More Footwork: Whiteline Rear Sway Bar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.