Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar

[Touge Tuning]

I finally found a little time to write up a quick start to the journal for my new vehicle that I received a few weeks back. After losing my beloved 2007 Legacy GT 2 years ago I ended up purchasing a Lexus Hybrid SUV for daily use as I needed something to tow my race bike to the track with. In the mean time I purchased a 2002/2004 WRX shell from a friend to begin building a time attack vehicle. This is in another journal that needs updating as well. While the Lexus was comfortable and nice to drive in, it was boring! I longed to get back into a Subaru as my daily and when the new 2015 Subaru WRX was announced with the new FA20DIT motor I was immediately intrigued. During the summer I was able to take one out for a good while from Subaru of Brampton and immediately could tell Subaru had made a major leap with the new car. I also had the opportunity to drive a few 2015 STi's of our local customers and as much as everyone has ragged on it having the old motor, the car as a whole is significantly better then the previous models. Late in the year I made the decision to move forward with purchasing a base WRX that we could use for research on the new chassis and motor. I was then presented with the reality that the WRX supply was very thin and they were in extremely high demand. After working with Devon at Subaru of Brampton, who is a great guy and someone I would recommend asking for if you're at SOB, we managed to find a base model shown at another dealership available. After signing the deal we found out the other dealership had sold the car a week earlier and not updated their inventory. Slightly disheartened I turned to Autotrader to see if I could locate another WRX and I stumbled across a new listing from Thunder Bay. The dealership is called Northstar Mercedes Benz which is where the name Northstar comes from. Within about a week I had finalized the deal for the car and it was scheduled to be trucked down to Toronto and delivered to the shop. The car had around 52km on it and was traded at a MB dealership in Thunder Bay. Whatever the reasons were I was able to get the car I wanted and not have to wait until March/April for new inventory to come.

We took delivery of the car on the 14th of November with 82KM on the clock. Everything in the car was perfect and we obviously took it for a quick spin to check it out. The first thing I noted was how firm the suspension was, the car I test drove before was not this firm but it also had more km on it. As I put more mileage on the car the suspension has become much more compliant while still feeling extremely tight and planted. The FA20DIT motor is very torquey and power comes on early and holds decently well for a stock car. The steering leaves a little to be desired but is actually still better then previous models. The car has very minimal body roll and the car is easily as good as a modified GR or GD with swaybars, springs and dampers. There's still room for improvement but the baseline is much higher on the 2015 then any previous model. The seats IMO are much improved and hold much better, the interior materials, fit and finish are a huge improvement as well. The WRX upper screen display has the option to display oil temperature as well as boost, throttle position and much more. The only thing missing is an oil pressure gauge, that can be added alter though. One of the only things so far I don't like about the car is the shifting. While the addition of the 6-speed is welcomed, the cable shifting assembly out of the box is not very good. As I've driven more it's become better but initially it was very notchy and difficult to get into gear at times. I find 2nd gear is the hardest still to get into and the feel of the shifting is not confidence inspiring. Hopefully Kartboy and others will come up with some nice improvements over this set-up.

Updated June 13, 2017

Modifications

Engine
COBB AccessPORT Version 3
Custom Dyno Tune by OnPoint Dyno
AEM Air Intake
Turn In Concepts TGV Deletes
Killer B Motorsports Catless J-Pipe and Intermediate Pipe - Re-Installed
Killer B Motorsports TMIC
Killer B Motorspors Charge Pipe
Invidia Catted Downpipe - Sold
COBB Cat-Back Exhaust
Grimmspeed 3-Port EBCS
Grimmspeed Lightweight Crank Pulley - Gunmetal Grey
IAG Performance Street Air/Oil Separator - Dark Grey
IAG Performance EGR Delete Plates - Black

Drivetrain
Turn In Concepts Shifter Bearing - Removed
Kartboy Short Shifter Assembly - Removed
2015 Subaru STi Transmission/Rear Diff Swap
Driveshaft Shop Carbon Driveshaft
Kartboy Shifter Bushings
Turn In Concepts Linkage Bushings

