lilredwagon

That HKS inlet is a nice piece! If I were in your shoes, I'd look at used cold air intakes, preferably a GS, and cut the intake to fit the HKS piece. I wouldn't mess with the HKS inlet, especially since you already did the hard work of getting it in!

Huh, well that's frustrating - everybody pointing fingers at someone else. The restrictor pill removed: was that at the request of the tuner? Has it been that way for a while, as in: you didn't change boost controllers right before you started having problems or right before the new tune? You could do a test of connecting the vac hose from the wastegate directly to the nipple on the turbo. That would bypass the boost controller and just run wastegate boost, which should be in the neighborhood of 7-9psi on a vf. If you bypass the boost controller and boost 7-9psi, then you know that the problem is related to the boost controller. Either the unit, or the plumbing to/from it, or the programming of it is off. If you still overboost, then you know it's a hardware issue (though I doubt that since it sounds like your mechanic did a pretty comprehensive look of the hardware.)

I vaguely recall that one of the "divorced wastegate" downpipes had a divider that impedes the wastegate from opening fully. I don't remember which brand downpipe. Has that downpipe been on the car before the tune? Otherwise, as mentioned, I would check to make sure the wastegate rod isn't making contact with anything. If the wastegate opens and closes freely, maybe try swapping the stock boost controller back in and see if you still overboost. If you're tuned for the Prodrive unit, the the stock hardware would boost less and kind of be all over the place. But it wouldn't overboost so if you're still overboosting, then it's not the boost controller. Oh, also, have you changed the restrictor pill in the wastegate vac line? If you haven't changed it, I wouldn't worry about it, but it's possible that the wrong restrictor pill could cause overboosting.

That's awesome! I've used paint matched rattle cans in the past for smaller, curvier parts before, like a front lip, and a rear WRX wing. They turned out great! But I need to do the hood on my other car, and I am skeptical about doing such a large flat surface. Let us know how your fender turns out!

^ Dang, that looks good! What turbo is it going to feed? Hope it's big because they look like pretty big pipes. Like Dom3/GT30 sized.

This would be awesome! But I can't think of anything on this car that I would trigger. My other car has an exhaust cutout, and that would be really cool to trigger it with the S# switch. But that car doesn't have SI-Drive. It would be really cool if someone had a Tein EDFC system and an exhaust cutout all triggered from the S# button on the steering wheel! I would encourage you to make it, but unfortunately I don't think I would be a customer.

Yeah, that's all about trying to get an accurate reading from the stock sensor. On my other car (25psi), I'm using an MBC and bypassing the turbo dynamics tables altogether. That's how I know about what the max is, and what it does when it reaches it. In the case of that car, it just flatlines at 23-24psi in all the logs, but my MBC is set to 25, and I read boost with my boost gauge. The key there is that I don't use the stock boost control, and don't use the turbo dynamics tables, so the ECU doesn't need to know what the max boost actually is. But it's speed density, so it uses it for everything else. And it works fine for all part throttle stuff, just not the difference between 23 and 25 psi as my max load/boost table. On my OBXT, I have the car set to 20-21psi max boost and I am running a MAF tune with all turbo dynamics tables active. The stock MAP sensor on my car has no problem reading/adjusting at those levels. According to the thread you referenced some people have a problem and some don't. I guess it would be worth checking to see if the stock MAP sensor on an 08 OBXT is a different part number than on an 07 LGT. The difference is that in that thread, people are attempting to get it to read accurately. Only mention of an overboost CEL is that he didn't trigger it. Which is as expected - when it tops out, it just flatlines at a certain number (either 18.5 or 23.5psi). As long as that number is below the threshold, it shouldn't trigger the overboost protection.

Reaching the limits of the stock MAP sensor wouldn't do it. I'm running 25psi on the stock MAP sensor on my other car, and it just stops reading at 23-24. It doesn't throw a code unless the MAP reading passes the threshold of the overboost table.

All four coil packs would have to die at the same time, and you wouldn't get the same CEL. You would get a misfire CEL (P0300, 301,302,303,or 304) if only one coil pack died. And it wouldn't do any fuel corrections unless it was in closed loop, not WOT. I wonder if there is a small crack in the vac line that feeds the MAP sensor. Or a small vac leak on the line that leads to the boost control solenoid. Do you know what the target boost is set to? Have you compared MAP reading (ECU boost reading) to your boost gauge? Basically, I wonder if the car is running fine, but the ECU is getting an incorrect boost reading and triggering the overboost protection. Or the other way around - the ECU is reading correctly, but the boost control solenoid is getting a bad reference, so it's building more boost than it should. Or maybe the MAP sensor is going bad. I've never seen that before, but I guess it's possible. I would compare the MAP versus your boost gauge to confirm that the ECU is getting the correct boost reading.

