rebourne

Those huge ass, low hanging, exhaust tips scrape exiting nearly any kind of ramp or drive way. If i can get a good angle, they don't touch, but it's not always possible. Been carrying more people and stuff than usual these holidays and that's not been helping at all... Sadly, i hardly even flinch any more. It's only when the scraping exceeds a touch and continues for a second or two that i cry inside. Having said all that... It's sounds great, was dirty cheap, and it isn't worth my time or money to attempt to "improve" it right now.

Still a fan!

Hallelujah!!

Looks fantastic! What's was your time investment per side? Power tools or hand?

Drop the exhaust aft of the downpipe? Or just remove the center section?

Oh crap, I just read this whole thread, beginning to here! It was liking watching a drama-mystery series on Netflix and having no last episode with the resolution of all the drama!! ie: sub'd.

Oh, but it sounds so good!

Yup! Heck yeah... Between 2k and 3k it can be powerful. Your ears take a beating while pulling a hill in the 2.5k range. This is not my bff exhaust. But she's a fun mistress, the wife likes her still and she makes the kids giggle way more often than complain. Speaking of drone and kids. We were out and about this weekend and my 4 yo's really needed a nap, but we didn't have a place to do that. I put the gear lever and throttle in "mega drone" and within 7 minutes both were knocked the F out. Adjusted out of drone range and the wife and I wasted some gas over enjoyable adult conversation, and a few U turns, before arriving at our destination. Win-win. dropping into 4th, bringing revs above 3k drastically reduces the drone, when the freeway isn't full speed. Probably hurts gas mileage, but hardly compared to my stop and go commute. As K. Block says #JustAintCare.

The muffler tips scrape coming out of driveways and parking lots. I have to do some crazy diagonal stuff to prevent it. They'd fit better with shorter tips or tuck the mufflers up with turn downs.

right 3/4 back, slight angle left 3/4 left side

I posted this in another thread here: Been too busy prepping for my twins 4yo birthday, and being sick with a fever to do anything since slapping those on. There's a mild clunk over certain parking lot speed rear bumps, but other than that it's working out. I need to get it up in the air to see if everything's where I left it, or if it's shifted. I'll try to get a few better pics this week. I haven't lived with them for a whole week yet, but I did get about an hour of low traffic (for LA) freeway driving in addition to my normal commuting, so this is a short term review: Love the tone at idle and off throttle. Pull to redline sounds sick. They drone too loud between 2k and 3k, when slowly increasing speed and especially when climbing hills, but drops fast to zero exhaust noise starting at 3.1k. By 3.5k I can hear my tires much louder than the exhaust. And it's wonderful from there to redline. With my small diameter tires 70-80 is in the sweet spot and I'm learning to keep it in that rpm range on the freeways by dropping to 4th as it starts to boom. Pretty easy. I can hear the kids whisper in the backseat. It's not the ideal trade off, but it's far better than I expected. We're driving to Yosemite in October though, so not sure if I'll swap them out for the stocks or not. Except for the 2k-3k drone, it's quieter than the wife's EvoX. She says she's had worse on her cars, but the drone is pretty bad in that zone. A pressure that's borderline hurting my ears.

Installed some mufflers off a used LGT catback exhaust I picked up. Stock OBXT versus the ProTuningLab/generic/ebay muffler: Left side clearance: Right side clearance: Front hanger (if the bumper is the "front") is using extended hangers, 3" center to center on the holes. My local Napa stocked them. Left side: Right side: Left side back is using a 2.5" hanger (stock is 1.75ish): Right side back is using a stock hanger. I had to adjust the mount on the downpipe, and use a longer hanger on the Y to get the left muffler piping away from the sway bar. The CBE came with a mid and Y, that I'm not using right now, mostly because without a resonated mid pipe the system would be really loud. My ultimate plan is to ditch the ProTuningLab cans, install the mid and Y with a Vibrant Ultra Quiet resonator, and a pair of good muffs with a little rumble but not too much drone. 3" mid pipe and 2.25" Y: Or maybe something completely different, using the mid, Y, a cut out and ...? we'll see

