redsport

My 2002 WRX is a daily driver so I need to be able to live with the ride. But like most on the board, I couldn't stand the terminal understeer scrubbing the heck out of my front tires and not being able to rotate the car. I installed the Hotchkiss front and adjustable rear bars about 8 months ago and set the rear bar in the middle hole. It was like night and day. The car became neutral and suddenly it loved to rotate. It's impressive how communicative this chassis is when set up a little more aggressively. It's easy to feel what's going on at the rear, when it's biting and when it's letting go. The front sway bar helped ALOT in steering response. The car went from a fairly noticeable heave with big steering inputs and then yaw, to much more immediate yaw. I was very happy with the results, but wanted to compliment the sways with some springs and struts that would accentuate the steering response and add a little braking and acceleration body control.

I chose the Swift springs because they minimally lower the car but offer an increase in spring rate. The spring rates and height reduction are pretty close to the discontinues Whiteline springs and after reading technical articles, it's clear that they know what they're doing. The Hotchkiss sways are close the the Whiteline sways in rate too, so I think I was fairly successful at mimicking the Whiteline solution at a lower price. The GR-2s are just nice struts that happen to be one of the only sets made for the GD Wagon.

I got exactly what I was looking for. The car's ride is a little more stiff, but absolutely not objectionable. Quite acceptable for a sporty daily driver. The better part is that steering response is further improved. There's a little body motion in response to a steering input, but it's very well controlled and feels great. Dive is noticeably reduced. Squat is really well controlled, but it really didn't squat with the stock suspension. It is lower. My floor jack is now a tight fit to get by the front tray on the way to the chassis brace, but it's far from slammed.

The strut/spring install took about 6 hours with a trip to the tire shop for a missing strut top nut (if you have a Les Schwab Tire store in your area, they're great guys!) and two trips to Sears to replace a cracked 19mm socket, a 1/2 to 3/8 socket adapter, and a 3/8 wrench, stupid 19mm rear strut bolts, and lunch.

Overall, I'm really happy with the new suspension combination so I thought I'd share.

Before:


After:

damianwrb07

iTrader: (3)

Swifts are absolutely awesome springs! Very comfy, nice drop and shocking performance. My favorite by far!!

redsport

Settled stance. The front and rear, mostly even gap.

dresk

iTrader: (2)

It looks good. I have a stock bug-eye wrx and I was trying to see if i wanted to go with the swift or RCE wagon springs. It looks like the swifts have a good stance with the GR-2's. Thanks for posting.

redsport

Maperformance.com has the sway bar set for $390 and springs were $255. Struts were $315 from discountautoshocks.com.

Urban_Grey_2.5

iTrader: (5)

I have swifts and GR-2's also and I love the setup!! It can handle nasty roads but still stays tight in the corners, best daily driver setup ever!!