I'm really amazed that motor held on the whole weekend. When I first saw the car on Friday, it started up with a big puff of smoke from the turbo and exhaust. That got me concerned right off the bat since the car was bought from a dealership with over 35k miles on it. Being an 07 STI, 35k+ miles on the stock ECU is good cause for concern.

We started tuning it Friday morning and quickly confirmed that the turbo inlet on the car was crap and collapsed on the 4th pull. So then it was a mad dash to find a replacement inlet. Big thanks to the guys at Speed Element for staying a bit late for us and having a nice Perrin inlet in stock! So we loaded up the car on the trailer and headed out to pick up the inlet on the way to Lancaster. We got the inlet, then stopped for some food in Gilroy. Then it was decided that we should try to get the inlet in there and then so that we could finish the tune first thing in the morning and not forgo too much practice time on Saturday. A couple hours later in a dark parking lot and Adam, Corey, and Reyes had the inlet in... thanks to Sammy for that fine lube .

On Saturday morning we met up again and went out to dial in the tune on 100 octane. The car never made the power I expected, so there was even more cause for concern over the engine. We went ahead and hot lapped the car all day Saturday to give Sammy some good seat time. He hasn't really pushed this car yet and hasn't been on a track in over a year, so the practice was badly needed. This also gave us a chance to dial in the tune further and figure out which tires we wanted to use. Some DCCD tweaking also helped out toward the end of the day. At one point Sammy pulled in and I caught a glimpse of the temp gauge... it was in the RED! We made a couple changes to the car to try to solve the cooling issues which everyone seemed to be suffering from that day. Either way, getting the temps that hot didn't help the already hurt motor.

Later that night we filled up with some leaded 110 and went out to adjust the tune for the higher octane. The car still wouldn't make any real power, so I just got the tune safe and smooth to keep the car running through Sunday. When we got back to the garage, I had the guys do a quick compression test. No surprise, cylinder 4 was down to 60psi... that could explain the smoky startups and lack of power . We thought about it decided that we all already came this long way, spent money on gas, etc, the motor was already significantly hurt, so we might as well just run it on Sunday and hope it makes it through the day.

Sunday morning comes and there is a mad dash to mount some new tires on the stock STI rims. At the same time I decided to pull the tune back significantly for qualifying to make sure #4 holds on through the rest of the hot hot day. Through qualifying I kept giving the car a bit more power until we eeked by and qualified with a 1.47.x by a margin of .1 seconds! We were all amazed the car was still running and aside from the occasional puff of smoke on startup, you wouldn't know that anything was wrong.

So now it was time to actually get some hot laps in and go for a real time. We decided to go for broke, so I juiced up the tune, turned up the boost and sent Sammy out with instructions to not worry or think about the engine, just drive the wheels off the car. Sammy went out and did just that. He kept getting quicker and quicker laps with the occasional cool down lap. He finally ended up running a 1:42.6 which was almost 5 seconds quicker than on Saturday. Considering the motor was basically on 3 cylinders, we were all very happy with the time and especially the fact that the car made it back to pits under its own power with no smoke screen . Our time put us in 4th place just .4 seconds off of 3rd. We beat out the other 8-9 cars in the class and did it on 3 cylinders... no complaints there.

Even better, the car was still running and driving just fine. It even made it onto the trailer under its own power with no hassle. On the way home, Sammy's bone stock Evo X blew a fuse that couldn't be fixed easily. The only option was to take the STI off the trailer and put the Evo on it. The STI ended up limping them home for the next 300 miles on 3 legs with no issues! Just goes to show how much crap a subie can take and still keep running enough to get you home! It was pretty amusing that the brand new, bone stock Evo X was what failed in the end and the hurt STI made it through the full weekend of racing and still got them home! Subaru FTW

Thanks to everyone for helping out and hanging out. We all had a lot of fun and considering all the issues and last minute drama, we were pleased with the results. Next time out this car will be much better prepared with plenty of time to spare before the actual event. I hate last minute bs!