legacycentral bbs

So from what i have been reading is that you can swap out your stock springs from a 91 turbo legacy up to 04 Sti springs with a few things needed like spring perches,both upper and lower plus top hats ext. I have been wondering I've read that the car drops about a inch all around. My confusion is people talk about the front sitting higher then the rear and I have read on one post that the fix to this is swapping over to 92-94 front struts I have the springs and new hardware on hand and I was just wondering if anyone can confirm this for me before I go and order up new struts. I know that this might be mentioned some were in another topic so links would be awesome and much appreciated.

04 sti springs will lower the cat about an inch and the front will sit at least half inch higher than the rear. I did it with complete strut/spring swap from 04 sti and I hated it. You need 92-94 rear top hats to get it to fit but I woukdnt do it. Get h&r springs and kyb struts instead pr cpilovers.

I keep hearing about different ride heights, there seems to be a lot of variation there and I'm not really sure why...I ran 04 strut/spring in the front, and 06 strut/spring with 91 tophats in the rear, and the car sat about 1/4" higher than stock and was totally even all around.

There's lots of variation because different models and years had the spring perches welded on the struts at different places. Plus there are a variety of different rear strut tops that have different stack heights and people are mixing and matching struts and springs. I was fine with the ride height I got out of stock 04 sti stuff all the way around but it was a touch lower in the rear. That was struts, springs, and tops though. The 04 springs wouldn't work with my 93 rear tops and perches so I had to do a bit of cutting and drilling.

Anyway, to use 04-07 impreza springs on a 90-91 legacy, all you need are the upper perches in the front. The lower perches are part of the strut and the rear uppers are part of the top hat. I have no idea what will happen to ride height but there are some old threads around about it where people have done it and posted pictures.

To answer your question regarding the 92-94 front struts. At least for KYB, the perches sit higher and would cause the front end to be jacked up more than your 91 struts.

http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17352


When I did my AWD & 5psd conversion I put 92-94 KYB AGX's on my 90. It raised the front about a 1/4". The rear also was raised about 1/4", but I would exclude that from your comparison because I went from FWD to AWD and the rear strut setup is different. Here's a little more detail about the suspension change.

http://www.surrealmirage.com/subaru/swa ... suspension

Dang thats crazy that it give you a 1/4 hight gain but I'm sure that the front and rear struts are way different then the awd struts whats makes me thing could i do 91 awd rear struts for the rear and then do a fwd strut for the front idk if there is a major difference between fwd and awd struts or are they the same for the front and the rear is the only difference

Ahh, I wondered why you had to swap to earlier top hats in a 92-94

OP what do you mean with the FWD? Looks like you have a 91 ss so I'm not sure why that's relevant...As far as the ride height, it's possible that my springs were worn out, which would explain it lifting a bit, but it was still a nice even stock looking height all around. Also if you're just swapping springs and not struts from an STi you may get a different height. I'd post a pic of mine with STi but since I had struts too it wouldn't really apply here.

It's real easy to swap the suspension though, I'd just try it with what you got if it were me...

No he's got a 90 NA FWD with AWD swap and EJ22T swap I think.

Well i was going to get new struts since mine have 127k on them and worn out I was going to upgrade to Kyb gr2's since it sounds like a normal upgrade for both 1st and 2nd gen Legacys. I was wondering for the front is there a difference between the FWD Front strut vs AWD Front struts as in dampening lower or higher perch hight's ext From what i understand is that the rear's are different for sure. I know that the springs i have are very low miles maybe 30k on them so i know that they should be good to go. I guess i will have to see what happens

There really is no difference between the front struts on the FWD & AWD cars. The factory manual shows some slight difference in damping, but if you get new KYB struts, it's the same part # between the AWD & FWD models for the fronts struts.

Sweet thanks for the conformation Josh. I guess i will just order up the struts for the car as if i were to upgrade