New radio install!

Yesterday I installed a great new headunit, a Kenwood dnx6140. The install went super easy. Much easier then the Pioneer install in my wife's Honda civic the week before (not Pioneer's fault.).

Here are some photos from the install along with a great link for getting the thing apart:

All Apart.

See that black mini-usb cable?  Plug that in and run it under the dash into the passenger seat or the glovebox and keep it hidden. It makes adding POI, voices, icons, and other garmin updates super easy.

Best spot for the mic.  Nice and clear for the people on the other end.

Testing everything before I put the dash back together.

More install pics, plus colors match!

 

The LCD image actually looks much better in person, but those shots were at 6400iso in a dark garage.  You either expose for the bright LCD or for everything else. The lens also picks up glare you eye doesn't, you can see examples of that in the top most images of the unit that were taken outside (I saw no glare until I looked at the photos).

I'm very happy with the unit.  The Nav is excellent and *very* fast, the USB features are great, having RDS data for radio is very nice and hopefully I'll have a ipod here soon to test those features out.

New tires!

Picked up some 245/40/17 Blizzak LM-22 performance snow tires this week!

  Tire rack had them on sale for 65$ each!!  So now I ended up with a set of brand new snow tires for only slightly more then what I expected to pay for used ones!

Look at the tread on those monsters!  They should be a blast when it starts snowing!

Mods, so far.

Well, so far I've gotten a Rally Armor 3/16" skid plate:

 Rally Armor UR mudflaps:

 

Winter / RallyX Rims

 

 Ram Mount video mount:

 

The video mount works wonderfully, *but* if you plan on videoing your runs you need to use a CCD equipped video camera.  CMOS camera's suffer from an effect called "rolling shutter" that will make your video look, well, in the words of top gear, "Rubbish". 

Here is some video from the mount while I was in Tennessee:

Yes, very loud techno.  But I didnt crash, unlike what you would expect if you watched this:

Remember kids, techno and driving kills.

New Rims (well, new to me!)

Yesterday I got my set of 07 STI rims I picked up on NASIOC.   For the low price of 375$ shipped I now have a nice (well, nice enough.. lol) set of winter and RallyX rims:

 

And:

 

 So they have a little bit of road rash but overall, not to bad.  Now I just need to get some winter rubber for them.  After a bit of research and a little bit of price shock, I think I'm probably going to end up with the General Altimax Arctic.  Its got excellent ratings on Tirerack by other subie owners, other RallyX drivers seem to like it on Dirty Impreza and it seems it also durable has a pretty good tread life as well.  Did I mention their made in Germany as well?

Now I only need to figure out how to get brake dust of the rims that sees to be welded on.

Snokel delete on my 2006 STI

A few days ago a went for a ride in a friend of mines slightly modded 2006 WRX.  The first thing I noticed was how *great* it sounded!  You could actually hear the turbo spool up like I could on my old 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo I had back in the day.  We popped the hood and he had installed a SPT Intake which was the reason for all the extra noise.  Now if you do a little research you will quickly find out that the opinions are all over the place on the intake.  Some will tell you your engine is going to explode and others will tell you its an instant 25hp.  There are enough reports of any intake other then stock tossing CEL (check engine light) that I'd be cautious installing one without some form of engine management (Cobb AP or OpenECU) so you can monitor AFRs.

Anyway, he informed me you could get it to sound almost as nice by simply removing the intake "silencer".

Are you serious!?  What mad scientist at Subaru decided it would be a good idea to shove a toilet in the side of their car?

Anyway, here is what your intake will look like without it:

Yes, those are white wire ties.  Its all I had at the moment.  You can tidy the whole thing up and skip the wire ties if you cut the top off the tolie-  I mean silencer, and reinstall it.  Another option would be to fabricate or buy ($$$) an elbow and place that inside.  I typically like to keep all the stock parts "just in case" so I'll probably go that route.

It sounds like a proper turbo car now, yet its not to overstated.  My wife hasn't noticed or complained about it so that makes it just about right in my book.  Well, for now anyway.  Someday it would be nice if it was so loud you needed hearing protection like Ken Blocks car! ;)