Surgery Underway

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: