1. Kyle
2. Virginia Beach
3. PM or this post
4. Starts below
5. $20,500, OBO
6. Pics are below descriptions (more pics to come once weather allows)

Hey all,

This is going to take a few words to get everything out and tell my story and why I am selling her, so please bear with me.

I bought my 05 Sti (Obsidian Black) about three months ago. I drove just about 1600 miles round trip to get it. And at this point in time I am looking to sell it. The reasons why I’m looking at selling and all details about my beast are below.

Let me start by giving you a little background info on me in hopes to help you understand why I am selling. Let me start by saying, I sold my 02 Acura RSX Type S, which was my DD to buy this STi as my DD. My Acura was extremely clean (extremely really doesn’t even start to describe how clean but I will go on), I am a super neat freak. The Acura had about 93,000 miles and you could have eaten off the engine, it was that clean (not exaggerating). She had no dents, no paint imperfections, no nothing, just super clean. I babied her to no end, no clutch drops, shifted at 3,000 95% of the time. She was garaged storage and clay barred every month or so. She was in such perfect shape to the point that I was able to get what I was asking for her. The point of all this is to show how clean I like my cars and how much to take care of them. The story is just a little different with my Sti.

I made a few mistakes in buying this car. All were small but added up to me; to anyone else they would mostly likely go unnoticed. Like only looking at pictures over the net and taking the words of what I thought was a respectable shop owner/seller (which was not the case) and getting to much car for my DD (this is really the key one). With that said, I do truly enjoy this car now that I have gotten her back to where she should have been and where was I told she was when I bought her. She is a beast. Here is what is currently done to her:

I have put 4,000 miles on her bringing the total to ONLY 35,000 miles

• Built motor, only forged pistons (Millennium pistons installed by Millennium Auto, less then 4000miles since installed, installed just before I bought her)
• TD06-20G, BOV
• Front Mount Intercooler
• New coil packs
• 1+ Step colder plugs
• DW 850cc injectors
• Cobb intake, Perrin Turbo Inlet, headers, up-pipe and catless downpipe (3”) mated to a SPT muffler
• Cobb Access port V2
• New Stock clutch (installed just before I bought)
• Tuned by Hill at Agile Auto (the best as far as I’m concerned) making 350whp at only 19psi

(Will be going back at the end of May b/c 1st time he found I had boost leak and I needed a new turbo inlet, he expects her to easily make over 400whp at 22-24psi on a very safe tune, more details later.)

• Gold Rota P-45F with BF Goodrich KDWs 245/40/18 with 90% life left
• 07 Radio with AUX port (but missing the cable b/w the two)

She is a beast, a true street warrior. When she reaches full boost (3600-4100) she puts you back in the seat unlike anything else I have driven before. She also sounds perfect. Not to loud under normal and highway conditions but has that great deep Subie rumble under full throttle. She is just amazing; I truly do love this car. She is just way more then I need for my DD!

Where everything stands as of day, I have a tuning appointment at Agile on May 22 to get her retune for the current setup and make the power that Hill expects her to make (400whp). It is at this point I will be looking to sell her. I am asking $20.5k for her. I will accept offers but please don’t go throwing low ball offers at me as I am in no hurry to sell her. I do have title in hand. If you are local you, you are more than welcome to come look at her. If you aren’t and want pics of specific areas that I haven’t provided just let me know I and I will do the best I can to accommodate.

Please understand I am not selling b/c I am unhappy with her, it is quite the opposite, I love this car, it is NOW a blast to drive. BUT it is just much more power then I need for my DD, I am sure some of you will think I am nuts for saying that, but I am not looking for a high HP DD, that is what my weekend/track car is for. I see no reason to dumb her down to what I want for my DD. I believe it will be better for me to sell this at a loss, and buy a stock one, than to attempt to return this to completely stock.

