I would really recommend not doing this as anything more than a temporary fix. Unless it's incidental damage from the LCA failing at speed, those welds cracked from too much stress under your regular useage, just like the LCA did. Probably cause you've been tracking a lot it with beefed up motor/suspension/tires. It either needs some kind of additional bracing bolted/welded on, or those welded-up cracks will just crack again at some point. A critical part like a subframe might also be a higher-carbon, heat-treated steel and if it is, the heat-affected zones around your welds would screw up the heat treatment and weaken the part.

Things to think about...

I talked to Matt and Greg at the race shop. I'm gonna bolt enough of the suspension bits back together to (hopefully) get it down to them tomorrow. We'll put it on the lift and inspect everything and weld up/reinforce whatever needs to be done. I'm pretty sure a minor touch-up is all that's necessary, but I'm gonna have the pros handle it.

However, to get the car rolling again enough to get it on the trailer and down to Moundhouse, I could really use a spare tire... with a donut on there, I won't have to pull the swaybar, re-attach the brakes, etc... I can just slap it on there and roll it up on the trailer. But to get a full size tire to fit, I'm basically going to have to spend a couple of hours to rebuild a bunch of stuff that will just have to all come back off as soon as the car gets to the shop. Anyone have a 5x114.3 STi donut they can loan me for a few days? My spare is 5x100 from my old hubs. On second thought, maybe the SVX's spare will fit... I'm gonna go try that first. :lol:

So did it fit?

Yep. It wouldn't clear the brakes normally, except that the brakes aren't on the car. I'm good to roll this bitch onto the trailer.

Well it took a while, but the front-end is back together as of yesterday.

The car went down to BBR like a month ago, and Greg did a great job welding up the subframe. He commented on how an additional bracket between the suspension subframe and the u-shaped crash subframe under it would have totally prevented the fatigue that lead to the broken subframe welds. Turns out the STi's do in fact have this bracket, but the WRXs don't. :unamused: Just another one of the little things on the STi that pretty much go unnoticed but make it so much better than the WRX. The welding Greg did will make the WRX mounts *much* stronger than they used to be, but without that additional bracket, it's just a matter of time that hard braking on sticky tires will eventually fatigue that subframe. I think I need to go the route of getting some more fab work done to properly anchor the suspension pick-up on both sides.

Anyway, after getting the fab work done, the car sat in my garage for a few weeks waiting on parts from Whiteline to clear customs (ordered an ALK for the new LCAs I got from Subaru, replacement roll-center kit to replace the ball joints and rod-ends that were trashed, and a new 22-24mm front swaybar to replace the 20-22mm one that was on there). I finally got all the parts last week, and spend Sunday installing everything. Thanks to GST for putting the order through for me!

The good news is that the installation went pretty easy, the bad news is that something is still miss-aligned under there. The distance between the swaybar ends and the LCAs is different from one side of the car to the other. It very likely is just a misalignment of the ALK mounts, but there could be some bend in the suspension subframe that's pushing the LF tire a little less than 0.5" closer to the driver's door. I think I need to get it back up in the air and make sure things are aligned correctly. If indeed there is something bent... I may try to swap out the subframe, or just align the suspension to compensate, as it's really not off by all that much.

The only good news is that my old swaybar doesn't appear to be bent like I thought... I lined it up next to the new one and it's dead straight... which I guess makes sense since it's made of spring steel, which is hard as hell to permanently bend. So if anyone wants a 20-22mm front sway for a WRX or STi, let me know, I'll unload it cheap.

Finally, I slapped my new fender on the car. It's primed in a satin black... so now I'm straight ghetto (wait, what's more ghetto; mismatched panel colors, or trashed body panels that match the car's color?). Looking at the black primer panel, I actually think a satin black paint job would look pretty sweet.

The next step is to swap out the rear trailing arms, since the bushings are shot on mine, and I've got a pair of Poltech arms that have just been sitting around my garage for about a year. Then I need to get it back down to BBR and have them sort out a subframe, front bumper/lip/splitter, and get the body damage/paint taken care of.

I saw your stock bumper on the roof of the car yesterday afternoon when we drove pass your garage.

:lol: If you had looked under the car, you would have seen me!

Nice, so is it drivable with that little bit of misalignment, or can it be dialed out do you think?

I'm pretty confident that the car could be aligned around whatever is putting it off, but I'd rather figure out what's off if at all possible.