=Robbo=

Very very nice, apart from the left hand drive and the thought of the 95min phone conversation with the insurance company "is the car modified at all sir?" - can I just send you a fax doll? Robbo

Wow that conversion is awesome - what a toy. With a quick rack and that conversion you could just about have a scooby drift car! Stupid driving tho, guy lost his bottle and hit the brakes. He should practice in a big car park like the rest of us! Robbo.

Hey Gumball, been there myself mate, although in the Royal Signals it was usually you boys boxing my heed!! Good times though. Robbo

Fantastic mate! I'm buying you a pint or two for that! Robbo

Hey Gumball, why are you not drinking? I thought you Infantry boys did nothing but get pissed and knock f*** out each other down the nafi? lol Robbo

I have the Afterburner and the H&S classic style backbox. I loved the sound of the Afterburner, but everyone I know hated it (it sounds like you have a hole in your exhaust robbo), and that was before a full decat (including up pipe). It's all bloody subjective! I should mention that both of my H&S back boxes sit FAR to low and that I'm booked in to C&C at the end of the month to have them modified. My advice - just see http://www.stainlessexhausts.com before you spend a penny, I wish I had known about them earlier. Robbo.

Damn!!! It was only 2kb as well!

I thought I'd post this one because it epitomizes every single thing my wife hates in me! Well, maybe not everything.

Get the up pipe as well Al it makes a big difference. Then an Andy F remap to finish it off! Worth every penny. Make sure you get your downpipe heat wrapped mate if you haven't allready, as a bare pipe will burn the wiring loom next to it and dry out the CV joint near it as well. I ran mine for 2 weeks weeks without the wrapping and was told my was wiring was already "crispy" and the cv joint was drying out due to the grease being melted and running out of it. Robbo

Welcome mate! http://www.stainlessexhausts.com/ in glasgow for your new backbox. cheers Robbo

*Edit* Oops you said it only started happening recently, sorry. Has it allways done this mate? If the steering wheel has been off or disconnected from the rack then it's maybe just not been lined up properly. Been there with many a car. Robbo

That's shocking, that car must have been two cars welded together? Tell you what folks I'm not sure the Impreza would do too well in a crash like that. The lack of any Euro NCAP rating is a tell tale sign. Robbo

I like looking at nice burds as much as the next man, but there's dedicated websites for that kind of "claw" action (i'm told), i'm guessing the photographer for that shoot was not interested in cars at all? What we want from car photography is wing mirror level shots from all angles, in good light to show the cars lines and with no distracting backgrounds and no people standing in the way. Nice wheels indeed, and the charge speed v1 (previous version) is going on my motor next year! Robbo.

Hey all. I'm looking for someone in Glasgow to refurb my OEM new age alloys, I'm thinking of having them stripped and painted black but leaving a silver rim lip. cheers all. Robbo

Yeh Brian C&C it is. I hear good things about them. I have it booked in for the end of the month, I'll post before and after pics. Robbo.

Yeh mate up pipe too, I was told the cat in the up pipe limits what the tuners can do as they worry about blowing it to bits and it buggering the turbo, i think they need to use more fuelling to try and keep it cool. Something like that. Very important though - you MUST get both up and down pipes heat wrapped or its a real waste of time. As for MOT, the big centre Cat on the new age should be all you need to pass emissions, get your fav mechanic to do it for you as part of the MOT it only take 10mins and warm the Cat up for 20mins before testing, just in case. Aye, just call me "Mr Environment". Robbo ps. Have you ever seen what the cat looks like inside the pipe - it's no wonder it suffocates the engine its like a big lump of cardboard stuffed down the exhaust!

Only a green panel filter mate, but from what i've read unless your gonna move to a full "smooth" induction kit, any expense in this department may be wasted, a standard Subaru paper filter may well be fine. The whole "air in - air out" thing is about reducing turbulance and improving flow but turbulance comes first, why do people spend so much money getting cylinder heads ported? To reduce turbulance. Right now my engine way out performs the handling of my car, both brakes and suspension are in need of a comparable upgrade. I wish I hadn't spent so much on a Hayward & Scott system as I could have had a better fitting stainless system made for me in Glasgow, for much less. I have bought both the H&S classic backbox and the jap style back box not to mention center, down and up pipes. Both backboxes sit so low they look bloody awfull. I have the classic style fitted and it sits about 5" too low, it looks like it's going to fall off! And before anyone asks, yes it is properly fitted. I'm getting it modified by someone at the end of the month I'll post before and after pics and contact details if they do a good job. Robbo.