Please remember, it is a built motor. For those that don’t know much about forged piston (as I didn’t when I bought her). They MUST have time to warm up and expand. The reason for the warm up is that forged pistons expand more than hyper, so when they are cold there is more clearance than normal in the cylinders and cold abuse can lead to damaged pistons or even the block. As they expand they create the proper cleanness needed b/w them and the cylinder walls. From what I have read and been told a cold start need 5-10mins at idle and not to go balls to the walls in the first 5mins of driving. After that they are good to go. Now once everything is warmed up you just have to take it easy for a minute or two after start-up.

Story begins here and pictures are below that:

To get her to this stable point has been pricey, frustrating and mostly unexpected for me. It is all b/c Millennium Auto in Michigan, which is where I bought her from is not a trustworthy place as far as I am concerned. I will explain everything I have done to get the her to this point, LOL if you want to skip it and just get to the pictures, just keep scrolling down. I know I’m extremely long windy and detailed orientated. But I believe if you are interested you should know everything.

So it starts as I pulling into their parking lot after a 14hr drive with 2 friends, I see what looks like one of my tires being put into the back of a SUV, didn’t think much of it right then. So meet and talked with the owner for a few minutes. Then we went to go look her over. Needless to say she was jacked up on one corner, missing what turned out to be the same tire I saw being put into the SUV as I pulled in. The owner told me they had just finished getting the car ready when they saw the tire was flat so they took it to get air and the valve stems replaced. So I continued to look over the car, saw a few more little scratches then I was told about, saw some rear bumper damage I was not told about and few others little things. Anyways finished looking her over, there was probably another 10% of stuff saw that I was not told about. That wasn’t enough to stop me from buying her. So we went back in the office to talk. The tire came back and was put on the car when we were talking in the office. Once it was on I got to take it for a test drive. Got back from the test drive and went back into the office to talk and sign the papers. It was at that point my buddy noticed the tire that was missing when we looked at her was different then the other three, yeah what the h*** right. I don’t just mean type, I mean like 3 were BF Goodrich KDWs 245/40/18 with 95% life and the other was a Falken 615 225/50/18 with maybe 50% left. I questioned the owner as to what this was all about. He made up BS. In the end I got 4 rims with KDWs on them. So this was the starting point.

I did buy the car AS-IS just like every other used car sold not by a dealership. I understand it is used, not in a 100% perfect condition; parts will is break (especially aftermarket), and things will need to be replaced. Instead of telling me what need things were need, I felt they just tried to hind them all. To me, they are not an ever honest shop. I will ever give them any of my business again and will try to convince others to do the same.

As for the car does have a rebuilt title (I knew it going up there). The reason I still bought it was b/c of why it was a rebuilt title. It was broken into and entire interior was striped. There is no collision damaged or body damage besides the backdoor window that was broken to get into her. All was confirmed by the Carfax report; but I also had her checked for straightness, just to make sure. So b/c of this, she has all new interior, everything was replaced with brand new original parts. I was 100% sure she had never been in an accident that would have caused any structural damaged. But passenger side rear bumper shows that it has come in contact with something, it is scratched down to plastic (not too noticeable, black on black).

So I drove her home, everything seemed great, the 800 miles went so fast. But the day after I got home the CEL (Check Engine Light) came on, check the code it was for cyl #1 miss fire, called Millennium to see why it would be doing this. I talked with the owner, I guess you could say he tried to help me verbal but I could tell he really didn’t care and that he was going to be useless. At that point I had realized he would be of no help and the more I talked with him, the more pissed I would get. That was the last time I have talked with the shop.

So I went to the forums looking for help and possible fixes. After doing some research I am came up with a list of possibilities and started trying them. I started with the sparks; I changed them to 1+ colder b/c that’s would be should for her current setup. That didn’t fix it. Next, I replaced coil packs for new one and that didn’t help. Next I did a compression test to make sure the cylinders and interiors were good across the board. At that point I started thinking it was the tune (PS Millennium said they tuned it to a very safe, conservative tune, at 300whp at 21psi, open source, and I have dyno sheets from it too). So I started looking for a good trustworthy shop to get it retuned. At the same time I found a local Subie shop and was going to have them look it over everything and tell me what they see, good and bad.

