Sub/Lower Front Suspension + Engine Mount Diagram

Diagram provided on request of the front suspension/steering sub-assembly, showing the main gearbox-mount [3], anti-roll bar [14] and drop-links [24], as well as the trailing-arm and its bush-mount [7+9], which I believe are at fault.

[click for bigger]

360° Spirit-Level in Engine Bay

The skip at work really has yielded some great items to fab-up car parts from, as well things like lightweight-alloy bolts [just like the ones available from Demon Tweeks, £5.99 for 5!] to build them with. This trick multi-directional spirit-level was no exception - it's basically a circular spirit-level with a ring in the centre so the bubble is level in every direction. I couldn't see it thrown away, so I've fixed it in place next to the intercooler to add a neat little instrument to the engine-bay...

It's handy to have for finding some level ground to check oil/fluid levels properly or work on the car, but most importantly it's ideal for making sure each of the four coilover-shocks are set at the same levels for balancing the car's suspension! In theory it should work a charm, so I'll have to get the front two TEIN shocks on asap... I know I keep saying this.

I found a nice place for it on the right intercooler-bracket, got the car on a flat piece of ground and, with the help of a normal spirit-level, found the right angle to mount it level. It's set in an aluminium-bracket so I had space to put a small self-tapping screw through it into the intercooler-bracket. I finished with lashings of ally-tape to stop it from tilting, as even the slightest movement will misalign the bubble.

I'll have to re-calibrate the position of the spirit-level again when I get the front coilovers on and all four corners will need to be set to the absolute bottom so the car is completely flat, but it'll make it so much easier to get the balance right when lifting the car later! Techy!

STi Carbon/Titanium Strut Brace!!

Anyone who's into modding cars knows about strut braces... It's basically a stiff bar that bolts across your suspension-turrets to brace them against each other and stiffen the suspension up. I've always liked the idea of buying one, but it's never been high on my priority list. This all changed when I saw the STi one [in the photo] and I figured that seeing as we've gone to all the trouble of TEIN coilovers, I may as well go the whole hog and finish beefing up the chassis in style.

They haven't made any of the STi ones for a long time so it's hit and miss finding one. Demon Tweeks' cheapest alternative is £100, but it's a heavy steel number from Sparco. eBay has some cheap, but great looking ones from about £50, which are made of much lighter aluminium, but they're unbranded and untested. Subaru really had it licked though with their STi one, fitted to V4's onwards - it's made of carbon-fibre rods with titanium-billet joints and is way lighter than the others, as well as looking achingly good. These usually sell for a ton or more and are quite sought after, but a few are cropping up right now on eBay and there are bargains to be had. I spotted a cheap one and put in a hugely optimistic max bid of £60. My chances were low, but the rival bidders must have been napping because I got it for £55, despite another selling an hour later for £81. The seller went above and beyond as well, only charging me £4.50 for standard-parcel even though it arrived within 2 days! :)

I am very surprised at how much difference this brace makes. I've still only got the standard front shocks on, but the whole front-end of the car is stiffer, feeling much flatter, especially round hard bends, but also noticeably firmer over bumps too! Absolutely brilliant for only £60 - I can't wait to get the remaining TEIN coils fitted to the front, it'll be one seriously stiff chassis! The strut-brace really is light too, I would say it only weighs a few ounces, yet it evidently takes some force. It's clearly built to take it too - it has 'Aerospace Division' emblazoned next to the STi logo, which is awesome. It's eye-opening to see how much the body and suspension flexes - I'd recommend fitting a strut-brace to any car!

FITTING :

This couldn't be any easier - all you need is a 10mm wrench. This is for the STi Classic carbon strut-brace, but the fitting is identical for all other types, though the nuts may be different sizes.

1. Pop the bonnet and remove the 3x 10mm top-mount nuts from each of the suspension-turrets. The weight of the body is resting on the top-mounts so they won't move at all.

2. Loosen the 10mm bolts on either shoulder of the strut-brace so the end-rings can be adjusted easily.

3. Lower the strut-brace under the rear bulkhead and the end-ring holes over the top-mount studs so that there is a straight, snug fit and the end-rings can be pushed flat to the suspension-turret.

4. Replace the 3 nuts to each top-mount with a 10mm wrench and give it a good tighten, making sure the raised mounting-points are all flush against the suspension-turret.

5. Tighten the 10mm bolts on either side of the strut-brace so the entire unit is solid across the turrets.

There you go - fitted in 10 minutes and the difference it makes is astonishing!!

