 It's hard to pass up invitations from a Japanese magazine to participate in a time attack event, especially when you have a race-prepped widebody STI sitting in the shop that's ready to go. So after receiving just such an invite from the biggest tuner magazines in Japan, Option/RevSpeed, it felt kind of mandatory to go. That's was our story, at least.
The downside of such events, however, is getting there. Traffic is never good, and usually is heavily on the Worst side of the railroad tracks. There are ways to handle this, one that is especially popular with our shop manager Esumi. It's a simple, effective plan. It's called getting up at 3am in the morning and driving to the circuit. This reduces traffic on the roads to merely heavily crowded, as opposed to "Stop, stop and sometimes go for next 20 miles". |
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 A long way from home... So up from 5am, packed and out from 6am, and my first stop was at Rallitek in Portland, Oregon to pick up their show car to bring down to the event. Fully armed and loaded with an AVO380, FMIC, intake, exhaust and fuel pump, it was an ideal weapon to take down the miles. And that's just what I did, driving for another 8-10 hours that day to get to the Sacramento area for a well-earned rest. Classic rock stations and commie-liberal NPR kept me awake through the trip. (nah, love it, and it had a great report about why medical costs are so high in the States). Anyways, I digress. Spent this Friday getting down near the track. Had to pay off a local car wash quite a bit to remove the dust, dirt, random squirrels, and 1500 bugs from the exterior of the car. Getting some rest, see everybody at the show! |
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 The AVO America office will be closed from the 8th till the 12th of October for Subiefest. I'll be heading down from Seattle early Thursday, stopping by Rallitek to pick up the red 08 WRX, and keep on trucking as far as I can stand - hopefully I'll be in or near California by the evening. Then another day to cross the Everhot State and get to the Mojave desert by the evening. I'll be there at the even bright and early Saturday. Hope to see some of you there! |
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 Ross and the crew spent the weekend at the most famous Super Autobacs stores in Japan, the Super Autobacs Shinonome in Tokyo Bay. This mecca of automotive performance parts and installation is one of those must-go locations in Tokyo if you are a fan of performance. On any given weekend you will see everything from mega-horsepower Skyline GT-R's to hot Ferrari's and Porsches. This particular weekend was given over to Subaru's, the most popular car in the Japanese tuner Market.
AVO Japan was invited to participate in this event, and had the booth ready from early in the AM. The weather was fantastic, and lots of Subaru owners were on hand. Turbo Legacy owners still are a big presence in the market, and there were plenty to see through the weekend. DAMD steering wheels also showed up, and we used our time with them to help get their steering wheels into the North American market. |
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 About 10 years ago, Ross of AVO came over to the states for an extended R&D trip, creating one of our most famous turbo kits for the Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS. The 2.5 RS was a great car from Subaru that had all the trappings of the STI turbo models in Japan with it's aggressive hood scoop and sporty 2-door styling. Unfortunately, the situation under the hood was not quite so sporty, as Subaru opted to only offer it with a 2.5-liter non-turbo motor in America. Given AVO's 38 years of turbocharging cars that hadn't been turbocharged in the first place, this was a natural job for us.
That project is, as they say, history. We still provide the kit to RS 2.5 owners, and it's been a steady, strong performer through this entire time. While it is still available, there is less and less 2.5 RS Impreza's available as the years go by. We had been looking at doing a turbo kit for the newer models from Subaru, but have been waiting for the right timing. With the release of the Accessport for the 2008 Impreza 2.5i, the timing was now right. |
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 The West Coast Subaru Show is a fantastic annual Subaru lovefest put on by Tex and the rest of his crew in late summer. Held at the Skamania County Fair Grounds between Friday, August 28th till Sunday the 30th, it's a little gathering that grew to epic proportions. This year, over 220 cars were pre-registered for the show. When I arrived at 9am on Saturday, it looked as if the majority of those cars were there.
I got set up from early on, but it took a little time for people to start stumbling in to the event all - literally. From all reports, the parties went on well into the early morning on Friday night. Between the rampant alcoholism and late night impromptu fireside karaoke attacks, few people actually got much sleep. Not a worry, by 10am everybody was starting to get some feeling in their faces again, and the entertainment of the day was awaiting them. |
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 One thing we see a lot more of in Japan than any other country is turbocharged Subaru Forester owners looking for a bit more power. It's not that the Forester is that underpowered, but with only a 2.0-liter motor vs. the 2.5 overseas, it just doesn't have that torquey feel appropriate for a mini-suv. One such customer came in with their 2005 Forester turbo that had a Prova ECU and STI Genome rear muffler. |
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 On the international scene, AVO puts a lot of parts in a large variety of cars. One of the latest ones to pull into the shop in Japan was a 6MT Forester STI with the 2.5-liter flat four. The motor is identical to the American Forester XT actually, but STI does add their ECU to the mix with a slightly more aggressive tune. It also comes with a few other STI bits - 6MT transmission, Brembo brakes, STI exhaust, and STI seats.
As good as all that was, though, it just wasn't enough for the owner. He felt it was time for a bit of a boost in power as the standard STI Forester just didn't quite feel as exciting as the name implied. So he came to Ross in our Japan office to see if there was something that could be done about that.
He already had had a Syms turboback exhaust system installed, which is frankly not the best for performance. Not only do they use two cats instead of a quality high-flow single, it necks down to 2.5" in several locations. While we couldn't do much about that exhaust, we certainly could about everything else - and so we did. |
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 Today we did the AVO 30kW package on a customer car at the Melbourne, Australia shop. This car included the AVO 30KW package with a AVO Flex joint Up-pipe tuned on 95 octane. As you can see the boost pressure was not raised - so how did we make the power??
With the Subaru one of the biggest gains to be had is with a good Turbo-back exhaust system, as the stock system is quite restrictive. That OEM stock was holding the beast back due to the 6-8psi of back pressure that it has. The AVO TBE with a cast nickel-iron outlet with a wastegate splitter and AVOs 200 cell per inch High-flow metal-strain cat converter removes that back pressure, that is where we gained the power without upping the boost.
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