2002 Subaru Impreza WRX *22.03.2014 - NOW WITH ADDED BOOOST!!!*...

[Willis]

09 March 2014;

So today we were blessed with some sunshiiine again so it was tools out time. These things are just like Lego Technics!!!

Got a couple of things ticked off the list, namely Aux Belt and also AC removal. One took twelve mintutes, the other took an hour.

1; Loosen this...



2; Loosen this...



3; Loosen this...



04; Loosen this...



05; Wind away at this until the alternator drops and the belt slackens...



06; Wiggle this off the pulleys, admire the fact that it's done 90,000Miles and ISN'T a service item...







07; Replace with some goodness from Gates (my preferred brand), cost me the grand sum of £12 from Import Car Parts, then repeat steps 6-1 in reverse...



Then came the AC removal. Not the most difficult of jobs to be honest, a couple of bolts were a bit awkward to get to due to the layout of the engine and the fact that all of the ancillaries sit within the crank width of the engine. If this was a V they'd all be crammed within the V itself, that's probably an easier way to put it. The AC on these runs off it's own belt which had already been removed. A quick prod of the pressure valves to check there was no nasty stuff in the pipes and I was away. Unfortunately I didn't get any during photos of this as I was mostly swearing at two bolts and then wrestling with the radiator to try and get the condensor out between that and the slam panel hahaha!!! I'd guess at a weight saving of 10-15KG, plus increased airflow through the radiator now that the condensor isn't sat in front of it like a big heat sink. The pipe leading into the cabin has just been cut for now so I'll order a bung for that and seal it up later this week, it's not doing any harm as it is but it'll look better sealed off. This now leaves me with an AC switch on the dash that can be utilised for other things, I'm thinking launch control or a secondary map!!! :w00t:

One downside today is that the very bottom bar of the front panel is rotten. Properley rotten. There was what can only be descirbed as compost wedged between that and the condensor and the constant moisture looks to have taken its toll. Fortunately though, it isn't a weight bearing part nor does it support anything as the radiator sits on the engine subframe itself. The options are either get a full new front panel from a breakers and swap it over, big-ish job but it's only nuts and bolts. Or, cut out the bottom bit and weld in some nice new steel flat. Luckily the lad next door is a Volvo Plant mobile technician and has a van full of toys which he said I can borrow for a four pack. Winning.

Anyway, here's a before and after showing her light-less (new bulbs in, woohoo!!!), the removed gubbins and the space left by the AC compressor (Calsonic no less) which will be filled with a catch tank...







Note the RaceChild and ''Man Picnic'' in the second photo!!! :thumbup:

 

[Foxspeed]

busy man :jase:

 

[Willis]

21 March 2014;

I had a week on ''holdiay'' from work this week which was meant to be a detailing and general tidying up week but what actually happened was I got offered thirty hours overtime on top of my holiday pay for helping them out and covering a couple of shifts. It would've been rude not too, that's a good chunk of change into the car funds. The days I worked turned out to be the days with decent weather, so that was the detailing not getting done but I did manage to get the time to remove and clean the intercooler, remove the BOV and refit the standard recirc' (with new OEM gasket) I'd picked up a few weeks back. Infact, due to not quite fitting it right and being left with a slight boost like, I did that job twice hahaha!!! But on the upside, I can now get the intercooler off in around four minutes which if you've never worked on one of these is mighty fast.

On top of that, my oil catch tank arrived (0.5L black powdercoated aluminium, nothing too blingy) but I've not fitted that yet (I'll come to that a little later) and also my eBay bargain find of an undertray arrived as well. I've not fitted that either yet as I couldn't be arsed scrabbling about on the wet driveway, plus I need to figure out how many and what size bolts it needs yet. Oh and also some new rubber trims for the inside edge of the rear arches arrived, again not fitted, due to the previsouly mentioned sh!te weather and lack of detailing action. Bascially it was a week of deliveries, not all bad though, it's always nice to get car parts through the door!!! :lol:

22 March 2014;

Two updates in one, you lucky lucky readers!!!

