[scottjua]

I should have done this a long time ago, as its gonna be hard to start a journal since I've had the car for a couple of years already and so much has gone on, if not many mods, the time and thoughts at least have flowed.

I'll try to update as much as possible as time goes by and also give a summary of the car to date.

My goal is to get my car as close to a great performing track car when I can get it out as often as possible, while not braking the bank and keeping it RELIABLE and street and wife worthy. We use it to go get groceries and every other daily driver utility along with our WRX wagon.

The mod list so far:

Engine:
- Cobb Catted Downpipe
- Protune @ Cobb Plano (285whp/344wtq)
- Ixiz Pitch Stop Mount
- Killer B Ultimate Oil Pickup

Suspension:
- JDM Pink STi Springs
- RCE lowering camber plates
- Whiteline 27mm adjustable Front Sway bar
- Whiteline 24mm adjustable Rear Sway bar
- Kartboy Endlinks front and rear
- Alignment -1.7F -1.5R +4.9 Caster 1/16th toe

Interior/Exterior:
- Recaro Pole Position Seat on Recaro height adjustable sliders and bracket
- Plasti Dip Dash
- JDM Red Hazard Switch
- Painted Headlight Reflectors
- Ixiz Hood dampers
- DEFI BF Amber Impreial Boost, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp + ATi clock pod

Wheels/tires:
- Street: Stock BBS 17x8 / OEM Bridgestone RE070s
- Track: 2nd set of stock BBS 17x8 / 245/40/17 Yokohama Advan Neova AD07s

Brakes:
- Goodridge Stainless Steel Lines
- Cusco Brake Master Cylinder Stopper
- ATE Super Blue and Type 200 Fluid
- Performance Friction 2pc Rotors
- Pads - Track: Carbotech XP10 Front and XP8 rears
- RCE Kool Brake Kit

So in my quest for track worthiness while watching spending, I've slowly come to some conclusions: The MOST WORTHWHILE thing to do for improving lap times is SEAT TIME. Weight and Brakes make more or a difference than power. And... tires make a world of difference

As most of the weight issues for this car will either cost money in new lighter weight parts or hard core paring of parts, safety, and creature comforts, I have resolved to live with just removing ballast essentially for the time being.

The brakes have been my largest focus after having gone for some simple yet effective suspension upgrades. Short of going for a big brake kit, the Performance Friction Rotors and good fluid/pads have made a night and day difference over stock Brembo rotors and less track focused pads. I can't wait to get my RCE Kool Brake Kit on to get my brakes cool between braking zones and after a session faster.

For my suspension mods, the JDM Pinks with stock struts and Whiteline sways are a wonderful daily driver compromise that can be taken to the track and enjoyed. I know there are many steps to go, but at this point, I am pretty happy with the suspension. I would like to re-orient my RCE camber plates to gain some more positive caster, but I will wait until I add an ALK and maybe some trailing arms and lateral links before doing that so when I pay for another alignment it will be worthwhile.

There's lots I want to do, but it will take time and money of course and other life priorities will outweigh mods here and there.

Future wish list:

- EQ headers
- Up Pipe
- Cat Back exhaust
- Wider wheels/tires (r comps)
- anything that loses weight
- coilovers
- Track data acquisition
- any functional aero parts
- oil cooler
- gauges
- bushings galore


ramble ramble ramble... now for pics:













Drop of the JDM Pinks and RCE plates




Painting headlight reflectors to match OEM headlight housings.

I used a chrome krylon base with a dark grey metallic in light coats over it until I got pretty close to the OEM dark chrome shade for the orange reflector. Eventually I will get the chrome/amber bulbs.








Cusco Brake Master Cylinder Brace: On the 06 it took ten minutes to install






Plasti Dip Center Dash: I was able to achieve a sort of crinkle finish to it by spraying about a foot away. Its held up perfectly for over a year now
















Recaro Pole Position seat: The best daily driver mod. I HATED the stock STi seat with a passion. Aside from sitting too high for me, the thigh support was hard and short and actually cut off circulation for me on longer drives. Not to mention it just didn't hold me at the track at all. I don't miss it one bit, aside from the safety of the air bag.






