Member Profile - 2008 tbSTI SWP Wagon + 2004 2.5i OBP Sedan

[bigBADbenny]

Yeah I have some 3bond which might work if you: clean out the old adhesive from its channel, tape it down with detailing or plain old masking tape.

Omg I’m scared to tally the inclusive costs for a track day
But thanks very much for your *thorough* breakdown indeed. Reality check!

I guess a spare set of rims might be another setup cost... and a dash cam!

Have helmet, extinguisher, seemingly reliable car with virtual gauges, warning alarms for over boost and coolant temp...
Radiator is due, 2nd one is 140k old already, pads n discs are on their last legs too.

Clutch is good, but I keep seeing the prospect of a track day being sayonara for my original stock engine at 290k, so factor in megabux for a tow home

Plus $$$$ for installing my spare rebuilt long motor

Waterspray? Just the hose from the 2nd pump on ya wagon.
Activate via rear wiper ring switch on stalk.

I have a spare Hobbs switch, various auto controllers in the stash...

You'll be fine! As I said just need to take it easy on track to begin with. You won't be driving the nuts off your car anyway as it'll take a few tries to just learn the track let alone the car. Definitely going to nag you to come along in the future .

Few pics of the rear end post-toe arms for anyone's interest:





And next on the chopping block; time to get rid of those sht Brembos. Fingers crossed they fit.

I see you got the “pre-tracked” look on the calipers

[jdmsubielover]

Love the colour on the calipers. I was expecting orange bbk . Looking forward to see them once fitted to the car.

[Turbo Lag]

I see you got the “pre-tracked” look on the calipers

New style is much more subtle! Big fan of it, looks very professional.

Love the colour on the calipers. I was expecting orange bbk . Looking forward to see them once fitted to the car.

Haha the orange would've put me off for sure! Too flashy for me (but would still look good).

Spent a bit of time checking brake clearance with a few wheels. Conclusion: Almost any aftermarket 18" will fit. They have better spoke clearance than the Brembos, but barrel clearance is a lot worse. Therefore any normal aftermarket 18" barrel size will work. Unfortunately the stock STI wheels have a smaller inside barrel than normal so they don't fit. Even an 18x7.5 has a good chance of fitting.


Fail!


Pass!


(JezzaH6's wheels) Pass!

[jdmsubielover]

Both Weds and SSR are looking great

[spike2135]

very niiiiice

[Turbo Lag]

Back to that IC spray. Finally got around to disconnecting the rear wiper and diverting the spray to the front instead. Some small 90degree Norma tubing joins from Bunnings were easy enough to put into the scoop to mount them, but I still want to find a more elegant solution to this using an adjustable nozzle. Now it's time to clean up the engine bay by hard mounting the tube instead of it flying around.


(Worlds most annoying connector)



And also re-routed the wiring for the gauges through the cubby instead (the extra wire there is for the Lufi OBD2 gauge which fits on the left, so no more janky loose wires all over the place).

Both Weds and SSR are looking great

Cheers!

So I ended up buying some Weds for myself anyway since I've always wanted a set, and sold the RPF1s and AR1s.

Found some 18x8+42 TC105N for sale in Sydney and had them shipped down, not my ideal size but considering they're some 2.7k new I couldn't pass it down.

Nice and light at around 17.5kg with 235/40/18 tyres - these will make perfect track wheels.

very niiiiice

Thank you sir.

[Yowie]

Good work.

Some adel clamps and rivnuts (eg into the existing bonnet holes or new ones) might be the solution to tidy up that water hose mounting.

[Turbo Lag]

Good work.

Some adel clamps and rivnuts (eg into the existing bonnet holes or new ones) might be the solution to tidy up that water hose mounting.

I'll have a look into those. Definitely don't want to put more holes in it if I don't have to - good thing there's plenty of them to begin with. If not I'll try to copy the layout of the existing front spray and get some bigger clips to hold them in place.

So I bought another set of Weds - RN55M in 18x8.5+45. Now all the wheels should clear the brakes and I can switch them around all the cars.

A little collage of most of the wheels I've had.

[Turbo Lag]

Time to get the brakes on.

Fairly straight forward job but ran into a lot of issues with compatibility.

The Shockworks kit is made for the ZN6 86, but uses a different, larger rotor (40mm v 32~mm I think) and switches around the sides of the calipers (as Libs have trailing front calipers).

