Introduction to THIS GUY

[stickyfeet]

Hey everyone, just thought I'd give a quick introduction to myself, as I think I'll be hanging out here reading the forums quite a bit.
My name is Andrew Gilpin, and I recently purchased an '02 WRX with a few modifications. I live In Iowa, and work full time as a mechanic in a full service gas station.... on top of that, I breed geckos ( yeah, you know, the little lizards with sticky feet, hence the username, works well for the AWD WRX too ). Have a ton of hobbies, and am extremely into macro photography as well, here's a photo for an example of some of the work I do:


I'll be posting a few things in some other forums as my time permits, but thanks so far for the information that has been quite helpful!

[BillFromTR]

Welcome, nice picture! Have any of the car?

[stickyfeet]

ummm, I've got a few photos from the ad, but they suck....
one of the things that annoys me the most about the car, is the ghetto job of custom bending the FMIC piping out of exhaust tubing ( and the hideous welds), that and the fact that it doesn't fit worth a crap and they butchered the front bumper trying to get it to fit....




I plan on cleaning up the above mentioned FMIC issues....
and it's got a carbon fiber hood which I'm not a big fan of ( especially the hood pins.... pet peeve).
it has a chunk on each hood tip where it was improperly stored at some point or another, and there are cracks in the gel coat as well. I plan on putting this back to stock, right about the time I redo the FMIC tubing and put a new front bumper on it.

Here's my old car....
'95 honda accord with an H22A in it. It was probably putting out around 210 HP or so, and was a pretty fun car to drive.

I sold that the first day I tried for $1,000 more than I paid for it after owning it for a year and putting 10K miles on it, so I decided I'd upgrade a bit ....
My other daily driver is an '02 Nissan Maxima with a 3.5L 6spd, no photos of that one at this time though....

[NY_04WRX]

I just made that picture my desktop background, do i have to send you royalties? Good luck with the car, I'd love to see pictures.

[EJ257]

If you're still running on the stock turbo, you're going to want to get a TMIC or a bigger turbo - I believe that a FMIC will cause too much lag on the stock turbo, but maybe someone more knowledgeable can tell you for sure.

Anyway, welcome to the forum and the Scooby-owner club

[BillFromTR]

What turbo are you running with the IC? Nice car.

[TheJ]

Welcome to the club!

[stickyfeet]

Hey guys, thanks for the comments. Right now the turbo is stock. I appreciate any help that people can give, as I'm used to working on cars that are typically stock, and not modifying them a whole lot. Working with the turbo/lag/boost etc. and knowing how the modifications work together with one another is going to take some getting use to. I know for sure I want to get rid of the air/fuel gauge as it's completely useless and just bounces around, and it's also got a Dastek PROgrammer installed however I don't know what has been done exactly with that as well. The car also had a dual stage boost controller ( don't know if that's the correct terminology either, doh!) and you can set it at 10psi for just driving around, or 16psi when you want to get on it a bit more.
Any suggestions on things to read or do would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the comment on the photo by the way.... many more can be seen here:
http://s169.photobucket.com/albums/u218/LACHERPS/

[Sasquatch]

Greetings and welcome to the club!

Great pic - the mantis is one of my favorite insects! Nice WRX too.

[EJ257]

I know for sure I want to get rid of the air/fuel gauge as it's completely useless and just bounces around

When you're driving a modified WRX/STi, I believe the 2 gauges that are most important are the EGT/boost - beyond that, I'm not sure what you should have (my car is still 100% stock).

[RayfieldsWRX]

I love it; the '02-'03's have an "organization" within this forum called the Bugeye Mafia. Your picture is the perfect logo for us!

Welcome aboard.