Wheels & Tires
Enkei RPF1 - 17x8 +45 - F1 Silver - Winter Wheels
Michelin X-Ice Xi3 - 215/50R17 - Winter Tires
Muteki SR35 Lug Nuts in Blue
Stock Rims & Tires - 235/45R17 Dunlop Sport Maxx - Sold
Team Dynamics 17x9 +35 Temporary Track Wheels
Hankook RS-3 245/40R17 - Street AWD Track Tires - Replaced
Bridgestone RE71R 245/40R17 - Street AWD Track Tires
Enkei NT03+M 18x9.5 +40 - Powder Coated Matte Black
Bridgestone RE760 255/35R18
Muteki SR35 Lug Nuts - Black

Exterior
Avery SW900 Full Vehicle Wrap - Grey - By Mad Graphics
Grimmspeed License Plate Relocation Kit
Painted WRX Fender Emblems
Stillen Front Lip
Stillen Trunk Lip Spoiler

Brakes
-StopTech Street Performance Front Brake Pads - Replaced
-StopTech Street Performance Rear Brake Pads - Replaced
-Hawk HPS 5.0 Front Brake Pads - Replaced
-AP Racing Super 600 Brake Fluid
-StopTech ST-40 332x32mm Front Big Brake Kit
-StopTech ST-22 345x28mm Rear Big Brake Kit
-Ferodo DS2500 Front and Rear Brake Pads

Best Lap Times:
-Toronto Motorsports Park - Stage 1 + TGV Deletes - 1:25.83
-Toronto Motorsports Park - Catless J-Pipe, AEM Intake, TGV Deletes + Pro-Tune - 1:24.75
-Toronto Motorsports Park - Catted Turbo-Back, AEM Intake, TGV Deletes + Pro-Tune, Hankook RS-3 - 1:23.058
-Toronto Motorsports Park - StopTech ST-40 BBK Added - 1:22.440
-Toronto Motorsports Park - Bridgestone RE71R Tires Added - 1:21.304
-Mosport DDT - 1:41.900 - 2015 Stage 1 Stock Tires
-Mosport DDT - 1:38.633 - 2016 Set-up - RS-3's - Class Track Record
-iCar Mirabel - 1:52.635
-Shannonville Nelson Circuit - 1:01.994
-Grand Bend Motorplex - Technical Layout - 1:12.273 - Class Track Record

Thanks to these companies that are helping with this Project
COBB Tuning - COBB AccessPORT and COBB Cat-Back
Mad Graphics - Full Vehicle Vinyl Wrap and Side Graphics
Grimmspeed - License Plate Relocation Kit, Lightweight Crank Pulley
Turn In Concepts - Shifter Bearing and TGV Deletes
Killer B Motorsports - J-Pipe, TMIC, Charge Pipe
OnPoint Dyno - Dyno Tuning and Testing
Uni-Body Collision - Paint Work (Emblems, Lip, Trunk Spoiler)
StopTech Performance - Big Brake Kit
IAG Performance - Street Air/Oil Separator, EGR Delete
Stripping Technologies - Powder Coating Wheels
Turn 14 Distribution - Big Brake Kits

We're going to get some better pictures of the car soon but here's the first pictures from when I got the car.

[Touge Tuning]

Well i'm just over 2400km and have had the car for 2 months and it has been a joy to drive. We haven't done anything too crazy yet as we're waiting for stuff to arrive from a few companies, namely Killer B and ETS. Given we got the car in November it was obviously necessary to put on some winters and luckily the car came with some awesome Enkei RPF1's with Michelin X-Ice tires! I am very impressed by the tires, they have performed awesome under all conditions and really give you confidence in adverse weather. We used some Muteki SR35 Lug nuts in blue to mount the RPF1's and they look great IMO. I normally try to change the oil at 1000km on new cars but we have been so busy it was difficult to find the time to do it. Finally at 2200KM we drained the oil, which surprisingly looked pretty dirty, and replaced the filter. The OEM filters are Tokyo Roki which is great, but it also begs the question of why the EJ255 and EJ257 filters were switched to Fram manufactured filters. We filled it up with some Motul 8100 5W30 which the car will see for it's life unless it goes to the track in which case we'll switch to 300V. It's worth noting the FA20DIT almost takes 6L of oil, even more then an EJ with a Killer B Oil pan!

That's it for this update, the next updates should be a little more interesting I promise!

[Père Foura]

Nice car!

