At one point, I found myself driving through part of an unplowed parking lot, which had about 6″ of fresh powder. My STi cut through the snow with ease, without a hint of trouble. Looking back, I realize this was primarily due to my choice of an excellent snow tire; the Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25. I purchased a set of these tires from Tire Rack about 2 years ago for my STi and picked them up in a 225/45/17 size. Currently, I’m running them on the stock 17×8 BBS wheels.

This setup has proved to work very well over the last 2 years. Last winter, I went on several ski trips which involved lots of snow driving. Again, the Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25′s proved strong, and got me through the snow without issue.

I did plenty of research prior to purchasing my Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25′s. One helpful resource for me was reading user reviews from consumers who had already bought these tires, such as the one you’re reading now. The Tire Rack website is a great resource to find reviews such as these, which are written entirely by the consumers themselves. You can find a link to the Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25 review’s page here. (Scroll down a bit once the page loads)

One of the primary reasons that I went with the Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25′s is that they feature better dry road handling than most other “snow tires”. Tire Rack refers to this as increased “European high-speed winter driving performance.” In addition, it’s pretty common for snow tires to be associated with the stereotype of being “soft”, and not allowing for spirited driving. Owners of STi’s typically drive their cars as they’re meant to be driven. Therefore, having a tire that’s capable during the winter months is necessary. Being able to pass RWD pickup trucks in the snow also makes for a good laugh.

I’ve always trusted Bridgestone in the past, which is why I decided to try out the LM-25′s. One of my more recent purchases from them was a set of Potenza RE-01R‘s.

Overall, I feel that I made a good choice. I’ve had the Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25′s for about 2 years now, and have driven them through 2 New England winters. Even with some mixed in spirited driving, they still show very little wear. With that said, I think it’s safe to say that these will last me more than a few years, especially since I run them seasonally.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to Tire Rack and pick up a set of Bridgestone Blizzak LM-25‘s today!

“Holy tire noise, Batman!” says associate Web producer Scott Evans. “I took the STI on a road trip up to Northern California, and the tire roar on the highway was excessive, to say the least.”

Indeed, upon Evans’ return to Southern Cal, we inspected the tires and noticed that, after over 17,000 miles of use, their tread blocks had worn even with the wear bars-not bad mileage for a soft and sticky summer tire, though-so we promptly called Tire Rack. For replacement rubber, we opted to stay within the Dunlop line, swapping the OE SP Sport 600s with a set of Direzza Sport Z1 Star Specs ($893.85). So far, the Direzzas are delivering a quiet ride and handling on par with the OE tires.

Tire noise notwithstanding, Evans did enjoy the Subaru’s lively personality and handling prowess during his stint. “Switching the car’s SI Drive to Sport Sharp makes a world of difference in throttle response.” Senior editor Ron Kiino agrees, adding, “I think Sport Sharp should be the one and only setting-both the Sport and Intelligent settings dull throttle feel too much.”

Evans also notes, “At no point did the tires break loose nor did the car try to get away from me — an impressive-handling hot hatch.”

Dislikes? “The only thing that would make this car more fun to drive would be a smoother shifter, as this six-speed is a bit clunky.”

“And I have one other gripe, and that’s with the navigation. While it works fine, if you have the audible directions turned on, the system insists on directing you to go straight on the road traveled far more times than is necessary. When you get within two miles of what it deems a major cross street, it warns you every half mile to keep going straight. Four times it insisted on cutting my music to tell me not to turn. Completely unnecessary.”

On the plus side, the STI, at 19.5 mpg, continues to deliver frugal fuel economy, especially for a 2.5-liter turbocharged all-wheel-drive rally rocket. The similarly equipped Evo, even with a smaller 2.0-liter engine, is so far registering only 18.1 mpg.

