With a new year upon us I had been eagerly searching for another axle replacement. After lifting the Forester the axle boots torn after a few months of driving… The Advance auto parts axles were decent around town but a heavy foot and highway speeds would show their flaws, awful vibration due to the new driveline angles.

Winter time is here! One braves the snow while the other stays nice in warm inside.

For those keeping track I just rolled over 209k miles! Go little Forester go!

Do yourself a favor and don’t ever install these.

If you are coming from the prior post you will know that Heri axles were supposed to be the savior of my axle woes but instead failed faster and by far more tremendously by having the cv joint coming apart. Which completely came apart by just pulling it from the transmission.

After asking around with my fellow lifted Subaru owners for input with plenty of varying answers but nothing definitive… Then from left field came Patrick Anderson of Anderson Design Fab to weigh in with his answer, A1 Cardone HD axles. Given he is the man to go to for quality Subaru lift kits and has plenty of experience with the platform I decided to place and order and see what would happen.

Install went smoothly, when you have replaced almost 10 axles over the last year… you expect the fifth set to do the same. But the real test would be putting the pedal to the floor and see if the vibration still existed and just like that it was gone.. what a feeling to finally be rid of that terrible annoyance. Back to smooth acceleration and highway speeds.

Enjoying some snowing weather and seeing how well the axles work.

While I had spent so much time in and around the transmission I had noticed a slight leak around the speed sensor. I had tried to repair it with adding a new lower seal and thread locker. This unfortunately did nothing to stop the leak… the leak was coming from an internal seal from the sensor. Once it arrived it was very simple to install from the engine bay, the only real obstacle is the factory downpipe but with my Invidia downpipe being slightly slimmer this was an easy install and repair.

Next up was a few adventures to test out the new repairs and make sure everything was running smoothly. As per usual my camera came along for some documentation of the journey. With quite a few miles and adventures it appeared that the axles did the trick, which was a great feeling after dealing with vibration and splint boots for over a year.

Where will the next round of repairs and mods take us…? Stay tuned for the next round of mods to take your daily driver back to being a daily driver.

New year and new axles... Will these fix my lifted issues?

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