Blinky the 97 SF forester

Been a little while since I've had to time (or extra $$) to do more work outfitting my forester. But theres some mods and extras in the near future so I've started my thread to keep track of it all.

heres blinky

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Rear wheel carrier is in the works atm, and repainting the roof in white plastidip. other than that I'm looking at making a rear storage system and strut lift.
 
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The 4 strut blocks are complete! just as i ran out of mig wire, paint tonight and in the car tomorrow.
 
Fantastic :monkeydance:

Don't forget to take a couple of before & after pics too :ebiggrin:

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
I'll dig up a photo from when i bought the car and compare wuth the lift kit, didnt take a before pic.

Got half the kit in, rest tomorrow morning, then trialling arm spacers and wheel alignment.

I've got to get the tire place to switch the rear tires from rim to rim as well. since the raised springs put out the camber the rears have been wearing un evenly, so i figure since it's only another $10 bucks I'll get the high spots put on the outside and get some more life out of the tires.
 
Thats what I did when I had the tyres swapped over to my Audi rims. I got them to reverse all 4 tyres. How are your front tyres wearing? They tend to wear more on the outside too due to body roll...
 
not too bad on the front, but now you mention it i might get all 4 swaped. The front is feathering on the edge from cornering, but other than that not wearing badly atm.

the rears have about a 4mm different
 
SO! The lift is finished in and a long story short. I don't like it, so it's coming out this week. First impressions were good but they've worn off :lol: . The extra lift doesn't really help it off road 90% of the time

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Clearance is awesome, yet in most situations doesn't make a difference. Before i put in 2" strut blocks I had Raised kings which only really sagged 5mm so i got a 30mm increase in height and the A/T's gave about 12mm @ 24psi (Tyres probably aren't a reliable measure). So as it was I only had clearance problems on really chewed up sections or steep ledges. Also 8mm offset with raised springs isn't enough to get the car back to neutral camber, and the rear blocks need some offset to adjust for the change in rack. Like taza's setup I'd need to put in 2 camber bolts in the rear to get it back into line, and another set in the front to get back to alignment.

The positive camber all around and increased rack in the rear makes the car handle really **** on road, it follows pot holes and the generally chewed up blacktop out here making it tiring to drive.

The extra clearance is nice to get the exhaust out of the way and give me more options in lines to pick, but the on road downsides where i spend most of the time driving aren't worth that. In the mean time I can get out the shovel and the saw and do some track building if i can't get through something or look for a way around.

So the lift is coming out and going on the bench for a rethink so i can find something that suits me. At the moment I'm waiting for a quote on having solid 1" rear spacers cut, and putting the standard springs in the front with the current blocks to improve the front suspension travel and have overall about a 50mm lift. It's pretty crap to drive as it is now.

Also ruined an inner cv cup out in the wombat (was already going but 4wding and lift killed it). So gotta change that now too

Finishing my 12v rear wiring today and giving the car a good polish sometime this week. L series low range is still on the books later this year when i do the clutch, snorkel is in the shed when i get to it. Will post some videos of the wombat trip later on when i get around to it as well. All that lift work to take it back out again is pretty annoying
 
Sorry to hear about the lift. I'm very happy with my setup. I find for my needs its perfect.
I did upgrade my rear swaybar to a WRX STI one and upgrade the endlinks to Whiteline ones. My body roll isn't that bad but it's certainly no race car.

I would find if I take my blocks out and went back to the height you had id be damaging the bumpers and sump a fairbit. Especially with the deep sand tracks and dunes we have over here.

If I were you I'd be upgrading to a more powerful engine rather than gaining another 15% lower ratio. I find the torque from my EJ25 out-weigh's and makes up for the 1.447.1 low range. I can get through pretty much anything I point my car at and crawl through. The torque allows me to crawl from 1000rpm onwards in 1st low and high without stalling.
 
15% lower would make a big differance descending.

I'll revisit the lift next I've some free time. I've screwed around with engine changes and tuning before, I'm not prepared to do that with my foz. Save that for the track car
ve been looking for.

And I'll have the box open anyway so it won't be much work.
 
Something I thought of, are you sure you got the camber offset right? So the bottom plate sits closer to the engine moving the top of the strut inwards?
 
