Car Is Back Together

So my Steam Speed STX67 finally came in and the install went smoothly overall. The side exit pipe got heat wrapped and small things came together. Only managed to break one thing; the recirculation port on the plastic inlet duct ended getting sheared off. I promptly ordered a new one from Subaru, but the part was placed on backorder and didn't end up coming in till about 4 weeks later. In the meantime, I ended screwing in a flared hose fitting into the remainder of the port, which ended up being sturdier and more reliable than the stock port. A few buddies and I spent the Sunday morning of my dyno tune modifying the front bumper to fit with the new exhaust and it ended up being a huge success. Honestly couldn't have asked for a better line-up of the hole we ended up cutting. I also sandwiched 2 stainless steel heat shields on either side of the bumper to prevent melting and fire hazard of the bumper. Other than that, I made the switch to Amsoil so I am back on a 5W30 formula with an Amsoil filter and supposedly 15,000mile oil change interval. I had been using Rotella T6 5W40 for the duration of this engine's life, but I decided to give Amsoil's legendary claims a try and I'm happy with it so far. As for the dyno, this was my second time on the rollers with Anthony (Drunkmann Tuning). He's a real awesome guy and he knows what he's doing. Unfortunately however, we ran into some issues with the wastegate not opening on the new Steam Speed turbo. After troubleshooting, swapping vacuum lines, and a whole bunch of headache, we narrowed down the problem to the wastegate itself. Whether the wastegate is faulty or if the spring pressure is too high, we don't know yet. At this point, the next step would be to bench test the wastegate actuator to see if it is opening under the correct pressure and/or swap out the wastegate spring to a lighter spring. It's very frustrating and disappointing that we weren't able to complete tuning because of this issue. I am very short on time and resources right now, so this wastegate issue probably won't be resolved until next year. As for getting a chance to get on the dyno for a protune again, it may be even longer. Anthony tuned what he could with the low end power of the car. AFR needed some tweaking because of the new exhaust and such. In the end, the car can still be daily driven as long as the boost is kept low. If I were to floor it, the boost will just keep building until the engine blows. I'll probably take advantage of this downtime with mechanical issues to upgraded such things as the clutch, but that's about all I really have left to upgrade before I'm ready for another protune. PS: I added some custom touches to the interior as well too. ;P

Solid Mounts, New Exhaust, etc.

I've been pretty lazy again and haven't been updating this blog. I picked up and installed the trifecta of solid mounts from Aluminati. This includes motor mounts, transmission mount, and pitch stop mount, all made from solid billet aluminum and very high quality. The car feels like a completely different beast now! A lot more vibrations and rattles here and there, but the connection and predictability I can now feel with the vehicle is beyond worth it. I didn't buy the car to drive luxuriously anyway. The turboback exhaust went up for sale as well, since I had a custom pipe made for the car. I'll let the pics explain for themselves. Turbo from Steam Speed got pushed back yet again. As of right now, I'm waiting for a journal bearing STX67. Really hoping it gets here in time before my dyno tune in June. Other than that, I'll be modifying the bumper some more to accommodate for the new exhaust and I'll get around to wrapping the pipe whenever my PTP Lava Wrap gets here. I'll try to do a better job of updating this blog in a more organized fashion. >_< Video to first start with new exhaust! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HqcmWcL01w

Small Projects Here and There

Since my last update, I did a few new things here and there and cleaned some things up. The stock turn signals are now completely deleted, and I am running Diode Dynamics' LED switchback C-light as my DRL/turn signal. Quite an impressive product with plenty of brightness. They told me they are releasing a plug-and-play harness for the product and will be sending that to me in the upcoming weeks, so I'm interested to see how much simpler they make the job of wiring the harness. While the headlights were out, I also opted to paint the chrome housings black before I put it all back together. Other than that, I ended up putting a JDM grille into the bumper and threw on a red/black Subaru replacement emblem I had laying around. Still debating on what to with the fog light housing area where the stock turn signals used to sit. I may cut out the entire area, or I may fab up some sort of cover plate to cover it. I've been pretty indecisive lately and brainstorming a million ideas. Still working on the decision factor. I switched up the mounting point for my windshield washer pump and mounted it directly beneath my Killer B dual reservoir for a cleaner, simpler setup. This pretty much involved extending the wires and hose for the pump, and attempting to get a good seal with the pump/grommet under the reservoir. The seal isn't perfect and it leaks a bit of washer fluid here and there, but it'll do for now until I think of a better solution. Also rigged up some Hella Horns so now I have working horns again. I hadn't been running them for a few months since the FMIC forced me to ditch everything that didn't fit. It feels good to be legal and safe again.

I ordered the BB STX 67 stock location turbo from Steam Speed, and have pretty high expectations for when it gets here around May. I also may have a custom exhaust setup coming soon as well. When I go to get retuned, I'll be happy with a conservative powerband around 350hp. Through the tests of time, there are a few people I have observed bending their stock rods when the car starts pushing closer to 400hp. I definitely want to avoid that as I have no intentions of rebuilding the engine anytime soon. I may do a few vinyl accents on the headlights, and I also want my roof wrapped in gloss black. Hopefully all the plans get moving along nicely.

