Sway bars
 

I think sway bars will be a first good suspension mod for the wagon. Perrin looks good with the end links or not? Any thoughts?

Not to be rude, but unless you have a specific swaybar question along the lines of "I running a 22mm front, 24mm rear swaybar setup and I'm still seeing understeer on corner entry", chances are your questions about swaybars have already been answered in other threads. Try searching here, on NASIOC, and on I-club... you'll probably find thousands of threads, including the specific application of Perrin bars on wagons.

Now, to address your question, on an otherwise stock suspension, a stiffer rear bar will help to reduce understeer. Wagons already have a softer rear bar than sedans, so just picking up a sedan rear bar will help. I've probably got one just lying around my garage if you're interested... make me an offer.

However, an adjustable aftermarket bar would probably suit you better since you can soften it up in the winter when you want to avoid oversteer.

As far as end-links... links don't make a bar any stiffer, however, they reduce the lag time between the car's weight shifting and the swaybar taking effect. So links will make a rear bar seem more "crisp".

One final thing about going to a stiffer swaybar, you should also upgrade your mounts as well. Having a bar tear out a mount is no fun.

And the perrin rear bars come with new mounts included.

Your stock sway bars are designed to work with the stock suspension.
That doesn't mean that the stock bars are the optimal ones for you.

Remember, engineers aren't the only people that designed our cars. Lawyers, bean counters, etc have influenced the design as well. And usually for the worse, from a performance point of view.

Now here's my theory...although I'm sure someone came up with it before me:

You will notice a difference running different sized bars, as long as the rest of the suspension remains unchanged.

For example, if install a 20mm rear bar, but keep stock springs, you'll get X amount of oversteer.

Now, if you install a set of coilovers with higher rate springs, and keep the 20mm rear bar, you'll get X-y amount of oversteer.


This is due to the coilover spring rate > stock spring rate, and the spring rate of the sway bar is unchanged.

Sway Bar Calculation info.
Calculation for solid bars

I contend that if you select a swaybar for otherwise stock suspension, you'll need a different/larger bar if you change the spring rate of the suspension springs.

Thank you for your response to my question. :)

That's good info.

I need to find oversteer first before I start worrying about having too much...

Ok, going to go with the Perrin rear bar with three way adjustment. They are off for the holiday but I need to call them. I want to make sure I don't have to order something WAGON specific.

There *shouldn't* be anything wagon specific. I have a sedan (20mm) on my wagon (like what Sperry offered you) along with solid endlinks. The endlinks seemed to make as much of a difference as teh bar did. As it is, my wagon is as tail happy as I want it...although generally it feels very well balanced still erroring slightly on the side of understeer...unless of course I lift in turn 1...

Are the endlinks still plastic composite on the new WRX's?

Moving from composite to metal is probably why you feel such a difference cody. Whereas, the STi (and others) have metal endlinks and you really only need aftermarket ones when the car is lowered and a sway bar is added (or stock height and a very large RSB).

I didn't know any Subarus came with metal endlinks.

My Legacy definitely does(did). I think STi's from 05 onward also does (maybe the 04s also, I dunno).

I'm going to use the Perrin end links with the 22 mm bar and probably change the front swaybar also with end links. I have to rotate the tires next week and do a oil change. When I do the rotation, I'm going to drop the Light Stars on to see how they look and check for clearance with the Falkens (just to make sure, so I'm not suprized in spring)

Hmmm............hey Scott, you still have your stock 20mm rear bar? I'm running a 17mm right now....I'll send you an offer.

Sorry to hijack the thread. But which is better, Perrin or Whiteline swaybars?

I've heard Whiteline bars will rust prematurely, but that could be dated input.

The perrin has less options with regards to sizes, but mine hasn't shown any signs of rusting like my old cusco one did. The rsb from perrin also comes with new heavy duty mounts.

My Whiteline bar did pretty good for about 3 years and change, but I recently sanded it and repainted it since it was starting to see some surface rust where the paint chipped off. Now that I don't drive it in the winter (or at all it seems :() I figure it'll be a lot longer before I need to paint it again.

IMO, Whiteline is the best bang for the buck, plus they've got awesome customer support: I got one of the old front swaybars before the redesign to work with the '02+ front subframe. Whiteline sent me a new bar straight from Australia for free when I mentioned it to the pres. of Whiteline on NASIOC. :D

My swaybars arrived today :D

Nice. Watch out for that snap oversteer...

Oh snaps!

obligatory text

Let me know what you think of them. I'll probably do mine in a few months.

Well, I basically took all night putting on the rear sway bar. I used the Perrin solid sway bar mounts. The right side mount gave me the biggest problem. You use the old bolts and the rear one was to short. The rear bolt also holds down an attachment to a plastic box with all kinds of connections running from it. Don't have any idea what the box does. Anyway, I had to pass the bolt through the boxes mounting point, then through the new sway bar mount. The bolt just would not take on the frame side. After much contemplation, I cut off the lock washer on the bolt so it would reach a little deeper and maybe I could catch a couple of threads. It worked and I continued on. I also use the Perrin end links. The hole set up looks much diffrent from the stock and I think I completed the task correctly. No funny noises yet but I was driving home with all by tools in the back of the wagon so I couldn't rearly tell what was what. I had planned on installing the front sway bar also but the rear took everything out of me. I used the most rear hole of the three provided on the rear sway bar. We'll see how the thing feels after I have more confidence that I put it on correctly. I hate second guessing myself.

Wow man, that sounds a lot more complicated than it should be. It's been a while since I've done a swaybar and mounts, but it really shouldn't be more than an hour or two. And IIRC the hardest part is dealing w/ the fuel filler pipe.

Oh, BTW: that box is probably the charcoal canister that scrubs the emmissions.