Danny Boy
17 December 2005, 19:25
Not a Mitsy but my experiences with my impreza so far, a bit of background before the next step.
This project started for me in 2003 when I bought my standard MY99 Uk turbo I had been after an Impreza for a while but this was the first time the insurance companies had actually talked to me rather than just laugh down the telephone! :cry: It was a very nice clean example with only 14.5K miles in three years, owned by one accountant (not always the most mechanically sympathetic profession :norty: :D ) who chopped it in for a new sti.
It actually stayed standard for about a year due to high insurance premiums:rolleyes: and it still being under warranty, but with the constant reading of scoobynet and 22B I soon succumbed to the modding bug and a second hand Scoobysports back box from ‘Gene the roofer’ was in my boot ready to fit, which I did the very same day in my lunch hour in the works carpark! Mod number one, it now sounded better and had a slightly better throttle response making toe and heeling a bit easier.:thumb:
After some more advice was gleaned from some of the more knowledgeable types online I was scouring the for sale forums for some more exhaust parts and had soon bagged a Scoobysports open neck down pipe from ‘Top Dog’ a Magnex straight through centre section ‘new’, a dawes device ‘new’, a knocklink from ‘Andy Tang’ and a autometer ultralite boost gauge ‘new’.
With all this fitted and the down pipe wrapped with some rally design exhaust wrap and with the turbo now running a healthy 1.1bar I headed off to the pod with a friend of mine that has a Celica GT4 with a few mods. It was a very cold day with ambient temps of not much more than 6C and a stiff wind, we both came home very happy after five runs having produced almost identical times of 13.7 seconds flat at 95ish miles an hour.:luxhello: :D
Stage two happened about six months later, I decided to get an Ecutek remap from BRD spurred on by a group buy. But to make the most of it in the mean time I added a few extras to the mods list (feature creep is great isn’t it!)
Some more for sale forum action turned up an Sti5 TMIC from Stevebt and a set of Gruppe-s tubular exhaust manifolds and a helix flexi up pipe from Simon Horton which were duly wrapped and sprayed ready to go on the car. A set of Samco boost hoses was ordered from Rally Design and a Sti Panel filter from another group buy.
With all this ready to go it then took another five months before Bob and I could find a mutual date we were both free! That’s what you get for working a lot of weekends.
My first mapping session was quite an experience, learnt a lot from picking Bob’s brains as we went along and boy did she shift at the end of it. But by the time I got home she had started to stall on the coast down to a halt and there was a bit more knocklink noise than I would have liked up at higher revs so a quick call back to Bob and we arranged to have another look the next day, a couple of frustrating hours later where Bob was looking more and more aggravated with his laptop we had diagnosed a bug in the latest version of mapping software! Once we had found that it was a fairly simple job to cure my issues. (the car’s issues that is, mine would take more than Bob’s laptop to sort!:eek: )
The butt dyno said yes because of the great torque hit but the numbers never really stacked up on the strip a few more drag days saw almost no improvement on my 13.7 with my best now being a 13.6 second quarter. It later turned out that the MAF had popped after the first mapping session and we had most likely mapped to a failing MAF sensor the second time round, it ran quite happily like this for about ten months, just not producing what it should have done.
All this extra go needed some extra stopping so a set of Pagid Black pads and 8 groove disks were added with goodridge braided hoses all round and Motul Brake fluid.
Just as I was planning the next stage of mods some other more major modifications were made to the car by a couple of Third parties which put my plans back by a good six months. First of all a complete monkey reversed a 7.5ton truck into the front of the car in the paddock at donnington causing this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0388small.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0389small.jpg
Fortunately the damage was only minor but took a long time to get his insurance company to sort it out and pay up, all the usual hassles about not using the approved repairer network etc:rolleyes: . Whilst she was in I got the door handles, wing mirrors and rear bumper extensions colour coded to get rid of some of the nasty black bits.
