We aligned the car to mild street performance specs that take tire life into consideration. We set the front camber at 2 degrees negative with zero toe, the rear was at 1.5 degrees negative camber with zero toe. We set the ride height to about 1.5″ lower than stock with an even wheel well gap. We set the shocks starting with KW’s street baseline, going up two clicks in rebound all around and one click in compression in the front. This gave a firm but comfortable ride with very little body roll.
For the chassis part of our build, we think we did a pretty successful job. The brakes have a nice initial bite and are smooth with no squeaking or any annoying traits at all. They are plenty good for spirited road driving and can handle mild track driving. The suspension is pretty amazing, the car handles crisply, the ride is no worse and in some types of bumps, better than the stock STI which doesn’t exactly ride smoothly, to begin with. There are no noises, squeaks, or sharp edge bump harshness nor are there any additional noises transferred into the driver’s compartment. These are all typical detrimental side effects of extreme suspension driven on the street.
Body roll is nearly eliminated and the turn is very much improved with a great reduction in understeer. The car still has gentil understeer at the limit which is appropriate for a daily driver street car. The car is much better in handling than stock with no negative compromises in daily driveability. In our opinion, all this car needs is some wheels and bigger stickier tires. In that case, the suspension has plenty of adjustment headspace to handle the additional grip.
In our sometimes world of high-end edgy suspension build, this car is a breath of fresh air. Definitely very fun to drive and still pleasant to just drive around in, the best of both worlds. Now it’s on to the engine which we are going to keep fully smog legal, even in eco nazi California with some Green Tuning help from Cobb Tuning.
Souces
KW Suspension
Whiteline
2 comments
Why not go with the Whiteline Front Roll Center/Bump Steer – Correction Kit too since you are already there?
One of the things is the kit reduces negative camber so, with limited camber adjustment, we chose not to run it. It is a good choice of parts to run in such an application through.