2013 Chevy Sonic - Daily/Autox

Hello all,

On March 9th, 2013 I purchased a 2013 Chevy Sonic LT hatchback with a 1.4T and 6 speed manual. I was a sophomore in high school and of course, planned on leaving it stock. 

Since then, I have done the following in I believe this order:

-17x7.5 Enkei RSF5 (38mm offset)

-Eibach Pro Kit lowering springs (replaced with coilovers)

-Trifecta tune

-Catback exhaust, no cats or muffler

-MPFab cold air intake

-DDMWorks rear brace

-DDMWorks shifter bushings

-Powerstop front pads and rotors

-RBF600 brake fluid

-Sharkfin antenna

-Sonic Z-Spec spoiler

-Pedders Xa coilovers

-Eibach ground control rear springs on coilovers (6k front, ~6.5k rear)

-ZZPerformance catless downpipe  (removed)

-RE71Rs on stock 17" wheels

-Spec stage 2 clutch

-Spec aluminum flywheel

-Cruze MZ0 transmission

-Seibon carbon fiber hood

EDIT: things added since first post:

-'98-'02 Camaro calipers

-Buick encore rotors

-Rear disc swapped brakes from a Sonic RS

-Porterfield R4-S brake pads front and rear

-New set of Pedders coilovers

-ZZPerformance intercooler and hard charge tubes

-Ported intake manifold

-MSD ignition coil

-RacerX Fabrication short shifter

-60# injectors

-RacerXFabrication flex fuel kit

-Sonic RS front bumper

-RacerXFabrication catch can

-Over the top performance lower transmission mount

-Goodridge stainless steel brake lines

I have a few projects I will be doing in the not too distant future. I'm going to pick up a rear axle beam from a Sonic RS and swap the rear disk brakes onto my car. I also purchased 1998-2002 Camaro brake calipers that I will be swapping onto the front of my car with Buick Encore rotors and Camaro pads. Probably GLOC R8 or R10 pads front and EBC Yellowstuff rears.

Onto the pictures:

I run STH now, not STS

Tell me more about buying a car in 10th grade as I have a girl turning 16 years old next month and the more I look at POS cars I realize how crappy they are.  

What was your plan?   How did you cover costs?

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

I looked at craigslist and various forums for things I was interested in starting with a ~$5k budget and wanted less than 100k miles. It had to be manual, preferably would have forced induction, nice, and fun to drive. The more I looked, the more I disliked what was out there. My whole family has always been very meticulous with their vehicles, so my standards were pretty high as far as condition of the car. My budget slowly kept rising and rising until the ~$10k mark and kind of plateaued there. I looked at countless Pontiac Solstices, Cobalt SS's, Saabs, Camaros, etc. Every single one of them was disappointing in at least one way. My parents, sick of taking me to go look at cars all over the area, decided to look into new cars. I've always liked the Sonic (hatch, turbo, manual, 2700 lbs, what's not to like), but didn't think I would ever get one. We found the only manual turbo hatch Sonic within hundreds of miles of me and test drove it. The numbers worked out well enough that my parents were willing to cover the rest out of my budget. (Total OTD was around $13k with my dad's GM employee discount and other discounts). 

I had a few thousand put away for a vehicle that I gathered through various little jobs, money from relatives, etc. My parents got a loan for what was left over that I paid each month from working. I had enough to pay it off right when I was starting college and went ahead and did that.

Your plan and family sound like my family.  

I'll be that dude first and say you should put the cats back on it.  Nice build otherwise.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

It has the primary cat, but no secondary cats. I like how it sounds and it's not very loud.  Thanks for the compliment.

That's the best looking Sonic I've ever seen.

And cool name!

In reply to Robbie :

Thank you and likewise haha

My daughter might be looking at one of these in the next few days. 

2012 Sonic LTZ, 1.4 Turbo, 6 Speed. 

With a few more mods, it will catch a stock Fiesta ST.  Ha, I have to joke with the Sonic guys!  They are a great little platform, I like the looks better than the FiST in fact.  I drove a pumpkin orange Impala Sedan in High School, so I am jealous of having a hot little hatch.  

It is a nice and tastefully mod'ed car.!

I’ve always liked these. Yours looks great!

picked up the rear calipers today. I need to clean them up and paint them along with my front Camaro calipers. I've already rebuilt all of the calipers. 

Will be picking up the axle beam with the hubs this weekend. I need to order pads and rotors and will then be ready to do the swap. 

