Subaru WRX Forum banner

handling on the WRX

3K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  Nose Nuggets 
#1 ·
i'm still relatively new my WRX and i came from a civic w/ springs, struts, and strutbar.
my question is about how a WRX handles, because it still feels really different to me. i always hear how WRX handle well but i still don't feel confident with it and don't want to push my luck on public roads. maybe it's the bodyroll.

what are the handling characteristics of this car? does the rear differential do anything besides powering the rear wheels? is there some kind of LSD?

if i'm exiting a turn and the gas is floored are my tires going to break lose? i'm also new to handling a car with 230hp and turbo lag. i'm just trying to figure out why i felt safer in my civic than this car
 
#2 ·
:) Wrx have understeer, if you are having understeer in the middle of the turn and suddently release the throttle it will have a bite of oversteer sometime. It have some tourqe steering too. when you exit the corner the tires may break loose sometime, Usually it happen in the 2nd gear. when the tires are break lossing, the car will slide to the outside a bite.And because it only have a rear lsd. when you exiting the corner the front is more like pushing to the outside, if turn more on the steerwheel when it happen, the rpm will drop. So I think when you throttle in the corner dont push all the way down, give some gas and make sure the car is griping the road frist.
 
#3 ·
The WRX is know for massive understeer, but that can easily be fixed by a larger rear sway bar that will give the car more of a neutral feeling. As far as the tires breaking loose, if there is no debris on the road, you should not have to worry about anything. I have an uppipe and catless TBE and I've never had my tires break loose during a corner when it is dry out. Another weak point of the WRX is the stock tires, they are overpriced and don't have very good traction, that would be another good upgrade to do. As far as body roll, in my eyes the WRX has very little, it is a very rigid chassis IMO. You could also get lowering springs and struts to lower the center of gravity and make things a little stiffer. After that would could get strut bars which will stiffen up the chassis a little bit more. THen you could always get lower arm bars to father stiffen things up. You might also want to look into an Anti-lift kit, I've heard that it is a good mod to do, but have never had expeirence with it. If you do all of that stuff and do it right your car should handle like it is on rails.
 
#4 ·
I felt the same way about my Civic when I went to the WRX it felt like it had alot of body roll, my civic had alot of suspension work done to it and felt very solid with no body roll. So when I got the WRX it had alot of body roll for my taste and I was also unsure of the handling. I would sugest getting the rear sway bar for now with end links see how you like and then get the front if you want more, those 2 together make a huge difference and you should feel right at home. Other things to think about, better tires, steering rack bushings, lowering springs and rims if you can afford them. All those together will put you back on the rails
 
#5 ·
If I were you, i'd take it to an open parking lot on a Sunday and play with it for while. A big think I suggest you do is take a turn fast, and just give it gas. You'd be suprised how it reacts. AWD works better when you're accelerating but only until your tires break free. Most people are suprised how sometimes when you press on the gas around a sharp turn it all of a sudden grabs the pavement and throws them off since they were expecting to slide and have already corrected for a slide... result, is usually not pretty. Oh yeah.. don't bother trying to peel out stock on dry pavement... it doesn't work. Well, maybe with stock tires. :p
 
#7 ·
i like the shot of you pickin up your left rear.



our cars are notorious for there understeer. but, understeer is easy to corect. just bleed of the throttle a tad.

i dont track or auto-x my street cars so i dont usualy buy suspension. i do, however tear ass perty much everywhere i go. i live in cali and there is a lot of twists and turns in the roads here, but never have gotten outside the limit of the car. i can mash everwhere and the car feels fine.

there is a lot of unibody roll, but its a 4 door sedan so thats to be expected. its also like 3200lbs, so not to worry.

weather the tires brake loose or not is not really a function of what gear your in. if your applying more throttle then the cohesion of the tires can maintain then, you will brake the tires loose. but its a 4wd car, so the power is being destributed over 4 contact patches instead of 2, so its quite a bit harder to brake the tires loose then on a rwd car.

another thing to note, the power distribution between the front and rear tires is 70/30 front rear as i recall. so the car handles more like a FWD car.

make sure you have descent tred on your tires and be smooth with your inputs (steering wheel and peddles) and you should be ok. i wouldent sugest spending any mony on suspenion, but thats just me.
 
#10 ·
The understeer comes from the suspension not the power split, if you put a bigger sway bar on the back the understeer goes away. The STI has comes with an adjustable diff from 55 front 65 rear to 30 front 70 rear
 
#11 ·
After my last post I did some research and it turns out we are both right on the power split. For the normal Subaru AWD system it is 60 front 40 rear but since the WRX and STI is considered a sports car they get more power to the rear between 35-40 front 55-60 rear on the WRX and the STI gets the adjustable DCCD which is any where from 70 rear 30 front to almost 50/50.
I hope this clears things up, Ian
 
#12 ·
yeah im aware the STI has an adjustible diff and can do 30/70 and 65/35 and anything inbetween.

stiffining the rear suspension is one way to fix a car that understeers. but i can gurantee you i can get lit real easy in my stock wrx if i had 100% power to the rear.

yes, gurantee

i can get my stock wrx to oversteer, just need big entry speed.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top