nerdstrike

Saw a panda in Sicily the other day with winters on. It was 25 degrees! Anyway... I've rode out two winters with Dunlop wintersport tyres. They're a bit vague until you tap into the grip after which they are nearly as grippy as the primacy HP and a lot more fun in the wet. Pretty rubbish above 15 degrees, really excellent in heavy rain and icy conditions. Also better on gravel drives! My choice again, I'd go for a milder/wet-focussed tyre, such as @Deacon suggests, but at time of purchase I was disabled by snow.

Aftermarket cats can be a bit dicey for both effectiveness and durability. I'm sad to see it caused you so much trouble.

4 grand blew my guess out of the water!

"turn right up this bolder-strewn canyon". Not sure if I want to sink more money into the somewhat unreliable navigation system.

Is it bad taste to start a repair quote sweepstake?

As an "official approved repair" that'll be disproportionately expensive. New bumper, new wheel, maybe the panel cut out and replaced with new metal, but it looks uncreased. When I made a claim through Direct Line about a decade ago (damage to my parked car), my insistence on using a local repair shop that I could walk to and from caused them to send an assessor out to see the car and quibble with the much cheaper quotation from the nearby garage. I saved them money and they made it difficult for me. With fault admitted (they hate that) it'll be much faster to resolve than your typical back and forth, but do still expect your insurance to increase a bit next year...

Mine's doing ok on 14 plate and 37k miles or so. It's a bit of a dirt trap, so I can see how it might start to go.

I doubt the OEM car is intake limited what with the big improvements available from exhaust changes. You might get some pressure build up when travelling at speed which would help a bit. On the other hand, at least it fills the space that used to be noise-maker tubing.

I guess it just disperses or drops the amplitude of reflected negative phase frequencies bouncing off the door skin. When they carry through the door card they'll muddy all but specific frequencies that match the wavelength to the door cavity depth (say 4 kHz?). It's a tiny amount of material for a big improvement. Like it!

Interesting. You mean inside the doors or under the dash covers too? Perhaps that's why I'm happier with mine as I went with absorber rather than mass loading material when I lined the doors. Perhaps I should have mass loaded too... but as I originally stated, I didn't want to add more weight than I had to.

The torque dip only manifests when you're trying to get up and go, it's not really an issue for regular driving. You can dodge it by being agile on the gearstick instead. My main issue with that is it more difficult to be swift-but-lazy. Staying above the torque dip really does require you to rev it out, which can be a bit more aggressive than you really wanted. It'll be plenty fast compared with a regular Corsa. The lower and grippier stance should make faster driving feel safer too (whether it is or not...)

Interestingly there's a bit of jitter when you turn the engine off, I wonder if it's oil pressure related? You should log that too! If the VVT sensor readings are correct, then the valve timings are static after the initial wiggle. That starves the airflow under high power, and may reduce effectiveness at low rpm too, depending on what position it's sticking in. It's basically downgrading your engine to the 1980s. The "relearning" part will be fuelling adjustments for efficiency and shouldn't have any impact on the VVT. I'd put your problem firmly into expert territory. Apparently oil viscosity and cleanliness can be a factor for VVT systems, and that's under your control, but everything else is probably going to mean pulling parts from the engine. Not sure how easy that is with the boxer recessed into the engine bay.

There's a regulation akin to "car should not be louder than it was originally", but it's hard to enforce due to the effort it takes to get a reference point. You have to really make them want to do you for it. To attract the ire of the law you're probably running a decat which is itself unfit for road use. The cold start is loud because of valve timings to increase oxygen flow to the catalyst. My old car had an air pump that fed into the exhaust manifold because you can't move the valves on a rotary.

It's good to know the design spec of the box is above what the engine can put out by about 40 Nm. They'll probably take more than that, but not for the life of the vehicle. Then it comes down to how you treat any part of the car. If you push it to the limit, it wears out faster.

Some of the cars I've encountered with really composed ride on dodgy surfaces had progressive spring rates, but that probably gives you a bit less roll control. Just a silly suggestion - check the asymmetric tread on your F1's is pointing the right way. They'd be awful in the damp if the tread direction is wrong.

I am familiar with the clunk, but I've not heard it for a while - not sure if that's because of my attempts to quieten the car or just ambient temperature. To my ears it sounds like the inertial lock on the rear seatbelt mechanism, but it could also be the hooks holding the seat in the upright position shifting around. The parcel shelf/loose wiring and boxes inside make lighter ticking sounds...

@86guns Let the speakers run in. They start off a bit strangled and round out over a week or more. Nothing you can do about the dash and windscreen geometry which rather funnels the treble, and the mids can get a bit lost behind the legs. It's worth playing with the EQ once they've settled, as the default is brash. Ambient on motorways is definitely down a few dBs of white noise, so I feel less exhausted on a three hour journey. I'm content with the audio, though I'd double my budget for next time around. I'm glad I changed them AND added insulation.

Assuming the dash is fitted correctly, the digital speedo would collect its information via canbus (or whatever Subaru use). As such it's pretty tricky to sort it out if it's not collecting speed data already. If it's not reading wheel speeds on all four corners properly it's going to have a really hard time using the VSC properly, same maybe for ABS. Get that fixed and worry about the speedo later. I'm a bit surprised the dash isn't all christmassy with that kind of problem.

Firstly, the good news is Toyota/Subaru have attended to sill problems I've witnessed on older Jap cars. The rippled coating along the sills should protect them from the worst rot. Waxoyl is only useful for cold parts of the car but does a pretty good job. The things I'd be looking to protect are exposed components like the headlight levelling sensors. I also wonder about the metallic floorpan/heatshield under the engine and the sump, but those can be cleaned up and repainted fairly easily though.

The gearbox is pretty near your left leg. I'd get down in the footwell and give the pedal a wiggle to see if anything is flexing.

Congratulations on your purchase! The stock speakers are an embarrassment when you hold them in your hands. If it bugs you there's a trivial upgrade available. I've found the Toyota head unit to be a bit pants all round, but it plays tunes well enough and isn't really important outside of long distance cruising.

Cars with O2 sensors and MAFs can tune themselves to a limited degree via trim, so a few quality mods can improve performance without risking anything. With that in mind, you can check the LTFT settings via an OBD reader and/or phone app to see what the car thinks of your mods. Large scale adjustments (e.g. more than +/- 10) can indicate that the car is making big adjustments to compensate for what it perceives to be sub-optimal combustion. The real problems with aftermarket intakes come when the MAF isn't positioned correctly in laminar air flow. Then it reads wildly and the ECU cannot figure out what to do. It will usually manifest as a crappy idle and uneven power delivery. There's quite a lot of leeway in the default tune to account for changes in altitude, fuel and air temp/pressure so you don't need to worry unless the car is running poorly. Indeed, much of the gains with remaps are from deliberately taking some safety margin away.

Nice tips sir

I test-drove one with odd tyres on the rear and it yawed a few degrees under power. One was a primacy, the other a Toyo of some description. It's quite sensitive to rear traction, but your problem could be in any of the wheel arches. Either way, your dealer has something to fix and should ruddy well get on with it. I'd be worried that they pranged it on delivery and and did a shoddy repair to save money. Whenever I hear the phrase "That's normal" from a car dealer I know they're lying.

Every time I've been in Toyota dealer, someone has been arguing about paying extra toward their service plan, just sayin'. Don't know if they had the same product.