Mach V STI Blog

Another gauge mounting option

2011-08-16T11:26:00.000-04:00

For a long time we've had requests from customers for an instrument bezel gauge mount. We've had that for the older GD chassis cars for a long time, but didn't have one for the GR...until now. Our friends at SMY Cluster Maker labored long and hard to make a gauge mount that fits and looks like a stock part.

The mount is textured just like the stock dash, and the finish is a flat dark gray that is a near-perfect match. If you weren't looking for the mount, you'd never know it wasn't a factory part. It fits two 52mm gauges. There's a good amount of mounting depth, but it's not infinite, so the very longest of gauges might not fit. The Prosport Halo gauges we had in our car fit fine, though.

Installation is pretty easy. The factory instrument binnacle removes without using tools. You do have to give it a good sharp tug to disengage it from the clips that hold it in, but it won't break. The new bezel just clips in -- again, no tools required.

With the new instrument bezel gauge mount in place, we can see how well the Prosport Halo series gauges match the factory red lighting. Note that for the sake of a clear view (as well as symmetry), we mounted the touch pad for the left-hand gauge on the lower left side of the gauge, meaning the touch pad is now upside-down. We figured that's a minor price to pay for not having it sticking out into the instrument panel.

When combined with our windshield mount gauge pod, you've got a total of four possible gauges you could mount in any of the GR chassis cars. (GR chassis includes 2008+ Impreza, WRX and STI.) We actually did install four gauges in a customer STI recently. Stay tuned for photos or videos of that car.

Out with the squish!

2011-02-09T13:07:00.000-05:00

Removing stock steering rack bushings

We replaced several factory squishy rubber suspension bits on our STI with firmer polyurethane versions from Whiteline. On the menu this week were the rear differential mount inserts, front lower control arm bushings, the Whiteline Anti-Lift Kit, and the a set of steering rack bushings. The idea of all these parts is to take out slop and squish from the system, resulting in more precise location of the suspension components so they can do their job more directly and without deflection. The factory rubber stuff is soft and comfortable, but as I've complained about in early blog posts, the 2008+ STI feels a lot more vague in its steering feel than previous-generation cars. I wanted some of that feel back.

Note that the 2011 STI did get revised, slightly firmer rubber bushings at the front and rear control arms. These Whiteline parts will be firmer still, but the difference from stock on the 2011+ cars will not be as dramatic as on the 2008-10 cars.

Pointing to the stock rear diff carrier bushings

Our shop guys report that installing all these parts was very easy. The steering rack bushings come with a cylindrical tool that makes pulling out the old bushings very simple. The rear diff bushing inserts just push into the voids in the existing rubber bushings -- we spritz the rubber with glass cleaner to provide a bit of lubrication. The two sets of front control arm bushings (the Anti-Lift Kit goes on the back of the control arms, and the control arm bushing set goes on the front) install easily, too.

Once the car was back on the ground, I took it out on the road to see if I could tell the difference. The effect on the steering was immediate -- between the control arm bushings and the steering rack bushings, it feels like the steering from a different car. There's much more immediacy in the reactions of the front end. Twitch the wheel, and the nose of the car twitches. Go over a ripple in the pavement, and you can feel it in the steering wheel. I love the increase in precision -- I feel like I can place the nose of the car very exactly in a corner.

Pressing in the Whiteline rear diff bushing inserts

The rear diff bushings were not as easy to feel at the beginning. Once I started driving the car hard, though, I could tell things were firmer. There is less "bounce" from the rear under hard one-two gear shifts, and on-off throttle transitions produce less wiggling of the rear end of the car. It's hard to describe this, because I didn't really notice it before, I just perceive the lack of it. Getting on and off the gas when the car is loaded up in a corner, it seems to stay planted better than it used to.

I can't say there's no effect on comfort from these modifications. The increased feel in the front end is also accompanied by more small bumps and impacts transmitted into the car. The stiffer diff mounting is noticeable when the car goes over expansion strips or other quick, small impacts, and in the form of some additional drivetrain vibration and noise in the rear of the car. (You probably won't notice this from the driver's seat, but rear seat passengers might.) The car isn't uncomfortable to me at all, but it's firmer and not as plush-riding as the OEM bushings were.

Overall I'm quite happy with the changes. The steering feel, in particular, is worlds better than it was before. The whole car just feels more secure and planted because of the more direct connection to the road.

End of year update

2010-12-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

We've been doing some more tinkering on the STI since my last update. We've got a new gauge mounting solution for the car, and some suspension goodies.

As I've talked about before in this space, the STI is a tough car to put gauges in. The top of the dash is all one curvy piece, and there's no separate removable clock pod on top like in the pre-2008 cars. We did develop the windshield pod that you saw in earlier posts, but that's not for everyone.

I contacted our friends at Craven Speed with our problem, and we went back and forth with some design ideas for sitting gauges on top of the steering wheel cover. In the end, Craven came up with a simple universal gauge pod that will bolt on to almost anything, and will mount a gauge the way I had in mind.

The pod is made from CNC-machined aluminum, and is very sturdy. The little foot bolts into place from the back side, so it's perfect for the top half of the steering column cover. (It would not be so perfect for the top of the middle of the dash, though, since it would be difficult to access the underside to insert the bolts.) Despite the smallness of the base, it's quite sturdy, and I'm not worried about the gauge vibrating or moving around.

There's a 52mm version and a 60mm version of the pod. 52mm is more than large enough if it's going to be on the steering column. You might want a larger gauge if it's going to be farther away.

I just put a random EGT gauge in for this mockup -- I don't actually want more gauges in the car at this time, so this is just a temporary setup for purposes of photographing the product.

Craven Speed gauge pod -- click me!

On the bottom side of the car, we're going to be installing some additional suspension parts courtesy of Whiteline. These include stiffer bushings for the rear differential subframe, bushings for the front control arms, a roll center adjustment kit, and maybe one or two more items. I hope to have some photos of those, along with some feedback about the handling, in my next blog post.

Boost and Wideband Gauges Installed

2010-10-11T23:00:00.001-04:00

One of my personal peeves is that turbo cars should all come with turbo boost gauges. I'm surprised I let our STI go without one for so long. But this past week we finally remedied that situation (thanks, Mach V shop staff!), and we got a new Prosport Halo boost gauge and wideband air/fuel meter in the car. As you've probably seen from previous posts, we like the windshield mount pod, and chose that for our car. It keeps the gauges off the dash, which really doesn't have a lot of room, and the pod is nicely concealed from outside the car.

I made a video showing all the features of the gauges.

I'm just happy to be able to see what boost pressure the car is running without having to hook up a laptop or AccessPort to see it. Want to have gauges just like this? Buy 'em from our web site. You'll thank me later.

Rota D-Force on the STI

2010-09-07T09:51:00.001-04:00

We mounted up the new D-Force wheels (18x9.5 +40) to our STI. Here's what it looks like:

300% More Exhaust Tips!

2010-08-31T23:37:00.001-04:00

Our friends at TurboXS haven't had a specific exhaust for the STI before now, so we initially installed the single-tip system indented for the WRX hatchback. That fit fine, sounded great, and was nice and light, but especially after we fitted up the STI accessory rear garnish bits, it always seemed like the car was missing something over on the left side of the rear valence.

That's remedied now with a new TurboXS rear exhaust section with four very nice polished stainless steel tips. The new rear section actually bolted right to the rest of our existing TurboXS exhaust, so if you are in the same boat as us and previously bought a single-outlet TurboXS turbo-back, you will be able to just purchase the rear section to get the new multi-tip style.

I thought the sound would be a lot quieter than the single-tip system (after all, the muffler looks about three times as big), but it sounds very similar to the old system. It might be a tiny bit deeper in tone, but the volume level didn't seem to change. The look is great. Some systems for the STI have a pronounced "drain pipe" that hangs down just before entering the muffler, but the TurboXS system tucks nice and close up to the body.

The new quad-tip TurboXS system for STI hatchbacks will be available for purchase on our web site in the near future.

Rota D-Force Wheels for STI

2010-08-26T22:49:00.000-04:00

D-Force test-fit on STI

If you follow this blog you've probably seen me complain that there aren't many wheels available that are both wide and high-offset to fit the GR-chassis STI. Although there ARE lots of 5x114 wheels around, most of them have the wrong offset -- typically around +35mm -- and would stick out on the WRX STI.

In an effort to remedy this situation we worked with Rota to spec out a wheel that would be nice and wide, but still fit under the fenders of the wide-body STI. We just got them the other day. They're called D-Force, and they're 18x9.5", +40. They have a very large (2.75") lip, which is really unusual for wheels that fit the big Brembo brakes of the STI. At 22.6 pounds, the weight isn't too bad, either.

D-Force

For now, we only have this wheel in flat black. Other colors to come will certainly include "Hyper Black," which is a smokey silver color. I'm open to suggestions on what other colors you'd like to see. Also, we could do the wheel with a polished and clear-coated lip. Comment at the bottom of this post if you have an opinion either way.

Want them? As I write this post, they are in stock and you can buy them. You can find them at our web site.

GT Performance dyno video

2010-07-25T19:54:00.000-04:00

This is the video from the second tuning session with the GT Performance race car. With boost peaking at about 22 psi, tapering to 20 psi, the car made 565 horsepower at the wheels. It's running 100 octane fuel.

Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhoMgVCjKuY

Tuning an STI to higher horsepower levels

2010-07-24T01:29:00.000-04:00

We had the opportunity recently to tune a beautifully prepared 2006 WRX STI that was put together by GT Performance in Maryland. Among other goodies, the car sports a fully-built 2.6-liter block with custom dry-sump oiling, a built-up dog-gear transmission, a complete roll cage, and even air jacks. A Garrett GT35R turbocharger pushes air into a Cosworth intake manifold, and through Cosworth heads. The car made a whopping 565 whp on our dyno. Here's a look at an earlier dyno run -- a mere 500 whp:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKD8wztdHnA

Here's the car on the track at Summit Point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiFtBMDpfEw

We look forward to working with the GT Performance crew some more in the near future.

Driving the Mach V STI

2010-04-22T21:52:00.001-04:00

I took the Mach V STI home and ran a few errands. Hauled a big PC to work, took the kid to school. The car is still its usual self for around-town driving. The exhaust note might be a tiny bit louder at idle and low speeds, but it's hard to tell.

Full throttle is another story. When the 20G-XT-equipped STI gets up above 3500 rpm, everything starts to happen really fast, and it sings a baritone Subaru full-throttle song that turns heads -- in a good way if those listening are car fans. (I got a thumbs-up from a guy in a BMW Z3 M roadster.) But maybe that noise is not so good if you're trying to keep a low profile on the road. Not like the car in its current form is subtle -- what with the multi-vented hood, huge wheels, and all that.

The power is pretty fun. At freeway speeds you can still dip into the gas in sixth gear and get a good dose of passing speed, although there is more lag than there used to be. Dropping a gear gets the car up into insta-boost range and you'll quickly be at extra-legal speeds.

Which brings me back to the thought of losing my driver's license. I'm going to have to get the car to the track to see what it's like to drive it really hard at this power level.

Blouch 20G-XT on the car

2010-04-13T13:33:00.001-04:00

We bolted the new Blouch 20G-XT turbocharger to our STI, and rolled it back onto the dyno for some more pulls. The turbo delivered as advertised. Spool was a little slower than the Tomei ARMS turbo we had on the car before, which is understandable given how much larger the turbine outlet is on the 20G-XT. The car made a lot more horsepower at the same boost levels -- 33 more hp and 30 lb-ft of additional torque to the wheels. An added benefit that isn't seen on the dyno graphs is that off-boost throttle response is better -- the more wide-open turbo outlet probably is the reason. The exhaust note is a bit louder now, too!

Most of the time when we put a 20G on a car we've also done a turbo induction hose, TGV deletes, and headers, none of which are on our car. When we do get those mods done, we'll dyno again. I'd expect another 10+ hp at that time.

Needs More Turbo

2010-04-02T22:41:00.001-04:00

Although the Tomei ARMS turbocharger on our STI made decent power, and spooled very nicely compared to the stock hair dryer, we just can't leave well enough alone. We asked our friends at Blouch Turbo if they had any suggestions for something with just a little more oomph, and we got a Blouch 20G-XT: A Mitsubishi 20G compressor housing and center section mated to a custom Blouch turbine side that will bolt on to any 2002-07 WRX, and any 2002+ WRX STI. But wait, there's more. The compressor wheel is not cast like traditional wheels. Instead it's CNC milled from a block of billet aluminum. That means it can be made lighter and more efficient than old-school compressor wheels. The upshot is supposed to be more power and better spool. We'll find out next week when we bolt the turbo on and roll the car back on the dyno.

The 20G turbo has always been my "go-to" turbo for 2.5-liter cars. It spools almost like a stock turbo, but has massively more top-end. If you have a 2.0-liter car, the 18G is probably a better choice, as the 20G takes a while to get going with only a 2.0 engine blowing on it. Blouch also has an 18G-XT available. Watch our web site for more details on purchasing these turbos soon.

Trickle-Down Economics, Subaru Style

2010-03-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

Today Subaru announced that the 2011 WRX sedan will get a wide body look that borrows the front fenders of the current STI hatchback. The car will be on display at the up-coming New York Auto Show.

What does this mean? Well, besides the obvious benefit of a 1.5"-wider track for WRX sedan buyers (the car also gets a more aggressive front end, blacked-out grille, and wider 17 x 8" wheels), it seems to me that it would be easy and cheap to just make an STI sedan, now that the body work is taken care of. Our customers have pined for the lack of an STI sedan since the old one retired back in 2007. I hope they haven't been holding their collective breath since then, but I'd wager there will be a 2011 STI sedan available alongside the hatch.

We've been working with our suppliers to get larger and wider wheels available for the current WRX STI -- now we'll renew those efforts, since the wider WRX will also allow for those bigger fitments. (We've seen STI hatch models run wheels as wide as 10".)

Tokyo Auto Salon 2010

2010-02-10T11:08:00.001-05:00

It's been extremely snowy here at Mach V HQ, so I haven't had the STI out much in the last few weeks. (I know, it's AWD, but it's also pretty low.) I did get over to Tokyo for the Tokyo Auto Salon, though. Here are some of the STIs I saw there.

The silver car above was Subaru's car for the 24 Hours of Nürburgring race. It's got a 2.0 liter engine with 320 hp, upgraded suspension, fat wheels and slick tires, roll cage, race seats, and other goodies.

Subaru's new R205 special edition STI has special lightweight wheels, six-pot front brakes, special suspension, and 316 hp.

The black car had aftermarket exhaust, carbon hood, and new Yokohama Advan RS-D (deep lip!) wheels. 19x9", I think.

This one was from Prodrive Japan. It's got a carbon hood, front bumper, side skirts, and rear wing from Varis.

I've got a few more STI pics that I'll upload later.

Pure Carbonium

2009-12-27T21:50:00.003-05:00

We have a new 3M carbon fiber-look wrap material that we're selling. It's not really carbon fiber, but it looks very convincing. Unlike carbon fiber, it bends around tight corners and, with the application of a little heat, can stretch and cover convoluted surfaces. It's self-adhesive and pretty easy to apply. (There are other carbon-look materials that are fabric-based and require spray adhesive to put on. This is a lot easier.)

I took a couple of hours and applied the material to the dash of our WRX STI. For an amateur, I think I did a pretty decent job. I popped the silver dash inserts free of the dash, and wrapped them each in the carbon-look material. I trimmed out the vent openings so the "open" and "closed" indicators show. I also removed and wrapped the steering wheel button inserts to match. Tools used: Heat gun (a hair dryer would do), Exacto knife.

Subaru makes a "carbon look" dash kit for the older WRX cars, although they don't make one for the current generation. I think this is far more convincing than any previous faux carbon I've seen.

Several customers have asked me about doing the roof of the car in this. It won't last forever (3M says 3-4 years in exterior application, and that's in a vertical mounting), but it should look pretty good. We can cut a large enough piece for that, too.

So far I've received mostly positive feedback about this particularly modification to the car, although a few have decried the fact that this is strictly cosmetic, and has no useful function. Well, that's true, but I'm in good company; I've seen similar dash treatments -- and this is factory-issue, not applied by the consumer -- on high-end Mercedes and BMW cars recently. What do you think, readers?

US Market Gets a Special Edition STI!

2009-12-11T21:48:00.003-05:00

We're used to seeing the Japanese home-market special edition WRX STI models. There's been the S202, S203, S204, WRX STI Spec C, and even a WRX STI Spec C Type RA-R. All of those cars are factory hot rods, with all kinds of cool goodies like stiffer suspensions, different (usually larger) wheels and tires, better brakes, and more power. What do we ever get? Well...there was the "Limited" model that one year, that came with leather and a sunroof.

Perhaps there's been some kind of change in philosophy in Spring Hill, because Subaru has announced a special edition that sounds pretty good to me. Named (wait for it...) "WRX STI Special Edition," the car will gain some features and lose some. Gained: Revised suspension with stiffer front springs, stiffer rear shocks, stiffer rear subframe bushings, and a fatter rear sway bar; and special wheels from the Japan-market Spec C car that MUST be lighter than the 27-pound standard US wheels.

Lost: Six of the ten speakers, and five of the six CD slots in the stereo; HID headlamps; turn indicators on the side mirrors; auto climate control; and $2000 of price, bringing the MSRP down to $32,995 plus delivery fee.

The grumpy Subaru forum denizens didn't seem too thrilled about this car ("Give us the Spec C!"), but I like it. It's slightly lighter, I assume it handles better, and it's quite a bit cheaper. In fact, I'd like to see Subaru go FARTHER in this direction. I'd continue the de-contenting and remove the entire SI-Drive system, switch to 17" wheels and tires, and swap the spare tire for a can of flat-fixer. (I'm trying to think of what else you could remove, but I'm out of ideas.)

The other thing that would make a special edition car a little more special would be a few more horsepower. Call it ten more for a total of 315, and maybe 100 pounds off the standard car, getting the weight down to maybe 3150. Sounds like a fun ride to me.

PLX Gauges and the STI Windshield Pod

2009-11-28T23:40:00.006-05:00

The windshield pod we mentioned some time back is now in production and on the shelf. We put a couple of PLX DM-100 gauges in a customer car and they turned out great. We were pleased with the Mach V splash screen, but it's the rest of the programmable functions of the gauges that's the cool part. You can choose between about six different data display modes, each of which is customizable by color. (Note that I was still playing around with colors in the second picture, below.) You can also upload custom wallpaper or gauge styles for each gauge.

If you have more sensors than you have gauges, you can change what sensor is displayed on what gauge using the wired remote control. Or you can display four different data channels in text form on one gauge.

The gauges are just about 1" thick, so mounting is really easy. They'll fit in any standard gauge mount (which is what we did), or you can just surface mount them or put them on a simple stand or L-bracket. They come in 52mm and 60mm sizes.

