Oswald Rear Triangle Brace

Installed the Oswald Performance Rear Triangle Brace over the weekend. Installation was pretty straight forward. Remove the back seats, loosen the seatbelt pre-tensioners, drop the strut brace supports in, attach the lower support bracket and bolt in the triangle brace. The only trouble I had was mounting the RH strut tower brace as I had a wire harness in the way, but some twisting and fiddling and it went on fine. Everything else fit perfectly!

The fit and finish of this piece is really top notch. I can't believe how sturdy this thing feels when bolted to the car. It feels like you could use it as a jacking point (although I wouldn't try). Off the car the brace couldn't have weighed more than 3-4 lbs. Well worth it over the Litespeed X-Brace cables I had before, which required tightening every so often!

I haven't really been able to test it on the street, but so far bumps seem to be less harsh than they used to. A similar feeling to when I installed the TiC Fender Cowl Braces, but in the rear instead. Definitely a good thing. Can't wait to try it at the track :)

Porsche GT-3 Brake Ducts

I've looked into the Roo Ducts but on the 06+ WRX/STI they put the washer jug in the fender area which completely blocks the potential to run a hose (see attached). I could revert to an 05 style jug in the engine bay but that would require deleting the air pump at a minimum, which would then be +PIPs if I decide to do OTA. Anwyay, I've asked Randy to find a solution for me as I'm sure he's run into this before. I think the Prova brake ducts will work but they need some airflow directed towards them (see attached photos). Jacopo mentioned he uses these on his STI at the Nurburgring and has no more fading issues. Even Porsche uses a similar style OEM brake duct on their GT-3:

TMP on April 29th with Touge.ca is my scheduled "shakedown" date to test everything out and heat cycle the slicks I bought. I'm also trying to schedule a bit of personal coaching that day too... The Stoptech kit actually keeps the stock brake bias, it's the KFP pads which shift the bias slightly forward because they have a higher mu (0.47) than the DS2500 pads in the rear (0.40). It's not that big of a difference though, and if I wanted to adjust it I could probably just get a more aggressive pad in the rear.

StopTech ST-40 BBK

Stop so hard, that shit cray!!

Stoptech ST-40 is on the car now. As my friend said while helping me bleed my brakes, "the pedal is now harder than a 13-year old on viagra". Funny guy, but the engine was off so there was no vacuum assist on the pedal lol. Despite that, pedal feeling IS amazing. I feel I have a lot wider range of modulation than I did before over about an inch of brake pedal travel. Of course, the stainless lines and master cylinder brace all help with that -- but there's a noticeable improvement over the stock 4-pot setup. My only complaint is that this kit makes the rear 2-pots look tiny!! :P

I'm using the Stoptech street pads for now and haven't bedded them yet as the instructions say to wear off the zinc plating first, but already stopping distance is pretty good. For the track, I have a set of carbon-kevlar KFP Gold pads that have a mu of 0.47. I'll be swapping those in before track days to conserve brake pads. I bought them from Peter Hanson and they came with a free pass to one of his full-day driving schools - sick deal!! As a reference, the ST-40 rotors are 328x28mm and stock STI Brembos are 326x30mm. I went with the ST-40 kit since Stoptech claims that the calipers are designed to maintain the stock brake bias. Big thanks to Chris @ Touge Tuning for hooking me up with a great deal :D

JDM Spec-C V9 Interior & SRS Swap

Did a bit of interior work this weekend.

A few weeks ago I picked up a JDM V9 Spec-C interior so I decided to paint my door cards black. I used Duplicolor Vinyl & Fabric matte black. Much cheaper option than Alcantara... we'll see how it holds up, but for now I think it looks great!

Along with the new JDM seats, I swapped my USDM seat base so the driver side has height adjustment, added the passenger OCS bladder for airbag detection, and also retro-fitted the side airbags back into the seats.

Overall I'm very happy with the JDM V9 seats after figuring out how to keep all of my original safety equipment. The seats add a significant amount of back and leg bolstering, as well as some needed thigh support. They provide just as much bolstering as the Recaro seats in the Evo X, but with a less intrusive feeling since the seat foam is softer. My body dimensions are 5'10", 160 lbs, 34" waist.

GS350 F-Sport Brake Ducts

Today I had the pleasure of playing around with a 2013 GS350 F-Sport. One thing I noticed was the simplicity of the brake duct system that is implemented into the lower bumper grill and fender liner. Considering last year's design failure (bdon vs. brake ducts 0-1)... I gotta make something work this year or I might as well hang up my iron ring. This gives me something to think about...

Oswald Lightweight Subframe & Rear Triangle Brace

On the topic of improving the chassis this year ... these showed up today :)

I can't believe how light both of these pieces are! I can pick them up with 2 fingers yet they feel so incredibly stiff and well built. The subframe should drop 14 lbs off the front end and stiffen things up nicely and I already know just how good the rear triangle brace will be from the Litespeed cable version I had previously. Come on Spring, stop teasing and reveal yourself already!



Thanks Mickey @ Oswald Performance for hooking me up! I want to wait until I at least put my summer rubber on before I give these pieces the review that they deserve... plus I have a few 'extras' which haven't arrived yet ;)

I believe Touge Tuning carries this piece now, for anyone else interested. Chris, I wish you had told me you were going to carry these before I went out and bought them on my own :P

Oldies but Goodies

Just going through my archived files and I dug up two old videos. My first and second time at the track ever!

Hard to believe after only 3 seasons of tracking that I'm already so obsessed about time attack lol.

Can't wait for the 2012 season to start! At this rate, winter will be over by next week and I'll be putting on the summers again





One thing I noticed is that with my old ghetto digital camera mount the boxer rumble really comes through. I guess I should look into fixing that annoying rattle noise from my GoPro mount...