[Touge Tuning]

Sorry for the delay everyone, the shop has been very busy and I'm having to update this journal on my day off. A few things have happened and I'm going to post them in a slightly non-chronological order. You will notice in the images below the hood is wrapped, I will touch on this in my next update. This update will cover when we took the car to Toronto Motorsports Park in January just to see what it would be like in a safe controlled environment. As luck would have it the day was very cold and ended up coming down with freezing rain which made things interesting to say the least. For testing purposes we had swapped on the stock wheels/tires on the car as I had hoped the track would be clean enough to set a baseline time. The best time I was able to record was roughly a low 1:50's in very poor conditions. Even with stock power levels I could not put the power down in the corners, it was just too slippery. I did compare acceleration between stock and Stage 1 OTS and the car was easily 5KM/h faster on the straight with the Stage 1 map. I also compared the 3 traction control settings and found that with the system fully off was the best by far. The traction control system in both modes was way too intrusive and unpredictable when it would come in. Overall it was a fun day sliding around the track in the car, the stock chassis is predictable and I can't wait to test it out in the spring. What really surprised me is that even after driving to the track, running probably 30+ laps and then driving home I still had quite a bit of fuel left in the tank and ended up getting about 460Km to that full tank of gas. Direct Injection FTW!!! The brakes will be the weakest point on this car at the track, they are very spongy and don't offer a lot of feedback or performance.

I had been driving on Stage 1 since just after my first oil change and as in previous generations of Subaru's found a pretty big difference. The first thing I noticed was that the car was smoother and easier to drive. At first when I got the car I thought I was just rusty from having driven a CVT for 2 years as a daily. This couldn't be though since I get to drive customer cars on a daily basis. Turns out that the stock mapping has a weird rev hang which is likely there to make it easier for inexperienced Manual drivers. But for someone who shifts quickly and smoothly the rpms would be too high during clutch release and the car would jerk. This was gone immediately with the Stage 1 map and just this alone makes it totally worth it IMO for going stage 1. I actually had another person drive the car back to back to confirm what I felt to make sure it wasn't a placebo effect. The pre-loaded OTS map was underboosting pretty significantly so I ended up running the HWG map to reach target. COBB implemented a very aggressive temperature compensation once below freezing, I think they need to get someone like OnPoint Dyno to do Cold weather OTS mapping for them . There's a noticeable power difference in the 2000-4500RPM range, mainly an increase in torque that makes passing much easier. The new 2015 WRX ECU is much faster then older WRX and STi ECU's, the refresh rate on the data is much higher which is awesome. Only downside is there's no real-time mapping right now and full reflashes on the car take 3-5 minutes to do. Overall I would highly suggest getting a COBB on your 2015 WRX, it is a small bump in power and makes the car "normal" to drive.

[Touge Tuning]

As some of you know and saw in my last update I decided to have Project Northstar vinyl wrapped. Before I even owned the car I had a plan in mind for the exterior and when purchasing the car I was not that concerned with the exterior colour. While I am fond of the WRB paint, I wanted the car to stand out where other Subaru owners would notice while not being too over the top so a non-enthusiast would likely not give a second glance. Other then my Lexus, all of the vehicles i've owned have been repainted gray but I wanted something different with this. Taking inspiration from Audi's Nardo Grey paint I set out to find a colour that was close to this. I have always been interested in vehicle wrapping but many of the vehicles I have seen in person did not represent what a quality job should look like so I was a little apprehensive about it. The nicest thing about wrapping a vehicle is that you can simply remove the vinyl when you're tired of the look or are ready to sell and there's no depreciation to the vehicle like their would be with repainting just the exterior of a car. Even if the only reason for painting a car is a colour change, you will always lose a little bit of value when you go to sell the vehicle as most assume repainted vehicles were painted due to an accident or collision. With my mind set on getting the car wrapped I set out to get feedback from people that had their cars wrapped before. After much research I was pretty set on using the pretty well known Sekanskin to wrap my WRX. Somewhere along the line I was chatting with a client and mentioned my plans to wrap the car. It just so happened that he was a 3M certified vinyl installer with years of experience that had recently relocated with his family from BC. After looking over his portfolio and chatting with him I felt confident we were on the same page in terms of the expected end result of the wrap. Damir, who owns and operates Mad Graphics, is extremely detailed and meticulous with his work. He shares a lot of the same values as we do at Touge Tuning when it comes to only doing work right and not cutting corners or sacrificing quality for price.