Still able to keep the stock Sub/Amp








Plenty of clearance


Wife on country road

[scottjua]

Now my number one Achilles heel for the car I feel for the track is...Brakes: The stock Brembos with upgraded Pads, lines, fluid did me well for a while, but I eventually got faster and am pushing the car more and more out at the track and would go through pads in 1-2 days at most. When I bled the brakes I would get minimal air in the fluid, but the heat checking on the rotors and ability for the pedal to recover between some braking zones diminished as I picked up speed and put more heat into the brakes. I felt like I needed better components to handle the heat and went up the Carbotech latter on pad compound over the years and recently changed rotors. I have the Kool Brake Kit on order and hope to get those in this week, as the last time I took temp readings on stock Brembo rotors the temps were upwards of 800 degrees at the rotor, and the wheel balancing weights actually started melting off.

I have a long thread here about it all: Brownbos, cooking brakes on Track: Bad cooling... or bad driver!?

So anyway this:







and this (these are after being resurfaced once already with similar cracking(the dents are not from braking)):


led to these and Carbotech XP10 front pads and XP8 rear pads:


installing








so pretty






the brembo rotors were seized on pretty good. I had to run to Lowes for n 8mm bolt to release them




done and ready for the track




So after my first track day on the new rotors and pad compound I have to say the improvement in braking was definitely noticeable. How much of it all was due to either the rotors or the pads I have no idea, but the combo proved to be great. The braking performance on the track was paired with new stage 2 power via Cobb downpipe and a Protune (more on that later) so to me the car felt completely different and took some real adjustment and getting used to. I actually was at first braking like I had previously with stock brembo rotors and XP8/AX6 combos and realized I was over braking by a huge margin. The new combo even with the added power down the straights meant I could go shorter and deeper than ever before, but getting used to it took me until the end of the day. This wasn't a normal session for me as I was also instructing this past weekend and didn't get as many or as frequent a session as I used to, so I really only got dialed in at the end of the day, and each time had passengers.

In any case, something funny is you can hear the dimples on the rotor surface under braking with the windows down. I noticed zero fade and plenty of consistent stopping power, but never got to get a single temperature reading as I pretty much jumped straight into student cars, or forgot after a session. I did still notice on certain sections of the track that the pedal hadn't fully recovered 100% between two big braking zones, leaving me with the impression that not enough air had flown over the brakes to cool them down, where in other sections, there was enough speed and time to get them cool enough to bite harder. So I'll be curious to get temp readings and impressions once I get the RCE KBK on the car and get out to the track next month.

So after the first track day on these, the Carbotech XP10 and XP8 pads looked like they suffered minimal wear and held up great. I'm excited by this for sure as it means less cost in the long run if I can get them to last more days. Of course my tires I use for the track (Yokohama Advan AD07s 245/40/17) are pretty much at the end of their life, and I had them flipped on the rims to get a little more use out of them. Unfortunately this last track day was run in the opposite direction we normally run, which was only a problem since I had the tires flipped to take advantage of the better shoulders on one side, only to have to beat on the more used side. :P


So after the one day the pretty new rotors look like this. I followed the instructions for bedding and had no issues that I could tell, but does this NOT look normal to anyone?


The driver's side Caliper turned more brown-ish than the passenger side, but wear looked similar




They look smeared...???


The stock rear rotors look like you can see the vein structure underneath...??? What's up with this??? Does this mean they are about dead too?? Or nothing to worry about????




Driver's rear

[scottjua]

This is the final post of the beginning of this journal, here on out I will add to it and hopefully not be too lazy to make a table of contents in my first post.

So another new piece of the puzzle was something I was putting off as long as possible as I always felt the car had plenty of power in stock form. I'd rather add speed by reducing weight, as coming from a heavy NSX fan background I'm almost obsessed with weight loss equaling performance as a mantra, but not to the point where I'm quite ready to strip my daily driver down and compromising safety (aside from the seat) and the inherent comfort that is built into it. At some point I may end up with an NSX converted to NSX-R or an Exige, but for now I need this car to be fun on the track, and keep my wife and possibly future kids safe when daily driven. So lightweight bumper beams full cages, etc. and stripped interior are probably not on the menu for sometime if ever for this car. NEVER say "never" though. If I can lose weight by upgraded, yet lighter weight parts, and removing balast that works for me...for now.

