First 8/6 day I've actually been able to celebrate, great group of people came out in Calgary. Photo from the post-cruise pizza "after-meet meet".
https://i.imgur.com/a9Hy754.jpg

Then I immediately drove to British Colombia to visit some more of my s/o's family. This car is an absolute riot in the mountains, so much fun even in traffic. Incredible driving the whole time, and shockingly good on gas. So close to 250,000 km... rolled into Kelowna at 249,850. Might need to invent a drive to the states and visit another one just to tick off the milestone ;)
https://i.imgur.com/ML4aVxb.jpg


2022... the year of the road trip and no track driving.

oh dang i wish i could have gone to that meet...didnt really have the time though.
that location isnt particularly far from where i live lol.

Maybe i'll try to join an 8/6 meet next year if i can.

My car needs some more "driving" time :D

Im always wondering where the good windy roads in western Canada are. From Calgary to Banff and Jasper is pretty good, not super windy but the scenic view is great.
I know there are some good roads with lots of turns driving to BC, due to the roads winding around the mountains.
The gas mileage on these cars are much better than i thought they'd be.

Could be worse. Could be Saskatchewan!

https://www.dangerousroads.org/image...tstraight0.jpg

So did you ever change out your motor mounts back to stock or did you take your road trip with the Perrin motor mounts still in?

First time meeting any of them, and they were a pretty good group of people.

I'm super new to the area, so I don't know of any. Banff to Kelowna has a few windy bits, but nothing super challenging or out of the ordinary. The views are very tough to beat though!

And eastern Alberta from Saskatchewan... holy boring! The GPS said "Trans Canada highway for 650 km" and it meant it :l

Yes, switched back to OEM mounts from the Perrin. I want to put them back in, but on long stretches of highway the added vibrations from them through the steering wheel caused my forearms to get numb :thumbdown:. They'll likely go back in over the winter.

IMO, STI mounts are the sweet spot. Strongly recommend in all cases.

I hate driving from Calgary to Drumheller....its only about an hr away but holy hell its straight, mostly flat and boring as hell lol.

Nothing beat the painful journey of driving from LA to Vegas though.....you guessed it, straight and......desert all around.

Driven to Calgary and back twice. NEVER again! :eyebulge:

Finished break in... 1/4 of a million km on the car and still going strong. No plans for anything engine related for this year, perhaps next year.

https://i.imgur.com/uv4evNY.jpg

At this point I would leave the engine alone!

No, no. Now is the time to do the valve spring recall.

It is a 14 not a lowly 13

The itch for some EL headers and flex fuel is there, but still suppressed.

And where do you find E85? Buying by the drum sounds easy enough but it is a total pain in the ass.

One place in Edmonton (according to the internet). That is a long drive to fill up!

I've found about a dozen stations in Calgary with e85 that, according to a few locals, all test between e70-e85.

Well they really need to let people know.
Wonder if there are any in Ontario now and just no info

Noice.

Thats a bit more than what i expect/want to achieve with my car (200,000kms) before having to think about a possible new car.
That or 10 years ownership.

I like this paint job! Looks like you have some battle wounds on the rear tho.

Went to autox over the weekend. Car performed well, for the first time I've found the "torque dip" is actually an issue in this car since I hate downshifting into 1st. The course was pretty well laid out for this car though and I some how managed to hit a top speed of ~90 kmh.

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


At autox there were some cool cars:
3UZ swapped Lava
https://i.imgur.com/7e5MSvl.jpg

2JZ-GTE GT86
https://i.imgur.com/ZNd52lV.jpg

And a very well put together Blobeye STI... makes me miss my old one
https://i.imgur.com/2f84mne.jpg

LOL I came here and the second picture loaded up before I read anything. I was all “holy shit he did that fast”.

"quick weekend swap, did it all for under 10k in my garage!" or something that the people who have never and will never do an engine swap say :bonk:.

Not my car but man is it a hoot to watch. He's making about 310whp and the weight is nearly the same as factory.

