Brighter light; louder noise

You know the incandescent bulb is a dinosaur, right?  New technology give us better, brighter light, with less heat and less power consumption.  For automotive applications, the name of the game is LED.  Fancy cars come with LED lighting now, but the less-expensive ones still make do with the older (but cheaper) bulbs.

LED license plate bulbs

Good thing work at a shop here to bring that BRZ into the modern age.  We removed every standard bulb we could, and replaced it with an LED equivalent.  That ended up being the puddle lights (in the doors), the backup lights, the license plate lamps, the fog lamps, and the dome light.  Oh, and the trunk light!

LED puddle lamps

Installation was pretty easy -- For the interior bulbs the lenses just pop off, and the new LED bulbs install in place of the old ones.  The exterior bulbs (fog, backup) are a little more involved.  The backup lights are easy to reach from under the rear of the car.  The fog lamp bulbs are accessed by removing some of the push fasteners under the lower splash shields in the front bumper.  The fog lamp bulb LEDs weren't exactly right -- they are an H16 bulb, and there are apparently different variants.  We had to carve off some of the tabs on our LED bulbs to get them to fit.  One we finished customizing the bulbs, they clicked right into place.  H16's push directly into their socket, by the way -- they don't push-and-turn like most automotive bulbs do.

LED backup lamp on right; stock on left

In each case the light is at least as bright as stock, and MUCH whiter -- closer to sunlight than the yellow stock bulbs.  We like 'em because they are practical and also eye-catching, and they don't cost too much.  It's a fun modification, and you can do a little at a time, or do the whole car at once.

Some new cars don't get along with LED bulbs, because the resistance is different (lower) than incandescent bulbs.  Those cars have automated bulb-checking routines that test the bulbs even when they are not in use.  The BRZ belongs to a simpler time, though, and doesn't have any of that new-fangled bulb testing logic.  In any case, no warning lights lit up in the dash after I installed all those LED bulbs.

Product links: License plate lamps, backup lamps, puddle lamps, fog lamps, dome lamp.

And for the second of the five senses in today's update, we built a prototype dual-outlet muffler delete.  This one has fully-polished double-walled tips, so it looks very presentable (as compared to our strictly-business single-outlet muffler delete).  It isn't what I'd call quiet, but I think it sounds great.  It's still much lighter than stock (I don't know the exact weight yet, but I'd guess it's around 18 pounds lighter than stock.)

We'll be manufacturing this one over the next few weeks.  When they're in stock I'll post a link.

Whiteline Com-C strut tops installed

From the factory, the BRZ comes with almost no front camber.  You can install eccentric bolts to get a little, but they don't help that much.  You can install solid aluminum upper mounts with spherical ("pillow ball") bearings, but those have their own issues, which include lots of noise.  Or...there's the Whiteline Com-C top mounts, which are a traditional rubber top hat, but with firmer rubber (like Group N parts), and with the center point relocated to one side.  It's not adjustable, but by installing it with the offset center pointing towards the center of the car, we can gain both caster and camber.  (See the photo above, showing one of the mounts on the passenger side of our car.)

Having extra camber helps the car to maintain grip in the corners.  Having more caster gives you more camber only while the wheels are turned, which (it turns out) is exactly when you need more camber.

The Whiteline top-mounts installed easily.  Mach V technician Tommy reports that they were no trouble to install; his only gripe was that the factory dust caps are slightly smaller than the holes they would go in, so he secured them with some urethane adhesive.

On the alignment rack, the car gained almost 1 degree of camber, ending up at -1.2 degrees left and right.  Caster also increased by a little over a degree, to 6.8 degrees.

On the street the car feels the same -- I didn't notice any additional harshness from the stiffer hats.  The car drives about the same, and I honestly could not feel the additional front grip -- the limits are so high that on the street it's hard to get the front end to wash out at all.  A few tail-out donut maneuvers in an empty parking lot showed that the rear is just as frisky as ever.



The big 255 tires fit under the front fenders a little better now, too -- before they were distinctly poking out of the front.  Now they're nestled in there nicely.

If you'd like to buy a set of these nifty top mounts, you can (as always) find them over at the Mach V web site.

Production muffler deletes are here!

