[urq] Brake Judder

[urquattro at comcast.net]

First off,
I consider "Judder" to be a perfectly reasonable technical term. The clutch on my 5+5 juddered on engagement before Bill B. helped me put a new one in a couple summers back, and he ascribed the same term to the phenomenon. 

Martin,
The first thing I would do (which is free) is jack up the front corners one by one and check for play in the control arm bushings, lower ball joints, tie rod ends, and strut  bearings by wrestling with the wheel a little. I have an '05 Impreza with 14k (no comments please) and I swear the strut bearings are already clunking on driveway lips.

Secondly, since it sounds like you already know you have at least some kind of balancing issue, I would have the wheels re-balanced by a wheel specialist. In most towns there is at least one shop where some weird little hermit-type guy does -only- wheel stuff. Those are the guys you want doing your balancing. In my town that man's name is Skip and I am very thankful to have him in my life.

Third cheapest and next thing I would try if the re-balance doesn't help (actually about the same cost but more hassle) is to have your front rotors turned again. I don't know why, but I managed to warp a new set of g60 rotors on my urq within a few hundred miles when I did the brake conversion. Probably messed something up on the install the first time around which caused that to happen, but after having them turned it was fine.

I'm not offering up too much new here, but that's the actual order I would tackle the problem in personally, if that helps. 

Best of luck,

Jon

<snip>
Martin,

I think you mean "Shudder" but in any case any loose/worn suspension  
components will make the situation worse, especially when braking  
from higher speeds.  Can't comment specifically on the Subi, but I  
think you're on the right track.  You state that there is a slight  
hint of this at higher speeds even without braking -- maybe tires not  
perfectly-balanced as well?

Ingo