[aspensti05]

I've been meaning to start a journal for a while now, but couldn’t figure out where to start. So here goes...

I was interested in the STi since I first heard it was coming to the US. I inquired with the local dealer about getting on the list, but the length of the list, lack of being able to pick colors etc, MSRP and/or markup and the lack of a delivery date left me cold.

Fast forward about 2 years and I decided to get one. I searched within a 200 mile radius to find aspen white, and the closest I found was NJ at about 180 miles away. I have had a LONG string of silver cars and was tired of it, and I preferred the darker metallic silvers like seal grey/titanium (my previous two Porsches were in this color) which wasn’t an option in 05. I liked the way the ugly STi looked in white and decided I had to have white. I love the color, but it isn’t as easy to clean as I thought it would be. After this it will be back to dark metallic silver for me.

As luck had it I went to my local dealer to try to get them to buy the aspen STi from the NJ dealer, and they told me they had one due in any day now and no one had put a deposit on it. I put $1000 refundable deposit down and the rest is history. I picked it up the last day of June 2005 at invoice plus delivery and NE advertising cost. Aspen white and gold wheels 3 miles on the odometer and no options.






Got it on a Thursday and on Saturday I bought and installed my first mod: a Perrin turbo back exhaust. Little did I know there would be many exhausts to follow. The video clip I listened to on Subydude.com sounded great and when mated up with my stock downpipe it sounded perfect (in hindsight the video clip must have been the catback only). I was waiting until after break in to install the downpipe, walbro fuel pump and get ECUTEK tuned.

After installing that I washed and waxed with Zaino Bros. It's pretty hard to get a white to reflect like a black car, but I think I did damn good esp. for crappy Subaru paint:





Notice the near perfect reflection of my wife's Honda Accord(soon to be replaced with a red mini cooper S! )

The 2nd mod I installed were deist 3” racing harnesses I had sitting around from my 996 track car. I was able to install the 4 point system using the rear factory seat rail bolts and using two eye bolts to replace stock bolts in the rear seats to give me a 45* angle for the shoulder belts. The shoulder belts can quick disconnect so they are only in the car before a track/autox event. The two lap belts tuck in nicely on either side of the seat. I’ll install the 5th and 6th points once I have a roll bar installed.

-- insert pics here when available --

3rd mod off the bat was to install my V1 radar detector and concealed display. I also debadged the SUBARU letters off the trunk and put on a laser shield license plate cover, real carbon fiber plate frame and 100 Club badge.




I ordered blue summer and rubber winter mats as well as some redline water wetter and a trunk cargo net from subaruparts.com Very pleased with the purchase esp. since the stock carpet without mats looks like it will wear quick and the trunk net keeps stuff from flying around the trunk.




The part numbers and "how to" for the cargo net can be found here:
http://www.scoobymods.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1856

Took over a month to reach 1000 miles in and in that time I had realized the stock springs had to go, there was way too much brake dust and the mushy/vague shifter had to go. I ordered JDM pink springs, STi front & rear strut tower bars along with some Porterfield R4-S front & rear pads and a pink star badge from Gruppe-S and a super shifter set from TiC. The shifter mods would be installed along with the downpipe and fuel pump. I also found someone on IWSTI selling used group-n mounts.







While these were all on order I had a wedding to attend. My own

Before leaving for the honeymoon I dropped the car off at a shop local to me (5min down the street) that has an AWD dyno and access to a great tuner (dynoflash.com). They installed the Perrin downpipe, fuel pump and TiC shifter kit. They also did a before and after dyno but I think they before includes the downpipe without tuning, not 100% stock because I put down 261awhp “stock” and 285awhp “tuned.”

I was expecting to get my car back upon return from my honeymoon a week later, but it took another week to get my car back! And when I did the car was filthy inside and out and they didn’t even put the air intake guide back on. To add insult to injury they didn’t dyno my car as true stock, and the dyno plot is hp only(no torque) vs mph(not rpm) I would have liked to see the air/fuel ratios as well because my car is running super rich. They also gave me back my stock fuel pump(why?) and downpipe but no hardware. No nuts or bolts and it looks like they broke a bolt in the stock downpipe. I’ll be forced to deal with that down the road when it comes time to return to stock.

That said it’s a nice flat tune making lots of power in the low rpms(which I figured out by doing the gear ratio math to figure out the rpm for the speed in 3rd gear. I edited this in photoshop to include the rpms. Anyone know how to calculate torque from knowing hp/speed/rpm/gear ratios? If so please let me know. I am sure my torque is well over 300, I just don’t know by how much.