Reconfigurable and programmable gauge displays are the future of gauge technology. Some of the latest cars have gauges like this -- the Lamborghini Reventon is one that I can think of. Recent airplanes have this approach, too, with LCD screens that display the appropriate data at the right time, rather than just fixed gauges that may or may not be useful all the time. As the technology gets less expensive, more and more original-equipment automotive gauge displays will eventually look like this. But for the time being, it's up to us in the aftermarket to lead the way.

Uncorking the Power!

2009-11-24T21:43:00.006-05:00

In that never-ending quest for more horsepower, we've been experimenting with some different parts on the STI. But as I've mentioned before, paying customer work has a way of coming before our own shop car. The good news is, this customer wanted to put almost the exact same modifications on his 2010 STI, as we have on our 2008 model. (Despite being different model years, the cars are mechanically identical.) We wrenched for a few days, then strapped the customer's STI up to the trusty Dynojet dynomometer for some testing. Would it surpass the Mach V STI?

Here's what we put on the car that's the same as the Mach V STI:

Here's what's different from our car:

One extra note about my tuning this car: It's a 2010 model, and at this point in time Cobb Tuning's wonderful AccessPort is not compatible with the brand-new ECU. The only way to tune this car for now is Open Source software available on the Web.

I don't usually use this approach for a several reasons. The first is that the results of my tuning can (in theory) be easily read by someone else, where the AccessPort gives me some amount of rights management over the ECU tune I create. The second is that the Open Source stuff does not allow "real time" tuning. For each change you make, you have to re-flash the ECU, which has traditionally been pretty time-consuming. (Early systems from four years ago would take 20 or 30 minutes for each re-flash.) The final reason is that the software has often been a little half-baked. I tried an early version a couple of years ago and there were some major bugs.

Things have come a long way since I last tried this stuff out. Although I still worry about my intellectual property a little, the speed of the re-flash has advanced to where it takes less than a minute to shoot a change to the ECU. And the software was stable during the whole tuning session, with no obvious bugs or problems. It still takes me a bit longer than the AccessPort system, because I'm using several different pieces of software and having to switch and move data between them. But most of the gripes I previously had with the Open Source stuff have been addressed.

This customer wants to use his car for track day use at road racing courses. That means the car will see very hard use, with high heat loads and much longer times on-throttle than any street car will ever see. I planned to be conservative with boost, fuel and timing.

Despite those guidelines, the car still made great power. The chart at left shows our own Mach V car (green lines) on a run where the boost and timing were similar, graphed against the 2010 car. Since there are some substantial breathing differences -- the headers, induction pipe, and the TGV deletes -- I can't say whether or not the turbocharger is responsible for all that additional power. But this combination of parts certainly woke the car up.

Fall New Goodies Edition

2009-10-21T21:43:00.005-04:00

Yep, it's fall! Leaves are falling, the temperature keeps lurching from 40 degrees F to 76 and back, and...hey, there are new goodies for the STI in the inbox!

We have been hounding our friends at Kartboy for some rear endlinks for the 2008+ STI. Kartboy makes our favorite endlinks for the older WRX, but until now they haven't made one for the new rear suspension design.

For those of you new to this kind of thing, the endlink is a little connection piece that transmits force back and forth between the suspension and the sway bar. The factory ones are rather spindly and aren't really up to the punishment delivered by fatter aftermarket sway bars and/or autocross or road race use.

The Kartboy ones, on the other hand, look super-stout! These are going on our car at the next opportunity. We've got more to sell, too, so you can get some too. Kartboy Endlinks.

We've also been involved in the development of a gauge pod that fits neatly on the windshield above the rear view mirror. It's ALMOST in production. Here is a little peek at what this will look like.

I like this design because it keeps the gauges off the A-pillar. A-pillar mounting is just a little too look-at-me boy-racer for my tastes. This windshield mount is hidden behind the screen and tinting at the top of the windscreen, so it's nearly invisible from outside the car.

Watch an update about product pricing and availability soon.

More Dyno Time

2009-10-16T23:16:00.004-04:00

We did get the STI back on the dyno, and temps were much cooler than during the summer. But still the STI wouldn't make any more power than before. I tried some different approaches -- lower boost with more ignition timing, for example -- but didn't have any luck. I was comparing the dyno results with a recent STI I tuned that featured a 20G turbo. (The Tomei ARMS M7760 is similarly-sized to a Mitsubishi 20G.) The Tomei turbo spools significantly faster, but seems to have less top-end. Is the turbo holding our car back? Or is something else going on? We're going to find out.

I also managed to take some video of the car on the dyno. There's not a whole lot to see, but you can get some idea of the noise and of the car straining against the straps. Off the left side of the screen are two high-velocity fans, which make a lot of noise on their own.

Finally, something more blog-related than car-related: The FTC has released guidelines about disclosure in online media. Specifically, it's trying to give a little more clarity to bloggers their relationship with advertisers or sponsors. I thought I'd use this opportunity to talk about the sponsors of this blog.

Basically there's only one sponsor: Mach V Motorsports, my company. At least as of this point, all the parts featured here were purchased by the company. None were donated by other companies. We sometimes get some discounts on parts that are intended for the shop car -- I think the hood shipping was discounted, for example. But aside from that, every part was bought and paid for, and none of my suppliers knew I would be discussing the product on this blog.

In the future, assuming the popularity of Mach V STI Blog suddenly shoots up, companies may fight for the right to give us free goodies to review. (Oh please, oh please.) When that happens, I'll be as clear as I can about parts that were given rather than purchased by us.

I do hope that this blog prompts people to go to our web site -- www.fastwrx.com, remember! -- and buy things. That's the whole idea of the blog.

STI Carbon - Gentleman's Express

2009-10-05T20:47:00.005-04:00

I know, there's always some excuse for me not coming back here with 400 whp from my trusty STI. So here's the latest: I dislocated my right shoulder, and am just a week back from surgery to repair it. One of the many downsides of shoulder surgery is that I can't row a manual transmission for a while. So the STI (and my Mini Cooper S) have been sitting at the shop while I borrow a friend's Scion TC automatic. (Thanks, Larry!)

Just so I'm not ending this post with my medical history, I thought I'd comment a little on the latest Japanese-market special edition STI, the STI Carbon. It's basically like your regular STI, but it's got a carbon fiber roof (like the BMW M3 and M6 cars) for reduced weight up high, where the weight reduction does the most good in lowering the car's center of gravity. Sounds fine, but there's more! There's...an automatic transmission??? Oh, and some suede seats and dash, but whatever. Autoblog, among others, said it "...doesn't make sense."

Here in the U.S. the transmission choice seems downright bizarre in a car of this type, but there's some precedent for this kind of thing in Japan. Of course, the current-model Mitsubishi Evolution X is available with a twin-clutch auto-manual gearbox, but back in 2002 Mitsubishi produced the Evolution VII GT-A, which had a regular slushbox automatic transmission, plus more sound deadening than the regular Evo. It was termed a "gentleman's express" car, something a little more civilized than the normal boy-racer Evo.

Indeed, in Japan you'll see "salarymen" business-suit-wearing drivers on the highway in all sorts of high-performance cars, many of them modified. It's FAR more expensive and difficult to own and maintain multiple cars there, so most of these are their drivers' only cars. That means they have to do double-duty, sometimes as track cars and daily commuters. There are lots more wagons there -- if you're going to have to live with only one car, a wagon is quite useful -- and many of those are heavily modified. (As a former Legacy GT wagon owner, I go nuts over the huge quantity of modified Legacies I see in Japan.)

So in that context, the dichotomy of the performance-enhancing carbon roof against the performance-sapping (but maybe utility- or comfort-adding) automatic transmission makes some sort of sense. The STI hatchback layout has high utility -- it's a decent alternative to a full-on wagon in terms of cargo space. But maybe the businessman would like something just a little more relaxing during that long Tokyo commute. We'll see. Remind me next year and I'll report back whether it was a sales success or not.

2009-09-16T09:46:00.004-04:00

One of the problems I have with running a small business is that it's hard to set limits on how much time you spend on it. There's always more work to do! I say that because I've been finding it hard to make time to put my own project car on the dyno when I have a steady stream of customers asking for tuning. (It's a good problem to have.) So we've seen a lot of cars on the dyno lately, but my white car hasn't been one. On the plus side, the weather has been cooler, so when it finally does get back on there the ambient temps should be a little lower.

I can't make a post without a photo, so here's one of the car with a new Subaru World Rally Team sunshade I got from my online friend Subie Gal.

Tuning Half-Done...

2009-07-16T15:38:00.004-04:00

Cobb Tuning looked at our slightly funky ECU (see previous blog post), did a collective shrug ("Weird, we've never seen that before."), and reflashed it back to its initial state. Then when the ECU came back I realized that my AccessPort was still "married" to the ECU in its previous state -- so I couldn't use the AccessPort until THAT was also reflashed. Anyway, a couple of weeks and several postal shipments later, the electronics were all ready to go, and we strapped the car to the dyno on a very hot and humid July day. Initial results were promising, but I was having some trouble making the car reach my desired boost level. I realized that the newest Subaru ECUs have several temperature compensation tables related to boost levels.

Basically, after the intake temperature exceeds 104 degrees F, the boost targets and duty cycles are all reduced, and the hotter the intake temps get, the lower the boost targets get. According to my logs the ambient temperature at the dyno was 102 F, and the intake temperature on our car was exceeding 135 degrees F -- that would explain why the car was seeking 19 psi instead of 21 psi. The only way I could keep tuning at my target boost levels was to zero out all the temperature-triggered safety features, but I felt it best to leave those in place. I decided to continue the tuning process in the morning when the ambient temperature was below 102.

Here are my initial results from the first half of the tuning process. Since the turbo is larger than stock, there is some spool penalty -- note how the red power line is above the blue line between 2600 and around 3500. But where the stock turbo is reaching its peak torque, the larger Tomei turbo is just getting started, and the torque and power exceed the stock numbers from that point on.

Once the air temps are cooler and I can depend on the car making the boost pressures I specify, I'll get back to work -- I hope to be able to show some additional power on my next update.

Summer Progress

2009-06-17T00:39:00.002-04:00

We successfully installed the TurboXS FMIC kit, the Tomei turbo, and a TurboXS turbo-back exhaust. I hooked up the laptop computer to the ECU for some dyno tuning, and found that I could not reflash the ECU, although other tuning functions were working normally. Weird. We parked the STI in the Mach V showroom and sent the ECU off for some diagnostic investigation.

While the bumper was off I swapped in some blue-er HID bulbs for the headlamps -- the stock ones always looked a little to yellow to me. And then to round out the HID blue lighting up front, we also popped in an HID 9006 kit for the fogs.

Surgery Underway

2009-05-29T22:08:00.007-04:00

I finally managed to push the paying customers aside (sorry, everybody!) to get the Mach V STI on the lift for some extensive surgery. The tasks include replacement of the turbocharger with the Tomei ARMS model; installation of the TurboXS FMIC kit (see previous post); removal of the stock exhaust system in favor of a full TurboXS turbo-back exhaust; and replacement of the fog lamp bulbs with HID units.

So far the turbo is in place, and the bumper is off in preparation for fitting of the FMIC plumbing and core. The core is a generously-sized bar-and-plate unit. Bar-and-plate is known for efficient heat transfer and low pressure drop compared to cheaper tube-and-fin designs.

The exhaust is a full 3" mandrel-bent system. Although the STI has a dual-outlet muffler in stock form, this new system is only a single-outlet. If I was in full-on marketing mode, I'd say that was for weight savings. The truth is that TurboXS hasn't yet relased their dual-outlet STI system, so for now we're going to make do with the single-outlet that fits the WRX hatchback. But hey, we are saving weight...

I also popped in some cool color-changing turn signal bulbs for the front corners of the car. The stock turn signals double as side markers. I wanted those to be pure white, but you can't have white turn signals. These bulbs solve that by being pure LED-white while they're behaving as marker lights, but when they do their blinking turn-singal duty, they turn orange! It's very cool. I took a video:

FMIC and Harness Bar In the STIzzle

2009-05-20T21:27:00.008-04:00

FMIC stands for "Front Mounted Intercooler," for those not in the know. All turbo Subaru models have their intercoolers up on the top of the engine -- that's why there's the big hood scoop. That top-mounted location means a very short pipe routing for the charge air, but it's not ideal for cooling. For that, the front of the car is perfect. Cooler intake temperatures mean more horsepower, and that's what we're after.

We chose the TurboXS front-mounted intercooler kit because we like the guys at TurboXS and we've done business with them for a long time. They make nice intercooler kits, with proper high-strength T-bolt clamps, multi-layer silicone couplers, and polished aluminum tubing. The extra-huge intercooler core should work nicely with the larger turbo we'll be fitting.

One interesting note about this kit is that it includes TWO different piping options, so it'll fit both the 2008+ WRX as well as the 2008+ WRX STI. The STI still uses the old-style aluminum manifold, with the turbo and stock intercooler separated by some piping. The WRX uses the newer plastic intake manifold, with the turbo outlet dumping directly into the stock intercooler. You'd need different plumbing for either option, so TurboXS thoughtfully included both with the kit.

Our kit is in a box in the showroom in front of our car. As soon as we can get some spare shop hours we'll be fitting it up. Stay tuned. In the mean time, I took one last picture of the car before the surgery...

In other news, we developed a harness bar for the 2008+ WRX/STI. This will allow you to mount four- and five-point harnesses in your car without having a full roll cage. We built and delivered the prototype bar to a happy customer during our Mother's Day Meltdown Spring Open House event, and should be building some production bars in the next couple of weeks. This isn't some slapped-together kludge part, either. Just to name one detail of this thing, we machined custom spacers to allow the proper freedom of movement of the factory shoulder belt even with the harness bar installed. Sure, it might have been easier to just throw some washers in there, but that's not the way we do things. Check our web site soon for pricing and availability.

Mwah Hah Hah! The Power Mods Begin

2009-03-30T21:22:00.005-04:00

Okay, it's a small start, but we installed some Deatschwerks 750cc fuel injectors on the STI. These are a new type that use an OEM-style Denso core. I expected that they'd act a lot like stock injectors, but larger, and I wasn't disappointed. I plugged the laptop computer in and drove around the neighborhood with the computer data logging for me. A few adjustments to the "injector scale" constant, and the car was behaving just like it did before, just with lower injector duty cycles. The car is now ready for a bigger turbo.

Sharp-eyed blog readers will notice that previously I said I'd use 850cc injectors. Well...my relatively mild power plans don't really merit that large of a fuel injector, and I'm always preaching to MY customers how they should use only as much fuel injector as their power goals require, and not larger. So I thought I'd practice what I preach.

In general, the larger the fuel injector, the tougher it is to tune low-load and idle fueling. Cars equipped with very large injectors sometimes can't trim the injector flow low enough at idle, so they'll idle very rich, smelling of extra fuel out the tailpipe.

While I'm going back on previous blog promises, you know when I said the exterior of the car was done? Well...maybe not. Besides a front lip, which I wrote about before, I think I'm going to up-size the rear wing. Stay tuned.

The photo above doesn't really have anything to do with today's topic, but I liked it. I took it at sunset back on January 28, 2009.

Power Plans, and MPG

2009-03-09T11:44:00.003-04:00

At this point our STI is pretty nicely set up in the handling department, what with the upgraded wheels and tires, Cusco coilovers, and Whiteline sway bars. And the car is looking pretty good, too. But the horsepower is still pretty close to stock -- the only power modification we've done is a Cobb AccessPort.

Part of the reason I haven't bolted a bunch of power-increasing parts on the car has to do with the engine failures we've witnessed among our customer base. (See my notes and pics below regarding that subject.) I confess I'm not very excited to think about having to pull the block out of the car to replace the pistons. Even if the likelihood of a failure is low, the expense (in both money and time) is pretty high.

Another contributing factor is that our service business has been growing and it's been a little hard to schedule work on our own car when we're full up with paying work. (That's not a bad problem to have!) The final factor is that like many of us considering the economic downturn, I'm a little leery of spending cash that I might need if the economic climate continues to worsen.

That said, I didn't buy this car to keep in bone-stock. The reason for having is to showcase what we sell and provide some first-hand insights about the parts and how they work. So here is our plan for power production on the car:

Mitsubishi 20G turbo or equivalent (maybe a Tomei ARMS turbo)
Deatschwerks 850cc fuel injectors
Walbro 255 lph fuel pump
Turbo-back exhaust system (with cat)
TurboXS front-mounted intercooler
Upgraded turbo induction pipe
TurboXS intake

This should give a healthy amount of power (figure around 350 awhp on our Dynojet dyno) but still leave the car relatively civilized for daily-driver duties.

On a completely different note, I've been noticing that the STI's miles per gallon is still improving. I noticed this looking at me from the dash the other day...

Exterior Almost Done

2009-01-11T00:48:00.005-05:00

The Seibon hood is now painted white. We left the vents in the natural carbon fiber just to give it some variety and to reveal what the hood is made of.

Some more details about installation on the hood: It uses the factory hinges and hood struts. Ideally, we'd find some weaker struts, because the original struts are very strong in comparison to the new lighter hood. The hood has holes for the stock windshield squirters, although the holes weren't quite bit enough, so we hogged them out a bit to fit. The original hood latch is bonded into the fiberglass, so it should be secure for the life of the hood, although if I was going to race this car I'd use hood pins in addition.

We also added Subaru's rear exhaust garnish trim, which are metal bits that surround where the tailpipes exit the car. I like the look of them, although not everyone is positive about 'em.

The exterior of the car is just about done. We're debating adding a front lip. It would enhance the look and improve the aerodynamics, but it would also make the car a little harder to use in the real world -- and who likes cracking a fancy custom front lip trying to get into some driveway?

In other news, we expanded the Mach V Media Empire with the addition of a Facebook page. (I think you'll have to log in to Facebook to view it.) Check it out, write on the "wall" if you want. Is this what we do now instead of watching TV? Collecting friends on facebook has a little of the feeling of collecting the Franklin Mint Fifty States Collector Plates or something. But what do I know...

Toys 'n' the Hood

2008-12-07T21:16:00.005-05:00

We installed a Seibon carbon fiber hood on the Mach V STI. The pictures here show it in its raw carbon form (it's finished in a clear gel coat), but it'll eventually be white like the rest of the car. We'll probably leave the side vents in carbon just to show the underlying material.

The hood fits pretty well -- it's molded underneath just like the factory hood, and it's got holes for the factory-issue windshield washer nozzles. It does come with silver aluminum mesh inserts, which we thought didn't really look good, so we removed those. The factory hood scoop doesn't have any mesh in it either...

The original purpose of carbon hoods on cars was to save weight. In recent years, a lot of carbon hoods don't actually reduce weight at all. The use of lightweight aluminum on the 02-07 WRX and STI, for example, meant that a carbon replacement weighed the same as the metal hood. But in recent years the price of aluminum has soared, and Subaru went with a steel hood for the STI. At 22 pounds, the Seibon carbon hood weighs a lot less than the 45-pound stock one. Hooray for actual weight reduction!

