XPystchrisX's Dancing Elephant - AKA AutoX Chariot

Originally I had planned on keeping the car mechanically stock and driving it in autox BS for a year. I hammered on the stock tires for approximately six months as I had not been consistently driving for more than five years. Along the way I decided to “cheat” a bit since I knew that everyone locally was pretty loose with the rules. I purchased a set of Whiteline COM-C top hats for the stock struts, and got the car aligned. I also purchased the Group N transmission mount, and Group N dog bone.

December of 2019 I purchased a set of Motegi TrakLite 3.0’s in 18x9.5 et45 and had a local shop mount a set of Falken RT615k+ in 265/35r18. Not the best tires out there but they wear like iron, were cheap, and were a good first foray into 200tw tires.



I had the Falkens on for two events and then everything shut down hard for Covid in early 2020. During this time I read up more about the car. Found out a few things about the chamber four cooling mod, how to keep the EJ happy (surprise I didn’t do a good job at it), and why my motor felt like it was constantly pulling timing while I was driving it.

In June of 2020 exactly one year after purchasing the STI I placed an order for an MA Performance intake, downpipe, Cobb APv3, and the MAP OTS map for these parts. The Apv3 arrived early and I immediately installed it with the Cobb OTS for the stock car. I was amazed at how much better the car drove and seriously considered canceling the order for the MAP hard parts. Previously the car would pull from 3000rpm to 6000rpm but there would be the feeling of inconsistent power through the rev range. I had my younger brother ride with me and even he could feel it from the passenger seat.

The downpipe showed a month later and I installed the intake, and downpipe after wrapping the downpipe with DEI heat wrap and adding a Cobb turbo blanket. The performance increase with all of the hard parts was butt-dyno approved, but mostly I appreciated the improved audible symphony under the hood. I could finally hear what the car was doing. At this point the car finally felt like it could keep up with the Mustang GT (probably just a bit of cognitive dissonance to be honest) and I was briefly satisfied.

Around this time my local autocross club opened back up and I was able to experience the car with its new found power. I realized that I wasn’t driving the car nearly hard enough and vowed to change this. I would mark this as the beginning of the end for the stock motor.

In March 2021 I finally found a local shop that I liked. They performed a four wheel alignment to the specs that I wanted, as well as installed a Killer B oil pan, pick up and windage tray. While the car was having those installed they also installed Group N motor mounts for me. The change with the mounts was subtle. They stopped the motor flopping around a lot, and were just right for slightly more aggressive driving. Somewhere along this time I also installed a Whiteline 24mm rear sway bar.


In June 2021 I turned 40. I used this as an excuse to get the coilovers I had wanted on a car for a number of years. So I purchased a set of Ohlins Road and Track, and a set of 8kg/mm Swift springs after a few months of research. At that time I also purchased a SuperPro Lower Control arm and toe arm kit. The SuperPro purchase would quickly become a point of pain and my first foray into “doing it right the first time” on this car. I also purchased a set of Nankang CR-1 tires in 275/35-r18 on a whim, as they were apparently fairly competitive.


I finally had all the hard parts installed on my car on the first weekend of July. I took the car to my local shop for the first alignment and was able to dial in -3.6F/-2.0R camber. Also had them zero out the toe all around. They were happy to do the alignment, but they called me crazy. Coming off of the alignment rack the car looked like a V8 SuperCar and had me giddy as hell.

The next weekend was an Autocross Club member fun day. I took the car out for approximately 25 runs that day. Wore through about ⅓ of the usable life of the Nankang tires. At the end of the day I had a local hot-shoe (I believe he was second at Nats this year) ride with me, and then he drove the car. Somewhere along his runs the SuperPro lower control arms slipped, bad. That said the moment I knew I had done a good job was approximately 2 elements into his first run. “Holy shit dude… this is an STI that actually handles!” I thought he was going fast, but then he really laid into the car. I don't get car sick, but with him driving I almost puked. It was fantastic. He was so impressed with the car that he dubbed it the Dancing Elephant because, to quote directly, “She’s a big old girl but she can fucking dance!”

