2003 lift

[Podjr]

So I have poked and poked around on lifts and have found a ton of great and useful information on here and other sites. One thing I really haven't been able to figure out is a particular question on the '03. From what I have researched 2" is the max lift without having to make modifications or lifting the subframe. That is fine by me, but it seems to apply to all years. I know the 04-06 stand an inch taller than the 03 because of stiffer springs. What I don't know is if anything else was changed, because if not wouldn't it be reasonable to assume you could lift the 03 3 inches? If anyone could shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your time!

[ZUBAJA]

I have an 03. Currently, I have a 2" lift on the front with just spacers installed above the struts. I have the stuff to add a lift to the rear, and almost all the spacers made to lower the engine cradle, and rear axle cradle all by about 1-1/2". I still have to make the carrier spacers and tranny crossmember spacers. I also have a longer steering coupler from a late Forester.
What I CAN tell you is the 2" lift gives you a lot of angke on the axles. My front tiers currently have a little excessive camber (lowering front cradle should bring this back into spec). Hope this helps. Dennis

[kamesama980]

Zubija, did you get an alignment after you lifted it? any pics of the offending tires? toe will cause wear loooong before camber does and it changes with suspension movement faster too.

Looking at Rockauto's cross reference info, looks like in front, NA axles are all the same and turbo axles are all the same (but turbo and NA are different). rear axles are the same turbo or not across all years.

I agree with your logic that it means the 03s have an extra inch of liftability because they start an inch lower.

[ZUBAJA]

I did check the toe before the lift, and then made a slight adjustment to bring it back to that spec. Alignment will come after the cradle is lowered (hopefully before too long) and I have been driving it a little less. It tracks down the road straight, and handles well for now.
In the work and research that I have done, I have found the following: The Legacys seem to have the cradle mounted directly to the (unibody) frame rails. The Outbacks (and Baja) have a spacer block between the cradle and frame rails. There are also spacer blocks on the rear cradle. If one wanted to LOWER their Baja , removing these spacers might do the trick (with shorter bolts). RAISING / lifting, requires extra spacers and longer bolts. For the front, I was able to get SAE grade 8 bolts in the correct length. For the rear. where the bolts thread into the frame rails, it takes a very long 14MM, which is hard to find and expensive. Again, the 2010 Forester had the longer rear bolts I was looking for.
A note on removing the rear cradle bolts: because they are long, I was not able to break them loose with an air impact (longer bolts flex and act almost like a torque stick with an impact gun). A 4 foot cheater pipe finally helped me break the bolts loose (fortunately and not OFF ).
I posted a picture of mine (after lift and next to a stock Baja) in the pics section a few weeks back. Dennis

[Podjr]

Zubaja thanks for the info. I will probably end up doing a spring lift with a one inch spacer on top and drop the trailing arms. Just wanted to see if I could squeeze another inch because of the year.

[walfredo]

I also have a 2003, running a 1.5" lift in the front and 0.75" lift in the rear. I am also squeezing an additional 0.5" lift from the 215/70/16 tires (which doesnt affect axles/suspension geometry), which gives me a total lift of 2"/1.25"

Anytime your camber changes (with a lift it tends to move to the positive) your toe is going to change, due to how the suspension geometry is setup. So you will definitely need an alignment, especially front toe and camber. Unless you like replacing tires, this is essential.

Because its a 2003, you could probably run a 3" total lift and be "ok" with your axles, but be aware that this is a hard and fast rule with no guarantees. I dont think there is any real tested data on whether a 3" lift on a 2003 is ok vs a 2" lift on 2004+.

For the fronts, for sure you are going to need camber adjustment, even for 2". The cheap route is to go with lower strut camber bolts (such as whiteline), which is what I did. This is because you wont be able to get the camber within spec by just using the OEM upper camber bolt, youll need to add in a lower one as well to get that extra adjustment. When you install the aftermarket camber bolts youll want them to have them adjusted to the max (or the cam bolt could slip due to it not being squarely positioned), with the OEM bolt adjusted to dial in the camber - mine ended up being about 0.5* negative without adjusting the aftermarket bolt (which was fine IMO). I didnt want them to touch the aftermarket bolt as I didnt want it to possibly slip. Had I gone with a bigger lift, say 2" or more I think camber could have been dialed in perfectly.

For the rears my alignment wasnt so bad, probably because I only went with the 0.75" lift, so no aftermarket parts were needed to get it within spec. However, if I had gone higher, I would have needed either the adjustable aftermarket bushings, or go with the fully adjustable rear LCA/trailing arm (more $$) to get both camber and toe adjustment for the rear.

[walfredo]

Keep in mind as well that the "King Springs" lift (from my understanding) is going to make your car stiffer and make ride a bit harsher. I opted not to do this because I wanted to maintain the softer ride and just went with spacers.

[kamesama980]

Yea, the kings are ~20% stiffer than stock according to the marketing, though they're also progressive so it's not a true comparison. IMO the Kings are the stiffness Subaru should have put in it from the factory. Stiffer than stock but far from harsh and a great way to ignore speedbumps and potholes. My other baja has 10k/8k megan (junk) coilovers, that's harsh. Kinda like the WS6 springs in my firebird (stiffest factory "performance package" option) are an OK non-performance street springrate for that car lol.

[Podjr]

Thanks for everyone's input. My plan is going to be a 2" lift kit with the addition of King springs made close to OEM height, but is still going to add 1/4 to 1/2 in in lift according to the website. So basically I'll be shooting the Gap at right around 2 1/4-2 1/2 in. Keeping my fingers crossed. Also will be buying some lower camber bolts to hopefully help out with the front alignment,thanks for that tidbit Walfredo. Will probably be a little bit before I get it done but I'll let everyone know how it turns out!