Lemon's CBS BRZ

[lemonjelleaux]

Hey friends.

So I bought this BRZ about a year ago, and have been lurking on the forums on and off through that time. Throwing some tasteful ceramic tint on there is all I got up to in that time. Here's a little pic:



Anyway, recently I've decided to make a couple more changes. Nothing too much - this is my daily and it's still under warranty and I've got other things to spend money on - but I thought it would be fun to put together a journal to keep track of my progress and look back on.

I started with new side markers. I was never into the orange, myself. Went with the GCS smoked side markers, which I ordered from ft86speedfactory. In my opinion they look the best of easily available options. They do require wiring, which is obviously more work than the plug and play lens swaps like the Helix markers and similar, but I'm not a stranger to soldering so I got at it. Here's how it came out:







It's a small thing, but I definitely think it's impactful. A good first step in my smoking the lights on this thing. Next are the Valenti tails I'm waiting on delivery of. Beyond that I'll look to grab some nice black rims, and then we'll see where we get to. Lookin' forward to it.

[lemonjelleaux]

Well, the tail lights finally came in yesterday, and a had a moment to throw them on the car. I think it's a huge step up from stock, though I likely won't get around to replacing the fourth brake light until this weekend and I feel like it sticks out a ton now. Regardless, a quick pic to prove I'm no liar:

[lemonjelleaux]

Just like I said, I got around to replacing the fourth brake light, which was as much a pain to do as I had read. Though I did manage to get it done without the car jacked up. I only lifted my head into the muffler to bounce back into the pavement once or twice. Beyond that, I haven't decided whether to rewire it to disable the blinking on brake or not. Regardless, it looks much improved over the stock light.

20170415_171326 by Michael Kossa, on Flickr

[Scrappydoo]

Rear of the car looks nice. I like the lines when there is no spoiler.

[lemonjelleaux]

Appreciate it, man. I definitely think the car looks clean without the spoiler, which matches the sort of murdered out look I'm working towards. Though to be honest I like the 2017 spoiler quite a bit on colors other than black.

In the meantime though, I took some time to work on the interior the other day when I decided to get rid of all the silvery plastic bits. I started with painting the shift knob and steering wheel trim bits with a gloss black. The look is just what I was going for, but the paint finish didn't come out terribly well. I'll snag some pics when I touch it up eventually, maybe throw a clear coat on there. Could do a little wet sanding even if I get crazy.

[lemonjelleaux]

Well, it's been a minute, but not much has happened with the car. Changed that up just recently though and slapped some new wheels on there. I went with 17x8 Enkei TS9's, which I was a little unsure of but am really liking in person. To keep the thread updated here is the one picture I have so far:



As you can see, we got a bit of snow and people have gone insane with the salt. I'll get it washed up when we climb above 9 degrees.

[lemonjelleaux]

I'm still out here changing things up every now and then. The other day I put in the Perrin intake hose, obviously in red for the big hp gains.



I really like the deletion of the sound tube. The cabin is definitely quieter, but it also to me sounds lower and less artificial. I tossed a new H&N filter in too while I was in there. I'm not sure that there's any performance increase, but there's obviously nothing much noticeable outside of the sound.

The only thing is the clearance between the tube and the belt is tight. I've kept an eye on it after a couple short drives, and there doesn't appear to be any problems or shifting, but it seems unnecessarily close.