Background.

The current WRX, Impreza, Liberty/Legacy/Outback and Forrester are based on the same floor pan as released on the original Liberty in 1989. That's why many of the suspension parts are interchangeable. The original platform was not designed for performance, but rather for reliability, potential ground clearance, passive safety and above all else, ease of manufacture.

The front geometry was maintained with struts and a Y shaped lower arm which reflected the industries change to unrestricted crumple zones for better energy absorption in frontal collisions. The arm is located at the front by the pressed metal cross-member and by the floor pan at the rear. The last branch of the Y locates the bottom of the strut allowing the wheel to be controlled in a fore-aft direction while the arm pivots at the front and rear locating point, allowing vertical wheel travel through bump. The original geometry of this arm and its subsequent operation meant that the designers had provided (albeit unwittingly) anti-dive, better off-road "clamberability" and a lower centre of gravity at the front.

More importantly however, there was an issue of packaging, how to fit a larger engine lower with out also having to modify the floor pan and rear pickup point. One of the costs for this design compromise was front lift under acceleration. Being the original 2.2litre Liberty, gross acceleration and resulting front lift was hardly a major compromise at the time but then along came the RS followed by the WRX. These cars were/are performance bargains because Subaru changed what it considered as important/cheap, but left other items that they felt would not greatly detract from the overall performance.


Handling Issues.

The WRX is a poor handling car with great grip. In a pure sense it does NOT handle well, but is saved on the limit by its all wheel drive. It will not please WRX owners to know that the WRX is consistently knocked off at the race track (tarmac) by 200SX's and many others, but they lead on the dirt. Again, more grip than handling. The WRX really tested the original design because of its enormous acceleration. As any WRX owner will confirm , powering out of corners means nose up and loads of understeer as the weight shifts to the rear and the front tyres scrub for traction. Power launches will see the nose lift while 70% of the available torque tries to find a release through the front wheels. These are the very symptoms that has been succeeded in doing with the anti-lift kit.


How the Kit Works.

So, the anti-lift kit changes the location and geometry of the control arm pick-up point to remove the "lift" resulting from the original geometry. The new mount also relocates the arm in another plane to add 0.5 deg. static positive castor. The new mount also features a performance polyurethane bush which replaces the original high compliance rubber type.

Before	After

This serves to maintain a closer link between static and dynamic alignment settings through reduced compliance and distortion under load. The 0.5 deg. additional static positive castor coupled with the low compliance bush means over 1.0 deg. more positive dynamic castor.