The WRX and STI are fun cars full of potential and easy to modify to add grip.

Once we figured out every detail, we put them into some model specific videos to help owners improve their cars.

We created this page to group all of the videos and blogs that we have on our site on this subject into one place, and you can find all of that information below.

If after looking through all of this information you would like to support the content that we make, you can send us a $5.00 bump which will go towards making new content.  

If you still have any questions after going through this information, you can reach out to us though Live Chat, or you can submit a question via email.

If you would like to schedule a special 1 on 1 consultation about your situation or issue, you can do that here as well. This is available on this page or as a separate part purchase. Once you sign up, we will send you an e-mail with some available dates and times so that we can get your consultation scheduled.

We will put points on your account afterwards equal to the cost of your consult that you can use towards any parts you will need!

When you start to look at improving your cars suspension, sway-bars are usually one of the first thing that pops up. And for good reason! But what exactly are they, and how do you pick one bar over another? Sway-Bars are actually an incredibly handy tool when it comes to dialing in your suspension, and they also have a minimal impact on ride quality, so they are both a great place to start, and a must have if you are building up a track car. We have put together this video to help answer the questions that we get about exactly what they do, and how to use them to tune your cars suspension.

When you get an alignment on your car, if you look at the printout once the work is done, there are three parameters that are measured up front: Camber, Caster, and toe. Camber and Toe are talked about a lot, and it is pretty well understood what they are and what they do. But what is Caster? And what does Caster do? Caster is a more difficult attribute to show and understand, and it seems like it is not talked about nearly as much as it should be. So we decided to put together this video to showcase Caster, and try to explain what it does and why it is important, especially if you are looking at changing your alignment settings, or modifying your suspension to get more grip up front. 

Topics in this video:

00:00 - Introduction to Caster and what it does
01:05 - What is Toe? And what is Camber?
01:40 - Why does caster only apply to the front wheels?
02:05 - What is Caster?
03:35 - What is the difference between static alignment and dynamic alignment?
04:03 - How does caster increase traction?
05:28 - How can you see caster working on a car?
07:07 - What effect does caster have on ride height?
08:26 - What other aspects of the alignment are changing with caster?
09:32 - Why wouldn't you just maximize caster?
09:56 - What does adding caster do to tire wear?
10:30 - How can you actually change or adjust caster?
11:44 - Conclusions about caster

For a long time now, Whiteline has been making something called a Roll Center Adjust kit that includes new Ball Joints, and new Tie-Rod Ends.

We have been running this part on our personal cars, and even our Pikes Peak car for a long time now, but what exactly is it? And why would you want to put it on?

Two of the key components of your Subaru's front suspension are the lower ball-joints, and your tie-rods. And if you have an older car like our 2003 WRX Project Car, there is a pretty reasonable chance that at least one of more of them need to be replaced.

So if you are going to have to replace them any way, it may be a good idea to keep the Whiteline Roll Center Adjust kit in mind.

If you have been closely following our Pikes Peak car or Yellow WRX Project car, you will have noticed that we are using a 25mm taller ball joint on both of those cars now.

When we first put them on, we wanted to get more experience with them before we did a full feature.

Now that we have done that, it is time to give you our Secret for more front end grip.

These Tomioka Racing 25mm Taller Ball Joints have made a huge difference for us, and there is a good chance that they will do the same for you.

If you are looking for ways to improve your cars handling, replacing your springs is a good place to start, but if you are wanting to make a big change, maybe you are looking at coilovers too. There are a lot of choices out there, and trying to decide what parts or combination of parts will get you the result you are looking for can be both confusing and frustrating. So for this Tech Tip, we take a look at the progression from springs all the way up to motorsports-grade coilovers, and go over the benefits/choices/compromises that you are making at each step so that you will be better able to pick the parts that are going to make your car handle the way that you want.

If you are looking for a coilover suspension for your car, most likely as you look at the different options, you will see two different designs that are available. One of those is a strut that has a fixed perch/mount that connects to your cars hub and knuckle, and the other has a threaded strut that gives you independent height adjustment. Here we install a set of Feal 441 Coilovers on our BMW 335i project Car, and we thought we should take a minute to go through what some of the key differences are between these Fixed Perch Coilovers, and the Independent Height Adjustable Coilovers to give you a better sense of what might be best for your application.

On the surface, it might seem that the Independent Height Adjustable Coilvers would be better for most applications, but there are some advantages to the fixed perch design too. And one of the main things that you may want to look at is the balance between compression travel and droop travel for your car.