So after my weight rant...

Within the past two weeks I came upon the opportunity to add more power via a Cobb catted (gotta be catted for me) downpipe and a Protune at my friendly local Cobb tuning of Plano. I also added a Prodrive 3-port boost solenoid which it was also tuned for. Calvin, the tech who did all the work and tuning on my car did a great job and so far I'm a happy camper. He spent the good part of a whole work day on my car, tuning it to run a safe but fun tune and in the end the numbers are pretty good although honestly I haven't paid much attention to other's protune results as so many of the components vary and it wasn't on my radar until suddenly recently really.

We didn't do a Dyno pull with the car in stock or Stage 1 form, although that would have been interesting to see how much it changed. Under stage 1 I did get overboost a couple of times on highway acceleration in high gear and in cold weather and once recently on the track while pulling down the straight in fifth gear. So I re-flashed to a stage 1 low waste gate map and that pretty much cured that. So after the DP was installed we did a baseline pull to see where to car was at with the DP, stock boost solenoid, and off the shelf stage 2 map and got a gnarly boost spike early in the revs so Calvin actually did some of his magic on the tune and we eventually came up with a baseline of 273whp and 303wtq.

After the Prodrive boost solenoid install and much time tuning and many dyno pulls later we had some pretty nice curves and safe looking power.

Some pics of the day

Calvin takes off the stock DP without removing the intercooler


taking off the stock DP probably took 20 mins total... no rushing


Cobb DP going on












Calvin modifying my stock heatshield to fit




Pulling my car out to the Dyno... The Cobb time attack car looks so different and so awesome. I bet that thing is fun on the track!




Cobb cone Basher in the background


Tuning via laptop


Baseline




installing Prodrive Solenoid








One of the pulls with 290.1 WHP and 344.4 WTQ (those are corrected numbers)






287WHP 344WTQ


Cobb shop




Neil is camera-aware


Shop talk




mmmmmm.... Big Stoptechs



Finally the printouts. This is Baseline vs. 19psi map to use in cold-moderate weather and track


Calvin also made an 18psi map for me to run in summer or at the track. Here's the comparison.



So yeah, I can feel the difference now, but its not a slug of power or torque as I expected, as it feels much more linear than before with stage 1. And apparently, my stage 1 car was spiking the boost pretty heavily before so that's probably why the torque always felt so meaty before and doesn't feel night and day with stage 2 tuned.

Overall, I'm happy with it, and with the stock cat back I retain a stealthy sound for now. With the new DP though I hear all kinds of noises coming from the turbo and engine I never did before. ^_^

[Datadatum]

Looks good, Scott.

I have had mine for 5 years now, and still don't have a journal!

[IGoFast1589]

I am 100% with you on a reliable, but track capable DD car! That is EXACTLY what I want to do. Way to go dude!

[scottjua]

Thanks guys! I just added more to post 2 and 3.

Josh, your car looks about where I'm aiming at. If/when I get the catback I will add fuel pump and injectors as mine are at about 100% on this tune at times.

I'll probably also go some form of comfy coilovers if they exist, and the various number of bushings and things to firm up the handling and rear.

[Deuce Cam]

In the last engine bay shot I see a vacuum line running over the alternator towards the manifold. Is this for your boost gauge? Where is it tapped?

[Wronks]

Seems like your having a blast with your STI.
Well written journal too!
Awesome.

[STI-Dash]

Hey man car is super clean.. The cobb car is so sexy to me... That is what i am going for..

[IGoFast1589]

Originally Posted by scottjua

Thanks guys! I just added more to post 2 and 3.

Josh, your car looks about where I'm aiming at. If/when I get the catback I will add fuel pump and injectors as mine are at about 100% on this tune at times.

I'll probably also go some form of comfy coilovers if they exist, and the various number of bushings and things to firm up the handling and rear.

If you want "comfy" coilovers I would get something with a progressive rate spring as opposed to a linear rate spring. KW Variant 3's have a progressive rate spring I believe... The bushings are AWSOME! You should definitely do that because it makes a worlds difference.

My motor is being built right now because I cracked a ring, but I think the next steps are gauges and sways with endlinks. At that point I will be very content.

Anyways, enjoy your whip! Looks sweet!