CovertRussian's 05 LGT Build Thread

[Mike07LGT]

Any reason why your sig says 13.5psi stage 2? That seems awfully low to me...or maybe I dont know the whole story but im hitting 18.5psi stage 2 all day long!

[covertrussian]

This is an amazing thread! Makes me jealous I don't have a place to make real progress on my project.

 

On the bright side, I get to pay inept shops to do the work I need. Perhaps everyone else should be the jealous one.

 

Thanks! Even when I didn't have my own place to work on cars nor had the experience, I didn't trust inept shops. It's funny because my Dad didn't trust me trusting the internet, but I that might have changed his mind since I've learned everything I know about cars through forums and web articles.

 

Will probably take me two hours then. Everything little I do always ends up with complications. the 6 hour brake job from hell was the last struggle (sheared a bolt).

 

Definitely probably have a vacuum leak, figured those o-rings are shot. Was there enough room to keep the intercooler on or did that come off?

 

Story of my life too, went to fix stuck caliper pins, ended up rebuilding all 4 caliper pistons

 

Any reason why your sig says 13.5psi stage 2? That seems awfully low to me...or maybe I dont know the whole story but im hitting 18.5psi stage 2 all day long!

 

Many folks and Cobb determine the stages based on physical mods. I have an aftermarket downpipe that has only one cat and flows a lot better then stock. Because of that I couldn't run a stock tune anymore, because of overboosting, knocking, and rolling off the map.

 

This put me into the Stage 2 field, because only stage 2 tunes fix all of that, but they also increase your boost. This is why I made my own stage 2 downpipe tune but with stock boost levels, it's giving the car around 230whp/tq which is enough power for now (clutch was slipping earlier this year too).

 

I personally don't believe in it's a good idea to run 18+ psi daily on a stock turbo which is known to fail at stock boost levels. Plus I'm on stock TMIC, which will separate fairly quickly with higher then stock boost levels. I also like to make as much power as possible with the lowest amount of boost, less boost = less heat (less knock), less headgasket pressure, less turbo wear and tear. I might up the boost later to 15-16, but probably will go with the big 16G I have in my parts bin.

[Mike07LGT]

Got ya.. understood but ive been running 18psi with a tune from bren tuning on the stock turbo and stock tmic with no bulletproof mod and have had no issues for over 40k miles of daily driving. Only reason I feel you're being alittle "safe". Either way if you throw the 16g on there I would hope you'd up the boost to take advantage nice car!

[covertrussian]

I would say that's impressive, but you've had your car since very low miles right? I honestly don't trust the EJ25x motors for reliability, for me a reliable quick daily is better then a fast daily that's a #YNASB.

 

I have 120k miles already on the clock, have some oil consumption, though I think it's from a leaking turbo line (just don't have the time to pull the turbo to replace it). So I'm just driving it as is for now, at least until I replace the clutch with a single mass flywheel (or sell the car and get a Spec B ).

 

Holding off on the selling until I see how the legacy does with car seats. If it's horrible as a baby carrying machine, I might need to get a newer bigger Legacy....

[Mike07LGT]

I would say that's impressive, but you've had your car since very low miles right? I honestly don't trust the EJ25x motors for reliability, for me a reliable quick daily is better then a fast daily that's a #YNASB.

 

I have 120k miles already on the clock, have some oil consumption, though I think it's from a leaking turbo line (just don't have the time to pull the turbo to replace it). So I'm just driving it as is for now, at least until I replace the clutch with a single mass flywheel (or sell the car and get a Spec B ).

 

Holding off on the selling until I see how the legacy does with car seats. If it's horrible as a baby carrying machine, I might need to get a newer bigger Legacy....

 

I got it with 53k miles on it and have been driving it like I stole it lol and it now has 98k. I use it for work which I should have learned my lesson driving my fully built sti for work and blowing that engine after 60k miles but I have an addiction to subarus now and cant let go upgrading to a spec b isnt gonna change your car seat issue I dont think haha

[covertrussian]

I can't blame you Legacy's are awesome cars, fun and comfortable!

 

That's why I said I'm holding off on a Spec B until I know how gen 4 does with car seats first .