As you can see it's a smooth pull making 250hp at the wheels starting at 3800rpm and never falling below. The stock run(well with TBE and no tune I am 99% sure thats not the stock downpipe) maxes out at about 250hp from 5000rpm.

I was not happy with the length of time this took or the service, but the tune is very smooth, just like stock but with more power. The thing I was the most happy about is that my stock power band was 3500-6500 and now it pulls hard from 3000-7000. The huge disappointment (even more than the dirty car or crappy dyno plot) was the Perrin catback. It was super loud, and sounded awful. Gone was the deep boxer sound I loved and in it’s place was a loud raspy note that sounded to me like the POS civics with the huge fart can exhausts. The 5 min it took to get home were bittersweet because the car drove so great, but sounded so awful. The moment I got home I was looking for a new downpipe on the internet. My search lead me to a Helix catted downpipe which I also ordered from Gruppe-S.

The week after I got the car back I had 20% tint and a clear bra kit installed on the nose, headlights, hood and mirrors.

Gruppe-S somehow forgot or didn’t have room in their shipment container for my badge or springs, so I waited several weeks for nothing. I ended up buying the springs from Rallispec.com who had them in stock. Had a little bit of frustration with them because I was told they would ship on Wednesday and I would have them on Friday for my planned installation on Saturday. They went away to a Rally event and didn’t ship them. I couldn’t contact them for over a week and was a little upset. They made good on this by giving me a refund. In the future I suggested they put an out of office type auto reply on their email and change they voicemail. I wouldn’t have been upset if I had known why they weren’t returning emails or phone calls for that long.

Once everything arrived I installed the helix downpipe, pink springs, top mounts, strut tower bars and brake pads with the help of a friend. Everything went great. Probably the first and last time in my long history of moding cars that we didn’t have to take a break to go to home depot to replace a missing bolt or something of this nature. The Helix replaced the nasty sounding Perrin downpipe and I was happy with the exhaust note (for the time being).




My pink badge randomly showed up one day in the mail months later and for some crazy reason I went back to Gruppe-S again for Cusco sway bars. Out of all the items I ordered the Helix and Cusco products were the only two that arrived in a reasonable amount of time. The Cusco sway bars were an incredible addition to the cars handling. The pink springs didn’t firm up the roll like I was hoping they might, but the sway bars are perfect. Now I just need to dial in some camber. That all said and done, I am very happy with the suspension, but I hate the stock seats. They are the cause of the bouncy ride. Come spring Recaro Pole Position seats will replace them. The stock seat is also too high for me at the lowest setting, so it will be nice to sit lower as well.




I saw Racecomp was offering a alcantara wrapped steering wheel and I have always wanted this in one of my cars but never gotten around to it. I went to order one from Myles, but when I learned I would have to send in MY wheel to get covered I knew it would be a hard mod to pull off. Lucky for both of us I ran across a forum member that had his done and was looking to sell it for cash plus a stock 05 wheel in trade. He sent me the alcantara wheel first so I didn’t have any downtime. Great deal for both of us! To me this is one of my favorite mods because I am in contact with it every time I drive my STi.




I also got in on a group buy with StaticX for some NRG hood struts. I looked at the TEIN offering previously but that nasty green in my white, black and red engine bay would look awful. Roberts group buy was a great product at a great price. I’m very happy with the polished struts and to be rid of that burning hot hood prop. Why Subaru does not include these stock is beyond me. Yes I know cost, but it would cost them $100 or less buying them in bulk and installing them on the assembly line.




Purchased 3 used gold BBS STi wheels from a IWSTI user and a forth from Wheel Collision Center. Total spent including shipping $1025. Not sure about the history of the wheel from WCC but it has a life time warranty and is considered insurance quality. While all the wheels are in great condition they will be used as winter and track rims seasonally. I ordered 4 Wintersport M3 tires from Tirerack.com and had them mounted on these for the winter. Will swap them once it stays below 45* for a week or at first snow.




I was displeased with the fitment of the Perrin catback. It would knock against the transmission tunnel under hard cornering and since the STi has no sound deadening this was rather annoying. It also tucked up too close to the bumper. I purchased 4 Kartboy extra long hangers to fix this. They did, but I lost some ground clearance and I didn’t like how the exhaust looked from the rear of the car. Even with the addition of the Helix downpipe the exhaust was still too loud. The Perrin catback I had was a version 1 dual tip which means no resonator in the mid pipe and the dual tips are louder than single tip according to Perrin. As the temps got colder I was driving with the windows up more and the drone became annoying. Even though I loved how it sounded at idle and when I was on it I knew it would drive me insane over the next 5 months of winter.

