crazyazn's 2006 STI 'abbey'

^ agreed

 

oh i agree, because its 10years old, ive spent too much on it. Plus its really fun to drive right now so i think im good. can't really make use of more power at autocross anyhow

 

yah, i think i've lucked out for the most part, it was a long process, but its pretty close to all there, and i went in knowing i just wanted body and suspension bits. Admittedly, it has been difficult to not want to go in on fancy interior bits and stuff, but at the end of it, I just want a autoX and eventual track car, which I think I have a good start on.

 

sorry, i've known its been a long while. I need to get back to updating this journal this weekend.

For now, here is a pic I did a few weeks ago. Actually also was a scary day, I experienced my first dead coil pack on the way home from this.

wtih the trees by Jeffrey Ling, on Flickr

 

I have, and I actually once had it down to where the flares were about 1/4" over the tires, but I couldnt get out of my driveway. Its really at the lowest that I can get with that chargespeed lip and still get out of my driveway, though i still scrape.

I'm thinking of going back to a ebay lip because Im scraping this fiberglass one everywhere, and it's making me cringe since it was a few hundred bux.

 

ebay lips ftw. Break it buy a new one.

 

lol, honestly i like it being 'high', i'm just not into the really slammed look on the subies, even the karlton flared ones.

 

yup, that's another thing, chip and I have our T2's at myles recommended height. I think its just the optical illusion of how the flares sit over the tires and me generally shooting from a down low perspective, you see the bottom half of the flares and I look like a monster truck.

Breel- KW makes (made) a front end lift solenoid thingy for the kw v3's that Im pretty sure will mate to the T2's (being the same body). However, i think the system cost more than the coilovers. I briefly looked into it years ago to get that 1" of speed bump clearance, and quickly folded to being poor.

And finally, yes 180 is still freshly paved smooth, which i'm not really liking as I noticed when there is a moderate sprinkling of dirt/sand the tires really slip out on it over when it was rough and had pockets to hold the dirt off of the top surface. Overall, my days of really pushing up there are over, I'm 'old' and kinda nervous around ditches still.

 

hehe, yea its more im staying within spec's of what the valving in the coilovers were engineered for. but yes, i believe i can go down 1/4" and still be within spec, i just couldn't get out of my driveway and still have the chargespeed lip still attached to my bumper

 

Alrighty, well its been forever and a day or two since I've made an update. I've been doing the same old working too much and playing not enough.
Lets see, I'll start off with, I've finally gotten to upgrading the rear suspension with some nifty parts sourced from Touge Fighter:
Cusco rear trailing arms
Whiteling adjustable lateral links
Group N rear bushing (thing goes in the rear hub that the rear trailing arm connects to)


Not only was this for an attempt to clean up the slop in the rear suspension, but also with the wide tire setup I was getting a lot of camber that couldn't get dialed out before, so I'm finally back down to -1.5 degrees rear and 0 toe.


The parts really added a more direct feel to the how the rear was tracking, which was surprised me, sure a bit more NVH, but I'm not running a daily anymore. Also, the most important part... they look pretty neat on the car



Now on to some fun stuff. I finally got into doing Autocross with a few members on here. I'm incredibly slow, but I'm starting to learn some things. I know a lot of people poke at the drive for 5 min work a whole day, well I took that a bit further and ended shooting pics of the events, so I end up with 8+ hours of work after an event (I must be crazy). Anyways, its fun and its been a way for me to try to battle my nervousness with the car.

A fellow member grabbed my camera during the last weekend and got a picture of me in my car, got a bit of inside rear wheel lift to boot. This event was actually quite disastrous for me, my power steering was losing pressure sporadically throughout the day, and I messed up my coilover settings and forgot to up my rear rebound along with the compression, so it was a little swervey which killed my confidence and made me even slower lol.
Anyways, it was a fun weekend, on to the pic..

 

ricer

 

yeah honestly the only reason I noticed a difference is because i did the first half of the autocross season without all the suspension parts. Im not sure if I could have really noticed the difference at dramatically without doing autocross or a track day.

 

haha, yeah, about that, i need to find where i put the ziplock baggy of the bolts that held it in place. Also i need to source a slide hammer as i believe 2 spots are still bashed in from my sliding through a ditch.
I do have brand new panels tho! I may have to just buy all new hardware

 

i like that method too, sadly neither method seems fool proof when your car isn't in your house for 14months and i sorta forgot to put all the stuff in one box

 

Well, I've run out of car budget for tires. However, I'm toying with the idea of still going to the test and tune on the essentially dead AD08r's for the hell of it.

It's times like this that I hate being an adult and wanting to pay my bills first

 

Alrighty, my journal has been dead without any updates for way too long. However, I'm kinda at a point where I'm happy with all the bits and pieces on the car and how it drives. The only addition is I finally installed the group N motor mounts I got months ago.

The motor mounts definitely added some vibration through the steering wheel, pedals and shift knob, however its seems mostly at idle and cold start. Its not like I'm going for comfort anyhow.

Now to further enable myself to make a race-like car out of this STI, I've replaced my totalled out camry with a 2016 WRX limited...




Lapis blue, nothing fancy added to the base limited. So far its smooth and quiet to drive like the old DD camry just with some pep. I have only gotten 130miles on it and only taken it up to 5k rpm a twice, but its pretty neat how fast the new motor builds boost. Still lacking the low end torque of a stage 2 EJ257 imo. But its a nice balance of a fun DD.

 

thanks!

yah the bbs wheels look great on this body style to me. However, I really can't let myself to mess with this one. I need at least one stock semi reliable car, and plus I need to come up with a fair bit of money to get new tires for the STI.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAj26rVWK14

 

thank you sir! yup ill be at tonights meet with the wrx

 

haha, i can see the shifter upgrades, compared to the sti with the holy shift kit and kartboy short shifter, it feels like im stirring mashed potatoes in the new car

 

Alrighty getting back to updating things on here.

I finally killed off the Advan AD08R tires with a season of autocross, a dragon trip, and about a dozen trips up to North Georgia and commuting on dinner meet tuesdays.

Overall not too bad for a hair over a years worth of use and I believe it worked out to around low 9 thousand miles. I found the advans to have really great traction, however the rubber compound definitely seemed more geared for track use versus autocross as there was a noticeable difference in traction from the first half of my autox runs to the last half. However, in the mountains they never greased over which was great for such a heavy car. Grip at temperature was amazing, the tires took a lot to break loose outside of autocross conditions, but overall they were extremely predictable and the transition from grip to slip was quite smooth and not snappy and sporadic which is helpful for my novice hands.

Now for this season of autocross I've chosen a more appropriate tire, the BF Goodrich Rival S, in a ginormous 315 30 18 fitment. Unfortunately the new hotness Bridgestone RE71 doesn't come large enough.


I've been having a great experience going to Global Alliance for alignments on weekends, and they are now teamed up with Global Tires Plus which is connected/next door to them, so it works out to be a nice one stop shot for tire things.




And finally, how she sits with the new shoes...