K
k. ote
Greetings all. I thought I'd share my ongoing experiences with my STi which
I traded my old WRX in for last mm.. September (2004) I believe.
For the winter I purchased a set of Pirelli PZero Nero tires and put them on
the stock rims. They were great, fantastic tires, but there were two
annoying things about them.
First, the sidewalls were mushy. Really mushy by comparison to the OEM tire.
Driving over bumps was smooth, and they took corners *almost* better than
the OEMs, and ate up snow and mud without even a chirp, but then travelling
along at decent speeds made me feel a bit like I was at the top of a
jack-in-the-box. It was nowhere near the kind of rock-hard,
glued-to-the-road feeling the OEM tires gave me on sunny dry pavement.
Second, either as a result of the soft sidewall or the tread design on the
tire (which itself was pretty unique,) I experienced some torque on the
steering wheel during acceleration. A wheel alignment *mostly* cured it,
but I was left with the feeling that the alignment wasn't straight but
slightly off in order to compensate for the tires, as when I braked
particularly hard, it felt like it was pulling *slightly* to one side.
Well, it's heading towards summer and the temperatures have warmed back up
to an average that I feel comfortable putting the OEMs back on the car.
Might as well use em up, right?
So, I went out a bought some nice rims--Rota Torque's, Hyper-Silver, 17x8
for future wider tires, and put the original tires on those, storing the
BBS wheels with the Pirellis in a safe place until the weather gets cold
again. The Rotas are approximately 3-4 lbs heavier than the BBS wheels
each, which I imagine would affect braking ability very slightly with the
greater inertia of the spinning wheels, but I refuse to pay $1200/wheel for
advanced alloys just to save 2-6 lbs per wheel, especially since I've lost
that much weight and more just myself. But more about personal triumphs
later.
Anyway, the new wheels with the old tires are BEAUTIFUL. The difference is
palpable. I'm back to being glued to the road, and to hell with the massive
increase in road noise. Even the tramlining isn't nearly as bad as I
remember it. It's as though the Pirellis were trainer tires that I could
roughouse around on until I was ready to come back to the macho Potenzas.
Plus, I have almost NO torque steer under acceleration, and that's even
without a follow-up alignment for the new wheels--something I'll get to
sooner rather than later. For some reason I find shifting a lot easier now
too, but that could just be because I learned to shift the STi under the
original wheels to begin with so I'm more used to the original road noise.
That or I'm just better shifting the STi, period.
The downside: other little niggling things are bothering me a little on the
STi now.
For example, the daytime running lights. The reality is that these lights
are almost as bright as the normal nightlights. Since you can see so well
with the daytime running lights when you're in the dark, it's hard to
remember you're on your daytimes and that your rear lights aren't lit..!
Argh! It should be: either the lights are on, or they're off. There are
three bloody settings for the lights on the lever: "Off/Daytime/Full".
Unfortunately "Off" is the same as "Daytime" unless you notch up the
E-brake or modify the wiring.
Second, the windshield wipers appear to be custom: the little wind deflector
attached to the driver's side wiper actually requires an additional little
piece to screw it on to. I don't know anyone locally outside the dealership
that sells compatible blades. Oh well, I'll live.
Third, I recently realised I never received the service booklet for the car
when I bought it. (DOH!) So I have to get them to get me a new one next
service run.
Everything else is as when I bought it: Gas mileage is notable in that I
average about 350 KM per fill-up of about 45 litres. That's about 21 mpg in
the city, or 12.85 litres per 100 KM. Not the horrible 18 mpg listed in the
literature at all and certainly nowhere near what I was getting when I
first bought the car. I guess after a time I either figured out how to take
it easy (while still booting around and sprinting with people at the
stoplights) or there's a mix of highway driving in there boosting it a bit.
Performance is still spectacular. I don't drag-race my STi, although on
occasion I'll pop up next to a superbike who'll give me a thumbs up and
want to see what it can do. I feel guilty somehow when I don't squeal the
tires and do a hard launch--like I'm disappointing the other people on the
road who recognise the car. It's a terrible dilemma: drag race the car, or
baby it. Arg the pressure!
Still, curvy roads are more fun than a sack of angry monkeys. I have to
learn to heel'n'toe much better than I can right now. I'm constantly
spotting places where the abilty to keep pressure on the brakes while
rev-matching a downshift would be tremendously helpful.
