CovertRussian's 05 LGT Build Thread

I drive on windy mountain roads very often. I drove about 7 different 4th gens over the years including one with less than 10k miles. They all over steered. Wagons seem less dramatic, maybe due to weight distribution.

That's interesting, because everyone always says that they understeer thus a rear-swaybar is a must. With how little rear camber these cars run stock, I can see them being more oversteer prone though.

 

With rear swaybar (on stiffest) and front caster bushings I found the car to be fairly neutral as long as you don't give throttle in a turn (which would make it push out). Basically it would rotate really well but without the rear end walking out at the limits. Now (post bushings) taking the same 90 turn at same speed I have the rear end walking out on me a lot more.

UPDATE: I believe it's my MAF connectors are starting to age and are getting loose, more details in this thread/post.

 

Car started acting up had me convinced that my MAF was toast:

For autocross I rich tuned the car to ~10.5 AFR. Car drove fine and AFR's were on par, until I took the car up and down a 3.5k foot mountain on a humid/foggy day. At which point it started to be very rich (~9:1 AFR's) while in open loop.

 

Hooked up the laptop to it, at 0psi it was reading ~1.50/grev when usually it's ~1.15g/rev. This caused it to be in richer parts of the map, but my fuel map is not that drastic even on right most column, thus it must have triggered some load/mass airflow based enrichments.

 

I parked the car for 1.5 weeks while I was out of town. Got back and went for a test drive, AFR's back to normal and 0psi is back to ~1.15g/rev... what the, guess my MAF is not dead afterall?

 

The best I can come up with is, humidity was really messing with the MAF, since my filter draws air from fenderwell it probably was more dense too. Anyone else see this oddness?

Edited August 19, 2018 by covertrussian

 

(Don't mind the cheap photoshop the inner bushing set, first bushings I ordered didn't fit)

 

Part Numbers:

Outer (knuckle): Whiteline W64494

Inner (subframe): Whiteline W63395

Design:

Outer W64494: 2pc Mechanical, with Knurling

Inner W63395: 1pc Chemically Bound to Metal Sleeve, with Knurling

NVH Rating:

Outer W64494: 1 - Barely Noticeable, feels like stock

Inner W63395: 2 - Noticeable on Rough Roads Only

Handling Rating:

Outer W64494: 1 - Barely Noticeable

Inner W63395: 2 - Moderate

 

 

Toe Arm is the back most link, outer (knuckle) bushing is on left, inner (subframe) bushing is on right:

 

Outer Bushing

I installed the outer bushings (Whiteline W64494) first, mainly because the inner bushings that I first bought didn't fit and I had to buy a different set.

 

My bolts were pretty tight, had to use break it loose with my biggest breakerbar

 

The bushings themselves were actually in great condition, almost didn't want to replace them. Since these require removal of the knuckle to press them out, burning them out is no brainer.

 

I actually tried to use a hack saw, just to try it, it was proving to be too annoying especially due to low space. Thus I used a die grinder with a carbide bit to shave enough of the shell away to break the circle's bond.

 

Installation afterwards was a breeze, make sure to install the bigger bushing facing the front and with the pin voiding up (vertical).

 

After I was done with the inner bushing I installed the toe arm and torqued it to 89 ft-lbs.

 

Inner Bushing

I had some issues with the toe bolts couple years ago. This involved me cutting the toe bolts off, surely this time around it would be easy...

 

Breaking the toe bolts loose was a pain, sadly a proper sized breaker bar doesn't fit on the nut due to the axle being there. It tried to break it loose form the back, that didn't work (no surprise since it's a cammed bolt)

 

Had to use my craftsman through set, otherwise I would have had to use combination wrench like an animal. After breaking the nut loose, you should be able to just tap it out.

 

But of course that's never the case with my cars. I had to get surgical with an angle grinder on both arms! That smiley face didn't help either...

 

For what ever reason the toe bolt rust welded itself to the bushing's inner sleeve. The left bushing (top) was actually spinning through and no matter how much I tried I couldn't hold the inner housing to prevent it form spinning. The right bushing was just stuck, but still bound to the bushing/arm. End result was both toe bolts needing to be cut off (once again I replaced these about 4 years ago...).