So with those two issues I set out to find ANOTHER exhaust. I searched everywhere to find a video comparing the Cobb TBE catted vs catless. I was pretty sure the catted would be too quiet. All of the videos I saw were catted but one, Bens. His video was great and I loved the sounds and flames, but in those videos I got no impression on how it sounded from the drivers seat, pulling away from the camera, or what it sounded like at part throttle/cruise. The reminder of how much I hated the Perrin catless downpipe caused me to order a Cobb catted TBE.

Fast forward a little and of course the Cobb catted TBE is too quiet, so I in a few weeks I am swapping downpipes with a local owner/member, Tfapps, for a Cobb catless. If you are counting this is my 3rd catback and my 4th downpipe. This is the last exhaust change for me no matter what!

Back to the Cobb catted TBE. Since I knew I would have the downpipe off the car when I ordered the Cobb catted TBE I also ordered a turbo heat wrap kit from Thermo-tec and a heat shield from Cobb to save on shipping I ordered some ATE super blue fluid and stainless steel brake lines from them as well.




Install of the Cobb catback exhaust went great. I liked the Kartboy extra long hangers so much that I got set of the short ones so I didn’t have to use the factory ones. Wrapping the turbo and the downpipe wasn’t too hard. The turbo was a little time consuming, but should go faster when I do tfapps esp. cause I know all the measurements already.






I had a snag with the downpipe install which caused another of those famous home depot runs I mentioned earlier. The stupid tuning shop didn’t give be back nuts and bolts that held on the stock downpipe to the Perrin catback when they installed the Perrin downpipe. I had saved the bolts and the springs myself, but I purchased new bolts to be used without springs to mate the 2.5” stock downpipe to the 3” catback using the stock nuts. Now I needed those nuts and had none. Off to home depot in the middle of a project. Weee.

The fluid and lines arrived pretty quick but the heat shield was backordered as Cobb was redesigning a STi specific version for better fitment vs. the WRX version. I wrapped half the Cobb catted downpipe and my turbo with the kit and have tons left over. So I will be using the other half of the kit on the Cobb catless downpipe when I swap with Tfapps and I will be wrapping his turbo as well. I’m somewhat happy I still have to swap downpipes again as I would have been pissed to learn that I need to remove it again to install the Cobb heat shield. Ugh.




I bleed the brakes and installed the lines myself. This would have gone great except the last banjo bolt I got to had thread damage. I didn’t realize this till Sunday and Cobb was closed the entire coming week. Needless to say I was pissed off. Again off to visit a friend and/or home depot to find a die to rethread the bolt. Only a short trip to visit my friend turned into a 2 hour long event of us trying to find a 10mmx1.0 die. Doesn’t exist at home depot, lowes, autozone, prepboys or sears hardware. I was against using the stock banjo bolt because I figured the replacement was included for a reason and the replacement had three holes in it as opposed to two in the stock bolt. Also the brake line ring it fit into had an internal groove vs. the stock one which was flush.

Rather than reuse the stock bolt and fill the system again only to have to swap the bolt and flush it again later on I left the car as is and drove my wife’s car to work. I called Stoptech since they make the lines for Cobb and because Cobb was closed. Meanwhile my friend took the bolt to work to see if it could be fixed there and when it couldn’t he went to a specialty store called the Nutty Bolt company and found the die we needed. I didn’t know this so I asked Stoptech for help and they sent out a free replacement via UPS. He did say it would have been ok to reuse the stock bolt for a while.

Stoptech wanted the damaged bolt returned to see what happened (damage in shipping maybe), but my friend had already repaired it which was fine by me because I wanted to put the car back together ASAP. The rest of the install went without a hitch. I think I need to bleed the system again to get the last bit of old fluid out since I wasn’t able to trigger the ABS with the car in the air like the Subaru techs can with the computer. But that can wait till the spring before I get ready for track/autox season.

Replaced 3M Clearbra headlight protection film with GT Yellow headlight protection/tint from http://www.hotsubarus.com :




So that takes us to today. Due for my 3750 oil change shortly. Will run Subaru oil till 10,000 and then change to Mobil 1 0w-40.

Right now I have several other parts in the mail or waiting to be installed. I still need to swap the downpipes with Tfapps and install the Cobb heat shield.