The shop I found was owned by Keenin, it is All Aspect Automotive (great guy, very trustworthy). So I bought it to him and we looked over it. He pointed out that my turbo didn’t have the coolant line run to it, they just bypassed it and went from the block straight to the coolant reservoir. Also I saw why I will never own a northern car, rust (salt and sand suck), normal for northern cars from what he has seen. All is just surface rust but being a neat freak that I am it just killed me. Don’t get me wrong, it all can be cleaned off but I came from a car with zero rust it is hard for me to accept it. It can’t be seen when looking at her normally but I know it is there. He also pointed out nothing had ever been touched on the back half, all is bone stock. From this I created a list of stuff that needed to be fixed.
So after posting a few posts and a ton of reading of customer review I liked everything I read about Agile Automotive and Hill’s ability to tune with the Cobb Accessport. So I setup a date to get it retuned with them. Got up there, Hill also looked over everything to make sure it was safe to tune and pointed out a few small things out to me. Like I was missing both turbo support brackets, suggested I change from a manual boost control to an ECU controlled, he saw I had PE 850cc injectors and asked if sometimes she felt weird /lethargic around 2000-3000rpm. I said yeah it did, I was thinking it was part of the bad tune; he suggested I look for different injectors b/c the PE have a lot of spray issue down low. All of these things he pointed out, he suggested doing some research on, never pressured me into buying from him. I did ask what parts he recommended. At that point I had him install the Perrin boost controller. After looking at the old tune, Hill wasn’t sure why I only was making 300whp, he believed based on the mods, she should be right around 400whp on a very safe DD tune. So he did his thing, after doing a few runs, he did a compression test on the intercooler, intercooler piping, and BOV b/c he wasn’t seeing what he was expecting. Tested everything to 21psi, everything held, at that point he believed there was a leak on the turbo inlet that we couldn’t see. With that leak he was only able get to her to 350whp/370wtp at 19psi safely. So I left with +50whp, +70wtp but most of all with piece of mind I knowing I have a great tune by a trustworthy person. I also know that when I come back with better injectors and a new turbo inlet she will make probably make another +50whp. So I left very happy with Agile and Hill’s knowledge and customer service. B/c of that he has ensured himself he will have another returning customer.

To get her to this point (stable and properly tuned and safe) I had to put an additional $2000 into her.

At this point in time I have bought new Deatschwerks 850cc injectors and installed a new Perrin turbo inlet. I am set to go get retuned at the end of this month. I have also bought and installed the turbo support brackets. I have cleaned up the downpipe and exhaust, painted both with high temp flat black. I have replaced all intercooler couplings. I have bought and installed the coolant lines to the turbo. I have changed the rear diff. fluid with dealership fluid about 1,000 miles ago. Oil was changed just before the tune with Motul 5w-30, 2000 miles ago and will be changed this weekend.

So that is my story, sorry it is so long and drawn out but I am a very detail oriented person. Believe it or not, I have left off a few of the small things too, if you are interested in them just let me know. But I believe anyone interested in buying her, should know everything about her.


Here are a few pics as I haven’t had the time to get some real good ones yet. I will get them soon as long as weather permits. I have fixed and cleaned up a few things since these pics, like repainted the intercooloer (w/ radiator paint) and other small stuff.




(From when I picked her up)




(From when I picked her up)



(From when I picked her up)



(Mavh V open house, April)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSsqTlOg-dk (At Agile, Hill working his magic. At 19psi w/ boost leak she made 350whp & 365wtq)

 

so you just wrote all of that, and for the built motor, you wrote forged pistons... That only leaves out like 100 important details

 

Good point. Added some info about them. Working on getting full specs of them.

MeanGreeGSX, thank you for the point out. If anyone feels or seeing something I am missing, let me know and I will add it. It is hard getting everything from my head into the post on the first try, I am sure there are a few other things I have forgot to add.