http://www.madgraphics.com/

I browsed through a few vinyl wrap samples from 3M, Avery, Hexis etc. 3M's Scotchprint 1080 wrap vinyl would be my first choice but they have a fairly limited colour pallet and did not offer what I was looking for. A close second is Avery's SW900 wrapping film which is a quality wrapping product and they had the colour that I was looking for. I initially wanted to test the waters before having Damir order a full roll of the colour so he got enough to do the hood of the car and we started with that. I drove around for a few days with the hood wrapped looking at it in different light and I was pleased that the colour was very close to what I wanted. Below are some images from when the hood was completed.

[Touge Tuning]

After about 1-2 weeks the roll of vinyl arrived from Avery and I arranged to drop off the car to Damir at his new retail location which happened to be on my way to the shop from home. They do a lot of commercial vehicle wrapping from cars to trucks to food trucks and everything in between. Many general sign shops outsource their wrapping to Mad Graphics as most places to not employ a full time wrap installer with the skills necessary to do these jobs. I dropped the car off on Monday morning and Damir explained the process with which things would go and he gave me a rough estimate of 3-4 days to perform the wrap. As I did not want to go as far as wrapping the full door jambs the doors did not need to be removed. I stopped by Tuesday on the way to the shop and the car was pretty much stripped down to where it needed to be for the wrap. Antenna removed, headlights off, mirrors off, door handles off, gas cap lid cover off etc etc. Given it's the middle of winter Damir would not start wrapping until the vehicle temperature was stabilized inside and that every surface to be wrapped was 100% clean of any dirt, salt or other debris which would cause the wrap to not look nice and at the same time possibly cause it to lift. Due to the complexity of removing everything on the 2015 and the road salt on the car Damir said it would take about another day to complete which was fine by me as I had planned to be without the car for at least a week. Wednesday morning I stopped by again and was pleasantly surprised to see the progress that had been made on the car. The front fenders, trunk and roof had all been completed and they were in progress of wrapping the A pillar to rear fender area which to me looked like a complex job to do as one piece. The results were looking fantastic and it was nice to see the car each day with more progress. Below are the pictures from the Wednesday visit.








I stopped by on Thursday as planned and found even more progress which looked awesome! The sides had been completed and all 4 doors had been done as well. When I arrived they were working on the rear bumper. It was all starting to look great but I knew the hardest parts were to come, the side skirts and front bumper have some extremely complex curves that would challenge even the most experienced installer.






Friday morning I was anxious as Damir said pretty much everything would be done and when I showed up I wasn't disappointed. He did an amazing job on the bumper and sideskirts, no weird stretch marks or anything. The only thing left was to install the front fender sides, mirrors, door handles and tail lights. Damir wanted to leave it overnight in his shop with the heat up as he said the Avery wrap material was more heat activated then 3M and this would provide the best bond for the vinyl. I left excited like a little kid on Christmas to pick up the car Saturday morning complete and ready to go.

[Touge Tuning]

So here's the finished product from the day I picked up the car and a couple shots from today outside. I have found it difficult to get pictures that really represent the colour as true. It also really transforms depending on the backdrop and light source. At night it looked like a much deeper gray where as in the sun light it looks very light, almost off white. Overall I am 100% happy with how it turned out and Damir at Mad Graphics did a phenomenal job with the wrap. I have been driving it for almost a month now and have taken it through multiple car washes with no apparent issues, although this is not recommended as their's always the chance for damage by the equipment in drive through car washes. I haven't had a chance to install the fender emblems yet, I initially wanted to do them plastidip but my recent experience has me second guessing it. I am torn whether to do them matte/flat black or gloss black as the wrap is gloss. Any opinions on that? Once I decide on the colour i'll likely have Uni-Body paint them properly for me rather then use plastidip. The last piece of the puzzle will be installing our company graphics on the lower door much like we have already on Project Blackout. Once we get those on and I decide on some summer wheels I think it will look awesome. I want to blackout the headlights but have not had time to tackle that yet. For anyone looking for a full wrap job don't hesitate to contact Damir and the crew at Mad Graphics. Their website is being re-developed right now but I will put his email below. A wrap like mine on most Subaru's would be around $2800 + tax, they can also do it for around $2300 + tax if you're ok with a few more cut lines on the complex areas which speeds up the job. The performance stuff is coming soon I promise!!!

