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Comments
-Colin
The SPT shifter for the Impreza fit my Forester like a glove, but the kit includes the entire linkage and rubber bushings, so I don't see the point of paying the full $200 or so. They should sell the lever separately.
What about Kartboy? Mike Moran has a 2000 RS, which is the Phase II engine, and his fit nicely. He also installed urethane bushings and the feel is fantastic - snick, snick, zero play.
-juice
bit - Have you tried contacting Cobb Tuning about your problem? I've heard that they're quite resposnive. Out of curiosity, why did you choose the Cobb Tuning shifter vs. the Kartboy?
Ken
Can't really remember why I picked the Cobb other than the bearing in the barrel. I should contact Trey... he was very responsive when I was looking at sway bars.
114 miles and enjoying every one of them. BTW.... for those who remember my ride height OCD with the 00... this one is dead level!
bit
-mike
Cheers Pat.
SVXs are few and far between. It'll be a hard find. 7.5" rims may bulge out a lot, look a bit pimped out.
Pat: check out i Club, go to Mods. They have a section on swapping the shift lever which shows how to take the center console apart. It's a start, but it's easiest to work from there on up.
-juice
bit
Forgetting alloy content for the moment (which really is simplifying the topic too far, but I don't have room here for a couple of chapters), in general the aluminum piece will have to have more material in order to be as strong as a steel piece. IOW a given thickness of aluminum will not be as strong as an equal thickness of steel.
Another fine art, that of compromise[1], plus the specifics of the application, tend to dictate the appropriate material. In the case of under-car guard plates aluminum makes sense because of its light weight and sufficient strength. It is readily available in sheet form and the tools to cut, bend, and weld it are also widely available. A comparable steel piece would cost less (again leaving fancy alloys aside), be a bit easier to manufacture, and, significantly given the application, it would be heavier and it would rust.
Cheers,
-wdb
[1] An engineer friend has a little message on his desk: Good, Fast, Cheap - pick any two. That pretty much sums it up ;-)
-mike
120-140 is plenty fast, I judge a vehicle by how fast it gets there. The SVX is clearly average in that respect.
-Colin
Cheers Pat.
-mike
what, exactly, is different between an Outback suspension and a regular Legacy suspension? Which parts are different to account for the ride height difference? Is it springs, struts, both or some other combination?
I can't believe the ONLY parts available are OEM and nothing else, but none of these tuners have ever bothered to have a look under there, so I am trying to figure out on my own what is upgradeable. It may not even be wise to upgrade struts without springs, and most of the springs out there lower the car pretty dramatically.
I'd say the struts and springs make up the difference and maybe the sway bars?
-mike
Loosh,
Ken started this club. I was the 2nd member. You are now 3rd. Rules: 3rd member has to get off the dime and find the answer. How fortuitous! If you can weed through the mulitmedia nonsense, query SoA via the website, or try Patti.
Report when complete.
..Mike
..Mike
So we decide to take the front sway bar off on that side. Bam, we were able to slip it right in
Then of course drilling out the upper holes took some doing, but finally got one side done! So tonight we will go back down and finish up the other front strut, and the XT6 will be back in business.
I can't wait to see how it handles with the coilovers in the rear and the RS springs/struts in the front. It *should* handle much better than it did previously considering that everyone said it had about 10" of wheel travel with the air suspension and it's roll was like 10" on one side and 2" on the other.
-mike
Well I know the tires are taller, that's why I am thinking of going to 16" rims. Are you trying to tell me there is an Outback-only strut out there? I can't swallow that either, but then again, I can't find a single aftermarket replacement for the car, so maybe. Springs? more likely. Swaybars are horizontal and I don't see how that would have any impact at all.
So maybe it is just the springs, then. Half shafts and all other driveline bits are the same, so the height diff isn't all that dramatic, especially if the remainder is made up in tire sidewall.
Quest in progress....