Is this a new tune? How long has this tune been 'fine' for? If this is a new tune, then again, I would point to the tuner just not raising the overboost limit. In this log, you reach 16.8psi. Ok, at least that's a little more than stock and would trigger the overboost limit if it was left to the stock value. You aren't showing any knock at all, and the IAM doesn't drop from 1 at any time in the log, so the car is happy. So something needs to be adjusted in the turbo dynamics tables for you to reach your target boost, or the overboost threshold needs to be raised. However, if this tune has been on the car for a while, like over a year, then I would look at a change in hardware causing it. Another thing is elevation - did you tell the tuner the elevation where you are? It's possible that the tuner raised the overboost threshold for sea level, but didn't change the value for the other elevations.

Vac leaks would cause your fuel trims to go crazy at idle, or it would idle rough. a boost leak would cause lower boost, not higher. You could check the vac lines that lead to your wastegate. I've see little cracks in that line cause boost spikes. But according to the log, you're only peaking at ~15psi. So I wouldn't think you're overboosting, unless you were tuned to stock boost. Are you sure it's fuel cut? (Everything is going fine through a pull and then all of a sudden a huge jerk and you let off thinking you just blew the thing up. CEL pops up P0244?). If so, that's the overboost CEL with fuel cut, as you mentioned in the OP. The best way to check for vac leaks is a smoke test. Look up "Subaru smoke test" on youtube, and it should pull up a good starting point. Another possibility is that the car was tuned with the exhaust leak, and now it doesn't have the leak, so it's building more boost than before. The tuner would have set the wastegate to to a certain value necessary to hit target, but now that you don't have the boost leak, you would need a lower wastegate value to hit target. You could mention the fixing of the exhaust leak to your tuner, and maybe he just needs to make a small adjustment.

I thought E-tuners didn't like open source because they couldn't lock their tunes. So they were worried about customers sharing their 'trade secrets'. But AP tunes are locked. If you were to get the diy version of AP, you would have to build a tune from scratch, or from the stock rom, and manipulate it from there. You couldn't just hack into a tuner-made map. That was my understanding from a long time ago, things may have changed since.

For the JDM WRX ecus, you need to go Opensource. I can't say for sure about the JDM LGT ecus, but for the WRX ecus, that's the case.

According to this, you're only boosting to 14-15psi, correct? If so, your tuner must have just forgotten to raise the boost cut limit. You are showing a little bit of knock between 3500-5500 rpm, but that's fine. Your timing is pretty low, and it looks like a pretty safe tune. IAM stays at 1, so if it drives well, I wouldn't worry about that. Plus, knock wouldn't trigger a fuel cut, so that's not causing it. Just ask the tuner to raise the overboost limit. I'm sure it was just an oversight on his part, no biggie.

Also, check the vac line leading to the brake booster from the intake manifold. By now, they're old and begin to crack like all the other vac lines under the hood.

If you have multiple Subarus, Tactrix. And once you get up and running, it's the same, but cheaper with the Tactrix. If I were you I would switch to a SSD just for faster boot time, and clean out everything but Romraider and ECUflash. Once you have a good tune, you don't need to touch it, except for little touch-ups every now and then. On my WRX (JDM ecu/Tactrix), I didn't touch it for roughly 5 years, and then had to adjust it when I moved to the other side of the country and didn't have access to 93 octane anymore, and didn't touch it for the last 3 years since. On my OBXT, it's up and running, and I haven't touched that tune in a year or so. The only advantage I see to the AP is that it is a smaller unit, so you could keep it in the glove box. But assuming you're happy with the tune, you wouldn't be taking it out very often, so that's moot. As far as real time logging, I like the gauge feature that the Romraider Logger has. You can make the virtual gauges as big as you want, and monitor them as you drive if you're diagnosing something. Those gauges on a laptop monitor would be much easier to read than on a little AP screen. If you didn't tune your cars yourself, you would be bound by the preference of the E-tuner as a lot of them refuse to E-tune open source.

Changed all coil packs today. Hopefully this is the end of misfires for a little while.

Exactly the reason why I'll always have a wagon in my stable.