Note that we don't have hood pins on the car, but I've always recommended people use them with any aftermarket hood. Still, the Seibon hood is made with a metal plate imbedded in the fiberglass that holds the hood catch. Given the minimal amount of use our car gets, I may hold off on the hood pins until some future time when we're headed for the race track with the car.

Brittle Pistons on 2008 STI?

2008-11-12T11:32:00.003-05:00

We've heard of an alarming number of 2008 STI cars that suffered piston ring land failures. Once the ring lands break, the engine loses power. Repair involves removing the engine and rebuilding it. Many of these failures were on completely unmodified cars. Subaru issued a recall on the car to reprogram the ECU in an attempt to remedy this problem, stating:

During a quality review, we discovered that under certain harsh driving patterns, specifically when repeatedly or continuously operating the engine above the “red-line” (RPM above 6,700), abnormal combustion could occur resulting in serious internal engine damage in the form of broken piston ring lands. This abnormal combustion condition is the result of an “over lean” fuel mixture caused by a combination of fuel cut activation and high turbo boost.

I'm not convinced the problem is ECU-related. Most of the failed pistons show no signs of detonation, although I admit that doesn't prove it's NOT detonation that caused the failure. Various theories have been advanced on the Subaru message forum communities, including:

Crankcase oil is contributing to detonation which results in piston failure
New materials used for the piston castings are more brittle than older ones
Solid (not sodium-cooled) exhaust valves create in-cylinder hot spots which lead to detonation.

Personally, I'm leaning toward the "brittle casting" theory. It just seems like the pistons are more fragile than in the older Subaru 2.5 liter engines. Given the general trend towards cost-reduction, it would not surprise me if Subaru changed suppliers and that the new supplier used a slightly less sturdy metal formulation for the pistons. The bad news for us if the problem is caused by the actual piston construction, is that we will not be able to fix the issue just by re-tuning the car, or by any bolt-on modification. Only an engine teardown and piston replacement would solve the problem.

This problem hasn't surfaced on our shop STI (yet), but we're keeping our eyes and ears open.

Thanks to the guys at Turn-In Concepts for the picture above.

TPMS and You

2008-10-20T13:28:00.006-04:00

When we swapped on the new wheels, we also installed the factory-issued Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) sensors, which would allow the car to keep track of tire pressures on our new wheels. Unfortunately, we broke a couple of them in the process, so we had to buy some new ones. And the car was not familiar with the digital code of the new sensors, so the dash cluster tire pressure warning light was always on. Some cars have an option to reset the tire pressure sensors right from the dashboard controls, but not this one. The only choice is to use a dedicated tool that can tell the car it's got new sensors on it. We'll eventually have one of these in our shop, but for now none of the aftermarket systems can work with the Subaru sensors.

So, down to our local Subaru dealership we went -- that's Dulles Motorcars in Lessburg, VA. A quick session with their factory scan tool laptop, and everything was working as it should. In fact, the next time the light went on, the outside temperature had droped about 40 degrees, and I found the right rear tire to be about 5 psi low. Hey, the TPMS actually works!

STI in the News

2008-10-17T22:11:00.003-04:00

The December 2008 issue of Evo magazine arrived in the mail today, and it's the tenth anniversary issue. The first feature article compares the latest UK STI edition, the 330S (it has 325 hp) with the original 22B Impreza, which Evo tested in its first issue ten years ago. As you might guess, the 22B comes across as the better driver's car. The cars have almost the same power-to-weight ratios, but the 22B is under 2800 pounds, while the 330S is 3311. (A whole bunch of that is in the wheels, which are the five-spokers from our base-model US STI. And which weigh a whopping 27.5 pounds each.)

The article talks about the modern STI's lack of steering feel, and I concur. That is something I'm looking to remedy with some aftermarket parts in the future. I don't think I want to go so far as to swap steering racks, but I'll look into changing bushings and maybe some of the front-end suspension geometry in an attempt to get better steering feel.

Oh, and speaking of weight, we're looking forward to dropping 20+ pounds off the nose of the Mach V STI by swapping the stock steel hood with a carbon fiber one from Seibon. The hood is on its way to our shop by freight truck now, so I should have some pics of that in a week or two.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'...Keep Them Fenders Rollin'...

2008-10-03T22:29:00.002-04:00

Somewhere many months ago, I said, "I'll find some wheels that fit better, because I don't want to alter the fenders to clear these." That was before I decided that the G-Games wheels are just RIGHT for the car. Not that I care -- okay, so I do care -- but 100% of the people who have an opinion also love the wheels. So they stayed, and to make sure the rear tires didn't collide with the edge of the rear fenders, we rolled the fenders.

You can do this a couple of different ways. The old-school way involves a baseball bat rolled between the fender and the tire. That's a little crude for my tastes, although there are people who can do it really well. We used a dedicated fender rolling tool, which bolts to the hub, and has a little urethane wheel and a screw that is used to press the wheel against the fender lip. It works well and makes sure you roll a nice circular arc. (The picture above is from Tire Rack. You can buy one of these tools from them, if you want.)

Mach V master tech Mike Gerber performed the delicate surgery on the STI, and the results are very nice. The fender is flared out ever-so-slightly -- so much that I didn't notice it at first -- so that it clears the outside edge of the rear tire. Mike made sure to heat the paint at the edge before rolling, so the paint did not crack. Before, the tires and fenders would rub together under any large suspension movement. Now, they don't seem to be able to touch at all. I've done some pretty hard cornering with the new setup, and have not been able to get them to rub.

At left is the fender and tire, post-fender-rolling. I'll be doing a bit more high-g driving to understand more about the results of our sway bar swap, and in the process I'll keep an eye on that rear tire/rear fender. Stay tuned.

I do have to make a note here about wheel offset for the 2008 STI. I've been seeing a LOT of 2008 STIs running very low-offset wheels. I think this is mostly because there are not many high-offset, large-width wheels on the market. Optimal offset for a 9.5" wide wheel on this car is probably around 50mm, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that wide, in anything CLOSE to that high of an offset. (As of this writing, I do have a set of 19" ASA's in the showroom. Email me if you're interested...) Most 18x9, 18x9.5, 19x9, or 19x9.5 wheels are in much lower offsets, like +30 or less. This kind of offset is great for a deep concave look, which I admit is really cool. But it also puts the tire really far out toward the fender, resulting in pretty serious interference problems unless you go with a narrow tire. So I've seen some people running only a 225 or 235 width tire so it won't rub. The car comes with 245s! I'd hate to go to a narrower tire just because I couldn't find the right wheel fitment. Some of the people who do this seem to really like the sticky-out wheel look, or the small-tire-stretched-to-large-wheel look. But in many cases these cars are severely compromised in terms of driving them every day, and in outright performance.

The other isse that nobody seems to talk about is that changing the wheel offset changes the scrub radius, and the steering feel is changed. For the worse. Even the relatively small (-15mm) change I made on our car resulted in a noticeable loss of steering feel, especially at higher speeds.

More Footwork: Whiteline Rear Sway Bar

2008-09-29T15:44:00.005-04:00

We installed a Whiteline 22mm adjustable rear sway bar on the STI to try to get the car to rotate a little more readily. The stock suspension, even with the coilovers, has a marked understeer bias, meaning the front loses grip long before the rear. While this is safe, it makes it difficult to hustle the car around corners effectively.

A firmer rear sway bar can make the back end of the car more lively, and Whiteline's 22mm bar (up from the stock 17mm) is adjustable so we can tweak the stiffness at the back. Since we were back there, we also installed Whiteline adjustable rear end links. Installation was straightforward -- you could easily do this to a car on jack stands. Note that the sway bar kit comes with a set of sway bar support brackets (the gold-colored bar in the picture), which tie together the sway bar mount and the rear subframe. We think this is a great idea -- the stronger sway bar will put a significant amount of stress on its bracket. You can buy the sway bar supports separately if you want.

One note on the installation: The bar has a Whiteline label on the center portion. You would THINK that the label would face upright when mounted on the car. At least in this case, you'd be wrong. Putting the bar on so it'll clear the exhaust meant the label is upside down. Who knew?

The STI as Daily Driver: Thumbs Up

2008-09-23T23:14:00.003-04:00

Compared to some of my previous daily drivers (cough! -- Lancer Evo -- cough!) the STI is extremely easy to live with. Even with the relatively hard-core Cusco coilovers, the ride is comfortable enough. And I had forgotten how useful and practical the hatchback layout is. Open hatch, pop down one seat, slide in a cat-back exhaust, box and all, and still have room for two passengers. It's quieter than older STI models, too. Talking with passengers doesn't require raising my voice.

I've come to appreciate the lighted steering wheel controls -- cruise control and audio functions are illuminated for easy identification at night.

The other part of STI ownership that I didn't expect is all the compliments and attention. At one gas stop I got three different people coming over and commenting on the car. I get thumbs up from random other drivers. One guy followed me to where I was going to ask about the car. Non-car people say things like, "I love your car! It's cool looking! What is it?" Not even the Evo got this kind of positive reaction.

