and everyone knows a doctor in a small village in scotland needs a 450/400 daily driver, 434/395 simply does not cut it

 

lol @ T-uk. But you know how he has to get every bitty liddle detail right.

I'll buy it off you then John (Banks) as mine has now done 50K and will do as a spare when i feel this one is starting to go off the boil.

Good thing is i already have all the bits i need to get it to run right away.

"Stuff the power, "feel the torque"!!"

 

Racing 9 plugs fitted, seem to behave nicely, slightly quieter knocklink over 7000 RPM, extremely smooth delivery, possibly a slight edge over the fresh PFR7B.

MAF lookup table put into MAP converter box so I can use original MAF calibration. Need to do the TPS code to allow acceleration enrichment.

Header gasket still leaking bad spool up slightly down.

Will change gear oil to Redline Lightweight, syntrax feels to have gone off slightly, synchros not as crisp as they were.

Exhaust must be catching the nearside rear driveshaft boot and it is almost permanently hanging off No number of cable ties keep it on. Have a Cherrybomb silencer section going to get welded in when the bigger turbo is fitted, so can revise then.

The daily dicing with the Talivans continues

And the torque is still magnificent

 

I've only had experience with the 9's on the rally car which of course is very different to your car John, but my only observation is that lots of short trip/continual cold starts give problems. (Probably won't affect you)

 

NGK are recommending 1 heat range for each additional 75-100 BHP. So for 450 BHP, the ideal would be 8 or 9 given that it is 6 in the car already. I hope with my higher compression that 9 is fine. It does get a pretty decent EGT on cruise, it would be more decent if the Talivans weren't there. I will blame them if the plugs foul

 

are you basing the original output on the 2.5 sti?

iridium 9s on order I think!

Paul

 

No was basing it on the 2.0, looks like the STi comes with 6Bs as well? In which case an 8 would be best.

I would have gone for 8s of choice rather than jumping two heat ranges. Not fouled so far with a few short trips today, we'll have to see. Cold start was immaculate. Manners seem fine - all Subarus are B******* when cold IMHO.

 

hmmm... my uncle everytime he sees me says "It would be a great car if you could get it to run on all 4 cylinders"
Bast4rd only saw one cold start 5months ago.. lol

Simon

 

Strange comment JB re: Subaru cold start.
I've not had any problems when using JECS, Link or GEMS.

 

I don't mean it won't start, but the usual bad manners and slight hesitation running closed loop on a low compression and cold engine. Only gets worse with bigger injectors, lighter flywheel, stiffer engine/box mounts etc. More a vibration/harshness issue than a problem.

I'd say that even when completely standard (with no faults) my Subaru was about the worst car to drive from cold of anything I've had, but I'm a whippersnappper and have only experienced stuff from the last 10 years, my first car being a 1995 Fiat Punto

It is probably not helped by what is a relatively big bore motor and STi cams.

 

My Impreza's had flawless cold starts for the last 5 years. Even after days of hill walking/climbing in severe weather it's always started first time and got us home.

As John said, it just slaps like a cheap tart and hesitates like her business

John, perhaps Alan's used to starting cars with a handle

 

Watch it!!..... I am old enough to remember seeing my neighbours starting their cars with a handle!!..and seeing folks with Mescherschmitts!!!

 

....and a bloke used to walk in front with a flag??

 

LOL. Mibbe not that old!!






I'll take that as a no then...

 

Sorry Alan, didn't mean not to answer. Might be a handy spare for me as I've got the EGTs hot enough to crack a weld on the manifold - unless it was just crap - (back to original manifold and lost 30 WHP and similar torque even with the same uppipe), T-uk reckons the pistons are not far behind. EJ257 would be my only spare engine block then.

If you want an EJ257 I think there is another group buy underway.

 

I meant to use it as a warning , to add a bit more fuel to keep things cooler. mind you , after fitting the standard (unported) headers I did note the fuelling was the richest I have seen it for a while.

 

Been thinking about it over the last few days.
Sensible tells me i should stick to 2litres cause of all the additional costs involved in going 2.5.
Been offered a rebuilt 2.0 shortblock, same as what i have for reasonable money,so tempted to stick it in a corner should i need it.

 

Fuelling is unchanged from the Gruppe-S on the same ECU map - about a week ago I richened it slightly. 12.0 from 3000-4000 then 11.7 from there upwards, on transients richens into the 10s briefly. I don't want to go richer on the road because of the plugs, don't want to really go leaner. It is dependent on methanol 10% to run 1.4 dropping to 1.2 bar at the top using good timing though.

If 12.5 is the area for theoretical maximum power, and the recommendation is to usually run 11.5, then running 11.7 is using about 80% of the usual extra fuel for cooling, and relying on 10% methanol which has 2-3 times greater cooling effect for the other 20%. If it is too hot I think the boost should drop, not richen the fuelling.

Difficult decision on engines Alan, I still wished I had had a rattle free 2.33 in a lot of ways.

