Our Factory Five 818 Gets Some Upgrades

We had taken our project Factory Five 818 autocrossing and while it performed well, there were a couple issues we wanted to rectify. First of all, our intake temperatures were very high. It seemed that the intercooler wasn’t getting enough airflow to cool incoming air. That makes sense. After all, the intercooler is mounted in the back and with the street-going version, it doesn’t recieve a whole lot of air flow. Also, the shifter action was not what we would call easy.

Enter Wayne Presley from VeryCoolParts. We had initially built the car in Wayne’s shop, and now that we had a couple issues to address, we called him back. After all, he actually specializes in these Subaru-powered Factory Fives.

The new intercooler kit includes a larger intercooler core which is connected to a large heat exchanger that sits at the front of the car, cooling the water inside like a radiator. Of course, all this would be useless without a pump to move the water from one end of the car to the other. The pump mounts at the front, right next to the battery. After installation we never saw the “high intake temperature” alarm again.

Now for the shifter. Sure, it may be more of a feel preference, but shifting this 818 can be a chore. the original kit comes with a shifter and wire linkage that runs from the shifter, through the front bulkhead into the front of the car, through the side of the frame and then runs all the way back to the very rear where it meets the transmission. Surely there must be a better way.

Wayne hooked us up with a K-Tuned shifter made of billet aluminum. Not only does it look sharp, but the new linkage runs straight from the shifter to the transmission. Shifting is now slightly easier.

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