End of Summer Update

2008-08-29T22:40:00.009-04:00

We've been busy with some travel, a new acquisition, and some prototype work. The travel was a trip out to the Pebble Beach Concourse D'Elegance, which is a hugely over-the-top classic car show. It's hard to describe the ridiculousness of this show, so I won't try, but I'll share a couple of pictures. On the modern side, there were such vehicles as the Lamborghini Reventón (one of twenty made) , several concept cars, and the debut of the new convertible Bugatti Veyron. On the classic car side, there were scads of '30's-vintage Rolls Royces, V-16 Cadillacs, and Packards. Oh, and a mess of Ferrari 250GT Spyder Californias. And a Ferrari 312P flown in from Switzerland. So many super-ultra-rare cars I felt like my brain was going to explode from overload. "Oh, look, a Lamborghini Miura Spyder. Wait...did they even make a Miura Spyder?" (Answer: Yes, but only one.)

Featured cars included V-16 Cadillacs, Alfa Romeos, and the Ferrari 250GT Spyder California, of which several gorgeous examples were in attendance. (See one at left.) The Spyder California was already highly coveted before the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but that film brought the car to the attention of the public, which further added to its value.

There were not any Subarus shown at Pebble Beach, but there was a WRX STi at the nearby Pacific Grove Concours Auto Rally.

Back to reality, we've got our annual Mach V Track Day event coming up, and after balling up my Lancer Evolution at a track event a couple of years ago, I'm not so keen on risking my pristine STI. So we acquired a somewhat tired 2000 Impreza which we're going to turn into a track mule. On the minus side, the body is a little rough, and the engine has a rod knock. On the plus side, we've got a spare engine, and it happens to be a Japanese turbo engine. (It's 1996 vintage, but still...) So we'll be putting that together over the next couple of months.

I find it interesting to compare the size of the '00 Impreza with its grandson the '08 STI. The old car (known by its chassis code GC) looks much smaller, even though it's only about an inch shorter in length and width. It is a full three inches shorter in height, and the roof line does look much lower; the beltline is lower, too. There's a huge difference in weight, though: The older car weighs around 2700 pounds, while our '08 model is a hefty 3350 or so. Even just getting in to the GC car, you can tell the old chassis isn't anywhere close to the stiffness level of the current car. You can get in the car and watch the frame flex! We'll be gaining some stiffness with extensive chassis reinforcement and a roll cage...

Yes, this post WILL actually have some Mach V STI info in it. We're working on a cat-back exhaust for the car. We have mostly finished the prototype. It still needs tips, but the basic design and layout is done. The design is a transverse oval muffler with four tips, similar to the factory layout. The piping will be 3" to the muffler, then 2.5" out to the tips. Even with our phony muffler (it's full of air, not normal muffler packing), the prototype system is surprisingly quiet. We're aiming for a mild sound with good exhaust flow. Look for the system on our web site some time in the near future.

Mach V STI Goes Drag Racing

2008-07-19T00:58:00.008-04:00

My good friend Tom lives near Capitol Raceway, a quarter mile drag strip in Crofton, MD. He invited me out for the Friday Night "Test and Tune" drag races. Two hours of rush-hour traffic later, I was there at the strip. An eclectic mix of cars showed up to run, including: A Chevy van; a BMW 745i; a 2009 Dodge Challenger (which ran a 13.2); a bunch of 350Zs; a couple of Lancer Evolutions; one or two other Subarus; and a good selection of loud American muscle cars. There was also a VW Golf with an STI hood scoop on it. The big scoop, the one that looks like a snow shovel. It wasn't functional yet, but the owner promised that it would be. He said he always liked Subarus.

My timing was bad, so although I was at the track for about three hours, I only got to make two passes. (Various pro classes and motorcycles were being run between street car runs. And then various cars broke, requiring clean-up.)

On my first pass, I was so nervous I forgot to switch the throttle map to "S#" and to turn off traction control. I revved the engine to 4000 rpm, dumped the clutch and peeled tires for a split second...and then the revs dropped to about 500 as the tires hooked up and/or the traction control kicked in. Worst. Launch. Ever. The elapsed time was a shameful 14.645, with a 2.275 60-foot time.

After that I had almost three hours of idle time in the staging lanes to think about my second pass, so I had it together and switched the traction control off, and toggled over to "S#," which would deliver maximum power above 6000 rpm. I was relieved that the temperature dropped a bit as the evening wore on. It had been almost 100 degrees earlier in the day. By 11:00 pm it was only 80.

I staged next to a clapped-out Honda CRX with fat wrinkle-walled slicks sticking 4" out from the front fenders. The second stage light came on. I revved to 6000 ("Must not bog!") and held it there while the Honda did a loud burnout. He staged. The tree lit up and I released the clutch. I heard lots of tire peeling noise as the STI launched forward, and I briefly saw the Honda in my rear view mirror. I shifted to second, and about then the Honda blew past like it was going into orbit. I struggled a little with the next shift, but managed to get into third, then fourth. The speedo showed around 100 mph as the car went through the traps at the finish.

Final time: 13.667 at 100.32 mph. Not bad! The mph was a little lower than I expected, but a decent 1.758 60-foot time allowed me to knock a full second off my first pass. With a little more practice I think I could get another couple of tenths from the car.

Oh, and the Honda posted a 10.682 at 142.40 mph.

Stiff Stuff

2008-07-01T14:39:00.005-04:00

Since increased chassis rigidity is always good -- especially considering we have greatly increased the suspension loads with the stiffer coilovers -- we applied Cusco chassis braces to the front of the STI. Underneath the engine, we bolted up a Lower Arm Bar, which ties together some of the front subframe bits, and replaces a thin steel reinforcement plate (that's the triangle shaped part) with one that's made from material that's twice as thick. If you know Cusco parts, you might notice that the Lower Arm Bar is gold -- this particular part was sold under Cusco's now-retired "Vacanza" brand. All the parts in that line were finished in gold instead of the usual Cusco metallic blue.

Up under the hood, we applied a Cusco OS upper strut bar. It only took a few minutes to install it. It looks like the bar leaves plenty of room for a larger intercooler, should we choose to add one later.

Cusco has not yet released rear chassis bracing for the 2008+ STI, but when they do, we'll be installing those, too.

First Dyno Results

2008-06-27T23:28:00.003-04:00

We put the STI on the dyno and did some baseline passes. The car made a respectable 244 hp and 245 lb-ft of torque to the wheels. This is about what I'd expect from a car rated at 305 hp at the crank -- I use a rule of thumb of 20% drivetrain loss for an AWD car on our dyno. Hmm...305 times 80% equals...hey, it's exactly 244! (I guess I'll keep using the 20% rule...)

Then we switched to the Stage 1 map on our Cobb AccessPort, and ran the car again. The change was dramatic: 264 hp and 289 lb-ft! That's a gain of 20 hp and a whopping 44 lb-ft of torque. We did all these pulls within about a half hour of each other.

For the record, the weather was pretty hot -- the temp at the dyno was 98 degrees F, and 25% ambient humidity. This isn't ideal turbo-car weather, but at least both sets of runs were under the same conditions. If you are interested, that SAE correction mentioned on the graph means the numbers are scaled up by 2-3% to try to normalize for the heat.

I did notice that below about 3000 RPM, the car actually LOST a little power, and I've heard some other people complaining about that on the off-the-shelf Cobb Stage 1 map. We'll be doing some additional custom tuning on the car, so stay tuned for more gains, and (I hope) recovering that lost low-end power.

HyperFest 2008

2008-06-25T00:36:00.005-04:00

On June 21, we took the STI to HyperFest. We didn't actually put the car ON the track, but we had it on display at our Mach V booth, and got a lot of nice feedback about the car. Many non-Subaru owners recognized that it was an STI, and knew about the car. "This is the new STI, right?" We continue to get HUGE positive response about the wheels, so it looks like those will stay, despite the slightly-too-low offset.

The drive to and from Summit Point was pleasant. Good weather, nice roads. The early morning light was good, and we got a few rolling shots of the car.

The HyperFest turnout seemed really big -- we had a lot of booth traffic all day long. Organizer Chris Cobetto said he suspected this was the highest turnout they've had.

Our booth was next to the Grassroots Motorsports magazine booth, and we got to chat with associate publisher Greg Voth. My not-so-humble opinion is that GM is a great publication, with some of the best technical content of any of the sports car magazines currently offered. Greg was clearly an enthusiast, and knew a lot about a ton of different cars. We talked about participating in one of their Subaru projects. If that happens we'll post here about it.

Photo Shoot!

2008-06-18T22:22:00.007-04:00

We assembled a crack team of photographers and assistants -- okay, okay, it was just me -- to shoot the Mach V STI on a summer evening. Many mosquito bites later, we had a few shots we liked.

If you're interested, I was using a Canon 30D digital camera, with a couple of different lenses, and a tripod.

In my experience, it's MUCH easier to get good car shots during the "golden hour" right after sunset, or right before sunrise. Not only do you get nice sky colors, but the car details are also softened up a lot, and little flaws -- chips or small bits of dirt -- are less obvious. But it's tough because there's only about an hour, and setting up shots and moving the car and equipment around is time-consuming.

You can view more pictures -- and mega-sized versions of them -- over at this thread on NASIOC.

New Shoes!

2008-05-30T22:22:00.005-04:00

Sorry, I promised dyno testing news, but I'm going to discuss wheels and tires first. The dyno stuff will come later.

Although the stock wheels and tires on this car are pretty huge (18x8.5" wheels, 245/40R18 tires), the fenders are simply gargantuan, and there's a LOT of room in there for bigger rubber. So, not being the type to leave well enough alone, I got out the calculator. Lessee...there's probably an inch of extra clearance...That'd be around a 275mm tire width. A wheel that was one inch wider would be 9.5" wide...might as well go up a size in diameter, mostly for appearances...So that means a 19x9.5" wheel, 275/30R19 tire.

Scouring our various suppliers didn't result in many choices. Most mondo-huge wheels are in lower offsets than will work on the STI. And some that would fit are boat anchors weight-wise, or wouldn't clear the brakes.