The next Monday I took the car back to get re-aligned and the shop and I both agreed that these SuperPro lower control arms were just going to slip again. I immediately went home and ordered a set of SPL Lower Control Arms, SPL rear endlinks and an SPL toe arm lock out kit for the rear. Big dent in the wallet but completely worth it. I was able to sell the SuperPro arms to a local STI owner who was more interested in looks than performance driving.

The latter half of 2021 I enjoyed driving the car and got faster and faster. The initial set of Nankang CR-1’s wore out faster than I had anticipated, but I liked them so much that I purchased another set.

At some point between December 2021 and June 2022 I hurt my EJ25’s cyl 3. I say that because I noticed oil in the intercooler when I removed it for some maintenance, and some smoke during start-up. I’m saying this now because the next part of the mod path involved me purchasing and installing a few parts and having YamahaSHO tune the car.

These days it seems typical for people to want to blame the tuner when something goes wrong. In this case I can 100% stand up and say, "My fault." I know how I drove this car and to say that I was aggressive during autocross events would be incorrect. I beat the snot out of it. Looking back there were a ton of times where I was in 3rd gear at 3000rpm going full throttle during a run, oil temps were extremely high and I kept going, or water temps went way up and I gave the car a perfunctory cool down and went out for another run. I’m certain this car was hurt for a while before he touched it, and I ignored it. I'd still recommend his services to this day.

In January of 2022 I installed a Revel Touring-S cat back and almost immediately regretted it. With the unequal length manifold the car was difficult to drive around town. During autocross it didn’t matter because I had the windows down and at full chatter there was zero drone. So I drove my F-150 more and figured that the best way to resolve this was to purchase an equal length manifold of some kind.

In April 2022 I found a Tomei equal length manifold for a good deal. I also started talking to JAZ Tuning, AKA YamahaSHO here about getting my car calibrated. He was a fantastic dude to work with and answered all of my questions quickly and professionally. I swapped spark plugs for one range colder NGKs, cleaned my air filter and installed the header. Power delivery was much better, the sound was better (no more drone!), and the car had much better transients with the equal length manifold. I was excited to drive the car again.

By the end of May the car was done being calibrated and I was generally happy with the results, if not a little disappointed with the overall power increase. I chalked it up to the stock turbo and being at the very limit of what it could do. At this point I was already working on buying injectors, a fuel pump and a slightly upgraded turbo. In all fairness to YamahaSHO I never mentioned this because I figured it was what it was. I went to my first event, a fun run again with the club, and that’s when things took a turn.

The first day of the fun event was phenomenal. I drove better than I ever had and did probably 15 to 20 runs. On the second day of the event, on my first run the car blew a huge white cloud of smoke during my first launch. I quickly turned the car around and proceeded to freak out. After calming down, a few other club members helped me look the car over and we couldn’t find any signs of damage or immediate indications of a problem. Someone on site said turbo seal and I ran with it. I disassembled the TMIC and found approximately a quart of oil in the intake tract.

I immediately went on RockAuto and purchased a replacement stock turbo. To my wife’s credit she told me to buy something a bit better since she knew I was looking to upgrade my turbo. However, after learning that it wasn’t as easy as just buying the turbo, I needed injectors and a fuel pump at minimum, so I placed an order for a brand new Mahle OE Replacement VF48. It arrived and I installed it after cleaning as much oil out of the intercooler and turbo inlet as I could. Note that up until this time I had not yet installed an AOS. Would that have saved the motor? No idea. If I could go back that probably would have been the first thing I had done after the MAP intake and downpipe.

Around this time I also decided to ditch the supplied Tomei header wrap and install some DEI wrap and add a layer of their Form-a-shield. From a heat perspective the Form-a-shield is excellent. It also keeps oil off of the exhaust wrap when doing oil changes. To work with it's an absolute menace. It's difficult to cut, difficult to form, the fibers make you itch like a bastard for days, and it smokes worse than any other product I've used when applied to exhaust manifolds. Also wear a mask when working with it. Here's a few shots of my terrible install job. I used a little tie wire to keep it in place. I plan on replacing this with some Heatshield Products Header Armor when the motor is out next.


