Church

There are few things that may help to enable pushing a bit more with serious lack of grip. One is alignment, eg. adding slight toe in for rear, for car to be a bit more self-stabilizing, especially under throttle, and in general do alignment, if it hasn't been done since car been bought (as stock "pass" alignment ranges are .. too broad, and when loosing traction some uneventies may show up more pronounced). When driving in very little grip scenarios, such as with summers during winter, not much to gain from extra camber, as one doesn't get enough side-Gs for it to help much. I'd still dial extra neg. camber at same alignment though, to not have to redo it for second time in summer and get rear-front grip balance more to my liking. 2nd would be in general being better with your driving inputs. Gentler driving inputs upsets car balance/grip less, timely inputs are also important - if you brake sooner/less, you get by less wheel lock/ABS kicking in, if you countersteer sooner, there is less to correct, as car hasn't gathered enough momentum in big swing. Use all road width in curves (outside/inside-at-apex/outside) for less side-Gs. You can use throttle-off and/or braking to transfer mass & grip to front for less understeer. Higher gearing/lower rpms at same speeds puts less torque at wheels. You striked out my would be suggestion #1 though, which would be to reconsider & start using proper winter tires (preferably one width step down at that). Or at very least with all-seasons. With proper winter tires one should drive normally in most cases. Pushing less then in dry at summer of course, but without any drama. Extra grip of winter tires should bring back reasonable braking distances, more cornering grip, more grip for acceleration. Of course not good performance summers grip at summer, but reasonable enough to not break cold sweat when driving in winter.

Even if not £400 with replacing with stright pipe, but simply smashing primary cat, i'd leave stock as is. 1) cheapest aftermarket headers are not too expensive, eg. gruppe-s and alikes .. 2) they'll get rid from torque dip too & are lighter then stock 3) you'll have your free stock header for when/if sometime in future MOT inspection rules may get stricter and for when you'll sell your car without need to buy one used from someone parting out. Unmodded/stock cars often are much easier to sell, and sometimes even at premium vs modded ones.

Or you simply hadn't lately performed manoeuvres to trigger symptoms. Try turning wheel from full lock to full lock for example.

Spring doesn't bind on spring perch by chance?

Seen few mods cutting fenders and modding garnish's grill to make them functional (in most of those BRZ ones were used though as with visually more opened area to change to grill). None of those mods involved placing oil cooler there, it was more in general for "reduce a bit under bonnet temps / pressure to add a bit downforce, like with hood grilles but to a bit lesser extent". Placing O2A cooler there will have downside of not being forcibly cooled by main rad's fan though, depending a lot on airflow speed from vehicle's speed, reducing effectiveness of it.

nerdstrike: aye, one of my favourite sci-fi movies, where absurdity looks way more realistic due humanity most probably being in future with same faults and as stupid as it is now, not some shiny-lights-button princess & knights fairy tale like eg. starwars As for rad area increase for heat exchange enhancing .. you left fans out of picture. After all, thermostat / engine load & rpms / ambient temps / car & air speed are not the only variables. Once ECU by sensors detects water too hot (and on contrary, switching them off when still too cold), it kicks in fans and/or dynamically regulates their rpms, rising heat exchange from same rad. As oil2air rads are often placed in front of main rad, extra airflow sucked in by fans should affect their efficiency too.

One should wait for summer with some hot days, to see logs for "worst case scenario". Imho ambient temps for any cooling solution used may play big enough role.

Hmm, i wonder what should be oil cooling solution placement if one would want complete self-drain. Most probably - placing cooling rad at loop's upper point? With rad inlets pointing down? Opening it somewhere high to let air in? Preferably on rad itself? Modify rad mounts to easily detach rad & put it higher & easily remount it back after flush w/o using instruments?

Ade: but aren't engine oils (& their preferable working temp range) specific to cars/engines? So imho Mocal suggestions should be secondary, just like tire pressures, where car manufacturer suggestions should be used over tire manufacturer ones .. LOL, though then again what i quoted is also generalization of sorts, not temp range told by Toyota/Subaru (which also may target more policies for generic daily driven vehicles instead for ones used on track). BTW, if there is higher temp gradient between ambient & oil (or oil to water in forester type coolers) - that also enhances heat transfer per heat exchanger (per same O2W cooler or per same O2W rad), if i remember right physics.

"Ade had a 99C thermostat on his plate and was still seeing oil temps around 80C" - shouldn't engine oil run higher then that normally? After all, it's not generic coolant even if also partially is what removes heat from engine too as secondary function, & i hav seen posts alongside "You want the oil over 100C so the water can evaporate leaving just lubricant on your components. 105-120c is a good operating range for most oils. "

One also should remember that all oils have their working temperatures. No need to cool below if it's still perfectly within their range, even if it seems that due being above water boiling temps is too hot, yet it's beneficial for oil to quicker heat up to. It's when those temps are exceeded, faster oil brake down happens with it loosing it's properties & shortening change intervals or engine life. So overall for majority of twins that are lightly modded, still NA instead of forced induction, and that mostly get driven daily at different ambient temps due yearly weather change and see only few trackdays instead of being dedicated track toys, those oil to water coolers look better fitting alternative.