TEIN Adjustable Coilover Suspension - Part I - Rear

Only one rear shock-absorber failed the MOT in the end, even though the guys at National said both were shot. I took their advice anyway and decided to replace the two. A pair of the OEM (Kayaba Racing) shocks was £115 from Camskill.co.uk, but before I could buy them a mate at work offered me a complete set of GMax racing coilovers his friend was selling for £200. A set of these would set me back £700 odd quid new, so I instantly accepted. The next day he informed his mate had already moved them on - that or he'd figured out how much they were really worth.

I turned back to the OEM shocks, but my heart had been set on the coilovers and over the next week I slowly came to the conclusion I should treat

myself to a setup - I've been dying to spend some money on the car after all... I didn't fancy the cheap-looking GMax though and I have said all along that I want to keep it as JDM as possible, so I did a bit of research and decided on an entry-level kit from Japan bad boys TEIN [http://www.tein.co.uk], who I've heard and read a lot of good things about - they are also very nicely made and look fantastic! Theyr'e pricey @ £650 [cheapest I could find off a guy called mjd128 on eBay], but you get what you pay for...

Coilovers are a serious suspension upgrade, replacing the entire spring/shock assembly with a much stiffer, sturdier damper unit, which is also lighter and more compact as well as, most importantly, being completely height adjustable, with the TEIN set we went for dropping the car from 5 - 50mm! [The set comes with two special spanners and it only takes a minute to raise or lower the damper with the wheel off.]

Fitting:

I had a mechanic from work lined up to fit the OEM shocks, but when it came to the coilovers I found a nice vid on Youtube of two Australian lads fitting them to a Ver.5 STi and it didn't look too hard. Because coilovers come as a complete spring/damper unit there's no need to compress the spring off or on so I decided to have a go myself. I guess Aussie weather preserves metalwork better than in Britain, because those nuts were really on there and it turned out to not exactly be a breeze, but my dad and I did manage to get the rear two on in a couple of afternoons.

The task itself isn't hard provided you have a few spanners and are willing to get your hands dirty, but you need to be prepared to use ingenuity, especially if you live somewhere with a climate like Britain, to get the old shocks off.

PROCEDURE [Rear Shocks Only]:

REMOVAL:

1. Remove the rear seat-squab, seat-back and parcel-shelf by first removing the two screws from the front edge of the rear seat-squab (at the footwell) using a 12mm wrench. Lift the squab and pull it forward out of the way. Remove the three screws at the base of the seat-back using a 12mm wrench, lift it vertically up off the hooks holding it in place and move it clear. Gently pull one side of the parcel-shelf out from under the plastic on the C-pillar and once it is free the shelf should work its way out pretty easily.

2. Remove the two rear seatbelt pulleys by unbolting them from their frames at the base of the C-pillar using a 14mm wrench [though I recommend a socket-set with a few inches reach] and carefully move them out of the way of the suspension turrets.

3. Lift the car and remove the corresponding rear wheel.

4. Slightly loosen the three 12mm nuts holding the top-mount of the shock-absorber to the suspension turret under the rear parcel-shelf so that they can be removed without too much tension later.

5. Remove the brake-hose from the bracket on the shock by turning the collar of the hose and moving it up slightly, which should loosen it enough to pull the thin, flat metal clip out and free the hose. [Our OEM shocks had no U-shaped bracket to slide the hose out of - it was just a closed circle, the hose must have been woven through the shock - so we had to make a cut from the side of the bracket to the hole with a hacksaw and bend it open with

grips to get the hose clear without disconnecting it.]

6. Using a 17mm wrench crack off the two large bolts holding the shock-absorber to the wheel-hub. [Ours were seized on so tight with dirt and crud that we needed a very long bar over the spanner to get enough leverage.] You will then need a second 17mm wrench to hold the nuts in place while undoing the bolts and it may also be necessary to brace it against a heavy part of the axle setup to get a turn on it.

7. Remove the three 12mm nuts from the studs on the top-mount of the shock completely so that only the tension of the spring is holding the shock-absorber in place.

8. Now that that two large bolts holding the base of the shock have been removed, the brake-assembly should tilt forward a little to allow the shock room to move out. The spring will still be holding the base of the shock against its mount but, as there is no weight on it, it should work back out of the mount and down into the gap behind the axle. The top-mount studs should now clear the suspension turret and the shock and spring assembly can be lifted out of the wheel-arch.

