Vimmy

Just had a great day out, well 170 mile trip up the M5/6 to Manchester for a 9am start, had the whole journey without fuss apart from a wee bit of fog..car never complained at all, was zigging and zagging in all the gaps in the 2nd and 3rd lanes. The way back was a tad busier, work finished at 4pm so hit the M5/M6 intersection at the 'right' time and miles of queues...but that helped me do some heat soak testing on work I've been doing to the car. When pulling away in jams previously theres always been that little bit of extra lag/reduction of pickup in boost and acceleration because of the heat soak effect its taken a while for it to disappear and normal performance to reappear. Now the car pulls away without any hesitation felt, from a stand still and the turbo sucking away and whistling like a good 'un. I take my hat off to the engineers at Subaru for putting together a great wee car that still goes on after many, many miles. I cant think of another car I would ever want to replace it (well only one that ends with 911) Cheers, Col

Ah yes possibly but you can never have enough of a good thing

Here's my little runaround..up the wagons

Aye I guess the closer it is, the less time there is to worry about it I'm just miffed I'm gonna miss the day out...always next year I guess

Looks like we wont be going now after all I got my dates mixed up as the day after the Castle Combe event I need to be in Bristol for my second TKD exam and need that saturday to practice and practice, I was sure I had a month left, not two weeks Anybody want a ticket/band for an adult and a band for a child? I have some spares now

Aye seconded good to see you back, now wheres the pics, I always loved the pulsars

Yeah I need to find one of them and try and fit it for a laugh

Thanks for th einfo from their website they seem to know their stuff, the weave seems pretty tight at 1.5mm thick should be easy to install too. I previously bought some graphite impregnated wrap from germany. The wrap was thicker than this and a PITA to fit, the weave on it wasn't as tight as this appears to be and its all but fallen off and rotted. I'll give this a try and see how it goes, even better that its made in the UK too, not some faraway country being produced on the cheap. If you had it back to the backbox did it suffer any from water ingress through the weave much? Cheers, Col

Thanks matey, I need to fit another cold air intake too from the front indicator section to get some air moving over the top of the engine itself as I have rear facing vents where the scoop once was and need to increase air flow to move the air out, yet another task to add to the list. What I do need to confirm tho' is if I can get away with wrap for the exhaust manifold that is rated to 600 degree C, there are other rated at around 1000 degrees C but the cost is way high. I was going to put on an initial layer on and then a secondary one also. I spotted this on the Gobstopper whilst looking for some inspiration

Hi Guys, just a quickie, I went to town a wee bit on keeping the engine bay temps down over the last few weeks. I got myself a roll or two of aluminium backed glass fibre based tape and started winding it onto the turbo coolant pipe, air filter intake pipe and so far the FMIC input pipe from the turbo. I'm waiting on a shielded thermocouple to come to properly measure the intake temps pre throttle body, once thats in place then the other fmic pipe is to be lagged in the same way. I replaced the two expansion tank/coolant hoses with newer/straighter ones and moved them away from the (stupidly positioned) top oem position on top of the air filter to stop direct heat into the intake. They will be lagged once the new air filter shroud has been finally finished. The filter shroud has had a similar amount of lagging and pretty much is a sandwich of two thin metal sheets with a foil/bubble wrap material in the middle to reduce heat soak from the PAS. Once these are done then the top/bigger radiator hose will get the same treatment. The PAS tank has been given the Carl Davey treatment with a set of spacers to keep the PAS tank from directly heating up the intake manifold and does it well One of the PAS hoses has been lagged, the other one to be done time permitting. Whilst in was in there I put in a bypass hose for the throttle body to stop the coolant from heating up all the nice cool air that the fmic has worked its nuts off doing. Without being to bypass the Idle Air Control Valve (again the same coolant runs through this from the throttle body) I lagged the intake pipe from the air hose over the top of the manifold to again reflect heat away as it feeds warm air right into the throttle body. Finally I made a reflective coat for the throttle body silicon hose to reflect heat away as underneath the throttle body there are a pile of exposed coolant hoses kicking out lots of heat. You're probably thinking I'm a bit of a nutter (and you'd be right) but I'm hoping this will go a long way to reducing the engine bay temps by keeping the heat away from the air intake pipework and therefore reduce intake temps too. Next on the list is some of Carl Davey's manifold spacers to really cut back on heating of the intake manifold from the engine block - they can reduce the heat by a good amount indeed It won't win shows for best looking bay, but hopefully will keep my intake temps down a tad...car was going well this morning on the way to work tho'