Damir@MadGraphics.com
http://www.madgraphics.com/

[Touge Tuning]

So I have definitely been slacking on updates about the car, we're slammed at the shop with Spring upon us so finding the time to write this has been tough. I do have another update that should come before this but I'm just waiting on some dyno graphs and more testing before I do that. About 2 weeks ago I attended the first Hanson Advanced Driving School of the year at Mosport DDT. This was very last minute but Peter and everyone at the school is awesome and when I found out they had some spots to fill and the weather was going to be solid it was a no brainer. Last year I attended the school driving Project Blackout so going out with a pretty much stock WRX was going to be quite a bit slower....but sometimes that's how you learn the most. I had the pleasure of being assigned our very own @bdon22; as my instructor for the day. At this point the car is Stage 1 with TGV Deletes so horsepower was around 240WHP and Torque around 270-280WTQ....nothing to write home about. Other then that the car had stock brakes, stock wheels, stock tires etc etc.

As with most schools we went out for our first session and basically cruised around at about 40-50% just to re-familiarize myself with the track and get some of the basic suggestions from Brandon on lines etc. Immediately I noticed that the base set-up on the 2015 WRX is quite good considering it's price, Subaru really did an awesome job with the suspension and chassis. Track sessions were generally followed by an in-class session with Derek Hanson which is always entertaining but also very informative. I know for myself I am more of a hands on learner but doing the class sessions has always brought new perspective to how I approach driving. For the next 3 sessions we limited pace to around 70% and focused on turn in points, played with different apexes and being consistent. Something that a lot of people, myself included, have issues with is consistency. Being able to put in one fast lap and then have the other laps be 1-2 seconds apart is not ideal. In order to make useful changes to a car it is critical to be able to put in laps that are almost identical back to back to back. To do this we decided to run the entire track in 3rd gear, which is actually something that I believe the designers planned on when designing the track layout. As the name suggests, Driver Development Track, the design gives you a taste of everything really and being able to focus on driving rather then having to gear up/down every corner really helps with that. Over the 3 sessions I was able to really start to get consistent at most of the 18 turns on the layout we were using and really started to get the 2015 WRX going. With a stock exhaust it was pretty much whisper quite but for the remainder of the day we didn't get passed once other then on cool down laps. The only issue with the 2015 WRX, as with most cars, was the brakes and brake fluid which even not going full out only had about 3 hot laps before the brakes stopped being effective. So that's really the next step in this project and something I've been working on for a few weeks is getting at least a big brake kit on the front of the car. On the last session of the day Brandon asked Peter Hanson, former racer and lead instructor of the school, to go out with me. It was a bit nerve racking to have the head of the school sitting next to me and to be honest the first lap I'm not sure I hit a single apex at all! After that lap though I was able to get back in the groove and do what I had done previously with Brandon in the car. Peter is a quiet person, but he gave me some pointers to try out which brought a different perspective on certain corners. The most gratifying thing was getting his approval, which on track is in the form of double thumbs up which he did a few times when I really hit my turn in, apex and exit points perfectly.

Funny enough Brandon was put in a 2015 STi for his other student and at one point he commented that even though the STi was modded the WRX felt faster. Whether that was driver or the car he couldn't decide but I believe he was very impressed by the capabilities of the new 2015 WRX, maybe he'll chime in . If you've never been on track, or even if you have, I would strongly recommend signing up for a driving school such as the SPDA/ATTS or Hanson Advanced Driving School. No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are there's so much to learn from driving in a controlled environment with someone beside you watching what you're doing. I've already signed up for the June school and look forward to another awesome day at the track!

http://www.hansoninternationaldriving.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

On a final note this 2015 WRX is awesome on fuel! I fueled up in Bowmanville just before the track and even after driving to the track, lapping, driving back home I still ended up hitting 350KM to the tank which is pretty damn impressive IMO.