Always Breaking Something

So I've been gone for the last 4 weeks and I wanted to put out a little update on what's been going on with Seolhyun. Shortly before I left, I attempted to go in and fix the boost leak I had at the charge pipe turbo connection but ended up making it worse. Really wishing this turbo used a silicone coupler system as opposed to a two-bolt flange design. Anyhow, one of the bolts that holds the charge pipe on ended being cross-threaded, and I broke the bolt in the process of trying to get the charge pipe bolted down. We tried a few different extraction methods to remove it, included welding nuts to it, external extractor, etc. No luck with any of that, so the next step would be to remove the turbo altogether so that I can put some decent tooling on it, whether it be drilling, reverse bit, and/or vice grips. Not a lot of room to work with the turbo mounted in such a low position and so close to the radiator. At this point, I'm waiting for someone on the market to make a replacement turbo for a least invasive upgrade. If I'm going to go through the hassle of removing the stock turbo, I figured that I might as well upgrade it. RD Engineering is working on a stock frame, upgraded internals turbo right now that is supposed to be pushing the stock longblock upwards of 400hp. That's the product I'm most interested in right now. Whenever that hits the market and I'm able to get my hands on it, I'll be sure to put out an update on my mindset for everything. Until then, I think I will slap some more RTV Copper on it so that I can get a better seal with my one-bolt flange. The car drives, but it knocks like crazy when under boost.

Tidying Things Up

I spent a few hours at the shop today doing some little things here and there. I'm a few hundred miles past 6000 on the odometer right now, so I did a tire rotation/inspection about a week ago as per FSM. Today I dropped my J-pipe and wrapped it in PTP Lava Wrap and secured it with some worm gear clamps. I had been meaning to do this for quite a while now, but am just now getting around to it since I wasn't looking forward to dropping the exhaust again. All went pretty smoothly and I replaced the turbo exhaust gasket with one from GrimmSpeed which is about 7x thicker than OEM and employs a fire ring design to prevent it from leaking in the long run. I also installed Perrin's brake master cylinder brace, which was a huge PITA to install. So many bolts to torque down with almost no room to work. Did not really notice any brake feel difference on the way home. Maybe I'll do more extensive testing on the brace in the future. Got rid of the F1 4th brake light. Getting ready to sell that since the rear end won't be needing it once it gets chopped up. Saw my heat wrap getting smokey at red lights on the way home, as expected. Hopefully it stays tight and does its job! I also got the charge pipe gasket from ETS in the mail today. It's just a thick paper gasket. Kinda curious to see if this will really hold my boost better than the RTV Copper will and hoping that once I put this in, my boost leak is solved. Not really looking forward to tearing apart the front end just to get to the charge pipe, but it is what it is. Might make some more bumper tweaks while it's off.... Stay tuned.

Dyno Day With Drunkmann Tuning

Seolhyun got her first Dyno ProTune on Sunday, December 20th, 2015. I was aiming for a torque range of 350-380ftlb but fell short due to some technical difficulties. In the end, she made 340hp, 340tq on stock longblock, stock turbo, with a slipping clutch and and a small boost leak. I have read many accounts of people having issues with the stock clutch slipping once it starts pushing additional power so I was ready to accept that as one of the technical difficulties. The boost leak however, was something I definitely did not expect to see, especially after putting so much crunch time and effort into the final preps before the tune. The boost curve was pretty smooth, other than few occasional dips below 20psi, but there was a huge power drop after about 5800rpm most likely linked to the leak. After getting protuned, most FA20DITs have a solid power curve all the way to the 6700rpm redline. https://youtu.be/eGDmOg4IIl0

I gave ETS a call today to see if they had any help to offer on tracking down the boost leak. Originally their FMIC kit didn't come with a charge pipe gasket (uses a 2-bolt flange) so their instructions were to form my own gasket using RTV Copper between the charge pipe and turbo. After talking with them today, they told me that they had finally got their first production batch of pre-made gaskets in and they would send me one free of charge since my kit had not originally came with one. What a relief! Although I'm not looking forward to taking apart the whole front end again to go in and rework the charge-pipe-to-turbo mating, I'm hopeful that this will solve my problem. From there I can test, datalog, and get my map back up to full power courtesy of Drunkmann Tuning.

Front End Tweaks

The FMIC ended up changing a lot of things that I did not foresee. There are no instructions for the kit, so you're kinda left to figure it out unless you rely on phone tech support during the work week. I had to get rid of my Hella Horn setup, so the car is currently without horns. I had to go back in and make my own RTV Copper gasket for the chargepipe to turbo mating.

The front crash beam is gone, a driver's side support brace is gone, the stock windshield washer reservoir is replaced with a Killer B Dual Reservoir, and I opted to take a custom approach to the front end in order to enable lots of airflow to still get to the FMIC. I took the bumper to GX Auto in Waipahu for some custom work, and it was still a pretty tight fit to get the bumper back on. In the near future I am looking to cut out the fog light housings as it is against my hot and cold side piping, preventing the bumper from seating all the way. I'm just happy it's done and ready for now before the dyno tune. I've gotten a lot of crazy stares and compliments on how the setup is currently sitting, but it's still miles away from where I want it to be.