One of the downsides of a wagon compared to an Impreza sedan is that that big booty tends to be much more flexible. A rear strut brace should stiffen up some of that flexiness.
This install can be done in as little as 10 minutes, or it can take an hour or two if you’re finicky like me.
There are many copies of this Chinese-made Impreza strut bar on Ebay, and they’re all pretty damn cheap. I found one shipped to me for about $35 by searching for “Subaru brace”, sorting by price from low to high, and scrolling down until I found a rear brace to fit a 1993-2001 Impreza.
Impreza wagons have the rear shock towers covered with plastic caps that can be easily popped off with a screwdriver:
The ten-minute install involves removing the three nuts underneath, putting on the bracket, and reinstalling the nuts.
There are varying opinions on whether strut braces should be installed with the car jacked up or on the floor, but I installed mine with the car flat. With those quick-release lynch pins it will be removed at some point anyway, and I can’t say I’ll bother to jack the car up to install it again. I hand-tightened it as much as I could and snugged down the lock nuts on both sides.
The time-consuming part of this job is reinstalling those plastic caps that covered the shock towers. I decided to cut as little of the plastic as I needed to, which involved making tiny little cuts with my dremel, test-fitting, and cutting again. I made cuts about a quarter inch at a time, then marked my next quarter inch with a sharpie.
A reinforced cutting wheel worked well for cutting until the point that the cut needed to make a bend, at which point I changed the cutting wheel for a small grinding tip.
You can also see in the picture above the lynch pins from Princess Auto that I used instead of the nuts and bolts that came with the brace. This way it can be easily removed when I want to fold down the seats and use my wagon as a wagon. Some people have used quick-release bicycle fasteners for this, but lynch pins work just as well and are much cheaper.
Eventually, enough plastic was cut away that the plastic caps could sit back down where they are supposed to. The final cuts were cleaned up and straightened out with the dremel cut-off wheel then the edges were sanded down by hand to make the cut plastic look presentable.
The brackets on this brace are oddly shaped, and I can only assume that they need to be that way in order to fit on the Impreza sedan. They are probably more flexible than they need to be, and I’m toying with the idea of removing them and welding in some more support.
Once summer returns I hope to get an idea of how the brace will perform in “spirited” driving versus unbraced, but for now it’s hard to notice much of a difference.
Cost breakdown:
$35 - Ebay strut brace
$2 - lynch pins
==$37
This install can be done in as little as 10 minutes, or it can take an hour or two if you’re finicky like me.
There are many copies of this Chinese-made Impreza strut bar on Ebay, and they’re all pretty damn cheap. I found one shipped to me for about $35 by searching for “Subaru brace”, sorting by price from low to high, and scrolling down until I found a rear brace to fit a 1993-2001 Impreza.
Impreza wagons have the rear shock towers covered with plastic caps that can be easily popped off with a screwdriver:
The ten-minute install involves removing the three nuts underneath, putting on the bracket, and reinstalling the nuts.
There are varying opinions on whether strut braces should be installed with the car jacked up or on the floor, but I installed mine with the car flat. With those quick-release lynch pins it will be removed at some point anyway, and I can’t say I’ll bother to jack the car up to install it again. I hand-tightened it as much as I could and snugged down the lock nuts on both sides.
The time-consuming part of this job is reinstalling those plastic caps that covered the shock towers. I decided to cut as little of the plastic as I needed to, which involved making tiny little cuts with my dremel, test-fitting, and cutting again. I made cuts about a quarter inch at a time, then marked my next quarter inch with a sharpie.
A reinforced cutting wheel worked well for cutting until the point that the cut needed to make a bend, at which point I changed the cutting wheel for a small grinding tip.
You can also see in the picture above the lynch pins from Princess Auto that I used instead of the nuts and bolts that came with the brace. This way it can be easily removed when I want to fold down the seats and use my wagon as a wagon. Some people have used quick-release bicycle fasteners for this, but lynch pins work just as well and are much cheaper.
Eventually, enough plastic was cut away that the plastic caps could sit back down where they are supposed to. The final cuts were cleaned up and straightened out with the dremel cut-off wheel then the edges were sanded down by hand to make the cut plastic look presentable.
The brackets on this brace are oddly shaped, and I can only assume that they need to be that way in order to fit on the Impreza sedan. They are probably more flexible than they need to be, and I’m toying with the idea of removing them and welding in some more support.
Once summer returns I hope to get an idea of how the brace will perform in “spirited” driving versus unbraced, but for now it’s hard to notice much of a difference.
Cost breakdown:
$35 - Ebay strut brace
$2 - lynch pins
==$37
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