 

For the left arm I actually tried to use a hacksaw, but once again die grinder is just so much easier and faster, I was in enough pain as is.

 

The inner end of the arms were pretty rusty too, cleaned it up with the die grinder and resprayed it

 

Finally ready for new bushings to be installed, but the bushings that I ordered were miss-cataloged as fitting on our cars, they were close but the crush tube was meant for 12mm bolts and not our 14mm. Thus I had to order and wait for new bushings to arrive. Luckily I had spare arms, which actually allowed me to test the outer and inner bushings independently.

 

Once the Whiteline W63395 bushing set arrived I got them pressed in, no frills here, but did take a few tries since my shop press sucks.

 

Here is a comparison of Stock vs Whiteline inner bushings. Whiteline's crush tube seems to be tighter around the bolt, maybe it wont rust weld as badly? Whiteline bushings do have some flex built into their design too which is really good (more on this later).

 

One place that the Whiteline bushings to fall down at is the crushtube's surface area against the subframe. It's much narrower which means if your subframe holes are elongated, it might not torque down properly (especially after preforming the surgery that I did). But making a thicker crush tube would be a bit hard, and require a smaller bushing, which would lead to more NVH.

 

Got the new toe cam bolts installed and tightened, now these should also be torqued to 89 ft-lbs, but it's impossible to get a 1/2" drive torque wrench between the axle and the toe nuts. Thus I had to just good-n-tite it by hand.

 

Finally I mentioned flex was built into the bushings, here is why: The toe arm wants to twist, this is why the outer bushings have vertical voids too. Here is how much the arm twisted while the suspension was at full droop.

 

Conclusion

The outer bushings with stock arms (with good stock bushings) was a negligible improvement in handling department. I believe this is mainly due stock bushings already being pretty solid, and were still in good shape. These made absolutely no difference in NVH, which is great.

 

As for the inner bushings, these were night and day! But I believe that's due to my stock ones being torn/aged. Rear end is much more stable now and the rear end doesn't start walking out on you as quickly now (car is still oversteering at the limit though). I'm also able to take a downhill 90* off camber turn about 5mph faster now (from ~35mph to ~40mph).

 

NVH wise these did slightly increase the road feel and noise that's transmitted into the cabin, but nowhere near as badly as the trailing arm bushings did. On a bright side they also eliminated a rear end creek that I would get going over speed bumps, so in some ways they reduced NVH!

 

Thus so far these have been the best improvement out of the rear end bushings!

Edited September 16, 2018 by covertrussian

Do you use Permatex anti-seize compound on the bolt shanks and all threads ?

Do you use Permatex anti-seize compound on the bolt shanks and all threads ?

 

Typically I don't, since usually the bolts/nuts that I've worked on never have seized up like this. I think this part of the arm is just in a big splash zone.

 

One issue with anti-size or any oils on threads is it's easy to overtorque them.

 

 

Part Numbers:

Outer (knuckle): Whiteline KCA399

Inner (subframe): Whiteline W63396

Design:

Outer KCA399: 2pc Mechanical with knurling and camber adjustability

Inner W63396: 2pc Mechanical with Void and Knurling

NVH Rating: 1 - Barely Noticeable, feels like stock

Handling Rating: 1 - Barely Noticeable

 

 

Started with undoing and removing the outer bushing, since the arm is under twisting pressure at full droop, I had to use a jack to slightly raise the knuckle to get the bolt out

 

The inner bushing bolt/nut is a littler harder to get to. I was only able to fit a combination wrench on the nut (left side), then used my biggest breaker bar to knock it loose.

 

After that the arm came out with no frills, which is a nice change of pace finally.

 

Outside bushing actually looked intact and still fairly good

 

Inside bushing was a completely different story, you can see how much it deflected with the screw driver.

 

Before I removed the factory bushings, I measured the distance between the two bushings. While eye to eye would be more proper, it's really easy to slightly move the tape measure, thus I did end to end instead.

 

Next I tried to push the bushings outs, but due to my crappy shop press and lack of proper spacers it only pushed out the inner sleeve.

 

In the end I resorted to the good ole burn them out method.

 

With the outer sleeves still in place, defaulted to my die grinder again. I'm so sick and tired of doing bushings that the fastest and easiest route wins in my book.

