Subadozer

Not trying to be a asshole but what kind of "Tech" are you? Lube? LOL. This statement is 100% false. Mostly any bearing that is at the "failed" point will have play in it.

I'm not taking sides here because I don't know the answer but mine were making noise and had been for at least a month or 2. With my driving that could be upwards of 3000 miles or more. I jacked every wheel independently and tried to detect any extra movement. The only one that I thought even had the slightest play was one of the fronts but I couldn't tell if it was just because I was moving the steering linkage somehow. When the dealer had it up on the rack and ran it they found that it was both rears. Maybe I could have gone many more miles without a problem but I didn't want to take a chance have a catastrophic failure like my nephew did with his 70's VW bug, which I would guess has the older style bearings. He welded the hub to the axle.

BTW, do everyone's plugs seem ridiculously hard to get out, or did the bastard who did the plugs before I owned it not put any anti seize on the plugs (Or the factory)? I thought I was about to break something getting those out.

I don't recall that mine were that hard to get out. I know that mine had been done at about 60k by a dealer so they weren't the factory install.

does the NGK Iridium IX (LFR7AIX) fit any year Lgt? i got an 06 and need to change mine.

From what I have read these will certainly fit your car physically but they are one step colder than the stock plugs. Your mods and driving style would most likely determine if they are appropriate for you.

Or you could jack it up yourself and check for wheel play now - that would probably give you more useful information than e-answers in this case.

Yup, planned for this weekend.

Arrived at this thread trying to diagnose a noise I began to notice just a few weeks ago. I was thinking it was the winter tires because they are definitely noisy and it sounds like coarse-treaded tires on pavement. I put the all-seasons on Friday but am still hearing the noise so am guessing I'm headed for a repair of some sort. The noise isn't terribly noticeable but I try to always be aware of how the car is running so as to be able to anticipate needs and not end up with a mess. I can't even discern if it's in the front, rear, or under the middle of the car. The type of pavement doesn't seem to alter the noise and I don't perceive that acceleration or braking changes it other than sound frequency to speed ratio. From this description would you agree that wheel bearing is a likely culprit? I wish I was thinking, I could have tested for play when I had the car jacked to change the tires.

This is excellent. I've been considering booting up my old XP machine if I ever get to the point of connecting the cable I've had now for in the ballpark of a year. Now I'll be able to use my good laptop, which has a much better battery too. I'm pretty good with computers but step-by-step like this is really helpful in making it bulletproof.

question and needed help:

I have a 2006 LGT with 106K miles. The seal in the turbo has gone bad and Subaru is telling me that I have to replace the entire unit for $1900-2300. Any help is greatly appreciated, Is there a better turbo?

'Better' needs qualification by specific criteria of what you want to accomplish. I'm pretty much stock and have a BNR 16g ready to go in. The turbo itself is less expensive than the stock one and is better made and will give you a bump in performance. The amount of bump is up to you with the tune and supporting mods if desired. BNR's customer service is excellent as well.

Just bumping this so i can find it easier when I tackle the 39 install, thanks as usual Mike your always a huge help!

I didn't take the time to look back through this thread but I think it's here or over in the Bolt-up turbo upgrade thread where Bryan took Mike's walkthrough and converted it to a Word document. I'm pretty sure I have it saved in my documents so if you can't find send me a PM with your email and if my recollection is correct I can forward it.

^ Yeah, one of my LGTs has this insulation, the other doesn't. The one that has is an earlier build, so maybe they eliminated it as a cost saving measure.

 

EDIT: checked. Yeah the insulators were there to till some date in Nov 2004. Part # 90815AG170 and 90815AG180 if someone wants to retrofit Also need four clips part # 94070GA490ML.

My October '04-built '05 has it and I think it was a help to rotate it out of the way when I did my plugs. It doesn't look thick enough to make any difference but with the tight tolerances at that location even an 1/8th of an inch can be a help.

What's a knuckle extension? A Wobbly?

 

http://www.toolguys.com/files/imagecache/product/products/KP3032006.png

What I'd call a universal joint. Worked pretty good attached to the socket on the end of the extension rather than what I think of as the more usual on the socket behind the extension.