[ Source: Motor Trend ]

Let me start by saying that these tires aren’t for the feint at heart. When buying these, you don’t think about if you need them or not. They’re designed for people who know they need them. (racing, competition, etc) At the beginning of the 2008 autocross season, I decided to convert my 2007 STi into a BSP prepped car. A common setup in BSP is wide wheels, paired up with race compound tires, also known as “r-comps” for short. The SCCA rulebook states that cars in the Street Prepared class are allowed to run DOT-legal race tires. Therefore, they can technically be driven on the street. (and yes, it’s fun!)

The two big race tire names in autocross are Kumho and Hoosier. Kumho offers the V710, while Hoosier offers the A5. Both brands and models can be found on all types of different cars throughout the grid areas. The general run-down for comparison is as follows:

Kumho – Longer life, more durable, less costly
Hoosier – Higher overall grip, more costly, lower tire life

When it came time for me to choose which brand to go with, I weighed out the pro’s and con’s of each, and thought about things for about a week. I’d been told by many to go with the  Kumho’s, as they’re known to be friendlier for first-time race tire owners. (lower cost, more life, etc) Therefore, I ended up ordering a set of Kumho V710‘s from TireRack, and they shortly arrived a few days later. (Did I mention that TireRack has some of the fastest shipping that I’ve ever seen?)

After receiving the tires, I quickly had them mounted up onto my race wheels; a set of 17×10 +35mm 5Zigen FN01R-C’s. This setup would soon produce incredible amounts of grip.

My first event arrived a few week later, and what do you know? Rain!. I figured what the heck, I’d been waiting for weeks to try them out, so I put them on anyways. That day went quite interesting. Let’s just say brand new race tires on a wet course isn’t the slickest idea. (No pun intended!)

I had another event 1 week after my 1st, and thankfully it was dry this time. It was also very hot that day, which is beneficial for race tires, as it allows you to keep their temperatures up. Tires of this nature operate much more effectively when warm; and it’s certainly very noticeable when they cool off. The event that day went very well, and I managed to pull off 2nd place in my class. (BSP)

One thing that you notice straight away is the noise. Race tires are silent. There’s no more crazy screeching noises coming from the tires. They just grip, and that’s it.

Not only do they create a ton of grip, but they also induce the driver with an enormous amount of confidence. I found myself rapidly dropping my times each run, consistently throughout the day. Things only got better as the day went on, and I grew more accustomed to my new setup. I’ve read that people say race tires are worth about 2 seconds on the autocross course. I’m going to partially agree, in the sense that they definitely lower times, but I think it’s more in the range of 4 seconds.

Overall, the Kumho Ecsta V710 is an excellent autocross tire. I have still yet to try out the Hoosier A5′s, but from where I am today, I can’t find myself wanting anymore. I personally feel that the Kumho V710 offers all that I’m looking for, and I can’t see them getting any better than they already are.

Interesting in picking up a set? Check out the Kumho Ecsta V710 at TireRack today!

Often times enthusiasts will purchase suspension parts for their cars, without thinking of the attached strings, such as added noise, vibration, and harshness. Or for some, they knew there will be added NVH once the part is installed, but the handling benefits outweigh the comfort factors. I happen to fall into this 2nd category myself, and figured I would post up a review of the Whiteline Rear Strut Brace for the GD STi.

Last year I installed RaceComp Engineering Tarmac 2 coilovers onto my car. These coilovers are great, and offer excellent adjustability, without sacrificing too much ride comfort. I drive the car with Tarmac 2′s on daily, and therefore have adjusted my struts to a comfortable setting. Often times people will categorize coilovers as making their cars feel stiffer. I think a better word to describe the Tarmac 2′s is “tighter“.

However, with this added performance other factors come into play, such as NVH. A few months after installing my coilovers, I began to notice a slight windshield creak, and it was only audible when going over driveways or slight inclines at an angle. So what did I do? I hopped onto IWSTI, and searched about the issue. Long story short, I wasn’t alone. Countless other members had experienced the same thing, and they all had one thing in common: They were all running coilovers.

A few members had posted about how they installed strut braces to help tighten up the upper strut tower areas of the car. Subaru enthusiasts often deem strut braces as an unnecessary mod, since the strut towers are so close to the firewall up front. Although this rule does not apply to the rear. Therefore, I decided to go ahead and order both front and rear Whiteline Strut Braces.