Do IT!!!! JDL 4-2-1 and Flex Fuel with a tune from Zach at CSG and its a completely different car trust me!

I had my finger floating above the button to order the JDL this week. Just hard to swallow $1650cad shipped to the border.
HKS is $890 to the border by comparison...

There was a steal of a deal in the classifieds for some EL headers, so I did snag those. Unsure when I will be installing them though. For the tune I've already been in contact with Steve Wiseman and will be tuning via Tactrix just like my old Subaru days.

Wouldn't happen to be the MXP EL V2s would it?

Hoping Steve can do solid JDL tunes on oft. Switching to ecutek now will put me another $500 in the hole :lol:

Yep, those would be the ones.

Steve can do OFT tunes for pretty much any set up, he helped me out when I was playing with raising the idle on my stock tune.

I was kicking around buying ecutek, but with a flex fuel set up I don't see the need for map switching to swap fuel types... or boost levels since I'm staying NA. I've driven a few ecutek cars with rev-matching and don't like it, I don't drag race or do much autox so launch control isn't something I need. Figured I would save nearly $800 and go the Tactrix route

Beat me to it haha. I was next in line to get that!

I PM'd Steve on FB about tunes to get his thoughts before pulling the trigger.

only if you want e85 blend? If not OFT is just fine.

Keep in mind with OFT doing FF tune you need to have a kit that is evap reference. With Steve’s help I was able to convert my ptuning kit from rear o2 reference to evap.

Yep, we've discussed that. I actually just ordered Gerald's kit configured in 0-5v and evap set up for Tactrix tuning.

Meep

Big update that is all over the place. Drove back to Ontario from Calgary via the US again. AB -> SK -> ND -> MN -> WI -> IL -> IN -> OH -> MI -> ON.

With some stops along the way...

Worlds largest buffalo statue that I didn't want to pay to get close to and the parking lot sufficed lol. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...41652DA1F5.jpg

Next went to the Mall of America, the view of the Delta maintenance hangers was more interesting than the mall though it was nice to stretch my legs.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...8B01E10C6C.jpg

Next was Wisconsin, met up with a few friends and went to Final Bout at US Air Motorsport Park. Super fun weekend full of drifting and catching up with friends. Apexi brought out their 2004 FD Japan car, super clean FD RX7. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6/IMG_9000.jpg

After that I went to Indiana to visit some friends who go to university out there. Car was absolutely filthy by then but still looks good under gas station lights. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...33C253D976.jpg

Made it back to Ontario without a hitch. Car has been flawless all these kilometers and still cleans up nicely, even after removing literal pounds of dead bugs.

Once back in Ontario it was time to slap on the track pads and hit the road course. I missed driving this car on track, it really is well set up for this. Other than the OBD2 port disagreeing with my Solo DL and throwing a CEL + limp mode, it was a struggle free set of 20 minute sessions. Over the winter I'll look into hardwiring the Solo DL into the CAN port behind the dash.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...2/IMG_1621.jpg

Drove back to Alberta, took the scenic route to see my friends in Indiana again and then to Iowa -> Nebraska -> South Dakota -> Wyoming -> Montana -> AB.

Mount Rushmore was underwhelming but the lake 3 minutes up the road was quite nice looking.
https://i.imgur.com/87foKwK.jpg


Back in Calgary I reinstalled my pressure and temp sensors for the Blitz gauges. Wonder where the oil leak on the front of my engine was... :bonk:

https://i.imgur.com/9shdSCd.jpg

DUDE I was only joking back when I said it was almost a garage queen. You didn't need to triple your miles on it on one shot!

Of course I have a huge bias to this particular car but with all the doom and gloom we read on here so often it is nice to hear stories where the car just keeps going and going!

https://media1.giphy.com/media/1lwmw...giphy.gif&ct=s

It just keeps chugging along, though a new rattle in the passenger side dash speaker has started with all these kms and it's driving me up the wall.

That said, took the car for a spin and ticked off 260k km. 10k km in 1 month :thumbup:

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