[Ben]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Post #1 - The story
Post #2 - Initial Impressions
Post #3 - The first mod list...uh oh!
Post #55 - First Pictures*
Post #80 - AccessPORT Stage 1 Flashed
Post #152 - Pictures of the new wheels and exhaust*
Post #254 - The Braille Battery has arrived!*
Post #264 - Updated pics of the Braille Battery with the STI limited edition mount kit*
Post #324 - Coilovers confirmed! Thanks to TopSpeed / Siegel Racing
Post #331 - Braille Battery installed*
Post #344 - First pics of the SSR Type-F's*
Post #353 - First video of the MXP 3" Turboback Exhaust
Post #374 - The first real pictures! Now we're talking!*
Post #390 - Some selective coloring from yesterday's photo shoot*
Post #393 - Impressions of the MXP 3" Turboback Exhaust
Post #407 - V1 Hardwire Installed*
Post #423 - DIY Black Painted Grille & Fogs Preview*
Post #433 - The grille and fog light housings have been removed*
Post #443 - Painting Complete! Sequence Photos*
Post #456 - The final product is installed!*

CLICK HERE FOR PICTURE GALLERY

*An asterisk indicates that the post contains pictures.

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SPONSORS



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MODS

Fuel & Tuning:
AccessPORT Stage 2

Intake / Exhaust:
MXP (Mackin Industries) 3" Turboback Exhaust

Drivetrain:
STI Factory Short Shift Package
Cobb? Kartboy? Short shift kit

Suspension & Stiffening:
BC Racing Coilovers (8k/10k)
BC Racing Pillow Ball Upper Mounts / Camber Plates
Whiteline 24mm Adjustable Front Sway Bar
Whiteline 22mm Adjustable Rear Sway Bar
Whiteline Front & Rear Endlinks
Whiteline ALK
Whiteline Rear Subframe Bushings
Whiteline Steering Rack Bushings

Braking:
Better pads...
Motul RBF 600 Fluid
Stoptech or Goodridge Stainless Steel Lines

Wheels & Tires:
SSR Type-F 18x9 in Silver (18 lbs Forged)
Dunlop Z1 Starspec in 245/40ZR18

Interior:
Valentine 1 Radar Detector Hardwire
Homelink / Auto-dimming Compass Mirror

Exterior:
Factory Fog Lights
Tint (50% windshield & front windows, 35% rear windows)
Debadged hatch leaving only "STI"
STI Valve Stem Caps
Flat black painted stock grille & fog lamp housings
Clear headlights

Weight Reduction:
Braille STI Limited Edition Battery /w Mount (~20 lbs)
SSR Type-F's (~40 lbs)
MXP Exhaust (~15 lbs)

Items listed in BLUE are coming soon (waiting to be installed)
Items listed in GREY are potential future items (not yet ordered / sponsored)

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RECENT PICTURES



MORE PICTURES HERE!

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THE STORY

Well, it's been quite a week. I never thought I'd ever be back in an STI after selling the race car almost 2 years ago but last Wednesday something strange happened. I was cruising around IWSTI at 2 in the morning as I sometimes do and for the first time ever I noticed the $7,000 off /w 0% financing thread in the GR forum. I'm not sure how I missed this for so long and I certainly came late to the party, but it seems I saw it just in time.

I was never really interested in the 2008 STI and never anticipated buying one. However, after seeing this deal it became apparent in about 30 seconds that this was just too good to pass up and off I went to subaru.com to start looking for dealers.

After hours of searching and tracking inventory with every single dealer in California, Nevada, & Arizona, I found 5 potential cars. Narrowing things down further, only 3 of the 5 cars were eligible for the $7,000 off incentive and of those 3, only 1 was the color I wanted. The dealership was located in Oakland about 7 hours away so it wasn't ideal, but I figured I'd give it a shot.

The next morning I called the dealership, locked in the price, and did all of the paper work and financing over the phone. I booked a one-way ticket to Oakland for the next morning and off I went. In a matter of 24 hours I had gone from never even thinking about buying another STI again to not being able to fall asleep because I was picking up a new STI 500 miles away in the morning. How things change...

The next morning I landed in Oakland, took a train to the dealership and I was all set to buy the car. When I was about 5 minutes away from signing all of the paper work I got a phone call from a different dealership about 50 miles away that wanted to give me an incredible deal on an 09 STI. This lead to an extremely long and frustrating series of events, and while the story is absolutely hilarious I don't have enough time right now to tell the whole story.

The short version: the GM at the other dealership sent a car to pick me up, the driver got lost, we waited 2 and a half hours to get picked up. After getting in the car the driver got lost again on the way back, and luckily I was able to figure out that he was lost about 15 minutes after we left by looking at my iPhone. Had I not bothered to look at our location on my iPhone and get directions this guy could have driven in circles and never told us he didn't know how to get back. After finally getting to the dealership some 4 hours later, I was basically told that the deal we agreed to on the phone was not going to happen due to a "communication error" and after apologizing for the inconvenience, the GM sent me BACK to the other dealership with a different driver to go pick up the car I should have purchased almost 5 hours earlier.