One promising wheel was the Rays G-Games 99B. It's really light at 21 pounds. (Trust me, for this large of a wheel, that's light!) It comes in the right bolt pattern and size. But the highest offset is +40. Still, I couldn't pass up the look -- it's like the stock five-spoke, but bigger and more sculpted.

For tires, the choices were again limited. 275/30R19 just isn't something you're going to find at the local Tires 'R' Us. Cooper Tire came to the rescue with their Zeon 2XS. Some of you tire snobs might be asking, "Why not Pirelli or Michelin or some other fancy-pants tire?" Well, to be honest, I didn't want to spend $300+ per tire, and I find that our customers don't either. So I thought I'd try this brand. Plus, Cooper sponsors our friends at CSI Racing, and the team has had good results with the Cooper product.

Here's the result. It looks awesome! To me, the car looks more to scale with the wheels -- the larger wheels reduce the car's bulky appearance, especially at the back.

But there's some sad news, too -- the +40 offset is too far outward, so both front and rear tires are sticking out from the fenders just a bit. We haven't done full testing yet, but it looks like the fenders and tires are going to come into contact at full suspension travel. In theory we could have the pad (the center mounting surface of the wheel) machined down, but I don't think there's enough material on the wheel to allow that. So it's back to the drawing board, looking for an even higher offset.

Check Engine Light Resolution

2008-05-01T21:22:00.002-04:00

When we last left our heroes, they were struggling to diagnose a mysterious "Check Engine" light that showed up after the installation of an electronic suspension controller. As I mentioned earlier, I was studying the wiring layout of the car. Had we somehow nicked a ground, causing several sensors to go offline? Was something left unplugged? We went back over all the connectors -- everything was plugged in.

The other weird thing was when the ignition was switched to on, stuff started clicking under the hood. The radiator fan went on and off. I said, "It's almost like it's in pre-delivery test mode." Someone else exclaimed, "The test connector!" I had been looking for that earlier -- turns out it's over in the passenger footwell, not in the driver's footwell like on earlier WRX cars. Well, one of our well-meaning junior mechanics had been putting the interior back together after the suspension install, and seeing a connector unplugged...he plugged it in!

This test mode connector is only intended to be used at the pre-delivery inspection, to make sure all the systems are working. After that it's unplugged. And going back to the wiring diagram, sure enough, the test mode connector plugs into a junction that also attaches to the neutral position switch, which was one of the trouble codes the ECU was telling us about. So we unplugged it on our car, cleared the stored ECU trouble codes, and poof, it's a working car again.

Next up: Dyno testing.

I Still Remember My First Check Engine Light

2008-04-27T00:49:00.004-04:00

Ah yes, it seems like only yesterday. We had just buttoned up the interior of the STI after the installation of our fancy electronic suspension, and we switched on the car to find...a dashboard full of warning lights! Specifically, the Check Engine light, and its friend the blinking cruise control light. (All late-model Subarus blink the cruise control lamp when the Check Engine light is on. I assume this is to make extra sure you don't drive around forever with the Check Engine light permanently lit. And the cruise control doesn't work when that light is flashing, either! Maybe they think THAT will give you the incentive to seek professional service help...)

Anyway, the car was throwing a bevy of diagnostic codes, including "Rear oxygen sensor signal low" and "Neutral position switch signal low" and something else about air/fuel. Clearing the codes resulted in them coming back on instantly upon starting the car, which is a sure sign of disconnected hardware. A once-over of the various wiring harnesses revealed no obvious plugs left hanging, though.

My next stop was to the excellent Subaru Technical Information System web site. There you can pay a small fee ($35 for 72 hours) and download shop manual PDF files to your heart's content, look at wiring diagrams, get detailed troubleshooting instructions, and more. I scarfed up pretty much the entire STI shop manual, plus the full set of wiring diagrams, and got to digging.

I'll post about the resolution to this problem next time.

Cusco E-Con

2008-04-15T22:43:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, we installed the Cusco Zero-2E coilovers on the STI. The "E" in the name indicates that it's compatible with the Cusco E-Con control module, which gives you remote adjustment of the coilovers' five-way dampening.

Installation of the system is a little involved. There are four little motor modules which each sit atop their respective shock. Wiring leads to a junction box, and then a ribbon cable from that connects to the control unit. The only wires you actually have to attach to the car are power (constant and switched) and ground, but running all those wires to the four corners of the car took some time, plus the removal of a good portion of the interior. The innards of the '08 dash are pretty cramped. We decided to mount the control unit inside the center console. The junction box we hid where the rear cup holders used to live. (Sorry rear passengers, you'll have to stash your water bottles in the doors now.)

After everything was popped and bolted back together, I took the car for a spin and tried out the new remote adjusters. They work! It's pretty slick; you just push a button, and faint little clicks emit from each corner of the car. (LEDs blink on the E-Con display at the same time.) After a few seconds, the dampening changes, just as advertised. You can adjust front and rear independently, or you can link them.

As for the actual hardness of the different levels of dampening...my initial impression is that "1" is great for daily use, and "2" through "5" should be labeled "kidney punch" through "liquefy internal organs." I think I'll be using the higher settings for motorsports only. But really, isn't that the whole idea behind one of these systems? Drive to work on Friday, drive to the autocross on Saturday, and switch settings without every having to turn a wrench. Neat.

Now to find the time to actually get this car on the track...

Red Tails

2008-04-07T12:14:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned before, I really don't like the factory chrome tail lamps. I thought I'd cover them in red vinyl, but the contour is a little difficult -- thin vinyl tends to wrinkle if you try to curve it too much. There is thicker stuff, like "Rockblocker," but that can't wrap around the edges, so the clear will show through. That leaves painting. We took the lamps to our favorite body shop, and now they're nice and red. The car really looks different from the back.

For those of you who want to remove your tail lamps for whatever reason, here are some pointers on getting the center lamps (on the hatch) off the car:

First, remove the interior hatch trim. Start at the top, by the hinges. Pop the four pieces loose. The bottom piece is pretty tight, but it will pop free.
Remove the 8mm long nuts from the sides. Note that these have little teflon washers that are easy to lose.
There's one last 8mm nut inside the hatch. Use a socket extension or 8mm nut driver to get to it.
Once all the nuts are free, the lamp will still be tightly attached to the car. It's got a pop fastener that holds it in. We just pushed on that last stud (where the nut was) with the socket wrench, and the lamp popped loose.

While we were in there with the hatch trim apart, we swapped out the backup bulbs with LED replacements.

Lowered!

2008-03-24T12:32:00.005-04:00

Since my last post, we've had the car in the shop a bit. We got the painted grille on the car. It gives it a slightly different look in the front, although I think non-Subaru people would never notice. We tinted the windows to the Virginia legal limit of 50% in front, 35% in back. Moving on to something more substantial, we bolted on a set of Cusco Zero-2E coilovers, and lowered the car about 1" from its stock height for starters.

The Zero-2E's are premium fully-adjustable spring/shock assemblies that allow for independent dampening adjustment at each corner, and continuously adjustable height adjustment at each corner. The "E" in the name means they can be paired with Cusco's electrically-actuated remote control, which allows you to adjust dampening from the comfort of your driver's seat.

I haven't yet had time to play with the remote dampening, but my first impression of the way the car rides and handles is very positive. I was a little worried that I would destroy the daily-driveability of the car by making it so rough it was only suitable for the track. That's definitely not the case. The car does feel more connected to the road, and body lean is less, but it's still perfectly comfortable. There's a little more vibration and impact transmitted into the car, but nothing your grandma would complain about. So far so good.

The Modification Plan

2008-03-06T22:04:00.003-05:00

The car is almost through its 1,000 break-in miles, and my modification plan is gathering shape. My overall goal for the car is to push the performance envelope just a bit in every direction, without making it unsuitable for daily use. That means no roll cage, no monster-huge turbocharger, no mega-loud exhaust. On the other hand, the very soft and quiet nature of this car (even compared with the older WRX STI) leads me to believe I can push things a bit without totally messing it up.

There are also some appearance things I want to address. I wanted to change the front end look of the car a bit, so I added the original equipment Subaru fog lamp kit. I also sent the grille off to get painted body color; I'll post new pictures with the revised grille as soon as I can.

Coming soon: A Kartboy short shifter; Cusco Zero-2E coilovers; and larger wheels and tires.

After that, the Cobb AccessPort. I'll be doing some before-and-after dyno testing with that device. Further down the
road will be more power mods, including a full exhaust system, maybe an intake system, and perhaps a slightly larger turbo and intercooler.

SI-Drive

2008-02-22T21:25:00.004-05:00

I hate to sound like a luddite, but the SI-Drive ("Subaru Intelligent Drive") thing just seems ridiculous to me. It's a knob in the center console (just where BMW puts their also-ridiculous iDrive knob) that can select from among three different modes. On the STI all it does is change the mapping of the throttle pedal to the actual throttle behavior. I (Intelligent) mode appears to limit maximum throttle, plus it has a shift light that encourages you to short-shift to improve gas mileage. S (Sport) gives you access to full throttle, but the initial pedal generates almost no apparent reaction from the car. S# ("Sport Sharp") is the only one that makes the motor feel like I would expect, with peppy response at lower throttle angles.

The reason I find this system silly is that I already am in control of my throttle foot. If I want to restrict myself to 30% throttle, I can do that without even switching a button. I'll just soft-pedal the gas. Plus, if I change my mind, I don't have to find the button, I can just mash the accelerator! (Gee, maybe I should get a trademark on this system. I'll call it..."I Drive.")