Now the cool part. Owning an STi has had one remarkable consequence: I'm
losing weight. Lots of it. Not to say I was horribly obese before I bought
the STi, but I was definitely chunky. I'm losing it all and getting skinny
again. My motivation? Weight savings for the car. What a bizarre thing
that's finally encouraged me to portion control and eat healthier foods!
But I honestly attribute it all to the car. It's almost like it's
encouraged me to be a better person, so I can do it justice when we drive
down the road together. Like my computers, the car is a harsh but rewarding
master.
Owning an STi has had another unintended consequence. I'm wayyyy too
overprotective. If someone is leaning on the car, I can't stand it. If
someone slams the door too hard, my teeth jar and I wince. If someone draws
their name in the condensation in the windshield I feel like cuffing them
in the back of the head (and have to fight to stop from actually doing it.)
Anytime someone tells me I'm shifting wrong, I have to roll my eyes and
ignore them: they just can't know what it's like to drive the STi. It takes
a certain amount of consideration. You can't just shift it and slam the
gears around. Well, you can, but it feels wrong to do it. The machine
protests and resists your efforts.
Really the only other person who's driven the car in a way that put me
completely at ease is a longtime performance car driver friend of mine,
whose most recent vehicle was a 2001 BMW M3. Mmm.. the fast M3 kind..
*drool*.
The seats are holding up very well, all mechanisms seem to be functional and
in top form, and I've felt no problems with anything else but the
alignment. The intercooler spray *still* hasn't run out of its original
reservoir of water.
The last thing I wanted to mention was that in experimenting with the DCCD,
an odd thing seems to happen at high RPMs. If I leave the car in Auto, it
feels like it's shifting much harder and more responsively than if I put it
into full rear bias. Perhaps I'm just not hearing the rear wheels break
free, but at certain times in a top-acceleration mode, if the DCCD is wide
open it feels like it loses power briefly. I'm still investigating this in
a "God I hope this isn't hurting the car" mode, so I guess I'll have to
learn more about it before saying anything definitive.
All in all, I'm well on the road to breaking the one-year mark. Silver, I'll
let you know if I manage to hit it and not trade the car in! I'm pretty
stubborn.. but make your bets now.
ttyl!
I traded my old WRX in for last mm.. September (2004) I believe.
For the winter I purchased a set of Pirelli PZero Nero tires and put them on
the stock rims. They were great, fantastic tires, but there were two
annoying things about them.
First, the sidewalls were mushy. Really mushy by comparison to the OEM tire.
Driving over bumps was smooth, and they took corners *almost* better than
the OEMs, and ate up snow and mud without even a chirp, but then travelling
along at decent speeds made me feel a bit like I was at the top of a
jack-in-the-box. It was nowhere near the kind of rock-hard,
glued-to-the-road feeling the OEM tires gave me on sunny dry pavement.
Second, either as a result of the soft sidewall or the tread design on the
tire (which itself was pretty unique,) I experienced some torque on the
steering wheel during acceleration. A wheel alignment *mostly* cured it,
but I was left with the feeling that the alignment wasn't straight but
slightly off in order to compensate for the tires, as when I braked
particularly hard, it felt like it was pulling *slightly* to one side.
Well, it's heading towards summer and the temperatures have warmed back up
to an average that I feel comfortable putting the OEMs back on the car.
Might as well use em up, right?
So, I went out a bought some nice rims--Rota Torque's, Hyper-Silver, 17x8
for future wider tires, and put the original tires on those, storing the
BBS wheels with the Pirellis in a safe place until the weather gets cold
again. The Rotas are approximately 3-4 lbs heavier than the BBS wheels
each, which I imagine would affect braking ability very slightly with the
greater inertia of the spinning wheels, but I refuse to pay $1200/wheel for
advanced alloys just to save 2-6 lbs per wheel, especially since I've lost
that much weight and more just myself. But more about personal triumphs
later.
Anyway, the new wheels with the old tires are BEAUTIFUL. The difference is
palpable. I'm back to being glued to the road, and to hell with the massive
increase in road noise. Even the tramlining isn't nearly as bad as I
remember it. It's as though the Pirellis were trainer tires that I could
roughouse around on until I was ready to come back to the macho Potenzas.
