How Subaru Owners Are ‘Regearing’ Their CVTs So They Crawl Better
Subaru owners get a bad rap in the car community. So what if that guy with the WRX knows more about vape coils than wastegates or blow-off valves? And who cares if an Outback driver memorized their Aussiedoodle's DNA sequence but not their engine code? The cars are popular for a reason: They carry you and your stuff (almost) anywhere.
I talked to a handful of Subaru owners who are making their cars even better at that core purpose by «regearing» their continuously variable transmissions. CVTs don't have gears so much as pulleys (see our explainer here), so they achieve this by switching out the factory CVT for another whose built-in front differential has an improved final drive. From there, they swap in a correlating rear diff, completing the mod.
Clearly, these drivers care more about off-road performance than most Subie loyalists. And while those same CVTs draw the ire of blowhard enthusiasts across the internet, the units in these builds are being put to good use. It all starts with diving into the Subaru parts bin for some OEM+ upgrades.
I first found out about these mods when Milton Salguero posted in the Lifted Subie Society Facebook group. (We used to own a Forester, so you can bet I joined the day we drove it home.) Since I come from the world of trucks and 4x4s, you can probably imagine how my eyebrow raised when I read about his regeared, 2.5-liter engine-swapped Crosstrek, pictured at the top of the page.
«CVTs are interesting to work with. Most people have full four-wheel drives, two-speed transfer cases. That's a lot easier to work on, easier to regear, et cetera,» Salguero told me over the phone. «Thankfully, a buddy of ours [Bruce Yeager] discovered that the parts within the CVT are identical between several platforms, whether it's Outback or Crosstrek or Impreza or Forester. They all use a TR580 transmission and all the internal parts, except the differential gears and wiring harnesses, are almost identical.
»All you have to do to make this swap work is change the valve body cover and the wiring harness from the original vehicle's transmission onto the donor transmission, which we've been taking off 2015-2017 Subaru Outbacks with the 2.5-liter