One thing I rather slowly came to learn was that the kit is directly compatible for the standard slider calipers, not the Brembos! It's somewhat surprising to me as I would assume most would upgrade from Brembos, but anyway. Thankfully since the hubs are all the same, it's a matter of finding the right bolts to match everything up. For anyone's reference in the future, the bolts used on the tbSTI Brembos WILL NOT FIT this setup. What you will need are the standard M12x1.25 (fine) 30~mm bolts with crush washers. These can be bought brand new from Subaru (partsouq etc) for a few bucks each, or can easily be found on any standard non Brembo Lib. The bolts used for the Brembos are 50~mm M12x1.5 (coarse) with the same crush washers. The length is to accomodate for the tie bar (2nd image), which will be safely deleted upon install. The tie bar seems to only be a thing on 08 tbSTI Brembos, however I haven't checked on an 07. The tie bar is a PITA since you need to back the lower strut bolt off to remove it, so I'm happy to get rid of mine.

The adapter piece sits like this, where the Brembo caliper would normally sit. Since you'll be deleting the tie bar, you can just run the 2 x 30mm bolts straight through the hub. I would recommend using some thread locker for this just in case. You will need to bash out the dust shields as they will foul the disc and adapter. The adapter will foul by around a mm which can easily be bashed in, and the rest will need to be pushed back 1/2cm or so. The discs do not fit the dust shields otherwise, so this is necessary. Alternatively, you can remove them too.



From here, things get very straight forward. Take a break to admire the massive discs...



Throw the discs on (make sure they're on the correct way as they are directional), then the caliper then fits over the adapter bracket with the provided bolts. These are 10mm hex drive bolts.

As far as hardware goes, you're basically done. Now it's a matter of getting the brake lines on and simply bleeding the calipers. The banjo bolts are provided with the brakes and look to be exactly the same as the Brembos. Absolutely nothing different from any other caliper.



One thing that is annoying me is the hard mounted clip on the stock STI braided lines. At the moment they're zip tied on relatively snug, but I'm not at all happy with it being able to rub on the strut. Just something to note if you have the standard lines installed. Otherwise, everything else should all work together.



Early impressions are that the street pad provided is absolutely bonkers amazing, as far as a dailyable pad goes. Initial bite is out of this world and it gives you a hell of a lot of confidence compared to the Brembos (albeit with a much less streetable pad). I can't at all quantify this but the outright clamping feel of the calipers is crazy - I can't describe it well but it really does feel like the caliper grabs a lot harder. I'd guess this is due to the pad compound, having full pads, and the caliper hardware + fresh fluid. It is really something to be experienced and is hard to explain!







And of course this means the 2.5i gets the Brembos.

[Yowie]

Bloody hell those are some big brakes. Good work.

[bigBADbenny]

Giddy !
Tuspeed usually have sti tmic jets in stock and the PW splitter has holes for three items.

They should do ok even with the low pressure from the rear washer pump.

[Turbo Lag]

Bloody hell those are some big brakes. Good work.

If these don't work I don't know what will . Thank you.

Giddy !
Tuspeed usually have sti tmic jets in stock and the PW splitter has holes for three items.

They should do ok even with the low pressure from the rear washer pump.

Would you happen to have a link to these? I've searched around but can't find anything But hey so far the system works very well!!

===

Next mod...
IAG Oil Pan, Baffle, Windage Tray and Pickup.
https://www.iagperformance.com/iag-ej-c ... i-lgt-fxt/

Definitely not skilled or game enough to tackle this myself, so I'll leave this to the experts. What a nice bit of kit though - hopefully it performs as well as it looks. The beefy fins on the oil pan are pretty full on too.

I must also ask the question of those more knowledgeable than I am. Does anyone know the effects of increased oil capacity in sump in context of temperatures and filtering, ceteris paribus? Lets say for example we took our standard sump and increased its capacity to x + y volume, from x. In terms of temperature I'd assume the increase of oil capacity leads to the oil taking a longer time to warm up to temperature, and also would take longer to cool down. Is this assumption reasonable? Would this also mean the filter may have a tougher time doing its job? I assume not as the contaminants would only be so much regardless of the oil capacity? I don't see how the capacity can change the actual volume flowing through it either.





I also pulled the pin on some 235/40/18 Nankang NS2R 180tw for a price I couldn't at all pass up. Initial impressions are great but I'll need to heat cycle them and use them a bit more to tell. Love how the Weds look though.

[Yowie]

Does anyone know the effects of increased oil capacity in sump in context of temperatures and filtering, ceteris paribus? Lets say for example we took our standard sump and increased its capacity to x + y volume, from x.
(1) In terms of temperature I'd assume the increase of oil capacity leads to the oil taking a longer time to warm up to temperature, and
(2) also would take longer to cool down. Is this assumption reasonable?
(3) Would this also mean the filter may have a tougher time doing its job?
(4) I assume not as the contaminants would only be so much regardless of the oil capacity?
(5) I don't see how the capacity can change the actual volume flowing through it either.

(1) Correct. EDIT - it will be interesting to see if the larger-volume oil reaches the same maximum temp (under same ambient & track conditions) or a bit less.