Well I finally did this today. My right rocker cover gasket leak was getting worse and I wanted to change the spin-on transmission filter so I figured I'd combine a bunch of things to economize on time. Having never done the plugs before I'm theorizing when I say it was a lot easier to do the plugs with the rocker cover off. However I wouldn't recommend taking the cover off for the sole purpose of making the plug change easier . I can't imagine doing the driver's side without removing the battery. It's too bad that the fuse box can't be removed . A number of the tips offered in this thread were very helpful, among them putting the universal joint on the plug socket and undoing the front end of the guard on the driver's side frame. My vacation pix said to unplug the wire harness from #4 (back driver's side) and I don't see how I would have gotten it out without doing so. In addition to ones mentioned earlier in the thread, a couple of tools that came in handy were a 1" extension and a 3/8" thumbwheel ratchet <http://www.harborfreight.com/3-piece-thumbwheel-ratchet-set-94011.html>. I had to use my brake adjustment tool a couple times to separate extensions and the socket in order to get them out of the spark plug tube. I was able to use my torque wrench to set all 4 plugs.

 

I did everything from above with the car on the ramps. I had originally thought I would use my jack to put the car back on the ground after my oil change and rocker gaskets were done but I didn't and I think the higher level was less strain on my back with no perceived downside. The couple times I needed the extra height I just stood on the edge of my ramp. I didn't time the project but I know that even with the less complicated passenger side it took me well in excess of an hour just for the plug phase of the work.

 

The plugs coming out have about 60,000 miles on them. They look normal and not in bad shape. Only one had opened up to as much as .035 but as might be expected they all had gaps larger than .030. All the new NGK ILFR6B's were less than .030 as they should be.

The last few times I've changed my oil since buying my new plugs I've looked at those coil packs sitting there in plain view and contemplated getting the new plugs installed. My car seems to have lost power in the past few months and I'm hoping the major cause is the old plugs so I got all ready to make the change today after I did my oil. I know that most people, including the vacation pics, say to go from above but from below they appear to be so accessible and for the life of me I can't see how coming from above gives any more clearance for getting my hands in or the coil packs or plugs out. I guess I can envision that wrenching might be easier from the top. Anyway I got as far as loosening the front driver's side plug (one of the "easy" ones) and backing it almost out before deciding I better not get totally committed because my wife had to take the car in 2 hours. I don't want to have to jack up the engine nor give up easily and don't really have $200 +/- to spend on this but now I'm contemplating hiring a local shop to do it on the assumption that the dealer will be more money and may not want to install my plugs even though they are NGK and OEM heat range. I'd especially be interested in opinions as to why going from the top may be better and maybe I'll take one more try at it before surrendering.

This would appear to be easier with everything apart. I had planned to wait and do mine when I upgrade my turbo, UP, etc. But I've lost so much power in the past few months I'm thinking I should not wait and do the plugs sooner than I'll likely get to them if I wait. How much else would need to be disconnected if all I was doing was jacking the engine to make plug access easier?

 

Changed my timing belt, water pump, idlers, ac belt, ps and alternator belt, and spark plugs this weekend.

 

To make it easy to change the spark plugs, my mechanic buddy came up with an idea that may or may not have been mentioned yet.

With the car already on ramps, he got under the car, removed the motor mount bolts, and jacked up the motor gently about 2 inches. This gave us all the room we needed to remove the coil packs and plugs, and to re-install. See the attached pictures showing the passenger side with the rear coil pack already removed.

I red this title for my car manual then I check the spark plug wires..

 

Do you think these values ​​are normal ?

With the given information it looks to me that they all look to be within the specification range indicated on the manual page you included.

Just saw somebody else installed a TransGo shift kit in a 5EAT (its another 05).

 

http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/transgo-kit-and-working-good-163856.html?t=163856

 

How much time do you think it would take to mod the VB with the proper kit and tools. IIRC, you only have to drop the pan to get the VB out. I'm curious if it would be doable at a DIY garage in a day without a second VB.

 

I got a PM this morning from Mike the OP in the thread referenced by Lt C. He said the down time was 1 day taking it to his friend's shop.

$700-800 for a tune??! Forget that! I mean, unless that's including stage 2 parts... but man that's money down the drain if you ask me.

No parts, just a tune. I think the license was something like $175 so they are estimating over 3 hours of dyno time if they charge $200/hr. Seemed pretty high to me. I've got enough good e-tune options and not that kind of money to spend. Work just happened to take me by the place I'd heard about before so thought I'd stop in and check it out.

 

Although I don't have the new turbo installed yet I'm looking forward to your Vag-com update on Win7 64. I was beginning to think about resurrecting my old XT machine to use for tuning but being able to use my new one would be a whole lot better.

I never knew Tatrix owned Romraider. I always thought Romraider/LV/ECUflash was all open source, coded by developers funded by donations ?

 

If that is the case, then its not so bad. You are either going to pay for the software or the hardware. And from a company's stand point, hardware is harder to pirate.