Took about three months in total to get that fixed, then only two weeks after I had it back straight again another monkey decides to park a Range Rover in the boot at a round about, he hit me whilst I was stationary at about 25mph causing all this damage.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0614small.jpg
Me and the missus were ok, no sore necks or anything and I’m not the type to be making up a fictitious whiplash claim, because that’s most of the reason why all our insurance premiums are so ridiculously high from people claiming fraudulently:nono: . It still amazes me how many companies there are out there that thrive on the compensation culture and positively encourage you to claim for the most stupid little things, but that’s another thread all together!:brickwall :mad:
All the mods were stripped off the car just incase it was written off as I would never get back what they were worth even though they were covered, the insurance assessor reckoned it was repairable so off it went to the clinic to get sorted out last chistmas.
Kev and the lads did a great job straightening out the car and it came back straighter than when it came out of the factory. The addition of a new (to me) set of wheels and tyres from Keigo and the reinstating of all the mods left her looking like this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/DSC00013small.jpg
However now all the mods were back on she had started stalling on the run down to a halt again.
I was on the sensor failure hunt but there were no fault codes coming up on the SECS unit, but after some fiddling around she seemed to run better with the lambda disconnected, so off to the local dealer for a new lambda and MAF sensor just to be sure.
This cured the stalling and a small amount of det I had on the knocklink when it was really hot had disappeared as well, but now she was running really rich, loads of black unburnt fuel on the exhaust tip. Yes even more than normal!:eek: This is when the penny dropped about what must have happened with the MAF sensor.
So roll on the next stage, whilst the car had been in being straightened over Christmas 04 I had acquired Tim Whiteside’s old MD304 through a third party, a Walbro 255lph in tank fuel pump and performed the snorkelectomy on the car, installed a 911 style drinks bottle catch tank gave her a fresh drink of Motul and a new set of PFR7B’s and took another visit to see Bob.
The results this time were much better, I have lost the real torque kick for now to keep the standard gearbox intact but she now pulls strongly all the way to the red line where the old tdo4 would run out of puff about 5krpm.
The long put off visit to Powerstaion for alignment and bumpsteer mod was performed next, plus before I went I added whiteline solid drop links all the way round, whiteline 22mm adjustable rear ARB and the antilift kit. The proper alignment that Curtis did transformed the cars handling for the better, which gave me the confidence to push on a bit more in the corners.
All that effort culminated in a couple of recent rolling road days one at powersation, and another at scoobyclinic.
Next installment to follow shortly:
Dan.
This project started for me in 2003 when I bought my standard MY99 Uk turbo I had been after an Impreza for a while but this was the first time the insurance companies had actually talked to me rather than just laugh down the telephone! :cry: It was a very nice clean example with only 14.5K miles in three years, owned by one accountant (not always the most mechanically sympathetic profession :norty: :D ) who chopped it in for a new sti.
It actually stayed standard for about a year due to high insurance premiums:rolleyes: and it still being under warranty, but with the constant reading of scoobynet and 22B I soon succumbed to the modding bug and a second hand Scoobysports back box from ‘Gene the roofer’ was in my boot ready to fit, which I did the very same day in my lunch hour in the works carpark! Mod number one, it now sounded better and had a slightly better throttle response making toe and heeling a bit easier.:thumb:
After some more advice was gleaned from some of the more knowledgeable types online I was scouring the for sale forums for some more exhaust parts and had soon bagged a Scoobysports open neck down pipe from ‘Top Dog’ a Magnex straight through centre section ‘new’, a dawes device ‘new’, a knocklink from ‘Andy Tang’ and a autometer ultralite boost gauge ‘new’.
With all this fitted and the down pipe wrapped with some rally design exhaust wrap and with the turbo now running a healthy 1.1bar I headed off to the pod with a friend of mine that has a Celica GT4 with a few mods. It was a very cold day with ambient temps of not much more than 6C and a stiff wind, we both came home very happy after five runs having produced almost identical times of 13.7 seconds flat at 95ish miles an hour.:luxhello: :D
Stage two happened about six months later, I decided to get an Ecutek remap from BRD spurred on by a group buy. But to make the most of it in the mean time I added a few extras to the mods list (feature creep is great isn’t it!)
Some more for sale forum action turned up an Sti5 TMIC from Stevebt and a set of Gruppe-s tubular exhaust manifolds and a helix flexi up pipe from Simon Horton which were duly wrapped and sprayed ready to go on the car. A set of Samco boost hoses was ordered from Rally Design and a Sti Panel filter from another group buy.
