Members will inevitably upgrade their Impreza, whether it is the lights, suspension settings or back box on the exhaust. Here are a few reviews of such upgrades...including one downgrade!

Subject: [iwoc] The Joy of Downgrading
From: Adam Curtin
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 11:34:00 +0000

Hi folks.

The saddest thing about buying new bits for your scooby is that you quickly get used to them. That's one reason why I think it's essential to have access to a crap car - every now and then, drive the crap one for a while, then you realise how good the scooby is when you get back in.

To make our scooby more attractive to punters ( see separate message "The Misery of Selling") we put it back to standard. In an odd way it was a fun thing to do, as it made us appreciate how good the bits were when they were on.

The scoobysport backbox came off first. I'd never thought of it as particularly loud before, but it was noticeably easier to converse on motorways. Also the loud throb-throb-throb at high load / low revs used to make me think that the engine was labouring - with the standard exhaust it doesn't even notice. It definitely removed the character of the car. Also a friend said they used to know when it was time to put the kettle on for us when they heard us turn into the street, now we get right to the door before they know :-)

The LEDA suspension was next - without it the scooby is a completely different car. You just don't feel like you're in contact with the road, and bends have Amanda reaching for the travel sickness pills :-) ... On the plus side, the standard suspension doesn't make you cringe and swear every time we go over a crater in the road.

Then we swapped our STI front seats for the dreary old ones. That made a huge difference to the feel of the car too - the STI seats are a bit firmer and a bit lower.

The 17" wheels were last, replaced by Subaru's finest 15"ers. This really capped it off, the car now felt like a normal commuter. One good thing was the 15" balloon tyres are taller than kerbs, which the 205/45's definitely aren't - so you can be less careful about parking :-)

Oh, the _very_ last things to go were the Scoobysport driving lights. We tried not to use it at night once we were back to standard lighting :-)

After the car was back to standard, to be honest we were happy for it to go. A few times we've had non-turbo Imprezas as courtesy cars, and I couldn't see what attracted folk to these over other factory's offerings ... but once our scooby had it's good bits removed we were feeling much the same, it was just a shadow of its former self.

A.
--
I've had a bang on the head

Subject: [iwoc] Cibie's vs PIAA's - A Test...
From: Paul Gander
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 08:27:57 +0100

Last night myself (STI4 with PIAA's) and Andy Williams (STI5 with ScoobySport Cibie) conducted a comparison between these lights.

Range: The PIAA's have a much longer range and were lighting up branches in trees 1/4 mile away, whilst the Cibies were just about illuminating the trees.

Spread: Out on some twisty dark roads the Cibie's have a very well spread light pattern - better than the PIAA's whose beams are not so spread and you can see the 2 search light type beams with diffused light around them. Being more diffused the Cibie's matched the PIAA's (brighter) lights in being able to see around dark corners.

Conclusion: If you do mostly motorway/long straight dark roads then the PIAA's have it but for anything else the Cibies are better - take into account that the Cibies are about half the cost of the PIAA's and Cibie's are the best buy. Also the PIAA's have covers that are a bastard to get on/off and require adjusting the alignment each time you remove them. The clear Cibie covers are slightly larger than the PIAA lenses and do fit over - albeit too loosely to stay on without tape or something.

So ... a quick review of lights just in time for the long light summer evenings.

Paul.

Subject: [iwoc] Geometry (again!)
From: Bolton, Andrew
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 13:52:49 -0000

Belated Happy Holidays (I'm getting American on you :-)

Fairly long message. Sorry.

Over Christmas, I had the geometry on my Terzo set up to SIDC settings. I know a lot of people have said this before, and I didn't quite believe them, but it has made a very big difference to the handling. It used to be that coming out of a corner with the power down resulting in the front end skipping about quite a bit and the car understeering. This has now been cured completely (so far, anyway). It's also helped with braking, although not completely cured, it doesn't tend off to one side on odd road surfaces as much as it used to. Turn-in also seems sharper; this is harder to define, but it definitely feels better.

I'd thoroughly recommend it as a first mod - I'm annoyed now that its taken me 7 months to do it - my confidence in the car has improved greatly, although I'm taking it gently until I find the new limits safely (he says, pretending to be vaguely responsible :-) I'm also not particularly worried about increasing tyre wear. As you'll see from the figures below, before the adjustments, the wheels were pointing in every which way, so I may even reduce the wear on some tyres, and certainly should even it out properly. The starting Toe figures are particularly interesting, as the spec is supposed to be -4 to +4 minutes.

Specs requested were 8 minutes toe-in on all 4 wheels and 1 degree neg camber on front. They can't get it perfect cos they change a little as they retighten the bolts.

I know there are other possiblilites that people have used (the 'Gardner' settings...), but I thought I'd try the less extreme version first.

Figures in degrees and minutes. Apologies if the layout comes out bad:

 

	Before	After
Right Front Toe	-0 10(!)	0 08
Camber	-0 30	-1 08
Left Front Toe	-0 14(!)	0 07
Camber	-0 34	-1 02
Total Front Toe	-0 24(!)	0 15
Right Rear Toe	-0 01	0 06
Left Rear Toe	0 13(!)	0 06
Total rear Toe	0 12	0 13

[UK specific] I went to Nottingham Alignment Services, who are on the Nottingham ring road. I got them out of the yellow pages as advertising 'the best alignment equipment in Nottingham'. It was impressive kit. Things attached to each wheel and it was all computer analysed with real time displays as he adjusted each thing. It took about 1/2 hour from drive-in to drive-out, including removing the front wheels because the suspension bolts were too tight for the pneumatic bolt thing, requiring a long wrench. It cost a very respectable 35 quid, comprising 25 quid for basic check and toe adjustments, and a 'fiver per angle' ie two camber adjustments. [End UK specific]

I can't recommend this enough - for the price, its the best mod I've made. Impreza newbies - do it!

Andrew