Alignment finally done. Rears were at -1.9, and fronts were way toe'd out. Now at 0 toe and -1.25 all around. Really hooks in the corners (for a mild street alignment, I'm really happy!), steering feel is way improved, and looks better. The rear wasn't benefiting from all that negative camber in looks or performance. Need to clean it up and get some better pics. Alignment notes: Only extra parts I have are the Whiteline KCA399 camber adjusting upper bushings. The rear toe is 0 in the rear with around 50% of the adjustment available. No toe arms needed. My alignment guy would have preferred a lower control arm to adjust, like the KCA124 or Megan's, versus the bushing one, because it required pulling the wheel off to adjust the camber, then putting it back on and re-measuring. But he still got it done first try, and I won't be making repeated adjustments, so it's a good budget solution.

Took the lazy way out and had AQ install the catless up and Cobb down pipes. flashed stage 2 OTS. Updated first page of the thread with all the recent updates.

Swapped out the stock OBXT wheels for some used Enkei Imolas. The fitment and tire size isn't exactly what I want, but the price was great. They'll suffice for now. The tires are slightly taller than stock LGT size, but much smaller than stock OBXT. Here's a bunch of numbers: stock 17x7 +48 w/ 225/55/17 ~49 lbs measured 26 1/2" diameter, measured Enkei Imola 18x8 +40 w/ 225/40/18 ~42.5 lbs measured 24 3/4" diameter, measured Speedometer reads a whopping 9 mile too fast. 80 indicated is only 71mph as read by GPS via Waze. The LGT ABS sensor swap is calling my name. Overall the car sits 3/4" lower due to the smaller diameter. Corner heights before and after: Stock wheels w/ 225/55/17s with about 60% tread left LF 25 15/16 LR 25 7/8 RF 26 1/8 RR 25 15/16 18x8 +40 w/ 225/40/18 with about 30% tread left LF 25 1/8 LR 25 -- RF 25 5/16 RR 25 3/16 So far they feel great. Tires are a bit noisier, which just emphasizes that I need some exhaust noise (that'll be another entry soon, I hope). Pics (My camera doesn't suck, I'm purposely blowing out the highlights so we can see the wheel gap clearly): Before: After (drove around to settle the suspension): Outside: Front quarter view: Rear side view: Needs an alignment, badly. No reason for this much negative camber. That's just the setting the whiteline camber bushings were set to, when I installed the upper arms. Sadly, I see that the rear has settled to be a tad lower than the front since installing the H-Techs. I'm surprised, or rather, dissappointed, as it seemed for the first couple weeks that the rear was just a hair taller than the front with just a 3/8" spacer. I'm thinking of ordering up some 1/2" spacers, but request bolts long enough to install the 1/2" and 3/8"s at the same time. Or maybe I just need a 3/4" spacer. Hrmm...

Finally crossed 1000 break in miles! Finally finally finally! Took nearly two months of normal commuting and weekend local trips. Friday morning changed the oil, with dyno 10w40 as required by builder, and Tokyo Roki filter. Drove around a bit before letting it cool and re-checking the oil. Then let er rip! Haven't WOT'd the throttle since early June? Feels nice! Did a few short 3rd gear runs on the way to work. Smooth and strong. Monday I couldn't wait and I flashed with the ACN91 Stage1 map. Wooo! Really noticable in the torque coming on much earlier. Saw 15.83 psi on the AP guages. Highest I saw on the stock tune was around 13.5. Not much else to report until I get the up pipe and down pipe installed, and switch to the stage2 tune.

Here's pics of the cracked ring landing from the #2 piston of the original engine and sample of the scored cam shafts:

Great question. Not sure this is a great answer, just what I observed. He jacked up both rear tires, and they rotated freely, so he could use the roller. In the front, both wheels stayed on the ground and he used the pipe and skillz. Talking to him, he seemed to know his way around awd cars n such.

