The rear will probably sit slightly low when you do this, thanks to the weight of all that SUV back there, so cut the front springs. No, seriously. The STi suspension has plenty of travel to spare and trimming just a quarter to a half inch of ride height off your front spring should work with few side effects.
You should also install the STi's rear bar. It almost bolts in (the bushings are slightly different) and will make it a lot easier to get the tail rowdy when you want.
The brakes are easily improved by swapping to a 1-1/16-inch master cylinder from an Outback VST (part number 26401AC220S1) and the sloppy steering can either be improved with a WRX rack or completely revolutionized with a quicker STi rack (for the STi rack to fit, you need one from a pre-2006 car). Upgrade to polyurethane steering rack bushings, the stock ones loosen up quickly and make the sloppy steering even worse.
For power, I'd continue my cheapness by simply upgrading to a used STi turbo and intercooler, which will get you 95 percent of the way to having an STi engine. You still want flexible low-rev torque for getting up muddy hills without igniting the tires.
And stay modest with your tire sizes. Run snow tires in the winter. Use a summer tire with a tall sidewall and an M+S tread pattern that might be able to handle the occasional off-pavement adventure.
If those Volkswagens or Nissans start messing with you, just drive off the side ofthe road and hit the gas. I bet they won't have the balls to follow.
Q. Light Or Balanced?
I'm 'restoring' a 1990 Eclipse GSX for light track use. The car doesn't have the greatest front-to-rear weight balance in stock form. Is it more important to try to shift weight to the rear, in an effort to get a 50/50 balance, or to lighten the car overall? If I pull out the back seats and rear hatch trim, I lighten the car, but more weight bias is shifted to the front.
Mike McDermott
Downers Grove, IL
Answer
An excellent question. Do you want to go fast, or have fun? A nose-heavy car handles poorly because the front tires are more burdened than the rears. In virtually any kind of cornering situation, the fronts will run out of grip first, giving relentless understeer.
Removing weight from the rear will help both ends slightly (the front tires don't have to work so hard at slowing your heavy rear seats and hatch as you brake into a corner), but the rear will gain more from the transaction, giving the back of the car proportionally more grip and possibly causing even more relentless understeer.
Thing is, it'll be going faster as it understeers, so the joyless lapping session will end slightly sooner. Remember, the load on the front tires is the factor that limits cornering speed. And you haven't done anything to increase that load. There may be some corners where trail braking is less effective at making the car rotate, so there is a possibility that you'll give up a little in a few places. But ultimately, your lap times should be faster no matter where the weight is removed.
As you start shifting weight around, this question will come back time and again. What if the battery is moved to the back? Taking 25 pounds off the front wheels and put it on the rear will help even things out, but two or three pounds of battery cable will be added. Is the extra weight worth it? On a nose-heavy car like yours, it is. But on a rear-driver already nearly 50/50, maybe not. Either way, consider a lighter battery.
What about location? Should the battery go all the way to the back of the car trunk, or just behind the seats? Here, the answer is more complicated. The various mounting options are usually at different heights. Lower is always better, as it will reduce the amount of weight shifted to the outside tire.
Tempting as it may be to move the battery to the back of the trunk to maximize the impact on weight balance, this effectively creates a pendulum. If you are successful at finally making an Eclipse oversteer, the extra yaw inertia of that lead and acid swinging around in the tail will make it harder to catch the slide, and harder to bring the tail back in line without overshooting into a demoralizing tank-slapper.
On front-drive street cars, I prefer to use the front of the trunk, as low as possible. On front-drive track cars, I'll move it to the rear passenger's floor, which is lower and causes less yaw inertia. My Silvia is fairly well balanced already, so I dropped to a 13-pound Odyssey battery and mounted it to the passenger's floorboard, under the passenger's knees. This put the weight low, nearly at the center of the car, and kept the battery cable under six feet long.