This explains the conversation I had this week with a pro-tuner. When I was discussing price with him he mentioned the cost of the license and said that any future tunes would be covered so would only run between $2-300 rather than the initial $7-800.

Now, if you have a 05-09 5eat LGT and are interested in having your valve body modified (some of you for a second time), please post the following information and feel free to ask any questions.

 

LGT 5eat car year? 05

IPT VB mod already performed? No

Are you willing to pay close to but less than IPT prices (perhaps again) for a proper shift kit modification performed by fellow 5eat performance enthusiast ClimberD himself?

I've been looking into this since I have a 16g turbo upgrade planned. I'm not planning on big boost but still have some concerns about the 5eat overall and especially if I'm beefing up the torque. Because of some more important and imminent projects I don't have anywhere near the $ available for the IPT price but somewhere I saw the figure of $250. That might be doable for a parts kit. Super if it also included labor.

Thats the right cable. But if you get it delivered in 2 months you did good. Chinese sellers are notorious for super slow shipping. I have them in stock here in the US.

I got mine in about 2 weeks from one of the ebay places in Hong Kong that listed delivery in about 14 days. They also said it would work with Windows 7 but of course there's no differentiation between 32 and 64 bit versions. I haven't done my turbo swap yet so can't comment on my ultimate success with what I bought. If you want to gamble on saving money and long delivery time you may make out OK with ebay but if you want to be sure of what you're getting go with the cable package from Mike.

Yeah on windows 7 64 bit I got everything to work by using ecu flash1.43 drivers then un installing it and putting 1.29 on.

I'm not clear on the progression here and maybe my ignorance comes from not having yet tried to connect my laptop to the car. So you first installed the version 1.43 drivers. Then you uninstalled ecu flash and installed it with the 1.29 drivers. But as I read your post I infer that it worked with the 1.43 drivers. If so why the uninstall and reinstall with the older drivers?

Your cable looks to be a liitle different than the one i got. I wish it was that easy for me, I went through a lot of hard ache before using a virtual machine.

I looked at quite a few cables on eBay and some stated that they would work with Windows 7 and others didn't. I haven't yet loaded the software and hooked up the cable so can't comment on how well my 'will work' cable actually does.

From my research it looks like the only option I have for improving the handling of my OBXT using dampers and not lowering significantly are the KYB GR2's with Rallitek springs. On this basis I'm assuming this walkthrough wouldn't apply to me and that there's no way to adapt Koni's to an Outback.

So from reading this thread I infer that in order to do an e-tune, in addition to the VAG-COM cable I need both Romraider and ECUflash installed on my laptop. Is this correct?

 

I just did a search on eBay and looked at quite a few listings. Some of them specifically say that they won't work with Vista and some specifically state that they will work with Windows 7, both 32 & 64 bit builds. I noticed also some references to software. I'm assuming that Romraider and ECUflash are the apps that we need and so can ignore any software reference in the ebay listing.

First, let me add my thanks to BoxerGT2.5 for starting this off. A few months back I decided that I should replace my turbo with a new BNR EVO 16G. It is still sitting in the box and as is often the case, one thing leads to another and now I have a whole list of things that I'll be doing along with the turbo. The main thing for the purposes of this thread being changing my catted UP for an STi. This will require a new tune and at this point I'm planning on having a dyno pro tune. Since my plugs will be approaching 50k miles at that point and tuners like to have fresh plugs that lead me here. My car is a DD and I'll be going with a relatively conservative tune but don't want to waste everything the turbo has to offer when I need a little something extra than my normal relatively conservative driving style.

 

I'm leaning toward the one step colder plugs. One of the questions raised by my reading through this thread is at what point in my mods should I do the plugs? At the same time as I do the turbo & UP when more things are out of the way? Or should I do them before or after by a few days just to minimize the number of things I change at one time? When I do the turbo I'm going to bypass the BCS so the car can be safely driven until I can get the tune done, which will likely be at least a 3 hour drive from where I do the turbo work and not necessarily within just a day or so. Reasoned opinions on both the sequencing and heat range of plugs will be appreciated.

 

BTW I found a set of the LFR7AIX on Amazon earlier today for $31.40 delivered.

No problem, just my .02

 

I'll probably end up going to them if I wanna get a dyno tune over an E-tune. Im probably going to settle with an etune for a while because of the cost.

I investigated going with an e-tune but can't think of where I'd be able to go fast enough to do the logging. Another advantage of a pro tune is that it's done in a day and if there are any problems that develop or are discovered they can be dealt with on a more immediate basis.