Thanks to Leh @ GSCMotorsports.com for the hookup on the Injen FMIC. Here is a pic of it being installed on Leh's car:



Also waiting for the following items to arrive:


APS cold air intake


JDM lightweight bumper beam


RallyArmor Mudflaps with red logo for winter use


After swapping the downpipes and installing the injen products I’ll be visiting Tony @ XX Tuning to retune with ECUTEK for this setup. Should be good for over 300 at the wheels and who knows how much torque…maybe 350? Stay tuned…

The parts I have left to obtain before the track season are:
Recaro pole position seats and brackets
Roll bar and camera mount (already have the fire extinguisher and camera)
Aftermarket brake rotors and race pads (Probably go with the R4 pads on front and leave the R4-S on the rear, still haven’t found affordable 2 piece front rotors any suggestions?)
Racecomp brake ducts
Racecomp camber plates
Rear camber bolts
Whiteline ALK
Performance alignment with -2.0 camber F and -1.5 R
JDM fog light surrounds (no lights to be used for brake ducts)
V-limited lip
Braille lightweight battery
255/40/17 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires for second set rims

[Nachos Libres]

Car pics look very nice. Now I have to go devote an hour to reading your journal. See you in an hour.

[Nachos Libres]

Didn't take as long as I thought it would to read all that.

Sucks about your problems, and after all the mods you talked about I would have thought you had a lot more miles on it than 3750. Of course I guess a lot of the time you weren't driving your car due to waiting on parts.

So did I read correctly that you are going to get a FMIC without an upgraded turbo?

[aspensti05]

Originally Posted by SVT Amateur

after all the mods you talked about I would have thought you had a lot more miles on it than 3750.

So did I read correctly that you are going to get a FMIC without an upgraded turbo?

Trust me it took a long time to write up. I still have to update it with pics later...

As for the mileage my commute to work is less than 20 miles each way so 40 miles a day takes a while. Because of the wedding and not having the car ready plus some really bad weather here in New England I wasn't able to get to the track at all this year and only got to go to one autoX(the rest were rained out, or my car was being worked on).

As for the FMIC I am going to try it out on my setup. I mostly did it to reduce heat soak in the TMIC location. The injen IC core isn't huge like Perrin or APS so I think the only lag I should have would be due to the extra piping.

Knowing me and my past history of modded cars I'll end up putting on a turbo and injectors down the road. Pretty much everything else is ready for it. I just need to determine which one to go with. I lots of power down low and under the curve not a huge peak number.

That said as long as the turbo lag isn't huge(after tuning) and the power is there I think I'll be happy with it as is and it should help prevent heat soak(along with all my other heat related mods) at the track and autox.

[nandanrp]

Drool...lots of nice stuff going into this car, I like it man

And after seeing Leh's post on his new turbo/FMIC I looked it up on gscmotorsports.com and their ad there says that the FMIC will detract only 0.07 PSI from stock...so 14.43 PSI instead of 14.5...not too bad! And considering you're getting tuned and have a stage 2, you're hitting higher boost than that anyways.

[nice-rice]

Great write up on everything, look forward to seeing all that is to come. Congrats man.

[aspensti05]

Another part in the mail:


Perrin radiator shroud in black

When I go to XXtuning for ECUTEK retune(for new mods) I am probably going to order a bigger turbo and big injectors from them and have them do the install/tune Just have to figure out which turbo. They are suggesting APS SR55 but all the comments on this forum about it have me sketched out.

I'm leaning towards the APS SR40 or the Deadbolt TD06H-20G and SZ49

[aspensti05]

Thinking about a silly mod that really doesn't do anything but might look cool. Alternator Carbon Fiber replacement.

This one from SGP Racing for $99:


OR

this one from CarbonTrix for $129:


For $30 more the CarbonTrix part looks much nicer and appears it would match the Gruppe-S radiator shroud better.

Am I just wasting my money on a silly dress up part?

[91TB78]

Looks nice, but I can think of other ways to spend $100+ on my car.

[TRM]

nysh!!!!

[91TB78]

I'm pretty sure that's geek for "wow, I'm impressed."

[costas]

Originally Posted by aspensti05

Thinking about a silly mod that really doesn't do anything but might look cool. Alternator Carbon Fiber replacement.

This one from SGP Racing for $99:


OR

this one from CarbonTrix for $129:


For $30 more the CarbonTrix part looks much nicer and appears it would match the Gruppe-S radiator shroud better.

Am I just wasting my money on a silly dress up part?

If you buy it, Ill take the old one

forgot to pick one up when I swapped

[Huy]

Great journal post

Sorry to hear about your problems, but it's looking very, very good.

[TRM]

nysh = nice! (ala Mutts Comics "mooch" speak)

[BLACKOUT]

Ahhhh...some more inspiration for modding the hell out of my new car in less than a year, hehe. Nice setup--Hopefully I'll be able to do much of the same.

J