Oh noes! that place is reserved for thermos with coffee that also fits well there Meanwhile, maybe worth to specify more wishes/requirements/expectations regarding fire extinquisher. For example how important is or isn't taking some interrior space for it, how important is quick access to it and from which place. One thing is for car mostly daily driven, another - for dedicated track toy. For later one may install auto-extinquishing system though instead of standalone one. My own choice for it to not take any extra space in trunk/cabin/cup holder space/glovebox was to mount it's plastic mount-kit with screws (to not rattle) inside spare wheel (#1 , #2). Mind your that my donut wheel is 17" & fire extinquisher is 1lr one, so 2lr have high probability of not fitting. If i did track days more often then i do, i might consider floor mounting prior passenger seat (hmm, hopefully not limiting it's movement for rear seat access) or in middle console cupholder area. But for mostly daily driven car practical reasons (of not reducing any storage space that i use more often for other things, that i need access to often) are of more priority.

Specific just to GT86/BRZ and repeated on twins tests like in linked thread about 2005+ impreza with logged AFRs and experience regarding some other codes popping up with or without O2 spacer installed? No. But seen few posts @ft86club from guys related to ecu tuning field advising disabling cat readiness checks in tune instead of using such spacers and stating that spacers or aftermarked header primary cats are no sure solution of eliminating CELs. And have strong suspiction that subaru won't reinvent wheel for every car and once started to use some system, with high probability reusing that in cars made after. Hence would prefer to play on safe side, then experimenting how exactly is or isn't used 2ndary O2 sensor in ECU tunes of our cars. As many installing aftermarket catless headers also go for having ecu tuned to get most out of them instead of using those +100% stock tune anyway, i don't see much reason to use O2 spacer over disabling those checks in tune. But for temporary get by if there still some time left till tune, as i wrote earlier, one may simply drive with CEL with no harm to car (except cruise ctrl).

There are two problems with O2 spacers. 1) Just like catted aftermarket headers they are not 100% sure way to eliminate CELs. Reduce chance of getting one or prolong mileage to one, possible. Eliminate for sure? No. It's blackbox, how Toyota/Subaru written ECU code decides if primary cat works properly. By what temps (or their delta pre-post cat), by what O2 readings delta from sensors pre & after and after what time/driving modes/rpms/load .. all unknown, and worked around with some guesswork at best. 2) There are drawbacks using one in modern subaru-s. I wonder if reducing chance (1.) is really worth exchanging with those? Most people in forums suggest that "right way" on our cars is keep O2 sensors as is, simply switching off cat readiness checks. Hence i suggested simply ignore CEL about cat if you get one and "fix" it later on in tune. Potentially best way would be someone very smart decompiling ECU code and finding out how code blob for cat testing works and modifies accordingly for not throwing CELs on aftermarket catless headers, but very possibly no-one will do that, as they (for example Ecutek guys) may see legal action from eg. Toyota, if doing that and sharing that work for generic public to use.

If you'll get CEL due cat readiness, about only thing that will stop working - cruise control. Imho no biggie, that can wait for ecu tune, that will disable cat readiness checks.

mourice: what method? - none . It's mostly daily driver for me, i'm not going to track very often and it's more for fun then competitive results, and very hot temps in summer here in Latvia are rare. But i noticed reported oil temps issues by those that track much more and even more so in countries with much hotter weather on average. Yes, including idling in traffic I'm limiting myself to usually to ~10min sessions (and as i wrote before, mostly due brakes, that started seriously underperform/lost after 15m, requiring more bleeding speed via drifting instead of braking, smoking when i went off track, so that was first and main limit i hit and that kept me from going longer. Not temps, not power, not tires, not suspension, not own tiredness. Brakes). After all, my car is still mostly stock performance or suspension wise, including brakes. They are very good relative to what many other cars have as stockers .. but not for a long :). Apart from better fluid & pads, better tires & more negative camber with bolts and LCA rest is stock. And more then sufficient for me to get my share of fun at track :). That doesn't keep me from keeping reading multiple forums on different parts that others are choosing, why, what impact, what alternatives, what price/performancy, what people that are way more truck junkies then me are choosing, .. that will ease choice for my future upgrades. For now for future i'm planning: 1) velox brake air ducts to squeeze more out of stock brakes (will be kept for street-legality by local rules ) + moving up to more aggressive compound pads + steel braided lines, 2) upgrades like closer placed steering wheel for more laidback seating position (for more headroom with helmet on) & accelerator pedal easing heal & toe, 3) OFT for slight engine tune-up (not as much for power, which i don't feel limited by lack of as it is, as rather slight redline rise and less drastic power cut, more engine longetivity & economy and so on ..) + oil catch can, 4) maybe some struts or coilover upgrade (something from Billstein/KW/RCE/Tein offerings), 5) mentioned forester or JR rad oil cooler. If you noticed, i placed oil cooling last :). I'd be glad to change (1.) with more capable for track brakes like eg. Essex APR Sprint kit & (3.) with top catless header+ecutek tune, but there goes back issue of local street legality rules . Need to change back to stock and then back to better brakes & header due MOT inspections every year is not something i'd want or willing to do for slight power gain. Luckily in many other countries inspection passing rules are more laid back.

