Recently a lovely Tuning Developments unequal length manifold and overpipe popped up for sale, before you could say M6 to Stoke and back, it was sitting in my boot. Now, I know many of you will think that I've finally cracked and succumbed to the frivolous world of modding for noise or performance reasons. Straying from my golden rule of only doing quality maintenance - and you could be forgiven for thinking that way. However, as it turns out, when it came to the swap over, one of the nuts one my factory overpipe was looser than it should have been. Needless to say I think I've been completely vindicated in my Columbo style hunch of choosing to do this piece of maintenance - prior to that fateful nut working itself off completely and causing untold damage.
Gorgeous piece of kit this from TD, working it's way miraculously through the guts and fitting very snuggly indeed into the belly of my blue beast. The noise when combined with the Ark Grip is a little bit special, it really sounds like a Subaru now.
Whilst she was in with the excellent tech's at Grinspeed in Leyland (I can't recommend Stevie and Don enough to anyone in the NW). I treated her to new fluids all around (nicely smoothing things off in the gearbox) and decided this was a time to do the spark plugs too. It is a little early for plugs for my BRZ but as there were bits coming off in the vicinity, and it never hurts to have new plugs, it felt right. For those of you who don't know, the plugs are a "bit of a job" on these. The workshop manual recommends the removal of many items including, but not limited to, the ECU, exhaust manifold, your underpants, all jar lids in the workshop, the engine mounts and then hoisting the engine up half a foot before twiddling around with the plugs. Fortunately, ingenuity is not in short supply at my tech's and this was dismissed as an inefficient approach and a quicker way was devised involving a great many extension bars and some knuckle scrapes. Take that Japan.
Naturally you'll be aware it's not ideal to change the exhaust flow and run a touch lean. So, after a chat with Tuning Developments, old bluey was on the dyno for a leg stretch.
I've kept the 2nd cat in a desperate effort to maintain an easy MOT life, so I'm a little down on the 210s and 215s the fully breathing FA20s see, but I'm still very pleased with the dyno work. The sharpening up of the throttle response alone is super, not to mention the fuller Subaru sound and a splash more torque when crunching motorway miles in 6th. I've not yet had a chance to take her for a spirited B road drive but it is on my to do list.
ECUTEK also throw in some slightly gimmicky (IMO) features such as launch control, flat foot shifting and a downshift-on-the-brakes throttle auto-blip. Some demo video here if you're interested http://youtu.be/YM9zkGsA96w I'll give these a whirl on some safe and private area one day, but the tune is all about the improved drivability and noise for me.
Anyone thinking of going to see Mike at Tuning Developments (they do tunes on 370s, but nothing for 350s), this was my first trip and I was very pleased with the service. It can sometimes be a bit dull sitting around waiting to get your car back, but it was great to have a chat with Mike and get some first hand info on the products and services they offer. I can see why the FA20 boys and girls really rate them. It's a great place to go and spend your hard earned with a genuine fellow enthusiast.
That's it for me now modding the BRZ, my insurance premium has taken a preposterous leap in response to these recent changes (and I shopped around ALL the specialists). I really dislike handing a wedge of money over to them for a teeny tiny bit more noise and torque, which has no appreciable impact on my statistical likelihood of making a claim.
In other news, I got to see the world's largest pot of hand scrub...
...that's a 1 gallon and a 1 litre pair of oil bottles next to it. I can't think who might want that much GREEN knocking about