Refreshing a 10 year old STI - where to start?
 

My Impreza, while great, could be better and I'd like to give it a new lease of life to sharpen the whole package. I'd like to know where to start so I'm asking for some advice.

My first thoughts are to refresh the suspension and steering bushes to ensure anything that's perished or isn't up to scratch is back to factory. I'm hesitant to upgrade them to polyurethane ones as I don't want to introduce any more NVH in a car that's already pretty raw for me but I'm open to suggestions. The steering is a bit loose when pushing on around a bumpy corner with a fair amount of kickback so hopefully it'll make it feel much more solid.

It also wants to turn left to a very noticeable degree off and on power, noticabley at 50mph and above but it is there around town too. After having the geometry checked, everything seems to be spot on as are tyre pressures and wear. Something is doing it and I'm at a loss as to what I can be. Thoughts?

One thing I'm open to doing is changing the struts and springs as I can detect a slight knock at times, very similar to the traditional rear strut issue I had in my Hawkeye. I'd prefer a more compliant and calm ride too so coilovers are out of the question for me. I want to get rid of the jumpy nature as low speed and the wallowing at high speed - perhaps the latter is a rear ARB.

So aside from these items what else would you recommend doing?


David

Whiteline adjustable rear ARB was the best value mod on my 2002 STI...

Improves roll control and sharpens turn-in.

HTH

dunx

I'd recommend the steering rack poly bushes along with anti-roll bar poly bushes front and rear from AS Performance, I found that they really helped with steering feel and turn in and not expensive as well as relatively easy to diy.

I also prefer a gentler ride and have not noticed any more noise or vibration as a result.

My car is a 54 blob wrx wagon ppp, one of the oem steering rack bushes was split, so maybe that could be the case with yours.

Along with camber bolts and a slightly more fast road focused geo set up the handling has significantly improved to my taste.

With it wanting to pull 1 way or the other is either tracking/geo totally out of kilter and or 1 tyre is excessively worn un-even.

I would recommend Stiffer rear ARB 23 or 24mm poly bushed, + new steering bushes, (cheap mod well worth doing) and the expensive bit.. New shocks and prodrive/eibach springs with camber bolts to go with them all of that with a good fast road geometry setup will not add any more noise, will be compliant and comfortable on B roads and still give you a much sharper drive.
You could add Roll Centre Correction ball joints if your feeling flush, which will pretty much eliminate any bump steer you might be experiencing .
Once the bits are fitted a good geometry setup is the most important aspect of all of it IMO

Excellent thanks guys :)

My blob had a pull to the right and had a geo check and set and still done it so then changed alloy arms both sides but still the same , so next I sourced compleat new struts but before i swapped those I was told to swap my front wheels with the back so tried it and hey presto drove perfect, wishi tried it before I bought and swapped my arms lol,

Been told this is common problem with a 4wd car and directional tyres

That's quite interesting and certainly not something I thought about. I'll pop down to the local tyre place and see if they can do a swap when they have a few mins spare.