100% sure that's right, just needed more. the extra height was good for dropping into those bog holes! talking to Dedman after we put in the tie rod, his had 10mm and looking didn't have any adjustment left really, all the extra weight on the front of his does help correct it too.
 
I understand your thoughts about the lift, harder springs are not that good for offroading and it doesn't help for diagonal spin because of the wheel travel altered.

A higher car needs more petrol, is CV unfriendly and is worse onroad handling.

A higher car just gives better angles and an easier access to the underbody….and a better view from the cabin !

My 3 cents anyway !
 
did you only have 8mm of offset on the blocks? While I haven't made any myself, I was pretty sure that it was 6-7mm per inch, so you should have had 14mm of offset. That may have been for an MY or L series though.

I have a Liberty lift kit in the shed so I'll go measure that to see what it has.

Ok. So the kit I have doesn't have anywhere near that offset. For 4" lift, it had 18mm on the front and 7mm on the rear. I'm guessing that there wasn't enough room to go bigger at least on the rear.
 
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Yea there's no room for offset on the rear on the SF imo. There's 2mm between the strut and inside of the tower as it is.

The lift would work for me if


  • 1" less
  • grab some hd sway bars
  • correct the link lengths
  • Camber correction in the rear. but i don't want to run a set in both strut bolts.
I'll keep and eye out for this stuff and re visit it.
 
I have GD Impreza rear lateral arms in my SF as they are 10mm longer per side. This should help. I think jf1sf5 is running SG rear links and they are 15mm longer, so better again.
 
Running longer lateral arms will help but you shouldnt need 2 camber bolts. I only have one & that gives heaps of adjustment.

I might have to take my strut top blocks out to measure them, prob should have done it before I put them in lol
 
Don't you have body blocks in as well?
 
So Easter Saturday, we went out to have a look around Mt Ida near Heathcote. Drove up to the lookout then followed Mt Ida track down to a really steep spur track that connects Mt Ida tk to Rodney tk. We then followed Dargile tk and had a look at the camp ground.



All besides Mt Ida tk and the little connecting spur everything was rather easy and flat (the little spur was a n elevation drop of 100m in almost 1km). the steep spur Blinky stalled out because i couldn't get him to go slow enough in low first with a fair bit of braking. A real low range would be nice but we can't have everything :lol:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgYrMeO33c

Lift kit is back on the bench and being modified, 25mm front blocks and 30mm rear blocks 50mm trailing arm spacers will stay as they are. I'll get some camber bolts for the rear and hopefully all will be well. I'll also have all the rear 12volt finished tomorrow and show have some photos. Hopefully will have some more work done over the next couple of months, planning on a long solo trip at the end of the year.
 
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Nice spot, Id.

Your comments on the high lift kit are interesting.

I may contemplate a 1" lift later in the year. See how Roo2 + trailer perform on the trip to Brissy and back via Narrabri and western NSW.

Where are you planning to go later in the year?

BTW, I agree about the importance of low down torque. It's something I really appreciate about the engine in Roo2. Being able to go over 80 Km/h in 2nd/LR means that I don't ever have that rotten feeling of running out of revs, and having to lose momentum, grip and speed changing up to 3rd/LR. This is so important when towing a trailer.
 
Haaha, I should clarify ratbag, i was going down , that track not up. Without a decent lowrange gear i was pretty heavy on the brakes and on the loose heavily rocky track the last thing i wanted to do was lock a wheel up. I should of taken a photo when we were at the bottom to get a better feeling of just how steep it was, videos never really show it from the top. But there wasn't much chance of getting back up there. The SF isn't too bad for torque if, with just the recovery gear and a couple passengers, i mean it's not great but can manage most of the time. Loaded to the roof for a trip it gets a little crap to say the least.

Me and the better half haven't figured out where to go, but its a toss up between tassy, more of the high country, or northern nsw and fraser island.

We used to winch with the hi lift on granddads farm all the time in winter, it was easier then getting the tractor. Get about 15m of pull before having to reset, and by that stage what ever needed moving was usually out. Well untill the slightly newer tractor came, it was a great improvement on the old one it liked starting half the time.
 
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