legacycentral bbs

I have a weird thing happening with my 91 AWD LS Wagon. Whenever I have a good load, ie 2 adults in the back seat or a heavy load in the rear compartment, I hear a loud growling if I try and accelerate at all quickly from a stop. It is worse if I am turning and starting such as leaving a stop sign and turning a corner. The axle boots look fine and I just had the bearings done on the left rear. It never makes that noise if I have nobody or no load in the back. It sounds just like a very worn axle but the axles don't appear to be worn. Any ideas? Could this be a differential thing? TIA...Lorry

It sounds a lot like your tires are rubbing on the struts or fenders. Maybe your struts and/or springs are worn out?

I go with tires rubbing, also. You can get the fenders rolled if everything else is fine.

Steve

and you don't make noise when someone puts a heavy load in your rear compartment?

Hmm, I wonder about those struts... 3 years ago I had my local Subie dealer swap out the air suspension. I immediately noticed that my subie appeared to have a droopy back end. The new suspension did not hold the rear of the car as high as the original air suspension. I questioned the service dept. about it but they kind of just pooh pooh'd me. Also, the "new" suspension didn't seem to perform nearly as well as the air (when it was working). There seemed to be a lot of noise coming from the back end when travelling over rough roads. Do you think this would be the result of worn shocks? Or perhaps the springs? I have no way of knowing if the dealer used new or used parts. (It certainly cost enough, so I hope they used new parts ie $2500 Cdn).

The OEM struts are not very good. When I originaly got my car it had shot struts so I had the OEM ones put in. They were weak and lasted only about two years. Any time I had weight in the back it looked like I had the 'before' people from a Weight Watchers ad back there. When they failed, the rods actually snapped and beat the hell out of the strut mounts. I replaced them with GR-2s (which are gas charged struts) and the rear end no longer has the sagging problem and handles better to boot.

Steve

thanks for the info. If I order a pair of GR-2s, do I need anything else? Such as strut and shock mounts or will these shocks just swap right into the existing? (NOthing cheap about them! almost $150 cdn each)

cheaper than almost any other strut. Might be cheaper than oem as a matter of fact.

Anybody know a Canadian supplier for GR-2's??

www.p-s-t.com that's where i got my agx setup from. They were very quick and courteous, I ordered on a friday evening, and recieved my package the following wednesday. I'm not sure on the pricing of their gr-2's, but agx's were very well priced when i purchased from them