​​​​

What pads would be recommended for me? I autocross about 10-15 events per year, drive backroads spiritedly on some weekends, and drive highway for a few hours at a time about twice per month. I don't do a whole lot of daily driving with the car since I ride my motorcycle back and forth to class. 

I've ruled out GLOC pads and HP+ pads due to cost (>$300). I'm somewhat in between EBC yellow stuff ($224), Hawk HPS($202), and perhaps Porterfield R4-S ($261). 

I'm going with cheap basic rotors and will have much bigger front calipers and will now have rear calipers instead of drums. 

Any insight would be appreciated. 

Tasteful mods indeed - car looks terrific!

If you're swapping to the Camaro calipers, is there a subsequent increase in rotor diameter too? If you're adding piston volume to the front, you're losing brake bias to the rear, so the mod might actually hurt your breaking performance. A Camaro pad likely has a much higher swept volume than the Spark pads (please do the math and tell us the surface area difference for both pads and pistons), so you can get away with a less aggressive pad. I would really encourage you to start with the cheapest pads you can find just to see how the mod behaves. Pads are easy to swap after all. Even with cheap pads in you might find the fronts lock up WAY before the rears ever do.

In reply to Mezzanine :

I am switching to Buick Encore rotors for the fronts whenever I put the new calipers on, which are 1" larger than the current rotors. They are the biggest rotors that I could use without having to redrill other rotors. Ideally, they would be a bit bigger as some have reported a little bit of the pad can hang off the edge of the rotor. I'll take a look on at my current brakes today or tomorrow to compare them. It seems a lot of people in the Sonic community have done this mod and haven't reported any issues about the biasing, but I'm not sure how aggressive the pads they run are. The Camaro calipers are also 2 piston while the stock calipers only have 1 piston.

That certainly isn't a bad idea to get cheap pads to try out. It appears there are a ton of options out there for around $20 or less. I'll probably end up doing that because it will still have better braking power than my current setup. 

Just took the measurements...

Each Camaro pad is approximately 10.5 square inches compared to the Sonic's 9 square inch pad. Combined, the Camaro has 42 square inches of pad compared to the Sonic's 36.

Each Camaro piston has approximately 2.405 square inches compared to the Sonic's 2.55 square inches. The Camaro calipers have 4 pistons combined while the Sonic has 2. This is 9.62 square inches total compared to the Sonic's 5.1 square inches.

 I'm not exactly sure what to do with this info now haha

EDIT: Just measured the rears calipers and pads I will be putting on. 18.12 square inches of pad and 4.53 square inches of piston total.

Can the stock master cylinder move enough fluid to make those brakes work and still have a good pedal stroke?

StopTech "Sport" pads are cheap and may be suitable for your purposes. 

Personally, I use Napa Adaptive Ones in my daily that sees very occasional autocross use. 

In reply to spandak :

I haven't seen that anyone has had that problem from the people who have already done these swaps. There is also a company that sells kits for both of these and I haven't seen anything mentioned about the master cylinder needing any work at all, so I assume it will be okay.

In reply to Greg Smith :

I was looking into those, but I think I'd rather get some more track focused pads because I don't mind the dust or noise; the price certainly isn't terrible though, so those are still a maybe. 

Picked up the rear axle beam yesterday. Not sure how I'll do the swap-swap the whole thing or just the hubs. It looks to be four bolts either way. I've ordered pads and rotors for the rear, went with Porterfield R4-S pads and basic coated rotors. 

I'll be doing this swap in a few weeks after I get done with tests and finals. 

Is the torsion rear beam stiffer on the RS model?

I know the Fiesta ST and regular Fiesta have two different rates for the rear torsion beam. Check to see if the RS version is stiffer than your stock assembly. It might be worth it to add some rate to the rear to get some more rotation.

Also, while you have it out, see if you can fill the bushings in the front to stiffen it up a bit. Some poly window weld or similar overnight is enough from my past experiences. Just duct tape each side, fill it with poly and let it sit to harden.

In reply to kevinatfms :

I don't believe that there is any difference between the beams; I haven't been able to find anything about it and everything seems exactly the same. The one on my car currently has a rear brace that I will 100% transfer over. I didn't think about the bushings at all and I'll definitely look more into doing that. Thanks for the suggestion.

You might be able to ask the GM parts counter person to look up the rear beam part number. If they are different, then they may very well be different. Worth a shot if the other beam is stiffer.