Picking the new Coilovers for Jon’s WRX was certainly a big part of this project, and the new Cusco Zero Sport 3-R Coilovers are finally going on the car.

In the process of replacing the struts and springs, we had the chance to look at and re-think the whole suspension for this car. As many old bushings as possible were replaced, and with some of the new parts that are now available, we decided to make a lot of changes.

We wanted to optimize the camber and caster behavior for the front suspension by making some big changes to the front suspension geometry. And the new Cusco Zero Sport 3-R suspension let us make some much needed changes to the rear suspension as well. 

By the time we put everything on the car and got it ready to put back on the ground to do the final alignment, nearly every part in the suspension had been replaced or gone through.

If you are looking at adjustable coilover suspension, or if you have all ready installed it on your car, there is a good chance that one of the main reasons that you picked the suspension is so that you can adjust the setup to get your car to look and/or handle the way that you want. It would seem that setting ride height would be very straight forward, especially if you can adjust the lower spring perch and strut height independently. But it turns out that this can get fairly complicated quickly.

There are more things to consider than you might think in terms of setting ride height, and those adjustments can also effect other aspects of how the suspension moves.

We talked to RaceComp Engineering about how they develop a baseline for their suspension and coilover options, and that led into the difference between a less expensive coilover or cheap coilover compared to a more expensive one. What is the difference, and what are you getting with the more expensive suspension that you might not initially think of.

This clip is part of the conversation that we had with Drew and Larry from Racecomp Engineering on Episode 87 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast. We start out this part talking about how much of an influence the Driver has on the handling of a car, and how important it is to keep track of the changes you make. From there, we dive into compression valving, and when it can be useful to change, and when it is better to leave the compression valving alone. This is the second part of our conversation about how to adjust your suspension with Drew and Larry, and we hope that this is helpful.

It has been a couple of months since I put the Cusco Zero 3 R coilovers on my WRX. Even though I haven't made it to the track yet, I have now spent enough time driving the car that I have a good sense of what the car feels like now. Remember that back in the beginning, the decision process that I used to pick parts for the car this time around was to chose the parts that would work best on track, and make the car faster, with minimal consideration of what the car would be like to drive day to day.

So how has that worked out? Is the car still fun to drive on the street? Or is this moving quickly to becoming a track car only?

One of the last steps when you are installing coilovers on a car is to make final ride height adjustments. This would also be when you would consider corner balancing the car as well. Since we had the scales in the shop, we decided to put the BMW on them to see how much it weighed, and how the corner weights looked. Since we had gone that far, we decided it would be the perfect opportunity to make an introductory video about what corner balancing is, and when it may or may not make sense. In a nut shell, as you adjust the ride height of your car, or even the ride height of just one corner of the car up or down, you are going to have an effect on how the weight is distributed. For this video, we wanted to take a closer look at the relationship between ride height and weight distribution.

One of the main advantages of a coilover suspension is that you get a lot more adjustment so you can really dial in how your car handles. But when you put them on your car, all of that adjustability can be a bit overwhelming. Where do you start? What is the best way to adjust ride height? What should you measure or check to make sure your new suspension is installed correctly?

When we were putting the new suspension on our 2024 WRX, we decided to take a moment to put together a quick guide to coilover install to cover all these questions.

You all had a lot of good questions about Rally Suspension, and for Episode #154 of the Flatirons Syndicate podcast, we are going to answer them.

Subaru has a long history of competing in Rally with the Impreza, WRX, and STI. If you want to take your Subaru out to run a Rally-X event, Hill Climb, or Stage Rally on dirt, suspension is going to be a key component for success.

There are a lot of options out there, and we go through your questions in this episode to hopefully give you a better idea of what to look for as your are building up your Rally Car suspension, and some other key details as well.

Ever since we put the Cusco Zero 3-G suspension on our 2024 WRX, we have liked how the car handled rough terrain, but we have had a feeling that the front suspension was working a bit better than the rear.

This was mainly because we didn't have nearly as much droop travel in the rear compared to the front, and we suspected that the factory suspension components might be to blame. 

So we got in all of the adjustable rear suspension parts from the Cusco Catalog for our VB WRX to see if that would help both in terms of suspension movement as well as alignment settings. 

See what we found, and what our impressions are after fitting these parts.

We have to send a big thank you out to Justin at After-hours Autosports for getting everything dialed in with all this adjustment.