Subaru Staging and Break-In Tips

Friday, January 29, 2010

Well, here are a couple pictures of my Subaru. This is the STI at its first Autocross event of the 2006 season. I purchased the car in April of 2005 with only 7 miles on the odometer. I got to work quickly after the break-in period with getting it running in events. I have hundreds of pictures of autocross events, so I'll only post these two to start with. Both of them are in the staging area before a run.

I'll get into tons and tons of things as this blog goes on, including the detail work I do on the side. I'll post some tips and tricks for making your car look like it's fresh off the showroom floor. I especially love working with black cars. This is all very important as you might be asking how I keep the car looking amazing while hitting pylons on the autocross course.

Earlier in this post I mentioned the break-in period. Everyone has their own way of doing this, but here is mine. I first make sure I find a car with no test drive miles on it (I did this for both the Civic Si and the STI). I drive the car very gently with the factory fill oil for 1500 miles then perform an oil and filter change switching over to synthetic oil. I began using Mobil 1 5W-30, but have since switched to Amsoil 0W-30. The Amsoil is very expensive, but independent lab testing has proven it is a far superior oil to any of the off-the-shelf synthetics. Because I only drive the car about 2500 miles a year, I change it every spring before the season and every fall after the season.