ASSEMBLY:

If you're coilovers are fitted with top-mounts right out of the box then go straight to Refitting. If they require you use the car's standard top-mounts [like ours did] then you'll need to get them off the old shock by slowly removing the 19mm nut at the top of the damper-piston - when the nut comes free the spring won't be under enough tension to pop anything off. The piston will begin to turn with the nut, so grip it in a vice if you have space, though strong grips or better still mole-grips will do fine.

Include the top-mounts in the assembly of your coilovers, but don't tighten the nut at the top of the piston completely [the coilovers will have a notch so the piston won't turn with the nut], so that the triangular top-mount can still be rotated to find the turret.

REFITTING:

1. Reverse the lifting out procedure to get the coilover in place with the three top-mount studs mounted in the turret.

2. The coilover shouldn't be under much tension at all with no weight on it and most [including ours] have helper-springs to ease compressing them slightly, so with a little elbow grease it should move into place to get the two large 17mm bolts through to fix the

base of the damper to the hub. [We placed a thinner metal bar through the top hole to help get the coilover aligned, which made it easier to get the lower bolt in first.] Tighten the nuts using two spanners again until the brackets on the damper are clamped tight to the hub-mount.

3. Slide the collar of the brake-hose into the U-shaped bracket on the coilover and insert the flat metal clip beneath it to hold it in place.

4. Replace the three 12mm nuts to the top-mount studs on the suspension-turret below the parcel-shelf.

5. Now the coilover is seated, tighten the large nut on the top of the damper-piston to about 40PSF with a torque-wrench. [We used a lo-tech 'bendy-bar' torque-wrench, but whatever, I'm sure just a good tighten would be fine.]

6. Replace the wheel, parcel-shelf, seat-back and squab.

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This was quite an ambitious task to undertake at home - we found ourselves baffled, frustrated and dashing out to buy new tools more than a few times!

Demon Tweeks quoted me £200 to fit all four coilovers and said it would take about 2 hours. With all our figuring-out and store trips we spent a good 10 - 12 hours over two afternoons fitting just the rear pair [although I hope this guide might help one of you to do it quicker than us] - a saving of about £100 - but either way they're on and the suspension is now MOT'able!

MOT Update - 2 weeks to go!

The test looms near and wow there's a lot going on in Scoob world! - I've spent over £1000!!

Got about a fortnight to go now until the current MOT runs out, however I'll have to get the car back into Seaview Motors by next Friday (11 June) to qualify for a partial re-test, where they only check what the car failed on [and any other faults that have arisen this week will be ignored!]

Just over a week and I've sorted all but the few mechanical problems.

Heres the checklist so far :

1. N/S Headlamp Aim - The 98 model Scoob features electronic headlamp-leveling [for when you're towing a caravan] so the beam for my O/S headlamp can be raised with the flick of a switch. The N/S one is off a 94 Scoob though, with no fancy leveling and simply had to be raised the old-school way by shining the lights onto our garage door and adjusting the beam up manually with the ratchet behind the light-lens.

2. Number Plate Lights - Luckily the 'broken' one only needed a new bulb, the socket was just hiding away in the bumper so I replaced both bulbs with 'Heavy-Duty' 12v-5w mini-bulbs @ £3.99 from Halfords. The other socket had worked its way free of its mount so I just screwed it back up with a 10mm long self-tapper. Simples.

3. Foglamp Not Working - This got fiddly! We took the bulb out, which looked blackened so we chucked in a replacement to find this wouldn't work either. After much deliberation over whether the switch or wiring may be broken we reached for the Multimeter... I first downloaded some wiring diagrams for the rear lights and as my dad and I got our heads around them we discovered that the two wires that run to the Subaru fog-lamp were not connected to anything on the new twin-clusters. I chopped the wires from the fog-lamp on the new clusters and fed them directly through the connector and into the two terminals that had previously been blank. Hey presto! Instant fog-lamp! Its a great feeling to know I've finally given the car a fog-lamp it never had before, but weird how she sailed through her last 2 MOTs with these lights on - no mention of the friggin non-existent lamp! Dodgy!

4. ABS Warning Light On - I downloaded a "Diagnosis Checklist" for the ABS warning light - a whole 50 pages by itself!! We grabbed the multi-meter and managed to work through the major components [PCM control-module, power circuit, etc.] with no results. I've deduced it is probably one of the tiny ABS-sensors on the wheels, which are nigh-on impossible to replace, so for now I decided to just take the bulb out of the warning-light in the dash. Had to take the whole dash apart to get the gauge-binnacle out, but all in all the job took less than an hour.

