BG5 struts.

[mintcat]

Still building my BC. Recently installed new suspension.
Front swingarms - from GDB (ver.7 sti) - front track ~25 mm wider.
Rear arms - from Forester SG5 - rear track ~20 mm wider.
Struts front and rear - yellow inverted Bilstein B6 from BG5 Legacy 2nd Gen. Front struts fit completely, but rear struts were reassembled with old BC2 (FWD) rear strut mounts, springs (though they looked identical to me with bg5 rear springs) and top spring seats.
When I put my car down to the ground I saw that something's gone wrong.




Asked local subie owners - they said me to replace rear strut mounts with ones from first gen Impreza sedan (gc). Does It worth doing? Will it fix that clearance problem?
I can buy complete ver.3 sti spring set for front and rear but I'm not sure if it fixes that problem.

[mintcat]

PS: I also have an experience in converting JDM Impreza GG2 to GG9, replacing engine from EJ152 SOHC to EJ204 DOHC, rebuilding car from FWD to AWD, but in that case I was using red inverted KYB struts taken from ver.7 STI. I also used FWD rear springs, and they gave a liitle sag on the rear. Combined with front sti springs it was a great daily setup.
The same result was expected here with my Legacy, but something wrong.

[mike-tracy]

Ha ha, I had the same problem! Car looks like a old school muscle car.

I also have bg/bd bilsteins. What I did was put 2004 GDB factory sti springs in. Rear height was great, but fronts were too high. And the ride was really bouncy. So I found some GDA (aka bugeye) front lowering springs thats spring rate were 10% less than than those 04 Sti springs. The ride height looks good imo. You can check my struggles and results in the "Build Thread" section under "Mike's 92SS"

[mike-tracy]

What was your intention with mixing and matching all the suspension parts, changing widths and etc?

[mintcat]

Oh, I'm just trying to set a suspension for my drivestyle, so that setup would be cheap in overhaul and maintenance. Build it preferrably with OE parts or parts that come with stock or japan-tuned subies, because in Russia, especially in Siberia, where I live now - here are a lot of private sellers, that order used cars from Japan auctions and deliver them here disassembled for sale by parts. So here's big choice of parts and they are not so expensive.

I like stock suspension setup on JDM GDB impreza, BD5/BG5 and especially BE5/BH5 Legacy twin-turbo (though they have multi-link rear suspension)- have been driving friends cars a few times, so I take it as a template for my own suspension settings. I use inverted struts because of their high rigidity and long time-between-overhaul (cartridges, bushings replace, etc.). That's why I don't want to use coilovers (Tein, HKS, JIC, etc.) for my daily car because of their sudden deaths in cold siberian winter rides:) I like GDB STI sedan ver.6-7 handling compared to GGB STI-wagon (only in bug-eye facelift) - completely different handling - just because of a little wider track, so I'm gonna use it here in my BC.

[mike-tracy]

Well, try throwing GD sti springs on the rear with preface-lift rear top hat assemblies. That worked perfect for me.

[mintcat]

Thank you for advice.
Can you explain what is the difference between prefacelift and later BC's rear top hats? Do I need to replace just hats or hats + strut mounts?

[ScaryfatkidGT]

BG5 suspension lifted you that much?

[mintcat]

No, no, it didn't. Struts fit very well. Such lift appeared because of FWD rear struts mounts I've installed while I've been searching for proper GC/GF/BC/BF AWD mounts (FWD and AWD rear strut mounts differ - FWD mounts have tilt which makes rear strut stand vertically because of suspension setup in FWD, unlike rear strut in AWD suspension). So rear struts wasn't working correctly.
Recently I put AWD rear stut mounts with rear and front HKS JDM sport lowering springs from GDB (ver.7 STI) - everything is now OK.