One should also choose which oilcoolers to get. OEM water to oil, or with oil rads. As for thermostat alone, while it's simplest/cheapest, it simply doesn't improve things enough, if goal is long sessions ability. From what is available currently my primary choices for oil cooling probably would be forester oem alike water-oil cooler, or if step further, then JR rad that has integrated oil rad section. Somehow not liking much all those separate oil rads in front of main one airflow through rad/air pressure drop efficiency wise, even more so, if mounted to bottom of front bumper, where in my eyes it's easy to puncture/damage it. P.S. With long track sessions in mind first thing i'd improve would be brakes, everything else with less priority. Hot oil .. at most it may make ecu to cut power a bit. Boiled/faded brakes may be a bit more dangerous thing on track . Hot oil temps? One can see those even when iddling in traffic jam on hot day. P.P.S. ft86club's basic bolt-on mods guide has also oil cooler section with links.

Grip balance change might be noticed not just if one pushes hard on track, but also if grip itself is lowered, yet one drives as hard as if on "normal road". For example - heavy rain days, winter snowy/iced roads, gravel roads. But then again on such roads people who don't care about handling probably will drive even slower (or at speeds/acceleration/braking/cornering like on "normal" family cars that have even less grip/worse handling) and they again won't notice ill-effects of staggered grip balance. Of course that in turn makes me think that they might have bought wrong car, as imho essence of these cars IS all that fun of driving at limits (artificially lowered by skinny tires and suspension tuning to lower/safer/still legal speeds) and feel of that rear movement and seems such a waste to see car used not for prized handling, but for looks only. But .. to each his own.

Even if you push it to grip limit eg. on track?

Changing filter apart from low price has another big plus: it's very easily completely reversible mod even by novices. I agree on +5whp being too low for anyone to really notice by butt dyno, but given prices of airfilters it still is objectively THE best intake-exhaust mod by price/performancy. Yes, other bolt-on parts, like catless header and so on, may net more gains .. at 10x the price. Actually imho aftermarket airfilter+OFT (or tactrix cable) with OTS tunes might be best choice for anyone, that wishes some gains with least efforts/spendings and car to still be easily reversible to stock status without requiring much efforts/skills/work/time. Gains are slight, but so are required investments (and from what i've seen, it's easy enough to resell used OFT gaining most of spendings back). And in countries with access to ethanol E85 gains are not just +10whp, but some +20whp. That, given costs, might be noticeable enough.

Imho about the only thing silicon intake hoses are good for - it's cleaner way for soundtube deletion/underbonnet space cleanup. Then again not sure it's worth the money. Smoother airflow? Doubt it's worth more then 1-2 ponies.

And it's made of metal. = heatsoak?

My bet is on that it might be dealer specific thing. I brought mine with complaint that it's a bit on short side of how long/how well battery keeps sufficient charge and that i had to jumpstart once or twice. They told - fine, bring it in, we'll test. Did so, after a while they told - we tested, found it faulty, replaced. Looked, that replacement was 65A. No clue what their testing procedure involves. Imho also it's not exactly in dealership interests to wrongfully deny warranty claims. It's toyota paying for replacement part/work, not them. And keeping customer happy imho is one of main things in properly running business and building up reputation. Try other dealer, and maybe switch to it, if you find it better to deal with?

It's not tire sideflex, that may noticeably change suspension working with performance tires. It's their grip. With grippier tires you'll push more into curves, car will roll more, will ride more on bumpstops with bottomed out shocks, and probably play in stock compliant bushings will become more apparent. With stock primacies one usually lost tire grip prior all that happening and before higher cornering speeds and bigger side forces reached :). More often then not from suspension tuners/engineers, first question comes - which tires, prior giving out any advise.

Oh yes, it does (like many things in this car). It rattles badly even half down. But then again i usually have it down only in summer during track days, and by then i don't hear it behind noise of redline revved engine & tire screech