5. O/S Steering Rack Boot Split - Found the part on a great site called JapaneseMotorSpares.co.uk, who have a superb stock of all those niggly, hard-to-find import parts. A pair of the boots cost £12 delivered and arrived the next day, absolute bargain, so I will have to get around to fitting the other one seeing as I have a spare. We got the boot on very easily in about 1 hour - I'll cover it in a post soon as.

6. N/S Rear Shock Absorber Leaking - I went a bit mad here. A pair of OEM [Kayaba Racing] rear shocks was the obvious direct replacement and cheap as chips @ £115 - but I didn't buy those. Instead I plumped for an entire adjustable coilover kit from JDM badboys Tein, which was a bit pricey @ £655, but you get what you pay for - these are the real deal!! Me and dad fitted the rear two on Sunday, but its a complete kit so the front ones will have to go on soon. Watch out for the post!

7. Emissions and Noise Excessive - This was the real problem-child. Quik-Fit, National, even large local stores like Chester Exhausts don't exactly shift many of these standard systems, so the cheapest price quote I could get for a full system, fitted while I sip coffee was £819. Ouch. The next option was to buy the OEM system separately and fit it myself. All I could find new was a real budget model 1st and 2nd cat @ £240 together, but still a rear pipe would be extra.

Scoobynet chums suggested I just shell out for a sports-cat for about £250 and have done with it, which will pass the MOT while hardly decreasing the power or noise. This originally seemed expensive to me, but after the OEM shit I guess not only is it the best value-for-money, but actually the cheapest option too lol. I tracked down a nice Prodrive 100cpi sports-cat that should fit straight onto my Peco centre-section... I hope, and its a bit below the average @ £235 delivered, although it is a used item - off a V4 STi Prodrive to be exact :) Hopefully this will get us through the test - I will have to hope it kills the noise a little bit or I'll have to buy a bung...

The deadline is Friday and the Prodrive cat still hasn't arrived so fingers crossed!

Suspension Upgrade Help

Uprated Springs / Dampers

Fitting sport-springs will stiffen up the ride and lower the car, but the Scoob's standard dampers are Kayaba Racing jobs so its not worth shelling out a couple of hundred for an uprated damper set as well because they won't give a worthwhile improvement to handling at all, unless you're standard shocks are knackered. If you just want to lower the Impreza then go for a spring-set only, it's a lot cheaper. If you're trying to stiffen up the handling then coilovers, below, are the only way to getting round corners quicker and flatter.

Coilovers

These replace both the spring and damper with a much stiffer, tougher and more compact unit, which is designed for handling first, comfort last, so road-holding gets a significant boost. They're also completely height-adjustable, so you change them from road to track in a few minutes and higher-end models also have settings for castor/camber angle and a greater degree of control.

Strut Brace

A strut-brace is a stiff bar that bolts across your suspension turrets and stiffens the whole chassis up. Front ones are an essential. Rear strut-braces are only necessary on Wagon Imprezas, saloon and coupe models have an integral one built-in. They're not an expensive mod, but the difference they make is amazing so if you're after better cornering then fit one right now. Price-wise, a good generic-brand one, like Sparco or OMP, is about £90. A proper JDM one, like TEIN or Cusco, will be £200+. If price is a worry then you can find pretty good looking no-make alloy ones on eBay for £50 or less, but I'd recommend scanning the auctions for a 2nd-hand STi one, fitted to the Ver. 3 and up. This is made of titanium with carbon-fibre rods, so its lighter than the rest and looks amazing. They seem to hang in the £50-100 range - I got mine for £65.

Drop Links / Anti-Roll Bar Links

These bolt between the hub and the anti-roll bar on either side to stop the car swaying like a boat. Standard ones are pretty stiff, but designed to give a little in the aid of comfort. Uprated ones have no give at all and will keep the car flat through bends. A good set of alloy drop-links with poly-bush inserts start at about £50 a pair on eBay. Handling will be firmer and steering ultra-responsive, but there'll be a lot more vibration and road noise.

Poly-Bushes

Upgrading these things is for serious nutters and trackday-special cars only really. Rubber-bushes are designed to have a little bit of play in them to soften the ride up, but they deteriorate over time and if your'e working on a classic Scooby then the chances are the bushes are quite worn and there'll be a bit more play in the chassis. Upgrading them to much stiffer and harder-wearing polyurethane ones [or 'poly-bushes'] means there's no play in the chassis whatsoever, which is great for staying flat as a pancake round that tough right-hander, but finally makes nipping to Tescos or pleasant day trips out of the question. The car will jar and bounce over every pebble on the road, but if day-to-day drivability is not your concern then this is the final rung on the ladder to real race-car suspension.