(2) Correct, but with a larger oil volume you have a larger heat sink to absorb heat in the first place. I suspect that, even with hard track driving, you can't accelerate at wide-open-throttle for enough extra cumulative seconds to cause any deleterious effect to your oil along the lines of "now more litres are hot and it's taking ages to cool down, boo hoo".

(3) Only while the oil is cooler and more viscous. See point (1);

(4) Correct.

(5) Correct.

A major benefit of greater oil capacity (if you can do it without raising sump level & causing "crank hits oil" events) is more time for the oil to cool and rest before it gets drawn back into the engine. That resting time allows air bubbles to get out and complex oil molecules to re-set. Turbochargers tend to whip the oil that goes through their bearings into a foam, so the resting time is important.


[I recommend buying the book "Four Stroke Performance Tuning" by A Graham Bell. The 80 page oiling chapter is worth the purchase price alone.]

EDIT - very cool sump by the way. If you were up for a "how to fit this from under the car in the garage" series of posts I'd be taking notes.

[bigBADbenny]

Yep I have a tmic nozzle in a packet for the part number...

[Turbo Lag]

Does anyone know the effects of increased oil capacity in sump in context of temperatures and filtering, ceteris paribus? Lets say for example we took our standard sump and increased its capacity to x + y volume, from x.
(1) In terms of temperature I'd assume the increase of oil capacity leads to the oil taking a longer time to warm up to temperature, and
(2) also would take longer to cool down. Is this assumption reasonable?
(3) Would this also mean the filter may have a tougher time doing its job?
(4) I assume not as the contaminants would only be so much regardless of the oil capacity?
(5) I don't see how the capacity can change the actual volume flowing through it either.

(1) Correct. EDIT - it will be interesting to see if the larger-volume oil reaches the same maximum temp (under same ambient & track conditions) or a bit less.

(2) Correct, but with a larger oil volume you have a larger heat sink to absorb heat in the first place. I suspect that, even with hard track driving, you can't accelerate at wide-open-throttle for enough extra cumulative seconds to cause any deleterious effect to your oil along the lines of "now more litres are hot and it's taking ages to cool down, boo hoo".

(3) Only while the oil is cooler and more viscous. See point (1);

(4) Correct.

(5) Correct.

A major benefit of greater oil capacity (if you can do it without raising sump level & causing "crank hits oil" events) is more time for the oil to cool and rest before it gets drawn back into the engine. That resting time allows air bubbles to get out and complex oil molecules to re-set. Turbochargers tend to whip the oil that goes through their bearings into a foam, so the resting time is important.


[I recommend buying the book "Four Stroke Performance Tuning" by A Graham Bell. The 80 page oiling chapter is worth the purchase price alone.]

EDIT - very cool sump by the way. If you were up for a "how to fit this from under the car in the garage" series of posts I'd be taking notes.

Glad to see my assumptions aren't too far off the mark.

(1) Correct. EDIT - it will be interesting to see if the larger-volume oil reaches the same maximum temp (under same ambient & track conditions) or a bit less.

This is something I'm very curious about. I assume that due to the larger volume it will take longer to reach maximum temp in the first place, as you pointed out. I am expecting oil temps to drop overall due to this but since the surface area of the sump is much larger, it'd be hard to correlate it back to just the volume only.

(2) Correct, but with a larger oil volume you have a larger heat sink to absorb heat in the first place. I suspect that, even with hard track driving, you can't accelerate at wide-open-throttle for enough extra cumulative seconds to cause any deleterious effect to your oil along the lines of "now more litres are hot and it's taking ages to cool down, boo hoo".

Again, I agree here. Ultimately I would guess the same amount of heat is generated from WOT in the first place regardless of how much oil there is. In theory I think since there is just more oil, the temps will at minimum be the same or worse, with no adverse side effects. The only difference may be that since I may be able to push harder for a longer period of time at reasonable temps, if the oil does get as hot as before, it may take longer to cool down if it gets that hot in the frist place. It is definitely not a replacement for an oil cooler, but may alleviate some of the temp issues as a beneficial side effect.

I'm giving snippits of that book a read already, you are a wealth of knowledge my friend... it really has a lot of great insights. It got me thinking about oil level and over filling and how it can lead to aeration. Interesting that author recommends running basically the lowest level of oil you can get away with too.

As tempting as it is to have a crack at it myself, I definitely don't trust myself with something that vital to the engine, especially as I'm pretty inexperienced with them in general. However thankfully plenty of youtube mechanics seem to have tackled it before with relative success. Seems like an awfully messy job especially if the subframe may need to be dropped too (ugh!).

Thanks for the extremely detailed reply, it is great learning

===

Yep I have a tmic nozzle in a packet for the part number...

Hmm any chance you could have a look if you get time? Can't seem to find anything on Tuspeed! I am a certified idiot however.