With all this ready to go it then took another five months before Bob and I could find a mutual date we were both free! That’s what you get for working a lot of weekends.
My first mapping session was quite an experience, learnt a lot from picking Bob’s brains as we went along and boy did she shift at the end of it. But by the time I got home she had started to stall on the coast down to a halt and there was a bit more knocklink noise than I would have liked up at higher revs so a quick call back to Bob and we arranged to have another look the next day, a couple of frustrating hours later where Bob was looking more and more aggravated with his laptop we had diagnosed a bug in the latest version of mapping software! Once we had found that it was a fairly simple job to cure my issues. (the car’s issues that is, mine would take more than Bob’s laptop to sort!:eek: )
The butt dyno said yes because of the great torque hit but the numbers never really stacked up on the strip a few more drag days saw almost no improvement on my 13.7 with my best now being a 13.6 second quarter. It later turned out that the MAF had popped after the first mapping session and we had most likely mapped to a failing MAF sensor the second time round, it ran quite happily like this for about ten months, just not producing what it should have done.
All this extra go needed some extra stopping so a set of Pagid Black pads and 8 groove disks were added with goodridge braided hoses all round and Motul Brake fluid.
Just as I was planning the next stage of mods some other more major modifications were made to the car by a couple of Third parties which put my plans back by a good six months. First of all a complete monkey reversed a 7.5ton truck into the front of the car in the paddock at donnington causing this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0388small.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0389small.jpg
Fortunately the damage was only minor but took a long time to get his insurance company to sort it out and pay up, all the usual hassles about not using the approved repairer network etc:rolleyes: . Whilst she was in I got the door handles, wing mirrors and rear bumper extensions colour coded to get rid of some of the nasty black bits.
Took about three months in total to get that fixed, then only two weeks after I had it back straight again another monkey decides to park a Range Rover in the boot at a round about, he hit me whilst I was stationary at about 25mph causing all this damage.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/Damage/DSCN0614small.jpg
Me and the missus were ok, no sore necks or anything and I’m not the type to be making up a fictitious whiplash claim, because that’s most of the reason why all our insurance premiums are so ridiculously high from people claiming fraudulently:nono: . It still amazes me how many companies there are out there that thrive on the compensation culture and positively encourage you to claim for the most stupid little things, but that’s another thread all together!:brickwall :mad:
All the mods were stripped off the car just incase it was written off as I would never get back what they were worth even though they were covered, the insurance assessor reckoned it was repairable so off it went to the clinic to get sorted out last chistmas.
Kev and the lads did a great job straightening out the car and it came back straighter than when it came out of the factory. The addition of a new (to me) set of wheels and tyres from Keigo and the reinstating of all the mods left her looking like this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/DanLewis/DSC00013small.jpg
However now all the mods were back on she had started stalling on the run down to a halt again.
I was on the sensor failure hunt but there were no fault codes coming up on the SECS unit, but after some fiddling around she seemed to run better with the lambda disconnected, so off to the local dealer for a new lambda and MAF sensor just to be sure.
This cured the stalling and a small amount of det I had on the knocklink when it was really hot had disappeared as well, but now she was running really rich, loads of black unburnt fuel on the exhaust tip. Yes even more than normal!:eek: This is when the penny dropped about what must have happened with the MAF sensor.
So roll on the next stage, whilst the car had been in being straightened over Christmas 04 I had acquired Tim Whiteside’s old MD304 through a third party, a Walbro 255lph in tank fuel pump and performed the snorkelectomy on the car, installed a 911 style drinks bottle catch tank gave her a fresh drink of Motul and a new set of PFR7B’s and took another visit to see Bob.
The results this time were much better, I have lost the real torque kick for now to keep the standard gearbox intact but she now pulls strongly all the way to the red line where the old tdo4 would run out of puff about 5krpm.
The long put off visit to Powerstaion for alignment and bumpsteer mod was performed next, plus before I went I added whiteline solid drop links all the way round, whiteline 22mm adjustable rear ARB and the antilift kit. The proper alignment that Curtis did transformed the cars handling for the better, which gave me the confidence to push on a bit more in the corners.
All that effort culminated in a couple of recent rolling road days one at powersation, and another at scoobyclinic.
Next installment to follow shortly:
Dan.