 

Bushings installed, preset the camber bushing to be 309mm end to end, then marked a hole ontop and on the arm for reference (since it will get miss-aligned during install).

 

This picture shows the inner and outer bushings up close. The inner bushing has missing poly to create a void for flexibility, the outer bushing has no flex engineered into it. This could be bad and cause binding since factory outer bushing is designed to flex a lot too.

 

Onto the installation, I installed the subframe bolt first (inner), then started installing the knuckle (outer) bolt. This proved to be a little difficult since at full droop the UCA was wanting to twist in relation to the knuckle.

 

I used a combination of the jack and breaker bar against the subframe and UCA to tilt it a little to get the bolt through.

 

Adjusted the outer bushing to my previously marked setting and torqued it to 89lbs. I stuck my punch into one of the holes to hold it from rotating while torquing it.

 

All done with the outer bushing, one thing I noticed is the right side of the bushing wanted to come out of the knuckle. This might destroy the bushing, the letter sticking out doesn't help, when I did the other side I made sure the lettering was on the bottom.

 

Finally torqued the inner bushing to the same 89ft-lbs

 

Here is the before and after install:

 

Conclusion

Unfortunately they weren't night and day like the toe arm bushings were, which is surprising since the inner bushing was really torn. I think the new bushings on the toe arm took up the slack thus reduced the need for the UCA bushings to be perfect.

 

Luckily the NVH didn't increase either, but even if it did, I think poly bushings are worth it just for being able to torque them with the wheels off!

 

This concludes my poly bushing replacement adventure on this car. The car is definitely harsher then stock, but it's very bearable and worth it for the stability improvements.

Edited September 25, 2018 by covertrussian

Good pictures I ended up getting both new upper and lower links and waiting for the last trailing arm to come in Monday.

Last year I was pretty bummed to have to replace Cooper RS3-A's after 27k miles. Discount Tire Direct and Falken had more appealing rebates thus I went with Falken Azenis FK450 in 215/50/17. Well a little over a year and only 13.5k miles in and they were pretty much legally bald at 4/32's.

 

I didn't want to buy tires, but the Falkens were getting sketchy in the rain and would be suicidal in the snow. Thus I went back to Coopers, this time I got the RS3-G1's which are the newer version of the RS3-A's and have 10k longer tread warranty. I went back to 225/45/17 tires since I liked the extra width and more accurate speedometer.

 

I loaded up my "racecar" with the new tires and took it to Costco to get the new tires mounted, I'm surprised it all fit in the trunk/backseat

 

 

Tread designs matter...

I fished out my old Cooper RS3-A wheels/tires and took pictures of them too. At 27k miles they are at 2/32" tread depth, notice how the sipes are still very prevalent even at legally bald tread depths!

 

Next is the Falken Fk450's, at 13.5k miles they are at 4/32" tread depth, notice that there are no sipes left at all, this explains why I was drifting in the rain so much

 

Finally here are the Cooper RS3-G1's, brand new (10.5/32"), notice that the sipes are not as sophisticated as the RS3-A's.

 

Alright so the Cooper RS3-A's are FAR superior in design to FK450's at end of the tire life. I feel like the RS3-A's are also superior to the G1's with the sipe design and quantity. I also feel like the RS3-A's have superior outside treadblocks (they are wider).

 

Time will tell how the RS3-G1's fare in the snow, and when they are closer to end of life.

 

 

Side views

The 225/45/17 tires are 25" tall, while 215/50/17 are 25.5" tall. That equals to the car being 1/4" lower. Doesn't seem or look like much but my loose exhaust heatshield is now scraping...

 

Falken FK450 215/50/17:

 

Cooper RS3-G1 225/45/17:

 

New tires are heavier at 44.6lbs with wheel(19.8lbs):

 

Old tires and wheels were 3lbs lighter at 41.6lbs:

 

 

Testing

I haven't pushed them too hard yet, but they do grip ~280whp even in first gear to redline. Treads are still new, once they are flexing less I'll see if I can improve my corner speed compared to Falken's (speed to beat is 40mph in an off camber downhill 90* turn)

 

Gas Mileage

I haven't tested gas mileage yet, but I think 1/4" lower ride height will improve aerodynamics, but new tall treads will negate the gains.