[Touge Tuning]

Finally had the chance to get out to Toronto Motorsports Park in good conditions with the WRX 2 weeks ago and had a blast. As a reminder the car was essentially stock at this point, no suspension, drivetrain, wheels, tires, brake upgrades. The only change is the car was running a Stage 1 OTS Map from Turn In Concepts for the TGV Deletes. We dyno'd this at 250WHP/287WTQ which is not bad but the car felt super slow on the track. Luckily @NBK; had his AIM Solo GPS Lap Timer so we were able to get accurate lap times and data from the car. The fastest recorded speed was 160KM/H on the main straight which is pretty slow! However I have to say this chassis is super impressive! Even with the measely horsepower/torque figures I was able to click off a 1:25.83 as my best time for the day which I think is pretty amazing! For reference Auto Guide did a 1:22.9 in a 2013 Evo X MR with a more experienced driver. This was with a passenger in the car, full weight (3/4 tank gas, spare tire still in the car). I know there's a lot of time on the table with some small changes, mainly the brakes continue to be a let down and it needs a little more power. Otherwise the suspension was awesome for being stock, the chassis is very tight and the car changes directions quickly and precisely. The car is very predicatble and I didn't have much to complain about with the stock 235 series Dunlop Sport Maxxx tires. As previously I managed to run the whole day and drive home on a single tank and ended up getting 410KM to that tank. I probably did 30-40 laps, maybe more.

Next steps for the car are to get a little more power, bleed the brake fluid and work on getting a BBK on the car to fix the crappy brakes.

[Touge Tuning]

I'll have a full update soon but made another trip to Toronto Motorsports Park yesterday after tuning the car Friday. We're up to about 280WHP/315WTQ now on the WRX. Other then the power increase, 30HP/30Tq, the only other difference was I removed the spare tire/tools this time. With that removed was able to click off a 1:24.75, made up a full second over the last time with just a little more power. The track was very hot and not as grippy so there's still a little more in it as it sits. Next steps will be to install, temporarily, some pads and finish off the power mods.

[Touge Tuning]

I wanted to make sure I got to this before some of the details escaped me. As some of you know this Sunday was the first round of the 2015 CSCS Time Attack Series and was held at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park Driver Development Track...wow that's a mouthful. CTMP DDT is their smaller circuit that really focuses on driver skill and technique with speeds not getting too high compared to TMP or Grand Bend. With our other project not complete, the GD unlimited car, I decided to take out the 2015 WRX and compete in the Street AWD class. The street class is aimed at street driven vehicles with restrictions mainly on suspension (2-way dampening and no extrernal reservoirs), Tires (200 Treadwear and 245mm Tire Width). The majority of the class is running Stage 2 or greater power levels, coilovers, Hankook RS3 in 245 width, gutted rear interior, brembos or other solid BBK. To say the least I felt like I was bringing a knife to a gun fight with the WRX, but it was just to go out and have fun and competition brings out something that you just don't get from open lapping days. At this point the car has an intake, TGV Delete, Downpipe and we replaced the stock pads with some StopTech Street front and rear since the fronts were completely down to the backing plates and the rears were getting there. This is likely due to overheating the pads and them just wearing away, ah well though they were no good anyways! The only other thing we did was dial in the most negative camber we could get on the front wheels with the stock camber bolts. I'm sure they are not the same left to right but we didn't have time to align the car before the weekend.

Went out for the first session to get a feeling for the conditions, track temp etc. Immediately the car felt horrible! It would brake decently but as soon as i'd turn into the corner the front would push and I couldn't run the lines I wanted to. After 3 laps of this I gave up and went back to the pits to see what was up. I had a feeling the pressures were going to be very high but didn't expect to see them at 47PSI front and 45PSI rear after 3 very slow laps. I had bumped them up to 38PSI cold for the road which I normally drive on and wasn't expecting such a big pressure jump. The ambient ranged form 27-30 Celcius throughout the day so it was pretty damn hot. I dropped all 4 corners to 38PSI hot and waited for the next session which was our first qualifying runs. In order to make the final time attack session be competitive CSCS has implemented a policy that in order to qualify you must be within 10% of the fastest time for your class that day. Went out for the qualifying session and the car felt much better then the first practice session. Side Note: I took out passengers for all of the practice and qualifying sessions just to give them an on track experience and show them how good the 2015 WRX was. This session went better but after 1 hot lap the car started pushing again so I knew the pressures needed to come down some more. Managed to put in a 1:44.7 which was surprising since we were running the DDT layout with 2 kinks. This put me into 3rd or 4th place out of 8 cars which was pleasing. Last year I believe the best Street AWD time was 1:41.6 running the 1 kink layout which I think is good for at least 2 seconds a lap. Checked the pressures again and they were up to 40 so I dropped them down to 38PSI hot and then waited for the next session. We ended up missing the second qualifying due to a car blowing up and dropping oil on the track. After lunch we had 2 more qualifying sessions to go so I was hopeful to knock down some more time. This session felt much better and the car seemed to be getting closer to what it felt like before, still pushing a bit but not nearly as bad. Did a good 4-5 laps and then a cool down lap and came in. Checked the pressures and they weren't bad but I decided to drop the rear from 38PSI to 36PSI to try and get a little less sliding from the rear and better drive out of the corners. Checked the live lap times, livetiming.net/cscs, and saw I bettered my time to a 1:43.996 which I was super happy with. This put me in a solid 4th position with the 5th place runner about 3 seconds behind me. I knew I would qualify for the time attack session and it was just a matter of could I move up any more.