To use the bicycle and steel/aluminum alloy example and to oversimplify, for tubes of the same diameter and wall thickness, steel tubes have greater tensile strength, density, modulus (stiffness), and elongation (elasticity) than aluminum. To forge tubes of approximately equal strength, the aluminum tube must have a larger diameter than steel. The larger diameter of an aluminum tube makes it stiffer and transmit more vibration than steel. Steel tubes can have smaller diameters than aluminum, are easier to design to flex (e.g., steel forks have more rake than aluminum), and hence transmit less road vibration.
Though latitudinal flex is easy on one's derrière, longitudinal flex makes for inefficient pedaling. The longitudinal flex of steel frames created a demand in the 70's for a stiffer frame; aluminum to the rescue. The downside as mentioned is that Al can literally be a pain in the [non-permissible content removed].
Historically, steel bicycle tubes were chrome molybdenum (Columbus, see Mechanical properties of bicycle steel frame steels) or manganese molybdenum (Reynolds, see manganese molybdenum steel). See the links for what's new. For those with steel frames, here is a diagram of butted tubes on the Reynold's Technical Information" page.
WDB, I shan't be offended if you correct any errors.
..Mike
..Mike
Loosh -- we anxiously await the results of your research.
Ken
To forge tubes of approximately equal strength, the aluminum tube must have a larger diameter than steel.
You can say that again! That's why the tube connecting the bottom brackets on our Cannondale tandem is as big around as a coffee can :-)
Steel tubes can have smaller diameters than aluminum, are easier to design to flex (e.g., steel forks have more rake than aluminum), and hence transmit less road vibration.
The smoothest riding forks are actually made of aluminum, and they flex like mad; they flop around so much that those who don't like to look at airplane wings in flight should never, ever look down at one of those forks as they traverse a rough road. I've seen them jiggle so much that they become a blur.
I would add that there is also titanium and carbon fiber to contend with these days, used in bike frames and forks as well as a huge number of car thingies; for example one of the new Corvettes has a titanium muffler of all things. Ceramics too, although not in structural applications except as part of matrix materials--which are, as techies say, a whole 'nother kettle o' fish.
As for all your cool tubing links, I'd like to add just one, although finding a bike made of this stuff is so rare as to be nearly impossible; AerMet 100 alloy, invented by a friend and former coworker of mine. He and I were trying to get the stuff adopted for bicycle use, but corporate politics turned it into a nightmarish debacle. The material is, pound for pound, the strongest and toughest material ever invented.
http://www.mcsi.net/frameman/aermet.htm
I'd give you the link from www.cartech.com but the web site is being a total dog at the moment.
Cheers,
-wdb
I posted the instructions for installing the Subaru indash CD changer to my site: http://bitman.com/soobdash/
It includes instructions for removing the dash trim pieces and shows a drawing of the HVAC/stereo unit and how it goes together.
bit
..Mike
..Mike
Seems to me, strictly from SOTP experience, that the GT has stiffer spring rates. They may be the same height, but the Outback seems to have a softer ride.
-juice
Michael Smith, you get a gold star! lovely linkage, even if it isn't Kartboy!
The GT has a lower ride height than even an "L." The Outback has been raised. Initial reports indicate that spacers are the culprit, and that they DO exist in the driveline, too. The full story should develop later in the week.
Cheers Pat.
bit
-mike
- hutch
I went out to Bugbomb's (of i-club) place yesterday to have his brother mount my Powerstop front pads and turn my rotors. Matt Wagner (LegacyGT00 on i-club) came too, and brought his '01 RS, which he is in the process of converting to a rally car- interior is all gone, and just from the 3000 miles of auto cross and rally cross, looks like it has about 25K on it!
Anyway, he mounted his big mudflaps, as his car has already suffered the slings and arrows of flying debris and gravel. We had fun hanging out- Matt's straight pipe sounds great, and Mike's car is really tight.
