Gripless

That 4mm is one way so on rebound the engine can move the same so about 8mm travel in total. The way the bush is designed the insert kits wouldn't do much as the solid rubber section where it moves is very soft.

@newsuba no haven't seen Chris in years. But I did notice it was getting hard to find the speakers locally. At a guess an importer was making it hard for stores to stock brands they didn't sell. Started with a couple of different pairs of 302's that I got super cheap. Chris helped sort getting one of the X overs fixed and recover the grills. Still have studio reference (large bookshelf) Avs 10" peerless powered sub 414 (not sure) the ones with the 10" side woofers and single 16cm mid Avc 2.5 center, dual 16cm woofers just have reference ones on my desk currently.

Without the turbo quietening the exhaust it's likely to just sound raspy and loud.

Pulled sti rod today. It's glass fibre reinforced plastic so actually pretty strong. The little end hardly moves forward and backwards. It does pivot to allow the engine to rotate. The large end is soft rubber and moves about 4mm under about 75kg.

Pulled pricy stop rod out. cleaned oil residue from intake so need catch can.

is drain back fast enough? I'm pretty keen to build one but it was more for daily use not track. sump swap can't be the longest job.

Why not buy the baffled sump? Hampton is the same, seen many dead wrx's there on track days. You also get more oil in the intake running too much oil.

@newsuba Yes morel make awesome speakers, I listen to them every day just not in the car. http://imageloudspeakers.nz/series-image/ PPI flat subs where made with the same tech as aircraft landing gear any military driven country makes good spin off tech. Pretty sure Sky decoders used the retired Israel encryption in the first generation, which is why is was so long before it got cracked. @Berg dddrive have been around about 20 years so they do appear at low prices. if I knew I was going to add the sub I would have gotten the alpine speakers. Even the base model is hard to beat if you have a sub. Thought I'd be sub less for a lot longer so got the infinity/Jbl/Harmon ones as they have far more bottom end.

If you want something nice get alpine dddrive. Sound better than almost anything else. You have to cut them above 63Hz for best results, but that's the same with most speakers. Now only about $400 a pair but when released $1400. Ultra light cones and extremely lightweight magnets as push pull setup. the rears just use the dddrive mids and xover without the tweeter, keeps the sound stage forward and helps with road noise that covers mid bass. Or they make tweeter in cone rears as well. It's worth the rear mids as road noise does really kills the mid bass and unless you over drive the fronts with eq which is never as good. Also helps with the fact you have a 12" sub as its creates a bigger gap for the mids to fill in. get the foam bass rings or make your own which is cheaper than the $39 to seal the speaker to the inner door skin. with good processor most speakers are correctable, though silk tweeters are far sweeter to start with. pioneer you need the cheaper ones or those old yellow cone ones to have nice clean sound. rockford punch are pretty bad these days. kicker and clarion make some nice models at reasonable prices. Someone has the JVC wooden cones for $799 new currently on trademe. Come in full fancy case and rrp was 4K what music do you listen too?

@Andy_Mac +1 for grey, never had an issue with it. the genuine 3bond white stuff is better but cost more last time I checked. Genuine stuff seems to have more rubbery stretch to it before it breaks.

Yeah I find the way you cut the fronts and the phase make a big difference. Phase out and sounds clear but lacks the mid bass. im going to try the fronts cut higher and the sub lower. So it seems like a gap but since the roll off is shallow they add up. that or cut using the EQ with a high Q at 80Hz. i have just exhaust noise, but hope that will be fixed soon. Have you bolted the sub down fully. Any box movement and the bass dies fast. i have a feeling mine will tear out the screws pretty fast it shakes the seat pretty well

Finished sub wiring. goes pretty well for size, shakes the front seat even mounted behind the back seats. Forgot the joys of hunting rattles all over the place. Can't fully tune the thing until the rattles are gone which take ages as some are behind trim panels. so far it fills in the bottom end seamlessly. Has some serious punch and sounds clean when given good recordings. Gets a little muddy on compressed or highly processed audio though this may tune out. biggest issue is the poor controls on the sub, seems like they cheaped out and them. the rest seems pretty good.

@boostin thanks. Since they are only $65 from kW not in the hundreds like they have been, possible acceleration gains sounds like it may be worth the experiment. even the hydraulic engine dampers are that sort of price, so no NVH and rotate so no twisting.

Removed inner front arch and managed to get power cable through. Replaced all the missing clips. factory wiring grommet and the water spray grommet both to tight to use. Wasted a lot of time as the tape was old and bonded to the rubber grommet to figure this out. found a small oval one right down low but getting it trough the next layer involved threading a tiny cable the other way through the round door loom mount. so much wiring in there as there is a few recesses filled with plugs to keep them out of the footwell. Ran sealer inside grommet so it won't leak and hung cable in U so any water drains downwards and never in to the car. part way through making the split tube and wiring looms. No idea why I make it so tidy and pretty just to cover it all up. But removal will be super easy.

@boostin So is the upgrade worth it and what improvements would you notice?

