2007 Subaru STi – The Gray Goose – Introduction

Hey everyone,

For those of you that don’t know me, I’ve been in charge of the sales & customer service at Touge Tuning for a couple years and through this I’ve developed the love for Subarus that I’m sure most of you already have. So far it has been a great experience being able to get to know a lot of great people in this community and following your builds. I look forward to getting to know you guys even better as I take this journey building my own car. I’d like to invite all of you to join me as I look transform this car into my ideal daily driven STi. I want to have an ultra reliable car that has a decent amount of power and torque that I can drive to the track, have some fun and drive home without worry. I’ll also be showcasing some of the brands and products available here at Touge Tuning that you may or may not be aware of. This won’t be a no holds barred build with an unlimited budget as this is my personal ride and I’m just finishing University. While I’m around this stuff all the time I haven’t had the opportunity to build my own car from stock. My current Subaru is a 2002 WRX Wagon that has well over 350,000KM on the stock motor. It has a V39 Swap, STi injectors, K&N Intake and a Catted Turbo-Back. This car has served me well but it’s time for me to get into something newer.

So let’s just get right into the good stuff, this journal is going to be about a new to me 2007 STi that we recently picked up from a fellow Subaru enthusiast. The owner was aware it had a head gasket issue which isn’t a big deal for us to repair and the price was right. The previous owner had just picked up a new 2016 Subaru STi to replace this 2007 so he’s keeping it in the family! The car has 242,000km on it but the body is in good condition for the mileage and the interior looks almost new. The first step on the path is to repair the head gasket so I can get to modding. Normally on a lower mileage vehicle we would just replace the head gaskets and call it a day, but since the motor was coming out anyways I decided now would be a good time to refresh the bottom end. I set aside a couple hours after work and we got the motor out and disassembled. To keep things simple, I’ll just be putting in some oversized forged pistons, upgraded main & rod bearings, head studs, and obviously new head gaskets. Next update I’ll begin with the motor assembly and list some of the other upgrades that will be happening in the future.