We now have the production version of our Mach V muffler delete pipe in stock.  It's a simple, lightweight alternative to the heavy stock muffler setup.  Bolt this thing on and your car drops 23 pounds -- we can't think of another single modification that reduces weight by that much!  Plus, it sounds great.  (Check out our previous blog post for the video recording.)  It's all stainless steel, including the hanger, with a slash-cut tip that matches the bumper contour nicely.  Bolts up easily to any BRZ or FR-S.

You can purchase the Mach V muffler delete pipe HERE.

Radiator hoses, updates on previous posts

Cool hoses keep car cool

We installed some new silicone radiator hoses from Fuku Works.  (Fuku?  Sounds like...something from an Austin Powers movie?)  The hoses fit very nicely, and have an interesting webbed scale pattern on them.  The first color available is white, which matches our white car, but I think the other colors (blue, green, black) will be more practical in terms of not showing dirt.  It's a three-piece kit.  We installed them with special "cut-proof" clamps that we sell.

You can purchase the radiator hose kit from our web site, HERE.

So clean!  Of course, rain followed immediately

I washed the car by hand over the weekend, and was struck by how much less dirt accumulates on it compared to some of my other cars.  The rear doesn't have nearly as much soot stuck to it as the turbo cars, and the wheels barely have any brake dust.  Low weight + tiny brakes = low dust!  The small size means the wash doesn't take long, either.

Audio system update!  I really enjoy the Pioneer head unit (full name: AVH-P8400BH).  I have not been using any of the App Radio features -- I never need nav on the commute to or from work anyway -- but I have been plugging an iPod Classic in.  Then I can control the ipod from the head unit.  It works well, and the graphics are great -- cover art shows up nice and large.  The sound is very clear, too.  Actual buttons (as opposed to touch-screen virtual buttons) for track forward/back are very handy.  Answering and hanging up the phone works fine, too -- those are touch screen functions, but they are large enough that I don't have trouble hitting them, like I did with the OEM head unit.

The only thing that I'm missing is bass.  I bought the amp intending to add a sub, but to save time and money on the initial install I left the subwoofer for later.  Now I find that I really notice the lack of deep bass, and I'm pondering how best to address it.  I really don't want to use up a ton of precious rear space, nor do I want to add a bunch of weight.  Hmm.  Sub in place of the spare tire?  Inside of the spare tire?  Tiny sub under the passenger seat?  Custom sub in the rear corner of the hatch?  I'll do some brainstorming and check back here.

We've added a few more parts to our web catalog.  We now offer BC coilovers for the car, as well as Deatschwerks fuel injectors.  (You'll probably want those if you're planning to add a turbo or supercharger to the car.)  We also have the Injen intake in stock.  More parts are coming in all the time!

More driving impressions, and prototype parts

I've been commuting back and forth to work in the BRZ, and the more I drive it, the more I just love this car.  I am afraid I'm turning into a less-polite driver, because every time I'm in the car I just want to grab it by the scruff of the neck and toss it around.  I find myself using full throttle more than in my other cars, and challenging myself to see if I can get past slow cars in traffic.  I feel like I'm reverting to a teenager.  On the plus side, full-throttle driving doesn't actually make the car go very fast, nor does it make much noise with the stock exhaust, so a lot of times I think I'm the only one who knows I'm flogging the car.  The rest of the world just cruises along in their tall, sound-isolated, luxury barges.  Which happen to be faster than my car, but that just makes it all the more challenging to keep up.

The car is very, very low.  It was low to start with, and the Mach V springs have lowered it about another inch.  Either way, I noticed that a lot of drivers don't even see the car -- I've had a couple of somewhat close calls with bigger vehicles changing lanes and not seeing me.  Maybe I need a little orange flag to stick up off the top like on a bicycle.

Getting in the car and driving it, I have these weird flashbacks to other cars I've owned or driven in my past. Today I had a memory of driving a 1988 Honda CRX Si, back when that car was new.  The Subaru has some of the same sensory triggers: Short-throw gearbox, taut handling, naturally-aspirated engine that only makes power up top, and light weight.  I remember revving that CRX to redline at any and every opportunity, and I'm driving the BRZ that way, too.  It's refreshing and pleasant to be able to use every bit of the car's performance, and not have to worry so much about breaking the sound barrier (or my driver's license).