I ordered both front and rear Whiteline Strut Braces, along with a few other goodies all from Import Image Racing. Shipping was very fast, as everything arrived only a few days later.

I have PDE camber plates on the front of my car, with Cusco camber plates out back. I quickly learned that the tophat studs on the PDE plates up front weren’t long enough, and did not feature enough thread to securely tighten down the brace onto the car. I’ll save my stud-replacement front brace install adventure for another blog post, so stay tuned!

Installation:

Installation of the rear brace was fairly straightforward. I used the following process:

1. Remove rear seats
2. Remove 6 tophat studs with the car on the ground (3 on each side)
3. Remove ends from center piece of the strut brace.
4. Fit end pieces into place, and loosely thread tophat nuts back on by hand
5. Adjust the brace’s center piece length as needed, and then fit it to the end pieces
6. After proper fitment, tighten up the 6 tophat nuts
7. You’re done!

Overall, the install went without a hitch. It should be noted that for step 5, I pretty much crawled into the trunk of the car, as it was my only option to get an up close view of things. Whiteline also mentions that you should not pre-load the strut brace. Therefore, I adjusted the length to where it was tight, and could no longer spin, and then loosened it 1 full turn. Either way, if the brace is properly fit into place, it’s going to work functionally, regardless of how stiff or lose it is. It should also be noted that the proper fitment of the brace is for the center piece to be parallel with the ground. (flat) This can be seen in the pictures below.

Initial Impressions:

After going out for a drive, I immediately noticed an improvement. My rear windshield creak was mostly gone, although I still had a few squeaks. I decided to fully wait on judgment until after installing my front strut brace as well. (To complete the pair)

Another improvement that I noticed is that the rear end of the car feels more planted and controlled. Shifting from side to side is virtually eliminated, which allows the rear struts to really take the hit when riding over bumps and such. (A good thing) With my Tarmac 2′s, I can hear a nice “psst-psst” sound, which is most likely coming from the strut’s external reservoirs.

I have yet to autocross with the new braces installed, however I do have an event this upcoming weekend. (Sunday) I’ll report back with race impressions in my comments section.

Overall, I definitely noticed a solid improvement from the Whiteline Rear Strut Brace. With a cost of only $169 for the Whiteline Rear Strut Brace, I highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for ways to improve their STi or WRX suspension.

I’ve included a gallery below with pictures from the install. I have not modified these pictures since taking them, therefore they are very high quality. (56k warning!)

The PDE plates are an absolutely excellent product. Their build quality is incredible, and they fit perfect. Their unique design sets them apart from all other manufacturers, as they feature a unique set-interval camber adjustment system, by the use of different holes. Each hole represents .2 degrees of camber, and the plates can be adjusted accordingly. For me, this setup has worked out great as I’m able to have my daily driver camber setting for the street, and then I’m able to max out the front camber when I go to autocross events. After I’m done with my event, I simply change the plates back to my DD “hole”, and I’m back at exactly -1.7 camber with 0 toe!

Coilovers are great, don’t get me wrong, but they sometimes come attached with other variables, including added noise, vibration, and harshness, also known as NVH for short. My Tarmac 2′s have been great as a daily driver setup as well, but I’ve noticed that they have promoted a creaking sound in my front and rear windshields. To many, this is expected and is not an uncommon occurrence.

To fix the issue, I’ve decided to invest in a set of Whiteline front and rear strut braces. The rear brace installed without a hitch. The Cusco camber plates provided plenty of thread on the tophat bolts for the brace to latch onto.

Although the front was a bit more of a challenge. After loosening the 3 tophat nuts on each camber plate, I quickly discovered that the tophat bolts on the PDE camber plates simply weren’t long enough. As part of the strut brace, Whiteline provides a set of washers, and in the instructions asks that you place them under the brace at each of the 3 bolts. This is done because the strut tower area isn’t exactly level, and the washers are meant to help fix this.