But in other fwd cars the motor pitches (forward, backwards) due to the crank being in line with the front drive shafts. Even stationary revs in neutral will pitch the engine. The Subaru crank is 90 degrees out from the front driveshafts so the main force is roll. But again the mounts are in place to stop that. Though isn't that the AWD vs 4WD having a seperate transfer case box that can split 0/100 to 100/0 or disengage half the drive train. @SpeedySub it could be to keep the driveshaft in line as you said but maybe limits factory mount movement. Now you've said that it maybe a secondary damper or movement limiter to the engine mounts. Explains why it's not overly strong as it's just taking part of the load at the extremes.

Puny @Joker good thing for you they don't stop roll. ROFLMAO

@THUNDA thought you could test the torque split not the rod. Well don't count autos, they are barely cars don't even have DCCD in the sti. yeah thinking the same thing $65 and I will most likely pull the cooler this week dealing with the power cabling. nzkw website is so S*** animated squares on loading pages, too much pretty and poor functionality. Good thing they use trademe or you'd be F***ed finding things.

@thewabbit1 yes one behind the intercooler but the firewall has heavy foam, heat molded plastic and rubber that will need cutting. That will require intercooler out to get a knife in there. This is the first late 2000's car I've ever had to run bigger power cable. @JGM yeah looks like there must be one. Rear washer pipe goes through there somewhere as it appears from under the sound deadening and joins the fuel lines. Found out jack that is in the car is busted so couldn't take the wheel off.

looked at trying to run power cable for amp. Holy F*** the amount of sound deadening which is hard and molded into shape and cramped space behind the dash. guess tomorrow I'll either take the intercooler off and cut the sound deadening away or take a wheel and inner guard off.

Pretty sure early to mid 90's Mitsubishi had the FWD bias higher than anyone else and it was only about 60/40. @THUNDA Guess you're going to have to do a lot of testing or drive in reverse. DCCD are 50/50 to 35/65 and everything inbetween so still rear bias.

Look it must do something or it wouldn't be there. If you have a front mount then chances are you'd get and aftermarket one to look pretty. But from what I can find the aftermarket ones just cause more issues with rotational loading on the upper mount, and a heap of noise. Plus the risk of fatigued alloy in the gearbox and not allowing the engine to move correctly in a crash. They offer a group N part which has been homologated which shows the factory and sti ones could be stronger if you can tolerate the NVH (guess as sales blurb says harder rubber). This also suggested it does get some load even with the matching group N engine and gearbox mounts. The design is for loading almost directly inline with the rod, which may indeed be the front driveshaft like @boostin and @gotasuby said. Old one below had bolts directly inline with the center of the rod so must have been directly loaded. Group N part not like the eBay version which is just an STI one. D1040FE000 ~USD$55 STI old one in picture, but the current one is just a bit more squared off at the edges and same length from 2002 upwards. I'm tempted to get the group N one and see what it does. Not like I won't feel the difference if there is one, as I have every mount and bush replaced so NVH is life.

Just sounds like the Internet is basing this on the marketing blurb for aftermarket braces. You guys maybe be correct, I just can't yet see how the replacement does more good than harm. The fact we have four wheel drive makes lift seem suspicious. On a front wheel drive that could be the case. But since the rear wheels are also pushing the car forward the amount of lift is minimized to the drivetrain and grip difference. Ok so the driveshaft and diff hangers are pretty floppy so there is slower response in power to the rear wheels. Sounds like it is almost based on the suspension squatting at the rear due to wheel rotation. Then there is that the wheels are directly attached to the suspension which will take that load more or less based on the castor and the springs extension would take less to move than lifting the engine from the car. Which is why cars squat on launch. I see Perrin updated the rod at some point due to causing firewall damage. Starting to show up after a few years installed that the spot welds are coming loose (I guess from the engine rotation).

Who knew they make drill bits with hex ends rated for impact wrenches... Impact drill bit Pulled all the false floor and panels attached to the seats to remove the material off the back of the smaller section of the rear seat. Found a section where the corrugations on the back of the seat lined up with the sub mounts and drilled and screwed it in. I had to mount it sideways to leave a gap at the bottom so the floor and lift up enough to be removed to get at the spare etc. Any higher and it would hit the retractable sheet that covers the hatch. So little room in engine bay to mount the circuit breaker. Fuse box and fuel lines take up almost all the good space. Can't use strut tower as bonnet gas support strut folds down there. time to break out the latest little toy to make a custom bracket to hold it next to the main engine loom. Not sure if there is still a rule about having a fuse within 30cm of the battery but it'll be close Hand Nibbler

I can't work out how it gets loaded up unless the engine and gearbox mounts are stuffed. the flex in the rubber mounting points or that rod mean that another mount has to flex a long way before it gets any load. id love to see Subarus official data on how it works and what the F*** it's really for. tempted to remove it and place something there to measure the load or deflection. I don't get wheel hop on launch, just 4 spinning wheels. After seeing a couple of cars with light impact damage I'd guess it'd do a lot more damage if the rod was solid.