“I’ll report back when I complete a few road tests.” But I’m not without class, David – I put some Tremclad on the hitch to make it look nice in the photos.” Yes, an STi with a trailer hitch! It’s still a Subaru, after all, and does plenty of everyday work when it isn’t looking sexy. “Honourable mention should go to my trailer hitch which didn’t interfere at all with the new parts. I own countless extensions, wobblers and flex adapters, and by the end of the day most of them were all strewn about.” “Like most exhaust work (with tricky and hidden hardware), your toolkit should be outfitted with every socket extension possible. Installation difficulty is probably a Medium+, only because you need the balls to remove intercooler bits and get the car jacked up high enough.” I’m glad I did – it was smooth sailing in the morning. “I removed the intercooler and hit the OEM downpipe bolts with penetrating oil the night before. The bolts are the specialized shouldered springy ones that aren’t available at your local hardware store.”
Both mid-pipe bolts broke off when loosening.
COBB assumes that you’ll reuse your old gaskets which is a silly thing to do if your cat is over a year old. “Readers should save themselves the hassle and go to their dealer BEFORE starting the installation to buy new exhaust bolts and new gaskets. COBB included a threaded bung in the bellmouth for a secondary O2 or EGT – bonus! Fit was near perfect, but they generously slot every hole just in case.” The factory downpipe is just a 2” tube welded to a plate that’s more-or-less inline with the turbo outlet. COBB doesn’t do a good job showing you just how much larger their parts are over OEM – they might sell more otherwise. The differences are quite dramatic, especially the bellmouth of the downpipe. “I included pics of the new exhaust system next to the old exhaust system. Below are Andy’s notes and pictures on the installation process. We’d been sitting on the parts ever since, caught up in the madness of launching and building this website and our YouTube channel as well as Andy getting married and building a new career of his own, but we’ve finally got around to testing them on Andy’s STI, along with the 3” SS cat-back exhaust he bought from Touge Tuning to complete the Stage 2+ setup.Īndy’s an engineer and a DIY kind of dude, so rather than installing the parts ourselves like we normally do, I simply handed the goodies over for him to install. The guys at Cobb were kind enough to send us a SF Air Intake and Air Box, a 3” stainless steel downpipe, and a stainless steel turbo heatshield, and then the magazine got shut down. Our plan was to move to the Stage 2+ setup on Andy’s car and document the process in Modified Mag, where Peter and I used to work as Editors.
#2015 wrx downpipe mid pipe gain plus#
Plus he noticed the infamous dip in power at around 2,500 RPM had been dialled out, too. Andy was impressed too, since he felt it delivered improved drivability and more torque in daily driving situations. Even more impressive was the mid-range power gains from about 3,000 RPM on up, most of which can be attributed to the higher boost pressure the Stage 1 OTS tune utilizes but the smoothness in both the HP and TQ graphs also indicate significant refinement to the fuel and ignition maps as well. All in all we were very impressed by the results of simply plugging in the APV3 and installing the OTS Stage 1 tune. The gains were pretty startling on an otherwise stock GR STI, peak horsepower jumping from 233-whp to 240-whp and peak torque jumping from 247.5-wtq to 280-wtq.
Andy’s STI was the perfect machine to test it out on, which involved a trip to visit Brian at Advance Powerhouse in Toronto to baseline the car and then try out the Stage 1 OTS (Off The Shelf) tune on APH’s Dynapack dyno. We’ve always been big fans of the GR chassis STI, so when Andy expressed some interest in doing a little light tuning to his, we were more than happy to help.Ībout a year and a half ago our friends at Cobb Tuning sent us one of the very first production unit AccessPORT V3‘s as a viral marketing strategy, since they knew I’m a Facebook junky and would post about it. Our buddy Andy, who we met autocrossing about 15 years ago, owns this 2012 Subaru Impreza WRX STI hatchback. He picked it up a few years ago because he wanted something equal parts fast, fun and practical, and it’s hard to argue with his choice.
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