Designing the button to look like a BMW iDrive button is insulting. What, does Subaru think I'm an idiot, and that somehow the cachet of the BMW will rub off on them? This reminds me of those cheap boom box stereos that have what looks like a ten-band graphic equalizer, but it's really just two sliders and a bunch of lines so it gives the appearance of more bands.

I'm in the fortunate position to be able to actual fiddle with the iDrive -- sorry, the SI-Drive -- throttle mapping using the Cobb AccessPort, so I plan to just take the "Sport Sharp" behavior and make the default mode work like that.

I must confess I wish that the money invested in giving my STI the SI-Drive system were spent instead on a couple other creature comforts that are common these days, like a sunroof, or heated seats. Yes, yes, I know, that's not in the spirit of the hard-core performance car, but what can I say. I already established that the STI isn't so much a hard-core care anyway. And even my old 2003 Evo had a sunroof.

The STI Loosens Up

2008-02-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

Gas Mileage Rising

The average mpg reading on the new STI was around 16 mpg through about half the first tank. I don't know if that was because nine miles on odometer when I got it were spent putting around distribution and dealership lots, or just because the motor was new, but it's been improving ever since. By the time the first tank was empty, we were up to 18.0 mpg. Halfway through tank #2, it's at 21.1 mpg. It may be my imagination, but the motor seems more willing to rev now, too.

Considering the car's 17/20 sticker mpg rating, 21.1 seems decent.

Living With the STI: More Tid-Bits

You can put eight -- yes, eight -- 20-ounce gourmet lattes in the STI. (For those who care, that's two in the front center cup holders, two in the rear cupholders, and one in each door pocket.) And thanks to the STI's plush ride, you won't splash coffee all over your interior on the way home to your seven coffee-starved roommates.

If bank-vault solidity is what you look for when you close a car door, look elsewhere. The STI doors make a hollow "ting" sound when you close them. They feel very light.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a lightweight aluminum hood like the older WRX cars had, sorry, folks. New WRX models, including the STI, have a conventional steel hood. (Some press reports had said the STI would get an aluminum one, but my trusty fridge magnet says that's not the case.) On the positive side, Subaru finally installed gas lifts on the hood. Hooray! I hate prop rods.

This car has a LOT of cornering grip. I'm still trying to find the cornering limits. It may feel soft, but it sticks like a barnacle in corners. I'm pretty impressed with the Dunlop tires. They're called SP Sport 600, and they were specially engineered for this car, according to Dunlop.

Stock Stereo System Notes, Part Two

Two sort-of-hidden features of the stock stereo are accessed by the "Menu" button. There's speed-sensitive volume, which I'd call mildly useful. And there's "SRS CS Auto," which is a sound processing feature. It makes the sound...different. I have a hard time figuring out exactly what sounds different, though. According to the SRS web site,

SRS CS Auto is the automotive audio industry’s only award-winning surround sound decoding solution that features additional post-processing techniques for a total vehicle surround sound experience. CS Auto’s enhancements include SRS Dialog Clarity™ to improve the clarity of the center or phantom center channel’s vocals; FOCUS® to elevate the sound image for any in-vehicle speaker placed below the listening level (such as in the lower portion of the door); TruBass®, a bass enhancement to deliver the perception of significantly lower bass frequencies and a specialized Channel Mixer which allows adjustable mixing of the front and center channel contents into the surround channels.

Uh...okay. So, we don't really know more than we did, but it sounds okay. The company claims this works with any source material.

EVO Likes the STI

I just got my March 2008 copy of the UK's EVO magazine. (One of the best car magazines on the planet, in my opinion. Especially if you're into photography.) The cover story is about pairing the STI with a Lamborghini Gallardo -- the crazy-fast Superleggera version, no less! -- and chasing them around the wet country roads of North Wales. The STI holds its own, although the authors admit that the Gallardo will zoom away in a straight line. (Chalk it up to the 226 additional horsepower...) The page 61 photo of the two cars, with the STI six inches off the tarmac, is just awesome. There's some terrific video , too.

And hey, they pretty much echoed my comments about the STI's cross-country abilities! Perhaps there's a career waiting for me in journalism if this parts business stuff doesn't pan out.

Break-In Procedures

2008-02-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

The Subaru owner's manual suggests you drive your new STI gently for the first 1,000 miles. Also, don't drive at a constant vehicle speed. Or a constant engine speed. And don't exceed 4,000 rpm. I guess I'll be waiting a while longer to experience those 305 horsepower.

My commute is 25 miles of straight-line highway. How am I supposed to drive at different engine speeds? I'm doing my best by shifting between fifth and sixth gears, and varying between 55 and 70 mph. The other drivers think I'm nuts.

I'm trying to experience some of the high-performance of this car, but with all the above restrictions, it's kind of difficult. I am surprised by how much lateral grip the car has. The suspension feels pretty soft and there's plenty of body lean, but it still sticks really well. The 245-width tires have a lot to do with that, I'm sure. I think the STI would be great to hustle over bumpy back roads.

Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

I can't stand looking at this car. My 2005 Legacy GT was really an attractive car. Subaru did a great job styling both Legacies -- wagon and sedan. This car...well, it sort of looks like a Mazda 3 crashed into a Lexus RX300. To my eye, it's a visual mess. There are weird combinations of curves (the fender bulges, the headlamps), and lines (the sharp cutoff of the front fenders, the front grille). I can't deny it looks tough, but it isn't attractive. Do you hear me, Subaru designers? The new Lancer Evolution is a nice-looking car! What happened in Subaru-land?

So the next question is, if I think it's so ugly, why did I buy it? Business! I find it very hard to sell parts for the latest version of the car if I don't have access to one. "Hi, does your blah-blah part fit on the 2008 STI?" "Um, I don't know, we haven't seen one yet. Let me wait until someone brings one by the shop, and lets me test-fit all my parts on it." That doesn't sound good to me. So, out with my beloved Legacy, in with the homely -- but still appealing -- WRX STI.

I think every car looks better with a little more window tint, a little lower stance, and slightly larger/wider wheels and tires. Oh, and some of those things can actually improve the handling, too. So we're going to try some of that, and we'll see what it ends up like.

Interesting Design Details

2008-02-05T23:21:00.000-05:00

Here are some details about the car that I found interesting in my first 200 miles...

The STi logo on the center console lights up at night
There are dim red lights in each footwell. Reminds me of a German car.
The clock also features an average MPG display, but there are no other trip computer functions unless you spring for the $4000 nav-plus-BBS wheels package.
If you set your EZ Pass electronic toll thingie on the clock cutout in the dash, it works fine.
The car is tall! I almost can't reach the center of the roof. I looked it up -- it's 1.6" taller than the older Impreza STI.
The seats are not Recaros, but they're very comfortable. And the Alcantara is grippy.
The gauges do a sweep thing (self test?) when you start the car, but you can disable that if you like, according to the owner's manual.
It's got a six-disc changer, and it plays MP3 data CDs. That means...lessee...about 65 hours of music if you just stuff six full CDs in. Not bad.

Buying It

2008-02-05T22:33:00.000-05:00

Delivery:

We picked up our 2008 Subaru WRX STI on Friday, February 1. Thanks to the folks at Annapolis Subaru for an easy and pleasant buying experience. Sales Manager Chris Kelly is extremely friendly and very knowledgeable about the Subaru product line and the enthusiast community. Sales guy Ed Rucker is super-friendly, too; plus, he drives an '06 STi and he's definitely a car nut himself. Parts guru Jackie said hi, but I had to run out without visiting with her. Hi, Jackie!

I also got to drink coffee from the Super Duper Robot Cappuccino Deluxe 5000 machine. It offers like 20 varieties of coffee. Truly amazing.

So, thumbs up for Annapolis Subaru!

First Driving Impressions:

It's like driving a smaller, tighter Legacy GT. Which makes sense because the car basically IS a Legacy GT under the skin -- put the two side by side on a lift if you don't believe me. The good part of that is that it's quiet, comfortable, and buttoned down in corners. The downside is that it's certainly not the visceral, twitchy hard-core feeling STI that we've grown to know and love. (I know, everyone has been over this before.) To me the challenge will be getting back a little of that more direct feel without losing that nice comfort.

Other Notes:

I listened only to the radio for the first hundred miles or so, and was ready to declare the stock audio system awful. The sound was muddy, and the volume was too soft -- I had to crank it to about 36 (out of 40) to hear anything. Then I put in a CD -- actually, a data CD of ripped MP3s -- and it sounded like a whole different system. There's no low bass to speak of, but otherwise it sounds pretty good, and it's plenty loud. I wonder if the problem with FM radio has something to do with a defective antenna or something?

Early Modifications:

On my last several cars, I have installed "clear bra" paint protectant, and we applied it to this car, too. (Technically, we applied Scotchgard Paint Protection Film. And professional installer Sophann To did the install.) This is a sticky clear film that is applied to the paint on the front of the car to prevent paint damage from rocks and other road stuff. It works great. It's not cheap, though -- for the price you could probably repaint the front of the car. So from a strict financial standpoint it's questionable. But I don't like seeing my car slowly chewed up from the daily highway commute. We covered the front bumper, hood, hood scoop, mirrors, and also did some strips below each door -- those fat side skirts are going to catch a lot of feet as people exit the car.

We'll also be doing window tint. I like it for the cooler interior, the reduced visibility of car contents (I've had many cars broken into in the past), and the way the car looks with tinted windows.

I also swapped out the interior lights (dome and map lights) to LED units. I'll post about that in a future blog entry.