,
 |
| The locks in place. They absolutely keep the crossmember from moving. |
 |
| A closer look at the lock. They thread into pre existing holes in the chassis and butt up against the larger hole in the crossmember keeping it from moving. |
 |
| On an STI, the differential carrier bushings are under a lot of stress. The differential carrier itself is an unusual design with a long torque arm that puts a lot of stress on the bushings. The bushings wear and the diff starts to clunk. Our diff had the clunk really bad, so bad it sounded like something was broken in the back of the car. The worn bushings can contribute to wheel hop which is hard on all of the driveline components. Whiteline makes two different bushings for the diff, some yellow Soft bushings and some black hard Motorsports parts. The yellow soft bushings work by filling the gaps in the stock rubber parts and by providing urethane limiter washers. This stops the clunk but allows for quite a bit of moment and vibration absorption. The soft parts are shown here first. They are designed to be installed without having to remove the carrier which is a pain. You get most of the benefits of a full bushing replacement with a fraction of the work. If you don’t want to do a lot of work, then these parts are for you. |
 |
| This is the stock rubber forward carrier bushing. |
 |
| The yellow urethane washers stop free up and down movement and the clunking noise. |
 |
| This smaller insert fills the gap in the rubber bushing and firms it up. |
2 comments
I have a 2004 STi. Can the hubs and steering rack be just direct replaced with an 05 sti?
I was looking into following your project fairly closely with my car but wanted to make sure I address any issues native to the 04 to make the path easier.
Are the engine management quirks mostly addressed once the car is tuned with something like a COBB accessport?
The hubs can be but the rack cannot. However, Whiteline makes rack bushings that work well for these cars. The Access port has been pretty dialed back but is fine for OTS tunes and for strictly following Cobbs Green Initiative upgrade paths. For maintaining smog legality this is really the best way to go. For more advanced stuff ECUtek is the way to go.