 

I did experience highway MPG loss when I went from bald 225/45/17 RS3-A's to new 215/50/17 FK450's, I blamed it tread flex, but I think reduced aero didn't help either.

 

Gasmileage UPDATE!

Highway gas mileage stated the same at 29.93mpg, previously I got 30.01mpg.

 

City gas mileage on the other hand suffered, went from 20.40mpg to 19.40mpg. I think part of it could be blamed to winter fuel switch (that should be around 0.35mpg), sadly I can't retest the old tires with winter fuel.

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by covertrussian

I have to resmooth my timing map almost yearly... As I install a new mod, I'll go out and start street tuning timing map, looking for the new optimal timing at WOT. A lot of times the power increasing mods only affect the full throttle portions of the map, while the cruise portion is happy with the timing it was at, thus I end up adjusting 1.40g/rev+ ranges only.

 

Well this leaves me with hills and cliffs in the map, which is around the area where the car likes to stumble to...

 

This is where you sit down with the 2d map editor and start smoothing the cell to cell transitions out, goal is to reduce the giant gaps (cliffs) between the cells, which leads to a smoother running (read less stumbly) car. Do note that AVCS map will require abrupt timing changes, you have to do your best to smooth around those changes.

 

Finally here is the delta map of the changes. Notice how much less timing is in the highway range, I was concerned that this would lead to poorer fuel economy. But it always felt wrong to have the cruise range be so high then it drops off like a cliff after 1.15g/rev.

 

 

Took the car on the first highway trip in 5 months, last time I got 30.01mpg on the new spark plugs and almost bald tires (less rolling resistance) and ambient temps ranging from 70-90F. This time it was colder at 60-65f, and I had brand new tires (with more tread squirm), and I got 29.93mpg.

 

It doesn't seem like the timing map negatively effected the MPG, it probably made up for the MPG loss from the brand new tires. While I know I have more then one variable changed, I don't have the time or money to do highway MPG tests nowdays, thus I have to bunch mods together .

 

On a negative side, I still can't seem to break 30mpg. Thus I'm thinking about doing some rolling resistance reducing mods next (hint).

 

 

UPDATE: Looking at those maps I decided to go back and fix all the negative ranges, those ranges are rarely hit so that's why they haven't bothered me.

 

I also further smoothed the map, which finally got rid of a stumble that I had going up hills at 2k rpm!

Edited November 6, 2018 by covertrussian

wow the way the rear end sits looks nice

Alright new tires gas mileage update, new tires dropped the city MPG from 20.40mpg to 19.43mpg. At first I thought it was a fluke but I got two city tests that both were around 19.40mpg. The only other thing that might have happened is the winter fuel switch, more on this below.

 

I think it's mostly related to the increased Tire weight. Old worn out tires were at 41.6lbs

 

While new tires are a heavier 44.6lbs, that's 3lbs increase per side, 12lbs of unsprung rotational weight.

 

Alright back to winter fuel, my before tests were from right before 09/15 (federal mandated winter fuel switch date), and both new wheel tests were fueled up after 09/15. Winter fuel has 1.7% less energy, which means gas mileage will be reduced by same amount, so we can calculate it:

20.40 x 0.017 = 0.35mpg decrease, or 20.05mpg, which still leaves me with 0.65mpg loss due to tires.

 

If I still had all 4 tires available, I would gladly install them and do another test, but 1 of the old wheels was used to mount the new tires.

Gee if you washed those filthy wheels you may gain a little mpg... LOL

 

Sorry, couldn't pass that up.

Gee if you washed those filthy wheels you may gain a little mpg... LOL

 

Sorry, couldn't pass that up.

 

Ha! Actually little dirt creates boundary layers, which in turn creates the golfball effect .

 

But seriously, these have 5 year old paint that's cracking. Since I used a different front right wheel, I had to paint it fresh and in comparison these all look like crap ha. So now I gotta find time to sand all the old paint on the 3 remaining wheels and recoat it.

Did you guys know that we can squeeze some extra negative camber out of stock crash bolts? I'm dubbing this "Camber Goes to 11 Mod".