Tell you what folks, the only reason I can think of to justify having built in cold piston slap, is really sh*it tolerance in the manufacturing of either the cylinder bore liners or the pistons themselves? I could well be wrong. Robbo.

Hey Type RA, don't worry mate, as far as I know your average bobby wouldn't know what a catalytic converter was, let alone what one should look like on a particular type of car. I wouldn't worry about being pulled bud remember that the police person is measured on performance, high performance = catching lots of criminals. So they play the numbers game. Imagine the scene, you're a copper sitting in a car, bored, looking at all the cars driving past, one after another, Mini, Vectra, Mondeo, Skoda, Land Rover looking for a criminal to catch, Honda, Toyota even a bog standard new age WRX, which makes them think just a wee bit. But it doesn't fit the "suspicious ideal". Bobbies on the beat are looking for classic tell tale signs of people involved in crime, that means people with a moderate disposable income of purely cash, only having cash limits what you can buy. In simplistic terms this means the likely dodgy person isn?t going to be driving a car worth more than 10k, as it's difficult to buy a car worth more than that for cash. They gamble on the fact that such criminals aren?t going to buy a '05 Nissan Micra. Then Mr Type RA drives past looking just a wee bit different (and bloody nice), HELLO! And guess what, your another "let's see what he's up to" statistic. Don't worry about it mate, it sucks but it?s just a numbers game, if you drove a car worth 10 times as much in a different area at a different time you would be equally suspicious to them. Bottom line is; make sure your car is legal, be polite when stopped and always think of them as you scream down the back roads at 95 (sometimes lifting all 4 wheels and hoping the feking things lands gently) whilst keeping on your side of the road. HeHaw. Robbo.

Hi Cal, well the first thing I said to Andy was that I was not intererested in BHP. As we all know it's torque that makes a car fast, BHP is just a peak figure and a marketing tool, like "fat free" Midget Gems! lol. I have no idea of what my car is kicking out all I care about is how it feels. I can tell you mate it feels much much faster. Robbo

I don?t know if the price varies depending on how complex the job is but I paid £550. I believe a large chunk of this is for the software license, Andy said additional remaps would cost me around 200'ish depending on how much has been changed on the engine. I toyed with the idea of a piggy back system such as the Dastek unichip, but from what I?ve picked up it's a bit of a hack. The on board ECU is in constant battle with the piggyback ECU (which is intercepting and changing it's commands to the engine), i.e. the onboard ECU is flat out trying to correct the engine that it thinks is not running correctly. Being an I.T. bod I understand this, it's all about processing power and overhead. Please don't quote me on all this folks I'm no expert, I'm sure there are peeps out there very happy with their piggy back systems. I just liked the idea of using a dedicated ECU and not adding any overhead to the thing. Robbo

Hi All. I had my decatted ?03 WRX remapped by Andy Forrest last weekend and just wanted to share my thoughts with you all. Andy used the EcuTek software to remap the Standard '03 WRX ECU (Denso, I think?). As most of you know Andy has a bit of a pedigree in performance engine tuning and I have to say it was a bloody privilege to sit next to someone who knows so much about a subject. So how does my re-mapped engine feel after one weeks driving? Well have a guess? ?Fantastic! If you?re thinking of getting a remap I wouldn?t look anywhere else. Robbo. Andys' website is www.andyforrestperformance.co.uk

Hi Al. I had this very problem myself, I was abut to buy the electrical fix which is basically a resistor. However i found a much better option on ebay.com (not co.uk) It's basically a spacer bold that makes the lambda sensor sit just out of the gas flow. Totaly worked for me on a 03 WRX, no cel light now, also if you put the cat back in for an MOT you dont need to remove that electrical fix. Interestingly the light only went out after about 40 miles driving, I'm guessing the ECU took some time to decided all was OK again? Robbo

Hi all. I'll be looking to have a charge speed body kit fitted and painted soon. Anyone in Glasgow any good with this sort of work? Cheers robbo