do it. And I probably could have gotten the part cheaper somewhere else. In my furious state I demanded the old part back when it is painfully obvious that there are no marks on it from where it would have had to get hit to be broken as they claim. Curry subaru in yorktown, ny. KEEP AWAY.
-Dennis
Maybe your insurance would cover it under their comprehensive policy?
-juice
why exactly did you assume this would be under warranty?
~colin
My old Datsun's side view mirrors was also knocked off. Someone else parked too close. Luckily that was just a $70 part, one of those ball-and-socket cheapies.
It happens.
-juice
The reason I would think it would be under warantee is because in this country, we have something called a b-u-m-p-e-r-t-o-b-u-m-p-e-r warantee that guarantees against loss due to manufacturer defect. If the mirror wasn't hit (which I agree with you is usually likely, but in this case, given the conditions, I find it hard to believe, I'm more inclined to think that since it was about 6 degrees outside that day, some piece of metal snapped, but whatever) and it was genuinely broken, it should be covered.
I had my mitsubishi (generally accepted to be a lower quality built car than subaru) and never had a problem in 8 years 120K miles. But the strut (and maybe mirror) broke within 2 years?
Whatever. I'm not a whiner, I'm just pissed about the excessive loss due to a stupid communication problem... and my next rant. read on :-)
Oh, and for what my insurance costs, it's not worth the rate hike for $300.
I'm just amazed you could even think that. it is possible, sure. maybe. really, really unlikely though even if you don't find surface damage on the mirror.
~c
So I bring it to the local tire shop and drop it off.
A few hours later I get a call saying "your front brakes are grinding the rotors you have to replace them."
I'll spare you the little tiff I had with the mechanic when I explained that I'd be doing the work myself and not paying him some outrageous amount of money for him to do it for me, (he was obviously pissed that I wasn't going to give him the business (perhaps I'll find out he's lying)) and just [non-permissible content removed] about this: THIS CAR HAS ONLY 19000 MILES ON IT. I see that the rotors are wearing funny, I just always assumed the pads were crap. Unlike other cars, you can't see the pads without taking off the tire because the caliper is so big, so I never could see the pads, and I never thought to take the tire off because the car's only got 19K on it.
Now you're all going to tell me that it's my driving. But alas, no. I have a 99 gti (both cars standard shift) that I drive the same exact semi-enthusiastic way. The gti is 4+ years old and has about 50K on it. And the ORIGINAL pads are showing almost zero wear. ZERO. or very close to it. And the rotors have a perfectly smooth mirror finish to them.
I know we've been bitching about how the ABS sucks in the wrx, but 19K for a set of brake pads that I almost never use? Absurd. Something is terribly wrong with the brakes on this car.
Now, this just happened yesterday and my driveway's full of snow, I haven't had a chance to pull the wheel off. It could be the mechanic was lying to me to get me to do the brakes, since we can look at the rotor and see the bad wear (which sorta does look like grinding wear, but I can't be sure) he could easily convince somebody who's not a car enthusiast to replace the pads and rotors.
I'll do that this weekend and possibly take back the anti-wrx sentiment and instead give you yet another mechanic to avoid.
Has anybody ever had experience with such useless brake pads on ANY car?
Anyway. I see your point. It does seem absurd to some degree anyway, to claim that it just broke, when there's such a high chance of it being hit.
I will say that a few days before I was shoveling snow in my driveway and to avoid accidently bumping into the mirror, I pushed it into the tucked position. I *am* allowed to do that right? That's not supposed to void my warantee, is it? So maybe, just maybe I USED the tuck-in feature of the mirror which antagonized a part to break. I haven't taken the old part apart yet to see exactly what went wrong. I'll let you know.