 

First lets start with the 05-09 FSM adjustment ranges. Subaru likes to use minutes of angle, to convert them to degrees you need to use this formula (Decimal Degrees = Minutes Angle/60)

 

From this we can see that the static camber is -0.25*, and that we have +/- 0.50 of adjustment in each direction. That means our total camber adjustment range is from 0.25* to -0.75*.

 

While I had the tire off I figured I would use my favorite suspension toy, an angle gauge, and see what our camber adjustment ranges are. Since the car is nowhere near from being level, resetting the angle gauge to 0 is a must at its current state. Also I did tighten the rotor to knuckle to avoid extra movement.

 

I rotated the camber bolt until I found a range where no adjustment was happening, and zeroed the angle gauge:

 

I then rotated the camber bolt to decrease camber (which increases negative camber), by halfway mark it was still rotating real easy and angle gauge saw no changes in camber.

 

Two marks in I was at -0.40* increase over static:

 

On the last mark that FSM tells you to use I was at -0.50* over static:

 

This is where the "It Goes to 11" part comes in, I rotated it to the halfway mark and saw another substantial increase:

 

That increased negative camber by another -0.20*! We are now -0.70* over static, so about -0.95*. For years I left one side on the last FSM mark and other side on the halfway mark, and I didn't think twice of it because I didn't see the knuckle move from second to last and last mark. This is where angle gauge is superior to our eyes.

 

Now is it safe? I kept on decreasing the camber (increasing negative camber), this is how far it rotated before camber started to drop off. Plus like I mentioned earlier, one side ran on the halfway mark for years and it never moved.

 

 

After torquing the strut bolts down, the final increase was -0.80*.

 

 

Next I wanna show how insignificant, to our eyes, going from 0* camber to -1.30* is at the knuckle and why it's hard to see the minute adjustments:

Cool stuff there!

You can get extra neg. camber by playing with the bottom bolt. There is some slack there.

You can get extra neg. camber by playing with the bottom bolt. There is some slack there.

 

I believe I tried to push the bottom bolt in and out to see how many degrees it would change, and didn't really spot much of a difference.

 

As for actually needing more negative camber, I'm not sure I need more, even 225/45/17's. Since my tires are not rolling over on the backroad driving and pushing it to the limits on the street. Wish I could say the same for my multi-link G20's suspension on same sized tires!

Question the Rear Upper Control Arm does whiteline have something that's not a camber adjusting bushing? I have some rear lateral I have to install but it seems the upper rear is just for the bump stop and to adjust the camber I'm not sure if you can just adjust the rear and not have to touch the upper rear?

Whiteline does have a non camber adjustable outer bushing, costs $10 more. Superpro also makes a non adjustable one too.

 

I opted out for camber adjustable one because it's the cheapest way to fix camber issues without going to aftermarket arms which are quite pricey.

So to make it a little clearer I can get the lower adjustable arm but leave the top stock and still have a adjustable camber.

So to make it a little clearer I can get the lower adjustable arm but leave the top stock and still have a adjustable camber.

 

That is the case with kits like KTA124: https://whitelineperformance.com/products/kta124-control-arm

That is the case with kits like KTA124: https://whitelineperformance.com/products/kta124-control-arm

Ok thought so I got the megan racing version the whiteline while nice was a little out of the budget right now.. had to spend my vacation pay on mostly baby stuff

 

 

What I don't get is I know the whiteline has a toe lock kit I don't understand about putting adjustable toe link bolts on a adjustable lateral arm maybe I'm just not understanding something.. how do you stop the bolt from making it out of adjustment for a adjustable arm?

That's the point of the toe lock kit, it converts the adjustable system to be NOT adjustable. You probably need the same for the Megan kit. Anyway since you have adjustable camber via toe arms, you don't need to worry about the adjustable UCA bushing.

That's the point of the toe lock kit, it converts the adjustable system to be NOT adjustable. You probably need the same for the Megan kit. Anyway since you have adjustable camber via toe arms, you don't need to worry about the adjustable UCA bushing.

Yeah got'cha I kinda want to try and do it all at one shot the arms plus the bushings all these road joints in NYC plus those raised metal plates in the road for road work is very unsettling maybe the last thing I can do before my daughter comes into the world.