Last session out and the car felt awesome! It wasn't sliding as much and I was hitting my points all through the course. I was really happy coming into the pits and wanted to see how much my time improved. Checked the timing and I hadn't gone faster! I was a bit disheartened by this as I was sure I had gone faster but I guess not. I figured the tires were shot after 3 track days and now all these sessions. I dropped the front pressures 1PSI going into the time attack session to try and improve the front end grip and feel. I ended up being the final qualifier for the Street AWD group so I was going out last, this definitely has it's advantages as you can control the gap between you and the person in front so that you don't get held up if they should make a mistake and slow down. I didn't have too much hope due to the lack of progress in the last session so I was just going to drive consistently and push a little harder each lap as the tires came up to temp. The format for the time attack session is 1 warm up lap, 3 hot laps and 1 cool down. They released us with I believe a 10 second gap between each car so I drove at a moderate pace making sure to keep the car in front close enough that I could see it, for that extra little motivation. First lap out felt good and according to my crew I did a 1:42.9 which is a full second faster then I qualified. I knew I could go faster as the tires were still not up to temp yet but I noticed the car in front of me seemed to be further ahead then before. He apparently had done a 1:41.902 on his first flying lap which would explain the gap opening up. The second lap felt even better and ended up being a 1:42.2...still leaving me in 4th position unbeknownst to me. Going into turn 1 the brake pedal started to go a little softer and I knew the brakes were a little past ideal but the tires were now likely at their best. I told myself to just brake a little bit less and rely on the grip of the tires to make up for it. On the third lap I could see the car in front getting closer which was good motivation. I made a couple small errors but also felt like I was faster in a few sections then the last lap. Crossed the finish line and now was the long cool down lap with no idea whether I had gone faster or not. Pulling into Pit in I saw a few of the crew there and they didn't really seem to excited. My brother Mike came up and said I had gotten third place by .002 seconds! I was floored at how close it was and the fact I could even hussle the WRX around the track that faster. My final time was a 1:41.900 which is over 2 full seconds faster then I qualified. The other car competing for us this year is Project Blackout, which many of you know, and he ended up taking first place. Another friend, Brandon Gomes, came second so it was an awesome result for all of us to be in the "winners circle" together.

Hats off to Subaru for putting out such a capable car! I don't think there's a car you can get for $29,900 that will be anywhere close to what the 2015 WRX is capable of. In conclusion I want to urge all of you to get out to the track and enjoy your cars because they are more then capable! It doesn't matter if it's a 2002 or a 2015, get a motorcycle helmet and sign up for a school and have some fun!

Cooling off in the pits in between sessions



3rd place Medal for Northstar!



Original Pads after 7700KM (3 Track Days)









More on track pictures to come!

[Touge Tuning]

Check out this blog post from a good friend of ours about the first round of CSCS this past Sunday. Also some other great posts about other topics.

CSCS - Round 1 @ Mosport DDT with Touge Tuning

[Touge Tuning]

Check out some of these awesome shots from Sunday by SkooterMedia.com!