So, to help visualize, the setup goes:

PDE Camber Plate > Tophat Bolt > Strut Tower (Body of the car) > Washer > Strut Brace > Tophat nut

With the supplied washers in place, I was only able to get about 3-4 full turns out of each tophat nut. This left me with a bolt that wasn’t able to fully thread through the tophat nut. A picture is really worth a thousand words, so I’ve included one below:

As you can see, the nut definitely has some thread to latch onto, but by no means do I feel this is secure. Therefore, I’ve opted to get some longer bolts, as the original bolts are designed to be removed from the PDE camber plates.

For those readers who might run into this problem in the near future, I’ve found that I need the following bolt size:

M8 x 1.25 Metric Button Head Bolt

The length can vary, although something probably around 60mm should be sufficient. I still haven’t picked up a set of these bolts myself, but I plan to sometime this week. I will keep you updated on how it turns out, and on the final size that I end up with.

Another picture:

Moving on, I also feel that I should point out that PDE’s customer service appears to be non-existent. I’ve emailed them about 4 days ago, and still haven’t received a response. I also noticed that their website states that the camber plates fit with most aftermarket strut braces. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Whiteline strut brace isn’t very different that any other braces on the market. Therefore, I’m not really sure how this statement can be true, but it’s still on their website.

Overall, PDE without a doubt makes an excellent product, though when it comes to customer service, they don’t shine very well. (if at all!) If your thinking about getting a set of PDE camber plates, by all means go for it, just don’t be surprised if it takes 3 weeks to get them, or if you don’t receive a reply from customer service. (they don’t even have a phone number posted!) In the end though, if you do end up getting the plates, take them and run!

So, why not spend $150 and invest in some brake upgrades? The easiest upgrade by far is a new set of brake pads.

For me, it all started when I did my first HPDE. (High Performance Driving Event, also known as a track day) My first time out, I was on the stock OEM Brembo pads. Stock fluid as well, but I had bleed the brakes a few days prior to my event. (to get rid of any excess air bubbles in the lines)

The day proved to be quite enjoyable, although towards the end of the day my brake pedal started to get a bit mushy. That’s when it hit me: street pads on a track isn’t the greatest idea. They’re known to overheat easily, depending on driving style, and I was experiencing this first hand. I took it easy on the brakes for the rest of the day.

Fast forward a few weeks later, I decided to sign up for another HPDE, my 2nd one. (the first time was just too much fun) Although this time I decided that I wanted to prepare my brakes, and wanted to do it right.

I began reading on all of the forums, most notably IWSTI, and a bit of NASIOC. Brake pad reviews can be very subjective sometimes. A little bit of noise to you, can be considered completely silent to someone else. I weighed these factors, but more importantly, I weighed the review trends. (ie: Most people think this pad dusts way too much, etc)

After doing lots of research, I ended up buying a set of Hawk HP+ brake pads from The Tire Rack. I opted for new sets both front and rear. The Hawk HP Plus pads are considered to be an aggressive street pad, capable of light track duty. After ordering the Hawk HP Plus brake pads, they arrived at my door step no more than 3 days later.

For those of you who haven’t done so before, swapping brake pads out on an STi is a piece of cake. Therefore as soon as I got them, I threw them on. Brake pads can take a few cycles to be fully broken in, (also known as “bedding”) and I wanted to make sure they were ready to go for my next event.

The second HPDE went very well, and the pads showed absolutely no signs of fade at all. One thing that probably helped a lot as well is that I bled the lines this time using ATE Superblue brake fluid. This fluid has much higher wet and dry boiling points, and therefore can take the added heat from track duty.

After the track event, I decided to leave the pads on, as I had an autocross event coming up the following weekend. During this time, I daily drove on the Hawk HP Plus brake pads for about a week. (work commute, errands, etc) My autocross event finally arrived, but I didn’t have to change anything brake-wise, as the pads were already on the car.