[covertrussian]

I recently discovered why my WOT AFR's have been every inconsistent between virtual dyno pulls. The issue is with AF learning, where column D affects open loop fueling, which is not good for a turbo car, or any car really.

 

Stock AF Learning values:

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/ECU/Fueling/D-Learning/AF%20Learning%20Stock.png~original

 

Stock AF Learning after a highway trip:

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/ECU/Fueling/D-Learning/D%20Learning%20Stock.jpg~original

 

D Learning can be disabled by setting the C to D range to be extraordinary high. Guys on Romraider found that 80g/s should be sufficient.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/ECU/Fueling/D-Learning/D%20Learning%2080.png~original

 

AF Learning with D disabled after a highway trip:

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/ECU/Fueling/D-Learning/D%20Learning%20Disabled.jpg~original

 

Here are two side by side runs, you can see how much it leans the AFR's at full throttle, on stock fuel map this might not be bad, but on a fine tuned fuel map this could cost you an engine.

(Don't mind the low power numbers, the road I did the pulls on were going up hill)

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/ECU/Fueling/D-Learning/LGT%20D%20Learning%20Enabled%20vs%20Disabled.jpg~original

 

 

I've been tuning D learning for couple months, every time it has resulted an MPG loss. If only I could have another column, then could retain stock learning and still have D disabled, but we can't have our cake and eat it. I just got back from a NoVA trip and got 30mpg going there and 29.8mpg coming back (both at the pump not gauge which was way off), which is some of the better MPG's that I've gotten going there and back. This gives me hope that this AF learning values might be good long term .

[Matt166]

sub

[covertrussian]

I have a few small updates to post up soon, have been pretty busy since my daughter was born, but finally squeezed in a few minor mods/fixes.

 

Highway MPG testing is gonna be a little harder, but I think I need to get her started young on liking road trips

[Flinkly]

Congrats! I'll be following suit in 2 months.

 

Sent from my XT1028

Edited July 5, 2015 by Flinkly

[covertrussian]

Congrats! I'll be following suit in 2 months.

 

Sent from my XT1028

 

Oh man your wife has it worse, has to go through the whole summer heat while pregnant.

 

Good luck to you guys

[covertrussian]

Handbrake leather has been coming off for a while now. Now that I'm on paternity leave I had some time during the day to fix it .

 

Common sight for a lot of folks:

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_001.jpg~original

 

Pulled it back and cleaned the plastic with some rubbing alcohol and let it dry, pulled out the metal pin that holds the leather down too (no picture sorry).

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_002.jpg~original

 

Picked up some 3m spray adhesive at a parts store and covered up the spray area with paper

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_003.jpg~original

 

Getting everything glued together was a little tricky, I sprayed a little too much glue .

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_004.jpg~original

 

After it dried a little reinserted the giant metal pin that hold the leather down

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_005.jpg~original

 

All done, looks like new, has been holding up pretty well for last couple days

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_006.jpg~original

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t188/covertrussian/Cars/05%20LGT/Interior/Handbrake/Handbrake_Lether_007.jpg~original

Edited July 14, 2015 by covertrussian

[silentsnow31802]

It's holding pressure much better so far! It drained about 10-15psi in 4 hours, which I think is about what it was when I was on the stock filter assembly.

 

I really should have timed it before... anyone with a fuel pressure gauge wanna check the pressures on 4 hour intervals for me?

I'm not sure if anyone responded to this but I remember getting into my car after a day or two and my pressure had only gone down maybe 10 psi at most. I can double check if you would like.

 

Sent from my C6916 using Tapatalk

[FJuan]

Handbrake leather has been coming off for a while now. Now that I'm on paternity leave I had some time during the day to fix it .

 

 

 

 

Did the same thing to my handle about 3 yrs ago and it's still holding strong. Now I'm looking into leather paint to fix all the wear marks on the handle and steering wheel.

[Flinkly]

Now I'm looking into leather paint to fix all the wear marks on the handle and steering wheel.

 

tell me more. I've scratched up the bottom of my steering wheel with a mechanical pencil clip in my right pants pocket. did a lot of damage before I figured out where the marks were coming from. i'm too afraid to do something to the wheel though, cause I NEED to touch it a lot.

