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Part 3 of Project Blue Boxer is comprised of a handful of very functional parts with a dash of style. A mixture of more power, better handling, and preventative modifications were all thrown at the car and we can honestly say the car is starting to set itself apart from the rest...finally.

For those of you that don’t know, a catch can is a device that is installed in the PCV (Positive Crankcase Ventilation) system. It “catches” all the oil vapor that passes from the crankcase back into the intake system where the crankcase is vented too. This oil vapor, as well as other nasty things that come out of the crankcase, has a very low octane rating. When the junk from the crankcase makes it's way into the cylinders, it can cause detonation and reduce the performance of the engine.

It's fun to tune the car right out of the box and it certainly feels much better than stock with more boost and a little more aggressive ECU mapping (for more about this, check out our Part 1 blog here). Our problem remains, though, that the stock components have such a low performance ceiling. The catalytic converters are extremely restrictive and the exhaust piping is small in diameter. This prevents the turbo from pushing further, as well as the cylinder from clearing and allowing you to advance timing and allow more air to move into the cylinder. The wheels are bulky and heavy and for being as small as they are, they certainly don't correspond with any weight advantage. After taking the car to the track with the completely stock suspension, brakes, and all season tires (which was really just to create a baseline, we knew we weren't going very fast without upgrading all this), it was clear that there was a huge amount of improvement to gain from a few basic upgrades.

So you have just purchased your dream car and you are now looking to make it your own. Where do you start? Where do you go? What are you going to do? You need to sit down come up with a goal, prioritize, plan, and then realize your goals. This is something that is both very easy, and very difficult at the same time.

Our 2013 Subaru WRX sedan was purchased used in completely stock condition. It originally had about 13,000 miles on it so it was very fresh and ready to accept some modifications. Our approach with this project is different than what we've done before. To be frank, we're not interested in pushing this car to the limit which is different than what we typically like to do (take, for example, our fragmented, blown engine block in our Ford Focus ST as a result of pushing the limits too far). Our WRX was bought with the intention of educating our WRX customers, EJ25 enthusiasts specifically, and anyone else interested.