CAMS Performance - Lots of brews and perving at Subaru-based porn.
TeamCarr - Healthcheck, TGV lockout, MAF to MAP sensor conversion, three port boost solenoid fitting and OpenSource live engine remapping.

Ok so despite being very happy with Nina on the whole and being very happy with her performance, I did think that she was running a little lumpy (initially put down to being stood at the dealers and then having to use half a tank of 95RON fuel). It was time to speak to somebody about some mapping. Two names kept popping up, strangely enough both of them were Andrew, one Carr and the other Forrest. I went with Andrew Carr (TeamCarr). Now she'd been advertised as running on a DASTEK management system but after speaking to Andrew and him requesting some photos of the installation so that he could allocate time to remove it etc., it became apparent that the DASTEK had been removed. With no invoices for any other ECU work and the lumpy running, alarm bells started ringing that maybe (somewhat amazingly) she was trying to run on the standard map!?! Sh!t happens, adapt and overcome and all that.

Andrew travels throughout the UK to carry out mapping but when he's home he uses CAMS Performance as his base. I'll be honest and say I'd not heard of them before but finding the car park full of all manner and variation of Subaru's, plus the workshop housing two Time Attack cars, a Mk.1 Escort STi (STi engine and full AWD running gear) and a pant-wetter of a Spec-C I knew she was in safe hands. I handed the keys over to Andrew and he explained what he'd be doing, checked everything over and off he went for a preliminary run. He wasn't happy, feedback was that she's got a healthy engine but there's more lag than there should be and she did indeed feel lumpy. Now to me she felt laggy compared to Nicole's instant twin-scroll spool and it'd been a few years since I'd driven an Impreza so it was hard for me to judge.

I had a brew with the CAMS lads whilst Andrew set about the MAF to MAP conversion and setting up the new three port boost solenoid. The conversion invloved fitting the intercooler with an air temp sensor and some general electrical f?ckery which was beyond my understanding but involved wires and soldering. The solenoid was a straight swap for the standard item and would allow greater control and manipulation of all things boost related. And the TGV is a system of butterflies within the inlet manifold that Subaru use to help fiddle emissions tests, f?cketh that, be gone green things!!!

A base map was loaded up and off she went for a test run. The verdict was much the same, still lumpy, still a lot of lag, but better than the first attempt. In went the laptop, up came some graphs and spreadsheets (non-techincal term) and after a bit of keyboard f?ckery it was time for another run. Much better, not perfect but much better. So, out came the laptop again, a bit more keyboard f?ckery, and off she went... I think in total it took around two hours for the mapping to be perfected with the final verdict being ''she's a bit different now, still a bit of lag but that's the nature of the turbo''. Earlier in the week I'd mentioned in passing that I wasn't sure how accurate the boost gauge was, Andrew had checked it against the readings on his laptop and it was actually -/+ 1PSI of what he was seeing. I told him I'd never seen it go above 10PSI, he just laughed and told me it now goes off the clock (20PSI) hahaha!!!

Job done, many thanks, pennies exchanged and it was time for my first drive. What a difference!!! Nice and smooth, loads more oomph and a comical kick in the arse once the turbo wakes up. Now this is what an Impreza is meant to feel like. Raw and a bit mental. She even managed a little four wheel drift coming off a roundabout on the way home, made me feel like Olly Clark hahaha!!! I've now also got the option to run flatshift, anti-lag and launch control, not sure about the last two but I'm tempted to give the flatshift a try at some point. This is all on the standard ECU, pretty impressive stuff.

No photos today with the weather being sh!te and no rolling road figures but the estiamte is 300-320BHP. :thumbup:

My little to-do list is slowly but surely getting shorter.

 

[Robo_#1]

Awesome stuff, I need another run out in Nina now she's running right .

Also, get her over to Sheffield for a detailing session