TaySTi

I’m about to fit a Whiteline 22mm adjustable rear ARB to my MY05 STi which is already fitted with Prodrive springs (which lower the front of the car more than the rear). For a B-road set-up (my car doesn’t see the motorway too much), should I try the softest setting or the middle setting first? I don’t want to provoke any tail wag

911

IMHO:

Fit it on the soft holes first, take a steady drive on roads you know well. Try it for a day or so.
Then try the middle. The hardest hole will have quite a pronounced effect of the 3 positions.

I think, like most, you will end-up in the middle (me included and I race mine)
Middle setting, but with a few other mods too!
DropShots Day

Have fun!

Mocom Racing

iTrader: (2)

Why have you chosen to replace the bar?

Personally I prefer the DCCD-A Impreza's on the stock bars (20mm) both front and rear, I found replacing the front bar loses any feel from the front wheels causing massive understeer and replacing the rear loses feel from the rear making it hard to tame when it lets go in damp or wet conditions.
Replacing them both would no doubt produce good lap times on a dry circuit but throw some rain into the mix and it spoils what is a very capable chassis.

Mocom Racing

iTrader: (2)

Just to add, my tests with the aforemention bars were carried out on the roads I drive everyday, Bedford Autodrome and the Nürburgring with both circuits resulting in slower lap times under wet conditions.

TaySTi

Thanks guys. My thinking was that uprating the rear bar one step from 20 to 22mm would offset the additional body roll introduced by the ‘softer’ Prodrive springs and the ‘softer’ sidewalls of the Michelin PS2’s which I also intend to fit once my RE070’s wear out. I appreciate that opinion on the RE070 is polarised, but I find these tyres too hard for our bumpy crumbling roads, and I’ve never experienced this kind of tramlining or twitching on white lines before – different if you’re on a relatively smooth track I guess.

Mocom Racing

iTrader: (2)

The tramlining you mention is more than likely caused by your current alignment settings and/or tyres, the rear ARB whether it be White or Blackline would have little effect.
Would you past experiences of Whiteline be based on the Newage chassis?

corradoboy

On my 03 WRX I prefered the stiffest setting, as I felt that the roll seemed to throw the weight enough to actually make it more tail happy. With everything locked in tight I couldn't break the RE070's loose except on wet/greasy roads. As it only takes 5 minutes to swap, have a play. I fiddled with mine for a few days before realising that the stiffest was best for me, and that I could maybe have gone 24mm.

Also worth noting that there are 5 available settings. As it works on rotational torsion there is no reason why you can't set one side to stiff and the other to middle, or one side to soft and the other middle, to get some halfway settings.

swifty.....!

iTrader: (4)

on my 05 sti i also have prodrive springs and both front and rear 22mm whitelines front on softest setting and rear on hardest both with solid drop links. For me i thought it improved the handling as i could take corners a lot faster but in the wet with bridgestone's it was very tail happy but once i swopped these for toyo's that didn't happen anymore.

also have front strut bar, front lower h-brace, rear strut bar and tsl geometery setup and i have found that for me none of the above have had any detrimental effects but increased the car feel for me.

911

Just illustrates we all have different tastes!

My car is currently on 22 in the front and 24 on middle hole in the rear.

I have a 24mm 2 hole front for the car, but not too sure about that (yet).

TaySTi

This is my first new age. Previously had M-Reg and S-Reg turbo’s. My geometry settings are allegedly the recommended Prodrive ones although the Subaru dealership couldn’t provide me with a report which I could cross-check against the Prodrive documentation. Looks like the answer to my original question is down to individual driver preference and where you do most of your driving. Suspect then that either leaving as is or the softest setting on the 22mm ARB would be best for me.

corradoboy

The guy who did my geometry trains the Williams F1 engineers about chassis design and suspension alignment, and when I presented the Prodrive figures to him he laughed and asked "which idiot did these ?" He applied the following settings to mine which were nothing short of sensational on fast a/b roads....

funkyspider

How long does it take to have a geometry setup and how much does it cost ?

I've just fitted gold STi 17's with Toyo Proxes 225/45 to my 2001 wrx and am experiencing slight tramlining.

Is the geometry setting specific to each car or do they usually apply a 'standard' setting ?
What do 'camber bolts' do and is it necessary to purchase replacements for a geometry setup ?

Ta

corradoboy

How long is a piece of string? A tyre-fitting place who simply follow the manufacturers guidelines will probably only adjust toe and finish the job in 20 minutes. The guy who did mine spent about 2 hours and needed to know my driving style, desired results, frequency of passenger carrying, and even my weight

Camber bolts allow for adjustment of camber to either allow for better tyre bite during aggressive cornering (excess negative) or offset any undesired effects from poorly executed suspension modification (extreme lowering).

silent running

Assuming yours is roughly the same as a classic, you'll already have camber bolts on the front. Where the damper is bolted to the hub with two bolts, one of them sits in an elongated hole. The 'camber bolt' is not round section like a normal bolt, but has a cam section in the middle of it where it goes through the strut. Therefore by turning the head of the bolt you can force the hub to slightly change its angle to the strut, thereby altering the camber of the wheel. Tighten up the camber bolt and you lock your camber setting in place.

As standard the front has camber bolts and the rear doesn't. Aftermarket camber bolts have a lot more adjustment than the standard Subaru ones, so if you buy camber bolts for the rear you may find that you end up with much more camber on the back than the front i.e. the fronts may end up maxed out at 1 degree negative and the rears are on their MINIMUM setting on 1 degree negative as well. I'm no suspension expert btw, this is just my experience of it.