[FJuan]

There's several kits out there, here's a few I've been looking at on Youtube.

 

 

 

[covertrussian]

I'm not sure if anyone responded to this but I remember getting into my car after a day or two and my pressure had only gone down maybe 10 psi at most. I can double check if you would like.

 

Sent from my C6916 using Tapatalk

 

I think this is could be the FPR related too, my FPR seems to have a lot of cross-talk. When I was trying to 100% make sure which line is feed and which one is return, since FSM would have contradicting information too.

 

When I would blow into the feed line at the fuel pump, I would see fuel coming out of of feed and return, just feed would have slightly more.

[covertrussian]

Reading through the "The famous stumble...fixed?" someone mentioned that Cobb recently wrote an article about relocating the FPR's vacuum line.

 

Newer STI's (like 05+ LGT's) switched their FPR's vacuum line source to Cylinder 4 from the plenum. Cobb found that this created a lot of oscillation in the fuel pressures causing fueling issues and adding onto the infamous stumbles. Cobb suggests switching the FPR feed to the BOV feed since it gets it's source from the plenum, this should be much better then stock.

 

Cobb did some awesome data logging a bunch of runs and came up with these graphs for fuel pressures

Stock FPR vacuum feed from the 4th cylinder:

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253370&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

After plumbing into BOV line, as you can see it's a HUGE improvement already.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253369&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

 

 

Now, I do have some concerns against using the BOV feed line, for one it's already being teed into with the infamous barbless blue tee (that you should really replace with the Turkeylord one especially if you do this mod). Second concern is length based, BOV line on it's own is about 19", adding the FPR tee would add another 4-5", giving us a line that's about 24" long. Why is this a concern? Resonance, In the Cobb post they posted a

that talks about the importance of having short FPR vacuum lines and resonance that long lines cause in the vacuum lines. By keeping the lines short the resonance is still there, just above our redline so it doesn't matter, with the line being 24" long that could push the resonance to be at our peak power range, which wouldn't be good.

 

Unfortunately I can't find a better source, and plastic manifolds don't let me easily tap drill and tap into them. Thus I decided to still give this a go using the BOV line.

 

 

BOV on the left and FPR is hidden on the right:

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253365&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

I was hesitant to cut an oem hose, but to keep the lines short did it anyway. Turkeylord's tees to the rescue yet again!

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253366&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Attached a new vacuum hose (I think it's 5/32") and gave it enough length not to kink, I will probably shorten this line once I switch to different FPR.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253367&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

For now capped off the feed from cyl 4, I will use this for my boost gauge eventually though. Just a PSA, these caps don't last long at all, they are only good for temp fixes since they crap and leak overtime.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253368&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

 

If you do this mod you want to make sure you replace the oem blue barbless tee with a turkeylord one too (or at least put clamps/zipties on it), otherwise if it slips off your FPR will not see positive pressure and send you into lean city. I had my blue tee clamped, but still replaced it.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253382&stc=1&d=1501640928

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253383&stc=1&d=1501640928

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253473&stc=1&d=1501768924

 

For now the car seems to stumble slightly less, but it's still not as good as I would like for it to be, this is probably due to the 05 styled fuel pressure regulator that I will be replacing with 04-07 STI one soon.

 

Here is a learning view screenshot after 90 city miles, this is the lowest I've ever had A learning at! A learning is used for idle AFR corrections.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253472&stc=1&d=1501768892

 

If your A learning is high you usually have a vacuum leak, clogged injectors, clogged fuel filter, or other air/fuel related issues. I've chased my tail for a while trying to get this down, glad to finally get it reduced with a 5 minute mod!

 

EDIT: Well I spoke too soon, just pulled a LW and A learning is at 4.50%. Looks like aggressive driving and probably less idling is the reason why it was in the negatives.

Edited August 3, 2017 by covertrussian

[Markbo]

Was your stumble at low rpm/idle?

[covertrussian]

Was your stumble at low rpm/idle?

 

Idle wasn't as smooth as I would like it to be, but changing the idle timing did help mask it, so doing this wasn't as big of an improvement as it would be to others. I will say I didn't feel it stumble at all while sitting on stoplights, but I had AC on so that might have masked it.

