I had contact with David Power about remapping my ECU.
I also asked about fitting a bigger turbo to the engine. David wrote me, that with a
bigger turbo, ECU remap and their exhaust system the MY98 could reach about
300bhp and a lot of torque! (goodbye STI.....??)
(David, I hope I don't misquote you!)
I'm surprised, that nobody who had his car remapped went this way. I think you
don't like the bigger STI5 turbo?
The complete STI5 turbo kit from MRT costs about 900£ (+about 200£ fitting
costs). And the remap is 650£ (as everybody on SIDC knows).
Why am I writing this post? I want to know, what you guys think of fitting this kit and
having the ECU remapped. I also want to start a discussion about tuning the
"normal" engine "up" to STI level at low cost. Please don't misunderstand me! I don't
want to advertise anything, I'm not interested in selling something.
I know, that a lot of you have the PE phase1 conversion with a lot of torque, but
nevertheless personally I think your cars could be lots faster with a bigger turbo (and
of course remapped ECU) and there would not be noticeably more lag than with
small turbo. Am I wrong? What do you think?

ric :-)

 

I have a P E phase 1 upgrade on my STI 2 which has a larger turbo I believe than the UK spec cars.I am very pleased with this upgrade and feel the expense worth it.
I dont want to pour water on the fire here
but generally the bigger the turbo the greater the lag and this means real world performance on the road suffers. Latter STI,s
3 onwards are definetly quicker in standard trim although they run smaller turbos than mine they are more responsive and have an extended rev range.I have driven a quite a few Scoobies and I reckon the differances between all of them on the road is minimal,the latest STI seemed the smoothest power delivery but unless you are interested in messing with your ecu yourself (Brave!)there is at present little in the way of upgrades ie remaps available beyond version 4. I must say though if you read the blurb STI engines offer a higher state of readiness for further tuning.
Dont dismiss the P E phase 1 on a std UK car
a decent exhaust and down pipe with a remap will get you Sti power and more importantly torque at all but the extreme end of the rev range.
Importantly though its up to you , all I suggest is that if you are a power freak (most of us are !)be aware there is usually a price to pay for performance increases not always in simple costs.
Get lots of advise of others to avoid some known pitfalls.
Finally dont get too carried away with BHP the secret to a performance increases that really counts is high torque figures over a wide rev range.

 

Hi there,

Before you have any mapping done, get the rest of the mods sorted first.

I would suggest a complete exhaust system, induction kit (panel filter maybe).

As stated before the "larger" the turbo the more lag.

What people are finding is that a UK car will match if not beat an import low down...but once the import has built up enough revs/boost the turbo will push the car harder.

The early WRX/STI cars did have larger turbos, the version four and onwards had smaller ones. The later turbos are ball bearing (these allows them to spin up faster and minimise lag).

The trick is to find a turbo to match your requirements - day-to-day driving, dragging, rallying, track, etc.... because each of those will have different driving techniques and different demands on the engine.

You see cars (eg R5's producing 200+bhp) using massive turbos, those cars arent practicle for everyday driving - they have no response until the revs are at 4000-5000+

If you are looking at mod'ing a UK car, there are several weaknesses you need to look at: Conrods, conrod bolts, lifters, pistons and transmission.

At all depends on how far you want to go... Just bolt on mods ?

A cheap source of a turbo is an STI VF-23 or the larger VF-22 turbo, or one of an Liberty RS.

Anyways... tea time.... post here or email me if u want any more info...

Cheers,

J.