Toyota GR86, 86, FR-S and Subaru BRZ Forum & Owners Community - FT86CLUB

“Well, it’s about time” begins every post in every forum ever, forever, even way back when users would use their real names, and Anomalocaris might pop up occasionally, and not ironically. But, still, the time has come that I begin my own build thread to showcase the work I’ve undertaken to spend an unreasonable amount of money on a perfectly good automobile, to in the end probably make it worse. And I’ll be doing it in full view of a crowd of discerning and experienced car nuts (I myself am also a car nut, but far from discerning, and less experienced than I’d like to admit), who I am hoping can guide me, gently, as I navigate the trickier aspects of this build. Hopefully it’ll be fun. And hopefully I can stop bothering my wife with all of my ideas and pictures and hopefuls and spreadsheets detailing costs and desired parts and quantities and so on.
Regardless.
I bought this car initially for a couple of reasons. First, I needed a new car. I had been driving around in a beat-to-death eclipse with too many miles and too many headaches to continue doing so. The only thing that initially kept me in the car is that I am afflicted with a bad case of the cheapsies. Worse, my spouse is also a sufferer of this particular disease. So stricken are we that, even when we graduated from college with real degrees and started working real jobs, earning wages that felt like real wages, we still refused to move out of our cheap and, frankly, awful apartment. I’m talking about the kind of apartment with papier mache walls, and carpets that stain if you look at them too long.
We’re still there, as a matter of fact.
I would probably still be driving that Eclipse, as well, if it hadn’t munched its own transmission and become too much of a hazard to drive even the scant five miles I drive to work. So, I parked it and waited. And waited. And watched. And waited. I waited for more than 6 months, in fact, which is when an absolutely unbelievable deal came up for a new 2015 BRZ in Lightning Red. It was a Premium, with a manual. Right up my alley, and it was a car I had lusted after in college. So we drove to Tennessee and picked up the little darling. We’ve been inseparable ever since.
I’ve loved cars, I had an RX-8 (which also munched its transmission) and I thought I had reached peak vehiclophilia, but this car completely stole my heart. So I committed to plan a build, and I will be posting it here as it happens. I will post pictures this weekend when I get some more work done to her, then you can all see what you’re in for. I will warn you, however: my cheapsies dictate that this will be a slow build. Like, S L O W. As in, molasses running down a freezer wall slow. As in, my sister once broke a bottle of syrup inside a freezer, and when I came back to visit my dad about a year later, there was still syrup on the wall. That kind of slow.
But I will be detailed, so there is that.
We call the car the Red Panda, and here are her current mods:
Interior:
Alcantara knee pads (JBM Coachworks)
Exterior:
Debadged BRZ and Subaru letters
Emblem overlays
Smoked side markers with white LEDs
Carbon fiber wrap on the roof and door mirrors

Performance:

K&N high flow air filter

Noise:

Custom muffler delete

That’s it for now, but more will be coming in the months to follow. Pictures up this weekend. I hope you all enjoy!