2004 Forester XT

still, easily, the bitchin'est hoonmobile out there. people were straight up cheering to see that thing throwing up walls of dirt. looking forward to next season man!

I'll probably be running in a different class (and sucking) so I hope somebody gives you another tight run for the title next year.

I might have to bring Filthpig out for giggles at least one time, probably at the end of the year if we have a non-points event.

Walls of dirt.

My radiator cracked near the passenger side upper mount and sprayed sweet-smelling ethylene-glycol all over everything everywhere under the hood of the Fozzie two Mondays ago on my way to work. Since Subaru does not provide a low coolant buzzer and I was driving at 70, I didn't notice I had this problem until my temp gauge was up near the bad part of its range.

Given that I have to work during the week, I brought it to my local repair shop (Janko in Raleigh, look for them in a camouflage WRX at Sandblast) and asked them to fix it. I wanted an all metal radiator, so I had them order a Mishimoto unit. I knew it would take a few days, but I figured it would arrive on Friday so I resigned myself to having my wife drive me to work and waited for them to call me.

They called me, and advised that FexEx had shipped the unit, it showed delivered and they didn't have it. Monday, same deal. It showed up on Tuesday and I got my car back. Nobody knows why it was missing for two days and showing delivered by FedEx, but there you go. Janko gave me a bit of an additional discount for having to wait an extra day. They're good guys and they do good work.

The new radiator is much more robust than the previous unit. I'm pleased. I'll take a picture of it while it is still shiny soon.

I picked up another set of 17" rims. They're Saab 9-2x BBS RK rims, they look like this:

The WRX wheels are now going to be the backups and possibly move on to rallycross duty. I just have to find some all-seasons with a wide tread pattern and fairly square shoulders to put on them.

The SPINS!

Luckily, others made mistakes as well and I still wound up getting first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcYMBpGIhQc

A bit better on the later runs, which got faster each time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsPFVvZDKbE

In reply to Brett_Murphy:

That looks like a slightly dusty auto-x course, lol. Looks fun, make that box move!

Wow, how fast were you going? That looks fast for a Rallycross, is that normal? How fast were the boost buggies going?

I'm not sure how fast I was going, my boost buggy was going too fast to glance at the speedometer . That course was a 2nd gear course, but I was keeping it at a boil. I've run an entire course there that was a bit more open in 3rd gear.

Let's use math!

The track is 2/5 of a mile, and we pretty much did two laps. My time was 51.1

So... 4224 feet in 65.1 seconds is 64.8 feet per second which is...

44.18 MPH

A prepped Subaru rally car running more boost had the FTD and was about 3 seconds faster than I was.

We just had an event at the most incredible rallycross course I've had the chance to drive yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYHLIWmvHeg

Also, here is how you de-bead a tire. You go way to fast into a hairpin turn and then put the wheel into full lock in deep, loose dirt. I know better, and I still did it. It cost me at least 50 seconds of time and knocked me out of a podium finish for the day. You can hear the tire come off at 1:06, after that it gets really slow and boring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV0r5Eky3o8

I am co-driving an older Legacy this year, so the Fithpig is going to be on backup duty and it is going to remain largely the way it is for now. I have a hillclimb car to finance, right?

Current plans that will be finished:

I am going to take the time to do a complete detailing of the car. There is dirt in some nooks in the car that is probably several years old. Somehow the motivation to clean it really well never struck me since I knew I was going to be throwing mud and dirt all over it several times a year.

I have thicker sway bars I picked up here that have to go on the car. I am almost positive the endlinks have to be upgraded at the same time.

Since the car is running on Geolander ATS tires at the moment, I'm also debating what kind of summer rubber I am going to put onto the BBS rims, if any. I might just ride on the tires I have for a while.

It's been a long time since I posted here.

The detailing never happened, but the Perrin swaybars are mounted and clunk a bit on uneven pavement, or off-road.

The rear Perrin swaybar has detached one end of itself twice now. I heard it rattling a bit on the way home from the hockey game tonight and I peeked underneath and sure enough, one end is hanging loose. I'm partially to blame, since I didn't use locking nuts, I guess.

That said, if I can't get this working right, I might switch back to stock units.

Brett, is it the end link coming undone, or the bar to body mount? I might be able to help either way, let me know.

