Alpenworks Automotive

I bid farewell to the Porsche about six weeks ago.  It was a fantastic car to drive, but nagging and potentially expensive issues convinced me that it was time to let it go.  Coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, I bought a 2015 WRX STI.  Here she sits, dirty and about 2 miles outside of the break-in period on one of my favorite driving roads: It's good to be back in Scooby.  As an prior owner of a GD STi, I can say this is a very different car.  The interior is a much nicer place to be and they finally sorted the chassis tuning.  The steering feedback is great, turn-in is fantastic and the car is a much more competent handler than any prior stock STI.  Actually, this STI is *almost* as composed in the twisty bits as the Evo X (yeah, I had one of those, too).  The inside of the STi is a much nicer place to be.  It's not luxurious, but it's far better than the late sixties eastern bloc motif sported by the Evo.  In addition to higher quality materials, it's

Part of my master plan is to use the first year as a shake down period for the car.  i.e. - catch up on deferred maintenance, fix whatever random (hopefully minor) stuff that pops up and get a baseline for engine health.  Here's how it's gone so far: I've already described the deferred maintenance and random fixes here .  By the time Christmas rolled around, I'd put around 5000 miles on the car.  That's only half of the Porsche recommended oil change interval, but I was curious about the condition of the oil and one of the local dealers sent me a coupon.  The dealer hooked me up with a Blackstone oil analysis kit & I sent of the sample the week after Christmas.  The results looked great.  There was no contamination of any sort and the metals look good compared to the universal averages at 3900 miles.  Based on the results of the test, I'm going to try a longer interval and it's nice to see that my IMS bearing is in good shape.