Plus, I have almost NO torque steer under acceleration, and that's even
without a follow-up alignment for the new wheels--something I'll get to
sooner rather than later. For some reason I find shifting a lot easier now
too, but that could just be because I learned to shift the STi under the
original wheels to begin with so I'm more used to the original road noise.
That or I'm just better shifting the STi, period.
The downside: other little niggling things are bothering me a little on the
STi now.
For example, the daytime running lights. The reality is that these lights
are almost as bright as the normal nightlights. Since you can see so well
with the daytime running lights when you're in the dark, it's hard to
remember you're on your daytimes and that your rear lights aren't lit..!
Argh! It should be: either the lights are on, or they're off. There are
three bloody settings for the lights on the lever: "Off/Daytime/Full".
Unfortunately "Off" is the same as "Daytime" unless you notch up the
E-brake or modify the wiring.
Second, the windshield wipers appear to be custom: the little wind deflector
attached to the driver's side wiper actually requires an additional little
piece to screw it on to. I don't know anyone locally outside the dealership
that sells compatible blades. Oh well, I'll live.
Third, I recently realised I never received the service booklet for the car
when I bought it. (DOH!) So I have to get them to get me a new one next
service run.
Everything else is as when I bought it: Gas mileage is notable in that I
average about 350 KM per fill-up of about 45 litres. That's about 21 mpg in
the city, or 12.85 litres per 100 KM. Not the horrible 18 mpg listed in the
literature at all and certainly nowhere near what I was getting when I
first bought the car. I guess after a time I either figured out how to take
it easy (while still booting around and sprinting with people at the
stoplights) or there's a mix of highway driving in there boosting it a bit.
Performance is still spectacular. I don't drag-race my STi, although on
occasion I'll pop up next to a superbike who'll give me a thumbs up and
want to see what it can do. I feel guilty somehow when I don't squeal the
tires and do a hard launch--like I'm disappointing the other people on the
road who recognise the car. It's a terrible dilemma: drag race the car, or
baby it. Arg the pressure!
Still, curvy roads are more fun than a sack of angry monkeys. I have to
learn to heel'n'toe much better than I can right now. I'm constantly
spotting places where the abilty to keep pressure on the brakes while
rev-matching a downshift would be tremendously helpful.
Now the cool part. Owning an STi has had one remarkable consequence: I'm
losing weight. Lots of it. Not to say I was horribly obese before I bought
the STi, but I was definitely chunky. I'm losing it all and getting skinny
again. My motivation? Weight savings for the car. What a bizarre thing
that's finally encouraged me to portion control and eat healthier foods!
But I honestly attribute it all to the car. It's almost like it's
encouraged me to be a better person, so I can do it justice when we drive
down the road together. Like my computers, the car is a harsh but rewarding
master.
Owning an STi has had another unintended consequence. I'm wayyyy too
overprotective. If someone is leaning on the car, I can't stand it. If
someone slams the door too hard, my teeth jar and I wince. If someone draws
their name in the condensation in the windshield I feel like cuffing them
in the back of the head (and have to fight to stop from actually doing it.)
Anytime someone tells me I'm shifting wrong, I have to roll my eyes and
ignore them: they just can't know what it's like to drive the STi. It takes
a certain amount of consideration. You can't just shift it and slam the
gears around. Well, you can, but it feels wrong to do it. The machine
protests and resists your efforts.
Really the only other person who's driven the car in a way that put me
completely at ease is a longtime performance car driver friend of mine,
whose most recent vehicle was a 2001 BMW M3. Mmm.. the fast M3 kind..
*drool*.
The seats are holding up very well, all mechanisms seem to be functional and
in top form, and I've felt no problems with anything else but the
alignment. The intercooler spray *still* hasn't run out of its original
reservoir of water.
The last thing I wanted to mention was that in experimenting with the DCCD,
an odd thing seems to happen at high RPMs. If I leave the car in Auto, it
feels like it's shifting much harder and more responsively than if I put it
into full rear bias. Perhaps I'm just not hearing the rear wheels break
free, but at certain times in a top-acceleration mode, if the DCCD is wide
open it feels like it loses power briefly. I'm still investigating this in
a "God I hope this isn't hurting the car" mode, so I guess I'll have to
learn more about it before saying anything definitive.
All in all, I'm well on the road to breaking the one-year mark. Silver, I'll
let you know if I manage to hit it and not trade the car in! I'm pretty
stubborn.. but make your bets now.
ttyl!