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Update 23/02/2019 - Silverstone Trackday On Thursday I attend a Circuit Days trackday at Silverstone, with several other members of the club. (Special thanks to @VAD17 for organising the day). This would be the first test of my new brake setup, featuring new Rear STi brembo's and Endless pads all-round. I was happy with the performance of the brakes, balance was good, no issues with over heating. Stopping power was the same as the Ferrodo's. I still think I'd prefer something with more of an aggressive bite, however I suspect that would mean sacrificing daily usability. So I might try running a dedicated set of track pads and swapping them out just before the event in future. Overall however they performed flawlessly. I'm not sure if it's Silverstone specific but it felt like the car was suffering with too much body roll in some corners, even though I had the suspension set on it's stiffest setting. A set of stiffer ARB's has now been added to my watch list 😆 Overall it was a fun day out with a decent amount of track time, even if it was a little busy on track. Here are a couple of photo's from the day:

I've owned many an interesting car in my time and I've done my fair share of modifications and ICE installs but when I picked up my BRZ a couple of weeks ago I knew I was past all that. Some of the Japan's finest chassis and powertrain Engineers have worked their magic on this car and WAIT A MINUTE!!!! Who thought it was acceptable to put a stereo in a modern car that is so awful?!?! I genuinely didn't think modern cars came without Bluetooth and the sound coming out the speakers is dreadful! I'm not some fox eared audiophile, I'm a normal human with a fairly sub-standard pair of ears but said ears were offended. So... I did my research and pondered and priced up various options and I've gone for a fairly middle-of-the-road if not lower end solution. That said with the headunit, speakers and the myriad of connectors I'm in for about £500-550 The headunit is a Pioneer SPH-DA120: It has Bluetooth and AppleCarplay (which is a good way to get cheap navigation). To install you need... ISO to Toyota/Subaru harness: Antenna harness: USB harness (if you want your USB port to work): Wiring-wise, that's all you need, but you will find this plug on the left is now redundant (thanks to this forum for confirming this is okay to leave unconnected): It is so easy to wire up a chimp could do it (well I did it so it can't be difficult): To make the double DIN stereo fit the gap I used (other parts are available): The part of these that goes down the side of the stereo is quite thick so I Dremmeled them thinner - I need to do a bit more as you'll see in the install pics later I'm still not 100% happy with the fit on one side. Finally you need brackets OR you need to modify the existing ones: There is a bend at the top which interferes with the side of the new headunit, I cut these off and opened up a couple of the mounting holes - you can see red dots where the cut/drill marks were. The brackets will look like this when fitted: Finally, put the whole lot together. It's all poke yoke so you can't get it wrong. Installed it looks like: And at night: There's a little gap between the headunit and the plastic spacers just on the right hand side, which isn't as bad as it looks in this picture because the flash has reflected off the metal in the gap, but it's still not good enough so a bit more Dremmeling will sort that out. Overall though it looks 'right' and makes the cabin feel much more modern. It also doesn't look aftermarket which is what I wanted to avoid at all costs. The headunit allows you to change the colours of the buttons and the theme of the screen so I've gone 90s orange to match the microwave oven clock. So, how does it sound? I've got some Focal IS165TOY speakers to add and some Dynamat superlite (~1500g weight for enough to cover the car - I didn't want to add weight if I could help it as that is not in the Colin Chapman ethos of "just add lightness") but as there are other write ups on the Focal speakers I thought it would be interesting to just see what it was like on the stock speakers with no additional sound deadening (I'll do that this weekend). Incidentally I went for the Focals as I just simply couldn't be ar5ed to muck about with running new speaker cables, find places for crossovers and generally tinker and fettle to get the speakers to fit. You know what? It's really VERY good, much more solid sounds, you can hear the tweeters working and doing a bit more work and in general the audio quality is really very decent. I wasn't expecting that and I'm not sure I'd update the speakers if I hadn't already bought new ones. Don't get me wrong, I will and I'm sure they will be better still, but the standard Subaru speakers with a good headunit really aren't bad at all. I did have the really low end Subaru unit before and I believe the Toyota units are better so perhaps the difference is more marked in a BRZ. I would be interested where others have mounted their mics for phone or where it sits in a GT86. Putting it on the steering cowl seems the best bet unless anyone says otherwise. Speakers will be added at the weekend and I'll update this thread. Questions always welcome, answers will probably be made up! McDude