They went gravel roadrunning whilst I headed back to Baltimore. Matt called later........he stuffed the rally car into a tree pretty bad after flying through a large patch of slushy ice. Not good. It might be totalled. He is o.k., and glad he hadn't pulled the airbags yet!
Re-enforces my opinion that my money is better spent on more driver training than on mods.....
I have to check with pop's and see if he is actually gonna put the 15" rims on his Legacy L. Yeah "the boys" were gonna make a visit to the body shop for kate...
-mike
Loosh: sweet. Guess you're braking them in (pardon the pun), but once you do please share impressions. Do they have a higher operating temp? How did the old pads hold up? Any pix?
That sucks about Matt.
-juice
-Colin
seamus: glad to see a vendor back his product. I'd be interested in pix, too. But if he installed it, and charged for the job, he may not want you to share the installation process. What about the final product, though?
-juice
Cheers Pat.
Well, I looked at the wheels which had a set of half-used R compounds already mounted. They looked better than I remembered... MUCH better. Hmm, I was sure that they were dinged up... So I looked at the ones *on* his car with street tires mounted. Aha, there's the chewed ones.
So I got a set of pretty nice (not perfect) 98 rims plus 2 BFG gForce R1s (~40%) and two Kumho V700s (~70%) already mounted. For $400 I can't complain! I figured if I bought another set of RS wheels like these I'd be paying shipping plus there's no guarantee of what condition they would be in. Oh, I also have a third Kumho in similar shape as the two others but it's unmounted. I have no idea what happened to the fourth one, but don't care that much.
I hope the rest of my suspension bits arrive this week, I'd like to install it all Saturday. If not, I'm just installing some front and rear solid swaybar endlinks (whiteline) and remounting my summer tires.
First event is 3/18, I'll post some pics and stories afterwards. Oh, and unlike most of my other mods I'll try to take some pictures while doing this stuff. Perhaps not installation-guide worthy, but at least you all out there will know what I look like. ;-)
-Colin
Are the whiteline end links the ones that look stock, with painted black metal? You know, to pass tech inspection? ;-)
That's right, you run modified...
How are you gonna use all those tires?
-juice
Re post #495, you'd better change that to subarufriek by the 15th. Good luck.
Cheers Pat.
http://bitman.com/soobdash
All the plastic dash pieces are snug fits. They really feel like they won't let go but they will. The arrows in figures #1 and #4 show where the prongs are that hold the pieces in place. Those are the points where you need to pull. Take it easy but apply constant pressure.
For the gear shift cover you first you need to pop up the end closest to the hand brake and then pull back away from the dash as the top two prongs are tricky.
Once you get the HVAC surround off you need to remove the small security box to the right of the HVAC/radio assembly. That's if you have the security upgrade. Now you can get at the 4 screws that hold the whole unit in place. After those screws are removed you can wiggle the complete assembly forward enough to reach behind and disconnect the antenna and harness. On my 00 the screws holding the Soob radio were really tight. Be careful not to strip them.
Take your time
Disconnect the battery
Be careful not to bend the black HVAC cable
Keep a towel handy to stick under the metal bracket when you pull the HVAC assembly forward
Tools you will need:
Long phillips screwdriver that is magnetized (don't want to drop any screws)
Stubby phillips for the ashtray screws
Butter knife or putty knife to help free the plastic trim.
It's more fun than it sounds.
bit
i will ask if i can take some pictures, i'm sure if i don't catch too much detail it will be ok.
the other thing i noticed today is that it isn't quite as loud as other intakes i've heard. which means i won't catch the attention of our light adorned friends (cops) when i take on a little civic or my friends accord on some of the local roads.
..Mike
..Mike
Juice-
Everything I have read about cross drilled rotors has been negatory. These cars don't produce enough gas to need 'em, pluss they are weaker and wear faster.
The whiteline links ar the ones with the yellow ends and the spring steel. it is the Kartboy links that look stock. but they are also 90 bux more!
Oh, right, helmets....damn, I need one by the 24th!
-mike