I soon found that these were excellent autocross pads. The first turn of the course, I had a bit of trouble, because my car was cold, and so were my pads. As soon as I braked, the pads quickly warmed up and were ready for action. The rest of the course was an absolutely blast. The Hawk HP Plus pads stop the car very well, and are very confidence inspiring. Throughout the day, I found myself going into corners and elements of the course much faster than I normally would. From my perspective, the giant confidence boost is created by the fact that these pads have such a hard bite.

After the autocross event, I found myself leaving them on my car for the rest of the summer, even for DD duty.

Dust? Sure, they may dust a bit, but it wasn’t as bad as the stock pads in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, the dust is certainly there, but what else can you expect from a track-worthy pad?

Noise? A tiny bit. I’ve found that if I haven’t washed my wheels in more than 2 weeks, they will begin to whine a tiny bit. They also whine sometimes when coming to a stop using light pressure. Solution for me? Apply more pressure, and come to a quicker stop. (safely of course!)

Overall, the Hawk HP Plus brake pads are an excellent choice for an STi that will see street, autocross, and even the track! Sure, there are other pads out there made by Endless, Pagid, and others, but the cost of them is much higher. For around $150 for both front and rear sets, you can’t really go wrong.

Interested in picking up a set, or reading more reviews ? Check them out by clicking here: Hawk HP Plus Sport Pads

At the time of this post, currently remaining inventory is as follows:

205/45R16 - $106.00

245/45R17 (2005 Production) – $78.00

245/45R17 - $95.00

2005 Production run tires? I’m not so sure. Sure, they aren’t using cotton cords anymore, but personally I prefer brand new tires when I’m buying….well, brand new tires! Either way, $95 for a brand new 245/45/17 RE-01R is an incredible steal! SCCA STU racers, are you listening?

As some of you may remember, I did a review of my own personal set of 245/40/17 RE-01R’s. (You can find it here) Cliff notes? These tires are awesome. Unfortunately, they also feature excellent tread wear for a performance tire, so I don’t have any reason to buy a set of RE-11′s yet! Although when the chance arises, I can’t wait to get behind the wheel of a car that does.

You can find a link to Tire Rack’s incredible closeout sale here:
Bridgestone Potenza RE-01R Tire

Although Bridgestone has done it again, and this time their back with their new Potenza RE-01R. This tire has been placed into the extreme performance category, and it certainly holds true to the name. I purchased 4 of these tires from TireRack just over a year ago, and couldn’t be happier.

My initial intent of my purchase was to obtain a nice set of street tires to use for autocross. At the time I was competing with my car in the SCCA BSP class, although I was running street tires. (BSP allows R-compound race tires) I somehow figured that I was best off with street tires, and the ease of being able to drive to events on them certainly appealed to me. Therefore, I went ahead and purchased a set of 245/40/17′s.

They arrived a few days later, and I immediately had them mounted up onto a new set of Hyper Black Rota G-Forces. (17×8 +48mm) The tires ran great, and I drove them on the street for about a week to break them in. (these were street tires that I had planned on using only to/from/at events) My initial impression was that they were significantly quieter than the stock STi Potenza RE070. (225/45/17) With the RE070′s, it sounds almost as if the tires are howling down the road, but with RE-01R’s on, the car sounded completely silent.

Grip also seems improved, but not something I would consider significant compared to the RE070. Rain performance is also very good, without much sliding, if any at all. Overall, the RE-01R introduced much more comfort, with the added benefit of additional grip.

Since then, I’ve taken my RE070′s off my stock wheels, and have put snow tires on them. I’ve been daily driving during the summer on my RE-01R/Rota combo now for about a year, and I absolutely love the setup. I’ve also introduced R-compound race tires to my lineup for autocrossing, and I’ve been using the RE-01R’s as my rain tires. (race tires in standing water = no good)

Currently RE-01R’s are a “special” and are on sale at The Tire Rack. Interested in picking up a set? Click the link below to grab them now, before the price goes back up!

Bridgestone Potenza RE-01R Tire