Tokyo Auto Salon 2010

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

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!

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

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!

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:

• TurboXS front-mounted intercooler kit
• TurboXS intake
• Deatschwerks 850cc fuel injectors
• TurboXS downpipe (catted)

Here's what's different from our car:

• Invidia Q300 cat-back exhaust
• Prosport header/up pipe
• Samco silicone induction pipe
• TGV's removed
• Blouch TD06H 20G turbo

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

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

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.