The handling is forgiving and exploitable in the same way.  Other cars I have, or have had recently, have such high limits, I could never, ever approach the limits on any public road.  It just wouldn't be safe or sane.  The BRZ has pretty good grip, but the limits are very progressive and approachable.  I feel comfortable playing around with the car in a corner, exploring a little bit of oversteer or understeer, and I don't have to be going 100 mph to do it.  A simple cloverleaf becomes my own little section of race track banking, and I'm only going 35 mph.

In other news, parts development for the car continues.  Our muffler delete pipes are in production now and should be ready in a couple of weeks.  We recently test-fit a prototype front license plate mount that bolts into the tow hook location (so you don't have to screw it directly into the bumper), and we should have those in 2-3 weeks as well.  Our Mach V rear differential cover, billet aluminum with big cooling fins, is also in development.

We also got in some aftermarket silicone radiator hoses from Fuku Works, and we'll be test-fitting those sometime soon.

First dyno numbers

Now that the painful 1000-mile break-in is done, I feel comfortable wringing the car out, so that means a trip to our Dynojet dyno.  I did runs with the car in all-stock configuration, and then I also removed the rear muffler section and replaced it with a little stubby pipe that we fabricated.  We observed the same horsepower with and without that muffler section.  The power is about on par with other BRZ / FR-S dyno results we've seen.  The weird semi-circle of low torque between 3000 and 4000 RPM is common across every dyno graph.

I tried one run where we removed the intake filer completely.  That resulted in no benefit.

159 horsepower to the rear wheels is pretty low.  We usually see a 15% loss from the engine to the dyno, so we'd expect 170 rear-wheel horsepower from a 200-hp-rated car.  159 at the wheels would indicate more like 187 at the engine.  Perhaps the power will go up after the car has been run in some more.  We'll check back.

The modest result on the dyno brings to mind our current vanity plate for the car, pictured at right.  (Vanity plates cost next to nothing in Virginia, so we'll probably end up changing these a few times.)

We got some decent video footage of the dyno runs with the muffler on:

I also did a little bit of outside recording of the sound with the muffler delete installed.  To my surprise, the noise was pretty moderate -- I wouldn't really mind living with that on a daily basis.  Although there's no increase in horsepower, taking off the muffler does drop about 25 pounds from the car -- almost 1% - so that's a plus.  We haven't decided yet if we're going to mass-produce the muffler delete.  Let us know if you'd be interested in purchasing one.

Window tint and lowering springs

We got some more changes made to the car, both minor and major.  The first was the addition of window tint.  Matt at TNT Tint applied it, and did a great job, as always.  (He's tinted every car I've had in the last...bunch of years.)  Tint level is 35% on the side and rear windows.






Matt showed me a cool trick relating to the windows.  Like many modern cars, the BRZ rolls its windows up and down when you open and close the door, to get a good seal when the door closes.  When you apply window tint, though, you don't want the windows to move while the tint is drying.  The solution is to remove the single 10mm bolt that retains the rubber button (inside the door sill) that detects the open door.  That button is grounded through the bolt, so removing the bolt makes the car think the door is always closed.  Use a piece of masking tape to temporarily hold the button in place, so it doesn't fall loose and get crushed.

Next up was a set of our new Mach V lowering springs for BRZ and FR-S.  I designed these to be 28% stiffer than stock in the front, 30% stiffer in the rear.  They brought the car down by about 3/4" in the front, and about 1" in the rear.  I think it looks great.  The ride feels the same on most surfaces; it's a little harsher on small bumps, but in most cases I don't notice the difference.  Body roll wasn't really an issue before, but the car feels even lower and flatter-handling than before.  It's a lot of fun!


I was worried the slightly-too-large tires would rub with the car lowered, but so far I have not been able to get it to contact.  I'll see if I can do some more aggressive cornering sometime this week.

The production version of the springs should be in stock around the beginning of September.  In the mean time, you can pre-order them if you'd like.

 In other news, this magic number appeared on the odometer this morning, so the Mach V BRZ is officially broken in.  On the dyno it goes...