Next event in early June I skipped because I was installing a Koyo Radiator and Get a Dom Tune Chamber 4 cooling mod. At this time I also sent my old VF48, that I had thought was blown, out to Pavel’s Racing Engines to receive his G25-550 clone upgrade. I mention this because when he received the turbo he said that it was in fantastic condition, and that the seal was fully in-tact. I find that there are moments in life when you realize you’ve been an idiot and just need to embrace that fact and move on. I hadn’t installed an AOS until now and figured that this was just excessive blow-by. I immediately purchased a Killer B AOS and slapped it on. I was determined that the motor wasn’t hurt, and was really sticking my head in the sand at this point.

Our club takes a break from autocross after the event in June for July, and August because of the SWFL heat. However in September we had another member only fun-run event and I packed up and went out. This time the car blew smoke again and I knew something was terribly wrong. I pulled the oil cap and there were strong white puffs of smoke out the oil cap. I checked the oil and the car was down to half way on the dip stick. I added oil, limped the car home and disassembled the car for a proper compression test. First thing I was greeted with was a massive amount of oil in the intercooler again. Also, after removing the throttle body on a whim, I noticed that there was a huge puddle of oil in the bottom of the intake manifold.

The compression test results came in at CYL 1 - 147, CYL 2 - 147, CYL 4 - 147, CYL 3 - 80. My friend and I verified this twice. I find it interesting just how much of a relief this was. I'm not made of cash, so motor issues aren't exactly a happy occasion, but at least I now knew that this wasn't all just in my head. I had felt like I was chasing my tail at this point. Looking back I should have done a compression test as a part of swapping plugs out when I was prepping the car for YamahaSHO to tune the car. I’m fairly certain at that point I would have found the low compression and been able to get this done before dumping a bunch of time and effort into hunting for the issue.

So now I’m contemplating a motor build and working with Dirty Racing Products just south of Jacksonville to come up with a plan to build something more resilient. The plan is something that can withstand 350 to 400 whp in the SWFL summers. I won’t get there all at once so the end result of this phase of the build may seem a little strange. I’m focused on getting the car back on the road and driving again. I will be doing a few “while you’re in there” mods but for now not nearly as many as I probably could.

That brings me to current. I’ll add some photos here shortly where it makes sense. Sorry for the wall-o-text. If you got this far pat yourself on the back. I would have looked for the tl;dr and checked out.

The local group does follow SCCA rules but has their own championship points system.
That's the official site. I've been a member for about a year and they're a solid bunch. Originally my plan was to keep it BS, then STU, and now I'm seeing SM in my future.

I finally pulled the trigger on an IAG 700 block about two weeks ago. I would have included that in the original post but I had written all of this up a while back and never got around to posting it until this weekend. I'll do another entry in this post in a few hours outlining the general plan, but right now I'm a little bit budget capped. This is my second car and I have a strict no-debt policy when it comes to mods. All of this has been done with discretionary income. You can count me in the ranks of those who have done well in the IT field for the past ~20ish years.

My average AutoX weekend included approximately 10 - 12 launches like that video shows. For reference that was a 5500rpm launch with the only saving grace being that the tarmac is polished a bit from so many years of launches in one spot. Now multiply that over an average of 11 weekends a year for probably two and a half years, she lead a rough 13,456 miles. The first AutoX was at 250 miles. Break-in on a stock motor be damned(in my mind...).

With the capabilities of the IAG700 and some time to save I believe I'll probably land on something from ETS with a smallish Xona turbo. Though an EFR 7163 has been a dream for a while now. Ultimately the goal is to be able to run whatever power level the car reaches for a 20min session in the SWFL weather. I'm not a big power person, my preference being response and linear power delivery.

In the immediate future I'll be running this upgraded VF48 and laundry list of other items. From what I can see 350whp on 93 should be perfectly reasonable from this turbo. I'll have to chill there for a bit since my account will need to recover before I can play more.

From what I understand on the VF48 hybrid it's good for roughly 30% more flow than a regular VF48. End results should look something like a VF48 high flow but theoretically it should hold boost out to 6500ish. We'll see what happens. I've seen dyno plots on Pavel's Instagram showing a car hitting 360whp using 93 on a Mustang dyno. But every dyno reads different so I'm taking it with a grain of salt. From what I can tell this is probably the most aggressive motor that this turbo has been paired with. With the cams, head work and larger valves I'll be interested to see how that turbo works with this engine. It might be a hot mess, but it's what I can do right now.

