03 WRX 4.25" Lift Done! 28" Tires GoDzilla

[betarambo]

Bumper trimming:
I am going to try my hand at trimming front and rear a bit, but hoping to keep enough to keep it looking ok. I know I should be worrying about looks on a project like this, but I can’t resist. It looks just way too cool to not try and maintain it somewhat. Any tips here are appreciated.
Current Status:
So the car drives now and rubbing is pretty much all gone. It had more body roll than the 72 Ford LTD my brother used to live in. It articulates like a rock crawler. The couple of ditches I went playing in tonight were just amazing. The gearing is pretty tall considering that first was already too high for technical off road, my tires are over 10% bigger and the 2.0 turbo motor has like 4 ft lbs of torque below 4000 rpm. However it does appear workable.
Picture coming tonight maybe depending on if it lets me post something this long!
All tips on future mods are appreciated.

[betarambo]

Installed (includes tax and shipping):
Subtle Spacers $215
Tires with mount and balance $800
Used Tire for test fitting $50 (now serves as a spare)
05 Forester Strut Assemblies, trailing arm brackets, spare wheel $400
subtotal $1665

Not yet installed
Adjsutable rear lateral links and trailing arms $235
Skip plates, camber bolts book, $500 ($430 for jsut skid plates with shipping)

Grand total $2400
One of the tallest WRX's on the planet and a fun father-daughter time in the desert: priceless

[Wunder]

Curious why you need 2 pages for all of this.. but okay, lots of stuff for me to read when I get a good chance, I was hoping for pictures!

[betarambo]

You're welcome. I just spent two hours writing up everything I could think of so that anyone else trying to do this would have a good headstart, and I get "why did this take two pages?".
I am working on loading pics now. That will probably get me people complaining about focus or shadows or resolution.WRX 03 On Hill With Tires and Lift.jpgWRX 03 On Hill Front with tires and lift.jpg

[hoekstbj]

Very Cool Project! Love the pics! Post up a write up of how the alignment goes.

[Bubba02sti]

Very nice man... Your name is appropriate for the car... But I think God Dayyyyyymn would be more fitting... Lol...

[betarambo]

Thanks guys. I will add in the stuff about the alignment when I get to it as well as the adjsutable links and skid plates. I think I have loaded all the good pics I have. I will try to get better shots next time I take her out.

[WAGONLOVE]

very cool and inspiring!! i want to lift my wagon now....

[twagoon]

I love it. I thank you for the information given, while I am not going to be making mine this extreme I know there are a lot of other people wanting this very result. I would love to see pictures with the trailing arms installed, keep us posted.

[em99sport]

Cool project and a nice, thorough write-up. I didn't have a problem with it spreading over two pages .

No doubt, you're already aware, but if you want some low-end grunt, stage 2 mods will help. DP and a real tune will have that TD04 working for you.

[twagoon]

Make sure you change out to a catless UP as well so you can get the turbo spoiling a little faster. An AP on stage 1 will even give a little more power but nothing close to a good tune. I think it would be cool if you could borrow some stock wheels and tires, do a couple 0-60 runs, then throw the meats back on and compare the times. I know it would be some work but I am kind of interested how much of an affect 3" taller tires will have.
Of course you should find a safe place to conduct the experiment.

[twagoon]

Oh and you will need to make sure and compensate for the speedometer being off. This is the website I always use, it has proven to be pretty accurate.
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/tirecalc.php
Good luck can't wait to hear and see more.

[betarambo]

I got the adjustable trailing arm and lateral links on one side of the rear. These things really look a lot beefier than stock and allow all kinds of adjustment. Using these I got the alignment on the left rear into "eyeball specs" without using camber bolts. I bought a digital level and some straight bars to do my own alignments. Something tells me I will be playing with alignment a lot so I might as well get good at it. Haven't tried it yet.

I got my rear skid plate from Primitive but have not mounted it yet.

We took it for a quick test spin to see what it can handle. The results on the really rough stuff are prety impressive. We went back and forth over some pretty deep ditches. It articulates great and finds traction everywhere. Gearing was definitaly an issue for going slow, but I think it is livable for my purposes. I did burn a few hundred miles off my clutch on one hill I tried from a dead stop. I think I need to learn a bit of a new driving style for the really rough stuff.

Thanks for the suggestions on getting more low end torque out of the engine. I will definitely look into that.

While doing some idle reading considering what I might do about gearing I found that there are some final drive sets out there in 4.40:1 or so from things like Foresters and some automatic equiped Imprezas. However, I then found that the WRX doesn't have the same final drive front and rear. Apparently there is gear reductoin in the center diff, but only on the rear output. I think it was something like 3.90 in the front and 3.50 in the rear with 1.1 reduction in the center diff. As far as I can tell the WRX is the only car to do this. That really limits my options for gearing down. Any suggestions here?

On the handling side I haven't gotten the rear sway back on yet. Earlier I mentioned a ton of body roll. With further experiments we determined that it appears to be all tire flex. These tires are pretty tall for this car, especially compared to the stock rubber. There isn't much I can do about sidewall flex, but I will try the rear sway bar and see what that does to it. I suspect that it is just normal sidewall flex but I am not used to it yet. The car is still fast enough and handles well enough even with the unresolved camber issue on three corners that I made my friend who's nickname is "fearless" grab the oh **** bar!

So she now has about 5 miles on her. I am hoping to squeeze in some time this week to finsh the install on the rear, do the camber bolts in the fornt and get the alignment all finished up. The next couple of weekends and next week are shot for a family vacation to Disneyland, so if I don't get it done this week it will be a couple of weeks before you hear another update.

[betarambo]

I took her out tonight for a little rougher running. I am getting more used to the tire flex and it actually handles pretty well. I did find that the tires rub sometimes on the new beefier trailing arms. It looks like it is only from the tire flex when I get in some extreme angles. I am thinking a little bit of offset on the rims will help this and the minor front rubbing that is left. I have the stockers that are like +53 and I think the Forester has +48 or something. That might be just enough to avoid the rub but not enough to hose up steering or my wheel bearings.
Best picture yet:
WRX 03 With lift on rocks.jpg

[betarambo]

testing new sig