S18 RSG - A British take on the GT86

[S18 RSG]

Hey everyone from across the pond (and everywhere else around the world). I'm Ross, I'm from a small town in South Wales, UK, and I'm here to share my experiences and progress so far with the GT86.

I bought it second hand, just over a year old in early 2015. You all know what a standard, red GT86 looks like, so I won't bother with pictures at this stage.

As much as I always liked the GT86, I came from a history (although a short history, as I'm 24) of owning highly tuned, turbocharged german cars, including my previous car, which was a Seat Ibiza Cupra. While only having a 1.4 TSi engine, mine put out close to 250hp, and could hit 60mph from a stand still in a fraction over 5 seconds. The lack of power, and lack of cheap tuning from the GT86 put me off for months, but after one drive, I had to buy it.

My plan with this car, from ownership, was to create my vision of what the GT86 should have been from the factory. So nothing crazy, but simply improving the car in each area that felt underwhelming.

This started with a few quality of life improvements, by changing any light in the car (license plate lights, interior lighting etc.) from stock to a cool white LED, and also by fitting an OEM armrest to the car, as mine was not blessed with one from the factory.

The lights made a nice improvement at night

Next on the list was exhaust. Getting a premade system was never really a consideration, as every car I've ever had has gone to one place for a custom exhaust. I paid £450 for a 2.5" header back system with secondary decat, and it sounds amazing (I'll get a video done at some time). It's basically half the price of a premade system, with a lifetime warranty, and built to my own specification in less than a day. Love it. (You can see the result in a picture towards the end).

Following exhaust was suspension, and where I experienced my only issue with the GT86 to date, although, it was nothing to do with the car. I initially bought a set of -35mm Eibach springs, which I had fitted by a local garage. I won't go into the full story, as I'll be here all day, but the short version is, they used air tools to compress the standard shocks, and ended up blowing up the seals on 3 out of 4 shocks. The result was that they offered to replace the shocks, or put the same value towards a set of coilovers. Coilovers were the choice, and a set of Tein Flex A coilovers were fitted a few days later. This was the resulting ride height (on stock wheels).



Finally, the last big change came around Christmas this year. For months I had been desperate to change the stock wheels for something a little classier looking. Initially I wanted Rota Grids, or something similar, but eventually settled on these:



I'm sure most of you know them already, but for those who don't they are 3SDM 0.01s. 18x8.5 all around with 225/40 tyres. In the above picture, the front ride height was a little high for my liking, and that brings us on to the current state of the car (with bonus pictures of the other baby in the background)





The front splitter was fitted around 2 weeks ago, along with a slight adjustment of the front ride height, and as of right now, I'm fairly happy.

Future plans shape out something like this:

New Focal speakers to be fitted (already bought and are sitting on my bedroom floor)
New Valenti rear lights to be ordered (hopefully through the group buy on this site)
Matching side skirts to go with front splitter
TRD rear spoiler
Brake upgrade (most likely just discs/pads/lines and fluid as opposed to big brakes)
Tune

All of the above I expect to be done by the end of Feburary, and from that point onwards begins the saving towards the eventual plans of:

Sprintex supercharger
4.44 final drive
Upgrade head unit (something with nav and digital radio)

All of which I hope to have done by the end of 2016.

That's basically everything from me anyway. If you stayed til the end, I appreciate your time, and I hope you enjoyed looking at my pride and joy as much as I've enjoyed looking through many of yours.

I'll leave you all with one final picture, as it's one of my favorites