Spool and response is why I am debating Xona vs EFR. From what I understand from reading up about Xona's stuff is the engineering is pretty extreme. That said you will pay for it, but in rotated applications it's not too much more expensive than a G Series Garrett or Borg Warner EFR. However if DRP tells me to go a specific direction I'll take their advice. I'm starting to get to the point where I'm making expensive decisions, which in my mind tells me it's time to talk to professionals who have done this a lot.

Ethanol is something that's out due to budget right now. I need to keep costs down so I'm going to start with ID1050x's and an AEM drop in pump. While there is no reliable source of E85 near me, I've got my truck and fuel cans. I can certainly make a drive or pick up a few 5G pails of E from a race-shop if needed. With Flex being more difficult these days I want to wait and see where the industry goes. If there's a plug-n-play kit that doesn't interrupt the TGV's I'd go for it. Or I'll go full stupid and run a stand-alone and just be done with it.

Here’s an update for the plans going forward. I’m working with DRP, which was a decision based on two friends having solid experiences with this specific shop. On the 4th of October I purchased an IAG 700 long block from DRP. Not sure when this will be delivered, I was told to expect a wait time of 12 weeks. I'm hoping that was just Covid delays that are mostly solved for now, however I'm not holding my breath. DRP will take delivery of the motor and offered to store it until I've trailered the car to them. Based on my conversations with them I’m installing the following parts, except for the clutch and turbo which were my choice. This may not be an exhaustive list, it’s what I’m remembering off the top of my head sitting in the airport.

• IAG 700 Long Block
• IAG Competition Oil Pan
• IAG Stage 2 Competition Oil Pump
• IAG AOS
• 3 port EBCS
• ID1050x Injectors
• AEM 340LPH Pump
• ETS Intake for Speed Density
• VF48/G25-550 Clone modified by PRE
• iWire Speed Density kit
• XClutch Organic Sprung Twin Plate clutch
• Cobb Anti-Stumble Kit

Some people might ask why I’m using x part or what lead to what decision. I made a lot of calls to DRP and talked to them about what I was doing with the car and how it would be used. My goal was to get the car back on the road/track while doing as many of the "while you're in there" that I could afford. A lot of this is coming from DRP’s experience running cars here in SWFL. I’d prefer to go with their formula since they’ll be doing all of these installs and will be on the hook to explain to IAG for their 2 year 24,000 mile warranty if there’s a defect.

To say that I'm fairly excited about this process would be putting it lightly. I've wanted to do something like this for a number of years. However family, house, and other adulting reasons have always had me delaying it. It's interesting but when I first purchased this car I had an image of what I wanted it to look like when I was done. A motor build an EFR turbo was on that list.

The SS304 P20 exhaust housing is installed and the turbo is ready for business. I was too excited to take photos. I wanted to get the thing installed since the day before I had gone to a job interview that lasted eight hours. The OE housing was difficult to remove, but the new housing was easy to install. The fit and finish looks good and the weight difference felt minimal between the two. The IWG port is much larger in the new housing, and the internal finish looked great. The physical dimensions of the housing appear to be different. Time will tell how it holds up.




In other news, I finally got back in touch with DRP today. I guess they've been having email issues, which is why I've been out of communication with them. Going to do my best to haul the car up this Friday or Saturday. It's a 5 hour trip without a trailer being pulled behind a '99 F-150. Up and back in one day should be interesting.

I have to give my wife credit. She's been very understanding about this whole situation. Never once has she complained about how much it's going to cost, she's only concerned that we're doing it correctly.
The TMIC decision is a difficult one. I know that the ETS is solid, there are folks around here who have both that and stock and they're both getting the job done. I really want to see the KillerB TMIC unit, but I'm sure they're busy getting real world test data. I know there are some crazy kids who are even spraying meth on the intercooler (not in the intake tract) to get it to cool down faster than just water. There's also an intercooler from Wagner Tuning that caught my eye a while back. It's tube and fin, not bar and plate, and looks pretty solid. I'm a sucker for trying out new stuff, which often leads me to doing things over again. But it's all about the adventure.