New member - from RS3 to 2022 BRZ
 

Hey all!

I lost my 2020 RS3 to a T bone, a guy with no insurance ran a red light and fucked me up. Car totaled and I got a large check from my insurance. I plan to buy a BRZ outright in cash, (2022/2023) and wanted to start looking at mods. I plan to dump about 8k into the BRZ, maybe 12 if I can find enough mods to peak my interest. Wheels, Turbo kit, and some clean visual mods, nothing crazy like air ride or an engine swap.

I've heard good things about the 2.4 so far, a step up from the 2.0 engine. Any good beginner articles or Youtube videos you guys can point me towards so I can learn a bit about this platform?


https://i.imgur.com/h6JaKVZ.jpg

Are you sure a BRZ is the right car for what you want?

As much as I love welcoming people into the community, it sounds like a lot of work to get the BRZ to the point that you'd enjoy having it. You're almost better off buying a car that's already made turbocharged from factory and has supporting mods and stuff.

Can you tell us the reason you want a BRZ at all?

At this point with that much cash, I would tell you just to get a first gen and put an LSX into it.. or just buy a used Corvette.

Adding a turbo to Boxers and their oiling issues is just a bad idea.

Why not look at something that can take power and do... whatever it is you want a car like this to do?

I've built a handful of cars from the ground up. I bought the Rs3 when I got tired of modding every single piece of the car (Sometimes it seems never ending) and thought a well rounded high HP starting platform would allow me to mod just a few bits a pieces. I thought I would enjoy the car more if I didn't have to wrench on it myself every month.

Don't get me wrong, I will miss the Rs3 every day until I die, but the 3rd gen RS3 looks like plastic garbage, and finding an 2018-2020 replacement that hasnt' been ran to the ground is not something I'm willing to gamble 60+k on. I had fun with the Rs3, it was a blast, however:
Rs5 would be an issue riding in the city I work in.
BMW's have never appealed to me. That cheap interior looks like shit.
I hated the 370Z
I've looked at Mazda, Jaguar, Ford (considered a GT350), Mercedes, Nissan, Porsche, Toyota and Volkswagen.


I had an GTI and loved it, but I really dislike the way the car looks now (the Golf R).
I really wanted to love the Honda Civic Si and I know it has a unlimited potential for tuning, but it ultimately wasn't for me at the price I wanted.

I can purchase a 2022 BRZ for around 27k with less then 10k miles. With my essentially unlimited bank for this car, I think I could build something I really enjoy driving.

That's all I'm interested in. Enjoying the car. I've hard amazing things about the BRZ so now's my chance to jump head first in and start modding.

Cars priced up at the $70-90k mark would allow me very little to no modding money. Buying a solid car at 27k means I can take this car in any direction I want without much hesitation. I plan on swapping out the stock wheels and tires, I hear Primacy tires are absolute garbage. This was the same with the paper thin Pirelli tires on the RS3. I also plan to upgrade the brakes and I've talked to Induktion Motorsports which is near me, who have FI'ed a good number of these applications without fail.

I guess our points are just, it's kinda ironic to say you've heard amazing things about the BRZ and then immediately want to start modding.

What amazing things have you heard exactly? A lot of what I would say are the good parts of it surround it being an amazing momentum car for cornering due to already low COG, plus being NA for quick throttle response. Modding it a ton reduces that IMO. Sure a turbo makes it quicker but is it worth the extra work of the supporting stuff, tunes, etc.

Anyway thats my 2cents.

I guess I would rather throw 30k into a 30k car, then own a stock 60k car. The number 1 complaint I hear is that it lacks power. I have an unlimited bank to fix that power issue. I could FI it, I could do full bolt-ons, I could swap the engine if I wanted to. It's a toy car for me.

What I love; Great handling, 10/10 for looks, parts are so insanely cheap, the interior is a pro in my book, the manual transmission is another huge pro for the driving experience.

I am also purchasing a Q3 for a daily driver, so the enjoyment I will get out of this car, just working on it myself will bring me endless hours of joy.

But I made the post to find out how the forum feels, since all my builds have been on forums for every car I've done, I know the forum members are deeply connected to the cars they mod, and they have a ton of insight.
I'm not looking for 500HP. I know that's not realistically achievable. :popcorn:

I will just state that oiling is the biggest issue, so if you are going to solve anything, solve that.

Also, if I may, ensure that you have some outlet to use the car in that regulates what you can and cannot do. That way you are getting performance with a purpose.

If I could go back and do it again, that is what I would tell anyone looking to mod.

Aside from that or a c5 z06, I wish you luck and glad you are not hurt (?) from you accident.

I'll look into this! Thank you, this is what I'm looking for. :thumbsup: Can you elaborate? Is this the gasket prematurely failing due to heat, causing oil to leak? Does the engine burn oil like it's gas? RTV failure?



I can't stand Corvettes, and the newer ones solidify that for me. It's the least practical car I've ever seen. I looked closely at the Supra and the GT-R as well. Honestly, if I get the car, and in a year I don't enjoy it the way I think I will, it'll be sold. I'm not willing to die on the BRZ hill, but I am finally in a position to give it a shot. :drool:


No, I wasn't hurt in the accident, the Audi took care of me honestly, because I could have been. Don't sleep on those side curtain airbags. It may have saved my life.

Thank you! Haven’t learned how to “thank” a post yet.

it's also a bit early to tell with the 2.4's, especially considering the ecu's were only just officially cracked, and tunes aren't available to the public, but the 2.0's had some relatively consistent oiling issues with the center pairs of pistons sharing a singular oiling tube. anyone that spun a bearing always spun #2 or #3. never saw #1, or #4 spun bearings.

that thread might also link to it, i don't remember, there was some debate on the horizontal engine layout encouraging side-specific oil starvation in high-G situations simply because there's so much distance between the sides of the motor to allow oil to 'slosh' to the opposite side of the motor.

Have you test drove one of these yet?
I get the feeling that you'll know exactly what you want out of it once you drive it and it may or may not be everything you think it needs based on what is the known weaknesses for this car.

I also hope you have adjusted some of your expectations of this car based on your previous one (you are going from a $60,000 level car to a $30,000 level car, so i guess im saying dont go into this thinking that this is a car COSTS $30,000 but rather this IS a $30,000 dollar car...if you know what i mean)

Uhh...you're about to be in for a hell of a disappointment around here :lol:

i dunno, i prefer the 86's interior over a bmw.