Quickclicknick

This car is now SOLD This car is now SOLD

Hello All, By way of introduction, my car is a 2014 BRZ that I have owned from new. The recorded mileage is now circa 11K miles. Very soon after buying the car I set about removing the noise generator gubbins on the intake. Conceptually it just didn't sit right with me. The manufacturer obviously wanted to keep the drive-by dB as low as possible but give the driver some semblance of drama at larger throttle openings. I can deal with fake side vents but not with fake engine noise. Then about 6 months ago I fitted a Mishimoto intake hose. This tidied up the engine bay and made things a little smoother but made no discernible difference in actual performance. The hose itself has no corrugation and the negative effect of this stiffness is a tendency to pull the air filer box away from the seal connecting it to the intake snorkel. After much umming and arring and reading and re-reading long threads on the US forums I ordered a TRD branded 'Genuine Toyota (PTR03-18130) Air Intake System' for a princely $369.99 from a vendor on eBay. It took a couple of weeks to arrive and came complete with every clip and cable tie. Installation was a cinch and at the end I felt that I had just gone and bought an OEM part and fitted it. The first impression was that it made a new and different noise, at part throttle just after 2K RPM there is a slight presence that wasn't there before. Not loud just new. I drove it out and warmed it up and gave it a few bootfuls and was utterly dissapointed. The car made more noise at high revs but didn't seem to pull any better, maybe it was actually worse in the flat spot zone. I came home and re-read the instructions just to review and realised that they specifically ask you to disconnect the battery negative. Something I had ignored. That set me thing about ECU learning and so I did a bunch of research about short term / long term fuel trims. After realising that the new intake had probably had the immediate effect of making the motor run leaner I drove it sensibly 'just in case'. The next morning (Sunday) I got up early and drove it conservatively all over Essex and Hertfordshire. Then bit by bit I noticed it surprising me in a very positive way. Part throttle pulls in 3rd and 4th from 4K upwards were noticeably stronger. I bought a Bluetooth dongle 'Android Torque Car Mini ELM327 EXCEL' for £7.95 off eBay and installed Torque on my phone and set it up to look at fuel trims. The following Sunday morning I repeated my long drive, checking the fuel trims to see how it was behaving. All good. By now the car was impressing me more than it ever has before. Actual peak power increase may not be significantly more but virtually everywhere else it is up. From 4K to 5K in particular the car really is transformed. Yesterday I drove nearly 400 miles on 'A' and 'B'' roads. From London to Oxford to Cardiff and up across Brecon Beacons before looping back east through the bottom of Shropshire. I discovered places like Fish Hill on the A44 (a public Hill Climb with 25-30Mph advisory for the bends!), Shelsley Walsh and Chipping Norton! The car is a peach! I am not one to post much on forums but just had to share. This modification should have been OEM and made by the manufacturer. S2000s have a good intake system out of the box so why not us. I have no idea what the car would show on a dyno or whether now it has this mod it would benefit a re-flash tune. All I can say it that the flat spot is all but gone and it pulls stronger and is much more responsive on the throttle. It makes dashing between apexes in 4th much more involving and overtaking is more confident. It no longer feels flat. Entering a motorway pulling moderately (changing up at around 5K) in 3rd and then 4th using part throttle is where the biggest gains are. If anyone would like a demo of a bone stock BRZ with a TRD intake I am in Essex. Happy Days! Nick

Very good points well made and I agree with you. As I said I cannot tell if it makes more peak power. I do think that torque is up in the mid range. It is a command and response thing which I feel. Do you think it would benefit from a tune by Mark at Abbey?

Yes I read all of that too. I think that we can get hung up on figures and measurable gains on a dyno. How a motor behaves to changes in driver throttle input isn't about peak CFM, or peak HP gain, it's about how the intake behaves at that instant. That is where the gains that I have now are. It has more mid range torque and it is more responsive to on / off throttle. It is faster and stronger everywhere but I can't say for sure if it makes more peak power. Maybe I will take it to Abbey and see. The noise with the TRD intake is somewhat less than the with stock noise generator thingy but louder than the stock intake with the nose generator disabled.

FWIW mine is bang on the mid level between min and max when cold. In the 1st days of new car ownership, noticing it wasn't on max, I topped it up twice and both times it dropped to mid point after a run and so I stopped worrying and it has been midway for 7,000 miles now.

Hello All, I have a BRZ with the most basic head unit, it's the one that has a mono LCD and no bluetooth, never mind DAB. About now Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are becoming established in the after market ICE and since I have Android it leads me to the Pioneer AVIC-F70DAB, which is expensive, but ticks the boxes. Does anyone have any experience with this or similar? Any wiring harness challenges? How about fitting antenna for DAB and GPS? Cheers Nick

I have had a quick search of Android Auto integrated apps and Tom Tom isn't one of them. If I launch Android Auto on my phone and touch 'Browse compatible apps' it takes me to Play Store. FWIW the main ones are Tunein Radio, Player FM Podcast, Spotify Music, EvolveSMS, WeChat and IRCCloud and of course the Google suite of apps which are natively integrated.

