My brother helped me immensely this weekend and it took longer than we thought it would but it's finally done...

Lowered on Tein H-tech springs. It dropped the car enough but not too much. It's still easily daily-drivable. Ride quality is still very nice, but cornering ability is drastically improved over stock. The car doesn't feel as heavy as it is now, which is cool. The DC strut bar is uber beefy but since the strut towers are ON the firewall I don't think it does much - it looks cool though.

Weapon-R intake and header are installed. I used the spark plug anit-fouler trick on the secondary O2 sensor to eliminate a CEL since the DC Header eliminates the cat.

DC's site shows a 7.5whp increase over stock baseline with the header:

http://www.dcsports.com/pdf/dyno/SHC...rts-4-1-HP.pdf

and an 11.7wtq increase over stock baseline with the header:

http://www.dcsports.com/pdf/dyno/SHC...rts-4-1-TQ.pdf

Some independent sites I've found have dynoed anywhere from 2-4whp and 3-4wtq more than that with a free flowing intake.

Here are the pics:

 

looks good!

 

very clean. you are off to a great start.

 

so, with the removal of the cat is it actually street legal? Where I am, it's not.

 

Technically I don't think so. We don't have emissions checks at all in Michigan.

 

does anyone know what the drop on the Tein H-techs is? that car looks super-clean and not too drastically low... cuz the Tein S-techs are a bit much for me.

 

very clean. nice work. i went with the S techs, just a lil lower.

not sure if im gonna wait 10 more years for the AEM CAI or just go with WR.

 

hey mash there are posts all over this site that has pics of drops and what types of springs

 

what type of exhaust r u running

 

What does it sound like with the CAI?? POST VID I WANNA HEAR!

 

Stock exhaust.

That's not a CAI.

 

I mean the weapon R. Does it make the car sound different. Do you have the TRD Exhaust?

 

nice drop, do an alignment yet?

 

Whay did you go w/ the DC sports header?

 

looks very nice.

 

Don't have the TRD exhaust. IMHO it's a waste of cash. I can get a full catback for the price of the TRD exhaust and actually see a gain. I'm planning on a cat-back pretty soon, I just don't know which one I'm going to go for yet.

The Weapon-R intake does make the car sound very different under hard accelleration. It sounds very throaty and makes a cool deep rumble sound. It's not something you'd easiliy miss at all. I'd record it, but I don't have a means to.

Nope. To be honest I don't think it even needs one. We didn't touch any components of the front end other than the strut. Nothing else was tweaked at all and the car still drives perfectly straight down the road. Some camber correction might be in order soon, but the alignment is still fine.[

quote="scrap"]Whay did you go w/ the DC sports header?[/quote]

All of the tC headers right now throw CELs. Honestly I don't think there will ever be a header that doesn't come with a full fledged cat that won't throw a CEL. Usually the cat on a car isn't on the exhaust manifold like that, it's under the car somewhere. By design pretty much any header will eliminate that cat... even if it uses some kind of "high flow" cat like the Megan header does. The Megan header, as if now, still throws a CEL though so I'd have had to do the ani-fouler trick anyway.

I figured if I was going to have to do the anti-fouler trick that I might as well go with a ceramic coated DC header that doesn't have any kind of cat on it at all.. it looks better to not have a huge bulge down there, and on top of that I trust DC header quality having owned two DC headers in the past. DC exhaust quality is another subject, however.

Thanks.

 

He he he SAWEET! how much was the intake? was it hard to install? pix?

 

I didn't take pics of the install. It took about 20 minutes. The hose they give you that goes from the valve cover to the intake is pretty jenk. You can't bend it very much or else it'll kink. I ended up using the stock hose and modifying my plastic engine cover a little to make it fit (I had to Dremel a little notch in it so the hose could cleanly exit). You can see what I'm talking about in the pic above. Note the vacuum hose going to the intake is coming out of the stock plastic engine cover... and that there's not usually a notch there.

Other than that it was 100% easy. The whole install took about 15 minutes during which time I completely removed my stock intake and airbox. Getting to the throttle body is easier than it looks with the plastic engine cover off and the stock intake tube out of the way. The only thing you need to be careful with is the sensor on the intake... it looks quite fragile.

I got everything from creativecompacts.com. They were extremely nice and helpful on the phone and my stuff got to me fairly quick. Prices were pretty good too. The intake was $229, header was $277, springs were $151, and the DC strut bar was $90.

 

Supposed to get my H-Techs today. Waitin on UPS. The drop looks perfect, I can't wait to get mine on.

 

I was wondering the same thing.