 

My main stumble was noticable at low rpm 2-3k, 25-35mph in 3rd or 4th gears. I still am getting it, once I replace the FPR will see if that fixes that, if not then it's the tune.

[005GTWagon]

Looking forward to the results. I have been experiencing the same issue with a stumble between 2-3k rpm. I have noticed with mine that it seems to learn the stumble. When I reset the ECU the stumble goes almost completely away but then comes back within a couple of days. Thanks for the great thread.

[Flinkly]

I literally just stumbled on this in ECUFlash, but wanted to post in case I forgot about it.

 

My ROM has an "A/F #1 Learning Threshhold" Min and Max. From the table description, it sounds like you can set the min and max value that learning #1 will be applied to vs. MAF g/s, so you could make it so learning D didn't apply to open loop by keeping learning #1 from being applied above 40 g/s (or whatever your open loop MAF flow is).

 

Mine reads strange in the stock ROM though, so I think I need ROM specific tables. it has -30 as the minimum, and .25 as the maximum.

 

FYI.

[covertrussian]

Good eye Flinkly! My 05 has it defined properly it seems.

 

 

Help text for Min Threshold is:

This determines the minimum mass airflow that AF Learning values will be applied to.

 

Help text for Max Threshold is:

This determines the maximum mass airflow that AF Learning values will be applied to. By setting this lower than D range, no fuel learnings will be carried into open loop fueling.

 

AF#1 Learning Min Threshold = 1.60

AF#1 Learning Max Threshold = 80.00

 

This means that I should be able to set my ranges down to 40 and just set Max Threshold to 39, which is awesome! Thank you for finding this!

[covertrussian]

Legacy's run a fairly complex fuel pressure regulator setup, this setup has a lot of cross talk between the feed and return fuel lines. It's believed the stock FPR assembly is the reason for a lot of the infamous stumbles. Newer STI's (2008+) have a similar FPR setup and have been known to stumble a lot more then same year WRX's that have a traditional FPR setup. It also seems like aftermarket fuel pumps really don't like the stock complex FPR assembly.

 

Parts list:

04-07 STI FPR - 22670AA351 - $100 new, I got mine for $20 used on the forums

5/16" Fuel Injection hose - $8/foot

4 x 5/16" Universal Connectors - Doorman 800-120 - $8/each

5/16" Fuel Hose connectors - Can use left over stock.

 

Now not all four universal connectors are required, you can probably get away with just two since stock hoses wont be long enough.

 

 

Stock FPR setup with fuel filter:

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253371&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Pulled the fuel pump fuse and started the car. Even though the car would eventually die there was still 20psi in the lines. This as usual made the fuel line pulling fun and splashy. Removed the fuel return and feed lines

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253372&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Next is removing the lines coming from tank, but Subaru decided to add a barb which makes it very hard to use any kind of fuel line removal tools.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253373&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Ended up unbolting the two FPR bracket bolts and undoing the clamps since couldn't get the other end. Left the stock short hoses, will reuse them.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253375&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

All of the crap on the left replaced with the little thing on the right... This is a prime example of Subaru over-engineering themselves where simplicity is best. Now this is interesting, the U hose goes from the FPR to what looks like a damper, not sure why they would put a damper AFTER the FPR, usually they are placed on the feed line and not on return too.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253374&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

 

STI FPR's vacuum nipple faces the strut tower when installed, this would require a long FPR hose (trying to keep it as short as possible for resonance reasons). FPR head is clamped onto the FPR, but wasn't permanently attached, thus I could carefully rotate it with some pliers.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253376&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Test fitting the FPR and its orientation

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253377&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Fuel Filter installed in the feed line, things are back to being cramped. The fuel lines from the filter to the hard lines are a little too short, might be a little to much tension on them.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253378&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Shortened the FPR vacuum line, looks nice and clean now

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253379&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Before

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253371&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

After

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253380&stc=1&d=1501640928

 

Started up the car, disconnected the vacuum to see how much vacuum she was running, and to my surprise it's running 46psi instead of 43. From what I remember stock setup was barely pushing 42psi at idle with FPR disconnected.

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=253381&stc=1&d=1501640928

Edited August 3, 2017 by covertrussian

[Turkeylord]

That looks fantastic, so much simpler!