Nicebiscuit I wish I knew the all the answers to those questions as that is where I want to be headed myself. I am learning about how it is configured and what all the connections are. I *think* that I will keep the stock door speakers and the stock factory amp and fit an Android Auto HU. I definately wont be fitting a Chinese Android HU (as has been discussed higher up this thread) as the OS they come with *will* be a bug ridden nightmare and very hard to upgrade / maintain. My theory is that I change phones far more than cars OR car stereos. This is what Google and Apple want you to think too and that is the reason for Android Auto and CarPlay. The rear speakers are tiny and you could say they are pointless but they weigh next to nothing. If you try setting the F/R balance to front only you will def notice that they are missing.

The car already has an external amp from the factory. It is configured to drive just the front speakers. The head unit's own 50W x 4 amp is only used for the relatively low current demands of the dash and tiny rear speakers. I imagine that during the design stage it was realised that a standard 50W X 4 HU power stage and nominally efficient 4 ohm door speakers would be OK but too lardy (and maybe not loud enough to fight the tyre noise). I speculate that the decision to go to 2 ohm neodymium magnet door speakers was to keep weight down, but maybe at the expense of efficiency (and so ultimately maximum volume). The problem of sufficient loudness was solved in two ways, firstly by using 2 ohm voice coils and secondly by using a basic (and light) external amp with a bridged output stage capable of driving them loud enough. 2 ohm voice coils means the door speakers draw twice the current from the same output voltage and this is beyond the reach of a standard HU with it's single supply. The factory external amp (for JUST the door speakers) is fused at 15A and most head units are fused at a mere 10A for the whole unit including radio, GPS, display, CD drive AND output stages. This tells the story. I agree that the front speakers are cheap, but they are very light and they do move air when driven from the factory amp. BTW my car doesn't have any *EDIT* speakers (just the tweeters) in the dash though the grilles lead me to believe that there were some. I'd like to know if they are fitted on anyone elses car? It reminds me of the factory fit Bose system in my old Alfa GT which had fake tweeter grilles with shiny Bose badges in the stock base model holes in the doors and then better than stock coaxials in the lower holes. When I bought the car I challenged the dealer that the tweeters were fake and he only believed me when he put his ear directly in front of one!

I have established that the aerial socket on the back of the stock Fujitsu Ten unit is a square grey connector (SFA12F I think it is called) with 2 pins. The cable is also grey and I think it is coax. Given that DAB aerials and shark fin kits that are FM/DAB have two separate cables I conclude that the 2014 BRZ UK spec shark fin is FM only. I may be wrong and there could be another cable wrapped away out of sight but from my quick look earlier I doubt it.

Thanks Lauren, Since my post I have had the radio out and had a look at the cables. As my stock radio has a DAB button on it, presumably to work with an external DAB module, I am hoping that the car comes with a dual FM/DAB feed from the roof shark fin, negating the need for a 3rd party windscreen mounted aerial. Do you know if I am wishful thinking?!

Hello All, Last November I succumbed to a second (or maybe third) mid life crisis, the quest to try and remind myself on a daily basis what it was like driving the Sylva kitcar that I built at the start of the 90's. This is the first new car I have ever bought, having had company cars and then a string of nearly new Alfas under my belt. I have had bikes too, my most bonkers bike being a Y2K Aprilia RSV Mille (I wonder where that is now). ...and so the BRZ has around 6000 miles on it now, running it in over a wet weekend in Wales was a revelation. My outgoing Alfa GT 3.2 never handled like that! Now I am thinking about some small tweaks....maybe. So far i have just ditched the noise pipe thing and put a Mishimoto hose between the throttle body and the filter. The kit car has a shiny Momo gear knob and so I just had to get something like it for the BRZ. A Richbrook Classic Ball is close enough. I changed the oils myself at 1000 miles - Motul 8100 Eco-lite 0W-20 for the engine and Redline MTL for the gearbox. (This has been a great mod and instantly made the shift MUCH sweeter). That's it for now, I just wanted to say hello and that I may well be tapping you lot for info... Cheers Nick

I'll always miss the V6 Busso for it's charisma but never for it's thirst! I had a 2.5 before that and I have to say that I liked the 2.5 unit a lot more than the 3.2. It begged to be revved...actually needed to be!

I had a red 2005 3.2 V6 GT before my BRZ and thought I'd miss my Alfa but I really and honestly don't!

Thanks for all the welcomes! I don't have any firm plans for mods but here are a few ideas that attract me and mostly centre around making it an even better road car and shedding some unsprung weight: Tein Flex A and 17" Enkei RPF1 with Michelin Pilot super sport 215/45 R17 and maybe HKS Spec L exhaust. Biggest suprise of ownership is that the fuel economy is much better than I expected (compared with my old 3.2ltr V6 Alfa!). Biggest annoyance is the dip in power from 3.5K ~ 4.5k....love to be able to fix that!