If the bar to body mount is warping you probably want to upgrade to an 04+ Impreza rear swaybar mount. Subaru Genuine Parts used to sell a cheapo ($35?) kit that is all the OE part numbers you need to interchange to run a 19+mm rear swaybar on an earlier car. I don't see it on their online store after the redesign, but I bet Jamie would know what you are talking about if you emailed them directly.

With a big enough bar the 04+ rear mounts will still tear but we're talking an immense bar, like 24mm+ rear. I've only seen it happen once and couldn't conclusively decide if it was foreign object damage or not.

I would assume that your generation of Forester probably has the weaker rear mounts, but I would also guess that if you have Perrin goodies on there you already have a Stout Mount or similar upgrade which does the same thing.

From the original post, I figured it was the endlink bolt and nut that have backed off. I don't really have a good fix for those.

The nut is usually nylock which means that previous owners have hamfisted it enough that it no longer contains ny nor does it lock. I generally end up having to replace those with parts-store stainless steel 12.9 fasteners, conventional lock nuts and a judicial use of washers.

If you have OEM rear endlinks, some Subaru wagons (I think including the SG Forester) can upgrade to nice-and-also-cheap aluminum ones by using B5 Audi A4 front endlinks from RockAuto in their place. They are pretty much the same dimensions, right down to the interior pinch of the "C." Often the endlinks come with nice hardware to boot.

The end links were coming undone at the lateral links. I picked up $7 worth of hardware and fixed it after work using nylock nuts. I'm still not sure I'm sold on the Perrin units, but this weekend's rallycross will determine the final disposition for them. I bought them used off a part out on the board here, and they are from up North. I think the spheres might be sticking a bit.

Apropos of nothing, the bar, stout mount and end links I have are black and they appear to be red in all the new photos, plus they're now 25mm, not 22.5, which mine are.

Good tip on the Audi units.

Well, let me know if you need either the beefier drop down brackets or new end links.

Brackets in this kit:

Or end links:

I just put a 25mm bar and brackets on my '04 XT.

I may need end links because the ones on there required me to flip the lateral links upside down for clearance, and having the mounts on the bottom is making me nervous. What is the going rate on the end links?

Brett, normally they are $123, but I can help you out. PM me or give me a call 562-907-7757 x224.

If you had needed them on Monday I could have given you my old set, but they went in the bin when I did the new lateral and end links. I still have the factory lateral links if you have a need for them (the end link tabs are ripped off).

PM sent.

Since the last update, we've replaced the front axle seals (completely shredded), cursed at the AC a bit, put on the summer tires, took the summer tires off again, put them back on, changed the oil multiple times and generally just did maintenance.

Recently,  I had a brake caliper sticking, so I elected to buy a set of 2006 WRX brake hardware. I'm kind of amazed at how little surface area the 2006 WRX rear pads have. I was apparently so amazed, I then proceeded to mount the rear brakes upside down without realizing it until I went to bleed them.

DOH! I'll fix that over the weekend. Good thing I have a backup car to drive. I may also switch back to the STI swaybars instead of the Perrin units I have on there now. The stockies were better in rallycross for sure.

Still no complaints about the car, it's done everything I've asked it to. Because of that, I'm expecting it to blow up soon.

The curse of the Boxer Brett... I do believe your luck just ran out my friend... 

After the rain ended today*, I also learned that the stock dust shields will absolutely hit the larger diameter brake rotors once everything is bolted back up and torqued down.

I made some some pretty egregious rookie mistakes made during this swap, for sure. I'm back to the stock calipers and disks in the rear until I can figure out exactly what I need to change to get this working properly.


* it seems like there has been a 100% incidence of rain on weekends I want to work on a car for the past year or so. This was when I started tearing it down, I barely got all of the tools put away. The jack went back indoors after the photo was taken, I had to grab a hat. Wearing glasses sucks in the rain.

So the Hawk pads on the 4 piston swap had about 3mm of material left on them. I started a pad change today that quickly went into a "Wow, that piston is stuck, I should order two new front calipers."

I'm thinking I am going to eat the core cost on the calipers and try to do a rebuild. I'd like to get a nice set of powder coated calipers on here eventually.

The power steering is wonky again. I'm going to replace the O-ring on the line and see if that fixes it.

Thanks to the owner of TurboTime, who commented a fix for the power steering pulsing on Facebook when I mentioned it. There is a small o-ring in the system that fails and allows a wee bit of air in the system. It cost two bucks at the dealer, took 5 minutes to replace and fixed the issue.

I threw on a new accessory belt while I was in there.