Interesting, have you tried mounting the mass dampers in different locations along the exhaust and re-running the spectrum analyzer? Another thing to note is that it just changed the resonant frequency, not the amplitude. In recording #1, peak amplitude goes from just over .20 to just over .25. And in recording #2, it goes from just over .2 to midway between .2 and .25. But the units of measurement is in (g), which I'm not familiar with, I would expect dB, so I don't know what a (g) is. Regardless, in both examples, it's more. In the case of recording #2, it drops the resonant frequency to less than 10hz. That's below what is regarded as the threshold for human hearing, and would probably register as a shake/vibration, not a pitch. So that one makes sense - it moves the drone out of audible range. For recording #1, it moves the resonant frequency to a higher pitch. So it's still there, but higher. This one would fall as a judgment call as to which is preferred. Or rather, which is less annoying. Disclaimer: this is just what I can guess by reading the charts posted. The cool thing about audio is that measured results are usually only part of the story. For a lot of things, it's easy to hear what sounds better, or more preferred. It can be unanimous among 100 people who hear it, but the charted signature would tell otherwise. So this is awesome! I love seeing this kind of experimentation going on. We can all benefit from it because we all drive Subarus!

Hahah, add me to the support group. Between my fiance and I, we have 7 cars! The 2 Subarus are always in need of something, so I was looking for something I could daily that was comfy, quiet, and reliable. I was looking for a used Civic or Carolla, ended up with a Jaguar. Yup.

No I haven't installed a Helmholtz resonator on an exhaust from scratch. My experience is on another car (Infiniti G37, which is known for being droney with aftermarket exhausts). I tried a few different exhausts, and while they sounded different depending on the mufflers used, they all droned in the same range. The drone was a car thing, the sound quality was unique to the exhaust brand. When I finally tried an exhaust with the Helmholtz resonators, it was perfect - all of the exhaust sound when you were on it, and none of the drone. Actually, it was really quiet when I wasn't heavy on the gas. Now, I understand that it's a different car, but the "Wookie howl" that the VQ is known for is about as droney as the EJ with an aftermarket exhaust. So, different car, but similar starting point, and similar objective. Interestingly, the Infiniti's stock exhaust also has a few mass dampers welded to it. It might do *something*, but I've never played with mass dampers before. Just thinking about it, I would expect that mass dampers would affect a more narrow band of frequencies compared to a Helmholtz resonator. The theories behind them are that the mass damper changes the resonant frequency of the pipe (amplification device) so it doesn't create an additive effect of certain frequencies; the Helmholtz resonator creates an opposite wave that cancels out certain (low frequency) waves, effectively killing them. The reason why I would think the resonator would be more effective is because it manipulates the source of the sound, not the amplification device. And if you change the frequency response of the source, you would also be changing the levels of harmonics that are included in the other frequencies, so a cancellation wave to the source would cover more of the audible spectrum. I am an audio engineer, so this theorizing is rooted in *some* form of real knowledge. But that said, I haven't seen any research on mass dampers on exhaust systems. But keep us posted with how the mass dampers work out. We're all Subaru owners here, so it's safe to assume that we're all annoyed with the drone.

For drone, those J-pipes/Helmholtz resonators really work well if sized correctly. On my WRX, I have it fully sound deadened, and it made the drone a more pleasing sound, but if measured by a db meter, I doubt it would register an amplitude difference. I did the doors, floor, trunk, and used roofing tar in the wheelwells. It made the car feel like a higher quality car, the doors close more solidly, the stereo sounds better, and the NVH changed to a more "solid" type of sound, versus the rattle-y, pingy sound Subarus usually exhibit. For that, it was worth it, but specifically for drone, a Helmholtz resonator is better for that.

On my WRX, I'm running the Carberry ROM. Is there a similar speed density ROM for the 08LGT/OBXT? That was what I was looking for and I couldn't find it over on Romraider. I guess that's what I'm asking, has this ecu been defined, or would I have to build it from scratch? Are you running it? If so, would you be able to share it with me to to use as a base map? We can take this to PM if that's more appropriate to this thread. Edit: Code, if you're on Accessport that makes sense. Unfortunately, I'm on Romraider, which is where I was looking... Also, doing a fresh search on Romraider, I've been able to find a patch by NSFW for the 05 LGT, but that runs a different ECU than the 08/09. I haven't been able to find a speed density solutioin for the 08/09 ECU (A2TB001N).

Wow, crazy! Where did you post it up for sale? And I'm sure the Portland, OR location made a difference for the response you got. Regardless, it's great to hear that there is still demand for these cars. It makes me feel better about spending money on mine. I swear, it's like throwing hundreds of dollars into a wishing well sometimes, but I'm never planning on selling it!

How did he do a speed density tune on it? Was he using ROM Raider or Accessport? They didn't have a speed density rom for our cars the last time I checked in Rom Raider.