Re: wdb's journal
Wow, 2008 is the last post. I'm tardy. Here are some updates for all of you folks hanging on the edge of your seats.
The Fit continues to do yeoman duty as my daily driver. I have two sets of rims and tires for it. The summer set is old-school Mugens strapped with Michelin summer-gummers. RE25's and stock rims for winter. I also put a header and midpipe on the car, plus a front undertray. All of that was in the hopes of improving fuel economy, which it did, incrementally. But the front undertray also had the very happy effect of planting the front end of the car much better at any speed above 30MPH or so. Anyone with a Fit will tell you they're squirrely around big rigs and in sidewinds; well, mine isn't, not anymore. Plus it raised the cornering speed on my favorite offramps.
The other big change on the Fit was the addition of some H9 high beam lamps in the lower grille opening. I put them on when I was still doing a lot of night driving, and they
really light up the road. They spoil me for any other car, STi-with-HIRs included. I went with a set of
90mm modules from rallylights because I wanted a wide beam pattern rather than the pinpoints a lot of driving lights give you. I need to be able to see Bambi bounding through the field before she jumps into my path, and that means a wide beam pattern. These lights fit the bill.
Oh yeah - the Fit also got a Subie transplant in the form of Impreza horns and interior map lights. The stock horn is pitiful; Bambi would just stand there in the road staring at me. With the Impreza horns she jumps and runs! And the map lights look almost stock, and make me feel that I'm in familiar surroundings. (Now if only the gas pedal did the same...)
Next major bit of car-related news was an impulse purchase I made last year around this time; a 1994 SVX, retrofitted with a WRX 5-speed. I knew it was a bit of a rat when I bought it, but I have always been intruiged by the SVX and I really wanted that 5-speed. As it turns out, the car needed more work than I expected to make it trustworthy. So it's been doing a lot of sitting around and waiting for me to get time to poke at it. I take it around the block about once a week to keep the cobwebs out. It's quite a departure from the STi, I must say! The ride is downright plush.
Finally, the STi - and why I thought to update this journal at all. During the last state inspection they found a broken front spring. I've been running Prodrives for several years without any problems, and I was really surprised by this finding. So the front end got stock springs put back in, and I started thinking about what to do about my now-mismatched springs and struts with 100K+ miles on them. The answer hit me like a thunderbolt just today - blow my tax refund on a set of
TiC AST coilovers. :lol: Just placed my order today. I figure I'll get them somewhere around the time the ice and snow finally melt away enough for me to install them.
I might reinstall the stock front swaybar while I'm at it. The Hotchkis front bar has never been a favorite of mine; the front end may corner flatter, but it breaks away more quickly than it used to. It's downright twitchy in the wet, in fact. That opinion was reinforced by a lot of subsequent suspension discussions on this forum, which have steered away from stiffer front bars for most non-racing applications. I'll have to do some more research between now and then and decide just what I want to do.
Anyway there you go. A mere two years between updates. Maybe one of these days I'll even fix all the broken image links.