We arrived at the original dealership 10 minutes before they closed, finished the deal, and I drove home in my brand new Lightning Red 2008 STI with short throw shifter, auto-dimming mirror, and fogs (that I didn't even realize I had until after I got home... ).

I'm finally back home and the car has 500 miles on it now. I'll take some pictures later this week after it's all beautifully detailed.

First impressions to come in the next post...

[Ben]

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This car is extremely interesting, and certainly not what I anticipated. After driving it off the lot, I was actually a bit disappointed initially. I flew 500 miles to buy an STI and what I drove home didn't really feel anything like one. The clutch was soft and had almost no feel, the steering felt way over boosted, the gas pedal felt extremely awkward, and in general the car just felt HUGE. To describe it in one word, the car was...numb. Luckily this pretty bad first impression gradually wore off and the car started to grow on me.

I started to analyze things one by one as I drove home and figure out why I felt the way I did. Was I being jaded or were my complaints and poor feelings justified? Was I being fair or making comparisons that I shouldn't have been making? I started to realize that the first mistake I made was comparing this STI to any of my previous STI's. This is a new car with a new purpose, and once you can appreciate that purpose everything becomes a bit more clear.

For example, compared to the clutch feel of a previous generation STI, this clutch feels horrible. It's soft with very little feel and doesn't seem like it belongs in a sports oriented vehicle. However, other new "sports oriented" vehicles have similar feeling clutches. The 135i clutch feels almost exactly the same, and possibly even worse. Once I got used to it, it wasn't really a problem, it was just a bit shocking at first. This initial "shock" faded away when I started thinking more about why I purchased the car in the first place. Did I really buy an 08 because I wanted another 05 STI? No, I wanted a more civilized, more comfortable, and more grown up version of what I had before, especially after coming from an Audi S4. So why then was I so concerned with a soft clutch? Why was I so hot and bothered about a steering wheel that felt over boosted and too easy to turn? Are these things actually bad? Does the car feel numb, or does the car feel refined? Aren't those two words really just synonyms anyway?

The old STI was about cheap performance by any means possible. The new STI is about finding a balance between performance, comfort, and practicality. To some, this might seem like a compromise, to others, it might seem like the best of both worlds.

After 450 miles of driving on the freeway fluctuating speed, gears, and RPM's, I got home and was very unenthusiastic about the car. It felt like something was missing and I was having some serious doubts about my purchase. But then I thought, how can you get a feel for a car if you're purposely staying out of boost and trying to stay below 4,000 RPM's on a highway? I reserved my judgement and went to bed, still somewhat disappointed.

The next day I took the car to Ortega Highway, a canyon road that would finally make me understand what this new STI was all about. With the SI-Drive in intelligent mode, I drove down the 5 towards Ortega highway in a comfortable, quiet hatchback that I wouldn't mind taking on a long road trip. It was almost as pleasant to cruise around in as my S4. Then I got to Ortega and switched it in to Sport Sharp and started carving some canyon roads at pretty unbelievable speeds for a stock car. The car put a smile on my face for the first time, and it finally felt like an STI. In fact, it felt so much like an STI that I couldn't really tell the difference between my old ones and this one. If anything, it felt better. I was absolutely and completely blown away. It became clear to me that this car wasn't a compromise at all. It could do everything an old one could do when and where it pleased. But unlike my old STI, when it was time to stop having fun and drive home, it could change back in to that "big, numb" hatchback I drove up in and get me home comfortably and quietly.

With that said, I'm going to touch briefly on some key points:

Transmission

This alone is probably the single best reason to buy an STI over a WRX. Thankfully, the STI transmission hasn't changed in the new body style. It's one of the nicest transmissions and has the best feeling gearbox of just about any car. I'm really happy to see that it's still there.

Steering

Initially this felt way over boosted and loose. The wheel was too easy to turn and didn't feel as solid as the previous STI. After a few hours of driving I completely got used to it, and after driving in the canyons I can say the steering definitely felt fine. I'm actually REALLY surprised it felt as good as it did with the HORRIBLE wheels that Subaru put on this car. 28 lbs? Give me a break. I can't imagine what this is going to feel like when I take 10 pounds of unsprung weight off of each corner...

Braking

Same old, and as always, these brakes are great for a stock car. Nothing much to say here. The brembo's felt fine and I'm really happy to see them painted black instead of gold and have an STI logo on them instead of the brembo logo. They don't look like aftermarket calipers finally.

Interior

While I'm not the biggest fan of the new interior -- the whole space shuttle theme that Subaru went for with the curves in the dash has me really confused -- I can't believe it took 5 years to get all of the damn lights to light up red in this car! But hey, it's finally here and looks good. The cup holders look nice, the black and grey is a much improved change over the black and blue, and the seats are definitely more comfortable. Are the seats particularly sporty? No, but that all ties in with this whole "refined" theme we have going with the new STI, and personally, I like it.

