In the last few weeks, i’ve added to the BE’s arsenal of parts. I’ve replaced my Kartboy with a Cobb double-adjustable short shifter. It needs some final adjustments, but it’s really nice. It does sit farther back than the Kartboy, but since the height is adjustable, that’s pretty easily remedied.

At the same time, i put on a rear Cusco 18mm swaybar. It was a pretty nice improvement, as the stock one is maybe 13-15mm. It helped reduce body roll and the car feels a little better planted. It had great handling before, so this should hopefully improve on that.

It was a busy day, so i installed an earthing kit i purchased on eBay. It’s a pretty simple kit, with 8-9 wires and a hub. I ran one wire to the passenger-side fender, one to the passenger side intake manifold, the alternator, transmission and the engine, then to the battery. The car runs good as it is, so i wasn’t surprised that there’s no noticeable change. It was pretty inexpensive and looks kinda cool, so no harm done.

I had purchased a Zerosports Type 3 front grille from through eBay purchase, but it turned out that it only fits the revision D Legacy chassis, that was only built in Japan. Thankfully it was a lot less expensive than it could have been, but i was still disappointed that i have something that can’t be used in the US. Less than a day after, i was able to get a very nice B4 grille from a fellow member on NASIOC. It’s an easy install and looks pretty cool:

Finally, yesterday i got around to upgrading my brakes. For some reason, in 2000, the Legacy GT had large, 11.3″ rear brakes, but had the same, 10.7″ front brakes as the 2.5RS. The 2001 model fixed this by using the familiar 11.4″ front brakes that the WRX got. I was able to get a whole set of calipers, rotors, brackets and pads from a guy in Wisconsin. They had a mere 33k miles on them and were in very good shape, so i passed on getting new pads or getting the rotors turned until at least next spring. Thankfully the calipers on the 2000 and the WRX are identical, and so i only had to replace the brackets, pads and rotors. This meant that no bleeding of the fluid had to be done, which is very nice.

The old rotors, which were drilled Brembos, had been completely dished by the Axxis Ultimate pads. I don’t know how much real material was left, but it wasn’t a lot. The new, bigger brakes don’t have the same initial bite as what i had on before, but with a little more effort, they work easily as well. In all, a pretty straightforward swap.