Hi Andy, hope you had a good time away I have both units here boxed up, they have been on the car since day one and still have a few wee bugs attached to them. They have the motors attached to the back but can be manually moved if needed. I was going to try and use the motors off of these to fix my new ones, but I don't fancy taking the new ones apart to attempt it, so I'll have to keep my new ones manual for the moment. I'm free (John Inman style) most nights, any time after 7pm. Drop me a text when you want to pop around, I'll PM you the number. Cheers, Col

Does the very bottom tip of Oxfordshire still count as South West?

Cool, might pop down there myself now I know they are there

Hehe, now I won't say 'that's women for ya' cos that would be sexist and I'd get a thick ear for my troubles I reckon if the spoiler has now been moved up further into the air-stream, at higher speeds, this should have an effect is it will be hit/seen by the faster flowing air over the boot and hence push down on the spoiler. At lower speeds it may have less of an effect, but its the higher speeds where you want more grip ? Youll have to try it on the twisties between carterton and faringdon, my favourite road

Looks pretty funky there Myles , at 40 squids for a set of fibre risers is a bit of a steal too. A little bit of extra down force at your rear wont do any harm on the twisties at all I've never seen these been used on an Impreza, more so on Celica GT4's and Skylines and they seem to work well for those cars, so why not the Scooby With me having a 'sensible' wagon I've never looked at them but it looks good matey. I wonder if you'll get the same effect as if you would with a big ass WRC spoiler costing millions more, I'm no aerodynamics expert but I think you may seem similar results - now just to test it on the twisties I've been doing a lot of work on my wee motor to reduce intake temps and are a bit wary of posting up pics as I have found there has been a bit of negativity towards anything that is done to take the car away from the norm, these cars were never made to be kept 'original' Need some more pics matey, show off that CF bling

Never thought I would see but its not bad...However this is just plain wrong...Now is the best one ever

Saber EDV is your friend

Hi Iain, the scoop you had on your Fozzie, was it the Sti8 style of scoop? The missus was looking for bigger scoops for her 2004 Fozzie, would the after market scoops available for 2004 model Imprezas fit the same year of Fozzie? Cheers, Col

Just got my tickets online this morning, should be a fun day 1). Baker zone and one other 2). Stu 3). Colin and one other 4). 5). 6). 7). If you fancy meeting up along the what sort of time are you looking to leave, the show looks like it starts at 9am

Aye Happy Birthday old bean hope you're going to share some cake

I'm in no rush matey, no pressure at all. I still have lots of cooling/heat reduction work to do in the engine bay myself before having it run full power on the rollers, just a wee something to think about

Happy days Myles thumbs up to the Big Man again, nicely done Iain I was wanting to get my car on the rollers after doing it a few years ago, wonder if we might get a wee gathering and pop along en mass? Cheers, Colin

Hi Guys, I am always up for one, the problem I have is that my work has a knack of calling last minute go-live weekends and on the flip side canceling them at the last minute too, needless to say it makes me look very undependable Any day after the 5th of September would be good for me, personally speaking, I'll be down Malmesbury for most of the day. Mondays and Wednesdays are training nights so they're out too, I can fit around any other times. Things have been a bit quiet of late, but from what I see on the forums its not just our area that seeing these quiet times. Anyhoo count me in

Hi Andy, is it just the lens itself or the whole light and motor assembly you're after? If mine will fit yours you can have it mate, my motor is a 98, if it will help you out. I'm not back until Monday, I'll dig em out and give em a wee clean then. Cheers, Col

Ah cool thx BigFootJim, that's a great bit of info, makes sense as the box for the lights said they they were for a -99 to 00 and thought they were for a different model of car If your up for selling yours I would be up for buying 'em Cheers, Col