 

Hi John

When mapping the other night with Bob my EGT's were around 850 degrees maybe a little higher in places! Glad i stuck with a lower compression ratio to keep them down a bit, but they look to still be getting hot on this turbo so it looks like a new turbo could be on the cards sooner rather than later

As i killed a brand new EGT sensor in the first hour of full boost mapping i will be moving it to the downpipe. Currently running 1.5bar pretty much all the way at the moment and the turbo seems to be holding up well!

Still got to work on the timing and fine tune a bit but will do this when the new induction kit turns up! On the delta dash test it came out with 353lb/ft wheel torque and 309bhp wheel power!

Rev limit is set at 7300 at the moment but does'nt really need going above 6800 as power seems to drop off due to size of turbo and timing at the moment!

Once the filter kit arives Bob thinks that one more session should see the optimum mapping for the the set-up on this turbo. Unfortunately we are not going to get enough time to do this for scooby shootout so i will be running as it is now! Going to power engineering next week so i can see what its going to produce

Scott

 

What turbo are you running Scott?

I didn't see much of a change in my EGTs with the higher compression, so I reckon it was less than 30C difference - difficult to test more repeatably than this anyway. Difficult to choose preference between 8.0 and 8.7:1 overall, fairly subtle differences.

 

It is John. On the one hand it would be great to have more power and torque than is ever necessary for a road car, but do we really need it? The cost to build such a thing is tremendous, which i fear some "group buyers" of the 2.5 may find out in due course.
I've still got the original 2.0 in my car but the cost of all the mods excluding labour still comes to the thick end of 10 grand. Granted this has been spread out over 5 years ( 2 grand/yr, app. £170/mnth, app.£40/wk), but it's still a fair amount of dosh in anyone's language.
With the 2.5 (which you are now using), you have a serious amount of money to spend on the setup even though you transferred the bits from your 2.0 on to it (gearbox, flywheel, clutch etc).

Those going on to 2.5's if they haven't got supporting components to take full advantage of the 2.5's potential could find themselves falling in to a big money pit before they get the benefit from it, so the cheap block price doesn't seem so cheap all of a sudden.
Don't get me wrong here, i'm not knocking the group buy that occurred for the 2.5 block, not one bit.
If you've got a knacked engine anyway, then it's a cheap replacement, but as you've shown on this thread, larger capacity brings its' own problems, which makes me wonder if it would have been better finding a like for like 2.0 block to get cars back on the road as cheaply as possible.

Food for thought?

 

Still on the lateral TD05/06, currently eyeing up turbo options but first things first, get it running properly on this one first

 

Agree entirely. It does sometimes seem worth it sometimes though when you compare what a similar performing car would cost out the box. I suppose depreciation on mods if sold separately and not on the car doesn't seem terribly worse than a newish car either. Then it is weighing up the costs of starting again with something like a Spec C or Evo, getting to 400 BHP on these would be trivial in comparison - probably just turbo, injectors, fuel pump, remap, induction, exhaust, under £3000 anyway or 350 BHP with just remap induction and exhaust for about half that? They already have the suspension, wheels/tyres/brakes, engine and drivetrain strength, rigidity it seems?

I really fancy a nice big V8 at some point though, probably normally aspirated, or a twin turbo (light pressure) six, but I would end up modifying the latter. Don't think I would do the Jap rally replica box again.

Upcoming RS3 looks interesting and quite reasonable as the 3.2 and twin turbos could go a long way and it is probably quite overengineered

 

400+bhp spec-c gets my vote. proper rev limit with equal space gearing and dccd

 

T-UK ... a man after my own heart there !!!

However with the right complimentary mods and assopciated components there is no reason a 2.5 should be limited on revs.

Scotts car will be limited as although his heads are ported he still has WRX heads and cams plus the TD05/6 turbo is too small thats clear. Its strangled above 6000 rpm.

bob (GL being identical in engine/power train terms)

 

Scott
Don't know anything about your car or its history.

Are we talking a 2.0 or a 2.5 litre car?

RS3 John? Yep, would get my vote.

 

Alan

I've got a UK300 with 2.5 USDM with the RCM Arrow rods and Omega pistons, Stuck with the standard WRX heads and cams although ported and bolted together with 14mm head bolts (not studs). 05/06 turbo with supporting mods

Scott

 

Scott,

This is unusual. I assume you had to have the block machined and tapped, and the heads machined too ?

Mark.

 

Are Scott's heads V5?
I would have thought the heads with porting work would have been okay for the 2.5 but the limitations seen on revs are down to the cam spec then?

 

I would think the robustness issue for not revving high on Scott's setup is the non-STi valvetrain but that the power drop is first the turbo choking then the cams limiting things?

The WRX heads are originally small port (which has been addressed by porting for Scott) but the cams are ever so slightly meaner than on the UK/Euro 99/00.

New age UK/Euro STi heads have slightly wilder cams again, but still small ports, although AVCS.

Some/most new age JDM STi heads have wilder still cams and big ports, and AVCS as well.

STi 5/6/P1 has moderate cams and big ports.

USDM 2.5 has similar (but with AVCS).

On mine, the valvetrain would be fine to 8000, the bottom end wouldn't, so the other way around, but the similar turbo chokes as early as 5300 RPM if you run enough boost. By choke - I mean the power curve flatlines thereafter.

Sounds like both Scott and I still have restrictive inlets though.