and oh man... I'm soooo tempted to keep this thing! I hadn't had the chance to drive one yet and now I know what you Forester people are talking about!

So, it's white and totally stock. It has heated seats and it's an 4EAT which is really quite nice... if I keep it it'll be a commuter/road trip car.

So, suspension... I have a 2004 STi Rear sway Bar sitting here and have read that WRX suspension will bolt right in... Suggestions? If I keep it I'll need to make it handle better...

 

drop the thing a bit, they look so cool with a bit of a drop. How do you like the sunroof?? it's the size of half the roof. I want a forester so bad now, wish I would've thought about it b4 the rex

 

funny, it's got the cold weather package but no sunroof... which is ok... I like them but mine always seemed to be closed...

 

Start by ditching the stock Geolander tires and get some decent rubber on there asap. The stockers are considered "factory rim protectors", and that's about the only thing they're good for.

The STi rear sway bar will bolt straight on and will eliminate much of the body roll, but I'd recommend some beefier endlinks to go with it. The WRX suspension will work, but IIRC will yield "saggy butt syndrome" unless it's from a WRX wagon.

BTW, all FXT's come with the cold weather package, regardless whether they have the premium package or not.

Oh, and get thee over here: www.subaruforester.org

 

on it! I've got some P7's here with AVS ES100's...

also, my tonneau cover is missing...

 

They always turn up on ebay real cheap:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/SUBAR...spagenameZWDVW

 

it turns out that I don't have Geolander tires... I've got some kind of Firestones on there...

 

Congrats on the new car . I don't have a XT, but I still love my Forester. As pleiad said, the 20mm rear sway really helps out in curbing body roll. However, as she stated, upgraded endlinks are the way to go. Myself, I had been running stock endlinks for quite sometime until a strange bump in the road snapped my swaybar mount, and bent my endlink in half. This started a epic saga of trying to get the endlink bolts off (they get rusted on there) that involved the use of a sawzall, dremmel, drill, drill press, nut splitter, hack saw, grinder, impact wrench, file, many different open end wrenches, many different sockets, and 3 people lots of time to get it done. Moral of the story? Buy good endlinks right off the bat so you don't have to deal with the problems I did .
Cheers
-Jeff

 

thanks! would the '04 STi end links be ok? they came with the sway bar...

 

STi endlinks = FXT endlinks. They're identical. They will turn into elbow macaroni sooner or later when you upgrade the RSB on the XT. I went from PolTec (clunk clunk bang clunk) to Perrin (temporary solution) to Kartboy (front and rears, supposed to be installed sometime this week).

Also make sure you use the STi sway bar mounts when you upgrade the bar (or comparable aftermarket mounts like Whiteline) because the FXT stock mounts are taller and skinnier and have been know to crack with a beefier RSB installed.

 

got it!

 

How much did you pay for your Forester XT?