The trimming is for future fitment experiments.

Cleaned up the wiring for the AP V3 Vent mount bracket from Amazon (http://amzn.com/B00KC4XBW8) that clicks right into the AP mount, AP mount, Accessport, the Cobb cable, and the thin 12" extension cable (http://amzn.com/B00GGLVXG2) : Popped out the blank plate in the side mirror module, after removing the whole thing. Getting the plugs out of the mirror and rear wiper controls was the hardest part! All put back together. There's a nice spot back in there behind the knee crash support to bundle the Cobb cable so it's tucked away: Cobb cable and vent bracket at work, holding up the AP: The low profile OBD2 cable. I'm no longer bumping it with my feet, and it looks so much cleaner: The finished product:

Yesterday had fender roll, trim and tiny bit of a pull performed by the legendary Tony. Can't really pull on the OBXT like a regular car because the plastic fender flairs won't sit right, so it's mostly just trimming the fender plastic and folding the lip. Tony's done more than a few Outback's. I think mine might have been the first one he's seen on stock wheels and tires though :-p The good ol' Eastwood Roller (before I realized camera was in manual focus): Left front rub marks, on trimmed inner wheel well plastic: More left front rub marks: Trimming the plastic lip of the fender flair: Some serious rub marks on that trimmed off plastic: There's a tiny bit of pull on the left rear: Compare to the right rear before rolling/pulling: Tony says: "Kid's, don't try this at home." More rubbing marks, from right front trimmed inner wheel well plastic: And that's about it. I don't have new wheels yet. I'm scanning the interwebs everyday.... funds are tight right now after the rebuild, if you can imagine. But the car's ready.

Half way through the 1000 mile engine break in... Still being very good, and keeping almost out boost. You know it's hard.

Well, before Formula One level telemetrics existed, there was the usual method: Car goes faster in the corners.

Update on the Tein H-Techs The Koni/H-Tech combo is awesome. I love it. There's a ton of construction around my work, and I don't even lift when I see the steel plates across the street. This suspension just sucks it right up. No bang, no drama. I'm sure the gigantic 225/55s have something to do with that, but I have them at 42 (forty two) psi, so they aren't exactly mushy. The cornering is impressing me more and more. I'm not really applying power through the corners, since I'm trying to stay out of boost during the motor break in, so I can't really report. And I still haven't gotten aligned. But my oh my is it a completely different car than the stock OBXT I took home. I've yet to make the Goodyears squeal, but I have to strap down everything in the car now, because everything goes flying in the corners. Now to the main reason for this update: There has been some settling in the rear. Unfortunately I lost the exact numbers when my laptop rebooted... before I was smart enough to hit save. But the rear was a hair lower than the front on both sides. So I installed the 3/8" rear spacers I had. Then rolled the windows down, put on KCRW Metropolis, and put about 20 miles on the spacers. Seaked out speed bumps and sharp bumps that made the whole car hop. Should have settled them good. New measurements in the garage: LF: 26 1/4 RF: 26 9/16 LR: 26 1/4 RR: 26 9/16 ie: the left side is same front and rear, and the right side is same front and rear. I'm not sure why the left side is consistently down vs the right side. But it's only a quarter inch, so I'm not losing sleep.

That's an interesting idea. The stock diameter tires are really stuffing the wheel wells. I haven't done any research on the ABS thing, but is it that easy? The ABS module calculates the road speed back to the ECU, I assume. The Outback has the higher 4.444 FD though, so going smaller diameter is really going to speed up highway rpms. Hrmm... edit: did some research: Swap ABS sensor: http://legacygt.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5042209&postcount=8 tire diameter: stock OBXT: 26.74 stock LGT: 24.62, 8% smaller 245/45/17: 25.68, 4% smaller. ie: half way between OBXT and LGT stock size. 245/40/18: 25.72, 3.8% smaller: ie: winner winner Of note, several LGT owners report their mph is more accurate with a 225/45/17, which is 6.6% smaller than OBXT.