Exterior

Like any car, this car has good angles and bad angles. It looks really awesome from the front and side, but it's hard to say it looks great from the back. I'm still warming up to it. The fender flares are really nice from some angles, from other angles they look really strange and out of place. No matter how odd they may look at times, I tend not to care when I see the wheel widths that fit on this new body style. I'm only going with 18x9's, but it's nice to know you can even go significantly wider than that if you wanted to.

While it's kind of strange to not see a huge hood scoop when looking out the windshield, the more aerodynamic hood scoop is definitely a nice change. The insane hood vibration that came with that big scoop also seems to be gone, and its nice to see the car comes with hood dampers now instead of a prop. I'm also pleased to say that for the first time in company history, Subaru has released a red color that doesn't absolutely suck. In fact, I like it quite a lot. Oh, hey, look at that...I got a red one .

Exhaust

At first I thought it was a bit hilarious that Subaru went with a 4 tip exhaust. 1 tip per cylinder? That's kind of a lot, don't you think? It definitely grew on me though and I think it looks good. As for the sound, it's not much different than previous years. If you want to hear anything at all you need an aftermarket exhaust because like always, this thing is extremely quiet. Again, this goes with the refined theme, so it's not a bad thing.

SI-Drive

At first I thought this feature was completely useless. What is the point of having an "intelligent" mode in an STI? I didn't buy this car to get good gas mileage! Well, I saw first-hand today that this feature isn't useless. In intelligent mode the STI is pretty lame, indeed. However, that's exactly what I love about this feature. You can drive a comfortable, lame little hatchback in intelligent mode that's quiet and gets decent gas mileage and then throw it in to sport sharp, get 12 miles a gallon, and get the intoxicating surge of torque that you've known and loved since the very first STI came to the states. Can you do this without SI-Drive? Sure, but this makes it quite a bit easier . Now, frankly, I still don't see the point of the "Sport" mode, but I think this is just the case of the Japanese being a bit crazy. You either want to go fast or you want to get good mileage, what is the middle setting for? It reminds me of Sony with their ridiculous battery charger settings, "Charge, Quick Charge, and Super Quick Charge."

Traction Control

Haven't really played around with this one yet, but I can't imagine that this feature is a big deal.


I'm sure I forgot some things, but that's some initial impressions for now . I have to say that I'm pleased with what Subaru has done, and that I'm sure glad this car redeemed itself after the horrible first impression!

[Ben]

The first mod list...uh oh!

So, what would this member's journal be without at least some kind of starter list of mods?

Here's some quick and minor things that are going to be done this Wednesday:

1) Detail, detail, and then some more detailing. This thing is going to look like a mirror once my guy finishes working his magic with the buffing machine .

2) Tint...everywhere. Lightest possible on the windshield and front windows, 1 shade darker everywhere else.

3) Valentine 1 Hardwire

And some more exciting stuff to be done relatively soon:
1) SSR Type-F's in 18x9 (Forged, 18 lbs! ) - PURCHASED, Picking up on Thursday


2) Dunlop Z1's in 245x40x18 - PURCHASED

3) Cobb AccessPort - STAGE 1 FLASHED

4) Braille STI Edition Battery with STI Mount Kit - INSTALLED

[GJM]

congrats on the new purchase ben... Welcome back to the game!

Dunlop z1's or bridgestone re01r's.

Personally i'd go silver... But your right. Gunmetal would be ideal if you could get it.

[lunatictokyo]

So you bought the car from Oakland Subaru. Where is this other dealership that made you the offer but backed out?

I personally think gold wheels on red is really sexy, but it will be super super flashy. =) .. You may want to go with silver.

[ATTI2D]

**** yeeah LR is the best color. Welcome back Ben!

[Ben]

Originally Posted by lunatictokyo

So you bought the car from Oakland Subaru. Where is this other dealership that made you the offer but backed out?

I personally think gold wheels on red is really sexy, but it will be super super flashy. =) .. You may want to go with silver.

I actually bought it from Diablo Subaru in Walnut Creek, but they're very close to Oakland. I don't really want to get in to details about the other dealership because I'm not looking to ruin anyone's reputation here. Sorry .

As for the wheels, I keep going back and forth. It's tough... do I just say **** it and go gold since I already bought a flashy color? Or is the flashy color exactly why I need to NOT over-do the wheels, because red is already going to draw enough attention .

[CharlesC]

Congrads. Cant wait for the pictures!

[PGT]

congrats! I have a red one too and thought long and hard about gold wheels. I honestly think bronze works better LR....the red is too bright and the full on gold wheels don't compliment well. This of course depends on the shade of gold.

I picked up 18x9ET50 Type F's in black for my LR

[USNSTI]

Congrats. Best color ever. I vote for silver on the wheels. Gold on red might look kinda... strange IMHO.