[Touge Tuning]

Some images taken by Chris Sue-Chu & BlackoutVader from CSCS Round 1 2015

[Touge Tuning]

This has been a long time coming but I'm happy to finally be able to post this up and help all my fellow 2015 WRX owners with making decisions on increasing the power of their cars. We took a methodical approach of adding 1 part at a time and doing a basic tune for each part so we could see the change each piece made. Thanks go out to OnPoint Dyno as always for providing us the dyno and tuning expertise. Before going further I want to make a note about how to look at dyno's and understand things. With so many graphs floating around the internet it is very important to remember that every dyno is different and although I cannot speak for others it is imperative for us to show REAL results with no tampering. While in some cases this produces less then "jaw dropping" numbers it is reality and we prefer to be up front and honest. The first point I want to make is looking at peak numbers. It is important to look at this as a percentage change and not as just a number. A 100WHP change between 200WHP to 300WHP is a 50% increase in power but a 100whp change between 300-400whp is a 33% power increase. The second point is to look at the area under the curve and not just the highest point on the graph. Making a high number that only occurs for a small 100rpm area is not as useful as having a nice broad power band.

With that out of the way let's get to the meat and potatoes of this post! We started off with a baseline for our 2015 WRX so we had a starting point to compare to moving forward. To say the least the results were a bit disappointing but from driving the car it was definitely lacking in the powerband department. It has a nice quick spool but the power is low and you can feel it. The only upside of this is at the track it gives you extra time to relax and less chance of getting yourself all out of shape with lots of power. We then installed the COBB AccessPORT and used their Off the shelf 93 Octane Stage 1 Map. As you will see this made a noticeable increase in power and torque pretty much everywhere with a really big increase in the lower end torque. The results ended up being about 6% increase in horsepower and 12% increase in torque over stock. Not bad for a simple reflash right? Side notes to this are that the OTS map made the car much smoother to drive. Power delivery was smoother, rev hang was gone and overall this is almost a necessary thing to do much like on the 05-09 Legacy GT that had the hesitation issue with stock mapping.

Event: Dyno
Location: Touge Tuning, Mississauga Ontario
Ambient Temp: Very Cold - February 2015
Elevation: 249 ft.
Weather: Cold
Car: 2015 Subaru WRX
Tuner: Sasha from OnPoint Dyno
Dyno Info: Dynapack
Transmission: Stock 6 speed
Gear: 4th
Stage 1 OTS Peak HP at RPM: 225 @ 5300RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stage 1 OTS Peak Torque at RPM: 280 @ 3100RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stock Peak HP at RPM: 212 @ 4900RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stock Peak Torque at RPM: 250 @ 2500RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Baseline HP/TQ for Stock 2010 STi on same dyno: 228WHP/240WTQ
Target Boost: 19PSI Tapering
Fuel: 94 Octane Petro Canada

Mod List
-COBB AccessPORT - Stage 1 93 Octane OTS Map



This was great but we knew there was more on the table and so we had Sasha of OnPoint Dyno do a custom tune for the car. While it would be ideal to have done a full pro-tune for each mod we made the decision to have Sasha spend enough time to make the car safe without pushing the car to the ragged edge. Normally tuning takes 2+ hours but we spent about half that time which means there's more smoothing to be done. After the pro-tune we were very very impressed by the numbers and it shows why a custom dyno tune is very much worthwhile for these cars! This took our percentage increase up to 15.5% horsepower and 14% torque. And just for reference we had a graph made showing the difference between Stage 1 OTS vs. Stage 1 Pro-Tuned.

Event: Dyno
Location: Touge Tuning, Mississauga Ontario
Ambient Temp: Very Cold - February 2015
Elevation: 249 ft.
Weather: Cold
Car: 2015 Subaru WRX
Tuner: Sasha from OnPoint Dyno
Dyno Info: Dynapack
Transmission: Stock 6 speed
Gear: 4th
Stage 1 Pro-Tune Peak HP at RPM: 245 @ 5250RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stage 1 Pro-Tune Torque at RPM: 285 @ 3200RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stock Peak HP at RPM: 212 @ 4900RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Stock Peak Torque at RPM: 250 @ 2500RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected
Baseline HP/TQ for Stock 2010 STi on same dyno: 228WHP/240WTQ
Target Boost: 19PSI Tapering
Fuel: 94 Octane Petro Canada

Mod List
-COBB AccessPORT - Stage 1 OnPoint Dyno Pro-Tune