Question about tuning......

[CUCUY]

...... the things needed to take care of on a stock 2005 Legacy GT, will getting a Cobb stage 1 tuner take care of them?

I'm talking about the lean to boost and other things of that nature.....

I'd like to get a custom tune, but if I can just get something out of the box and do it myself..... well, ya knits.....

[ehsnils]

Before doing a tune make sure that everything is in good order. Do a compression test first to make sure that you don't tune something that's going sour and get a bad tune.

 

If that checks out you should continue with checking the turbo since they have a habit of going sour now and then - and take the engine with them. A lot of oil in the intercooler is also a telltale sign. Some oil there isn't unusual.

 

That done - there's a number of items to take care of before tuning:

 

• Fresh filters and an oil change.
  
• Clean MAF and throttle body.
  
• Flush radiator and engine and use fresh anti-coolant including a thorough burping. This would lower the risk of bad cooling.
  
• Replace PCV valve. It's one part that acts quirky on older cars and can cause blown seals.
  
• Fresh spark plugs. If you discover that there's traces of oil in the spark plug wells you should replace the seals for the spark plug wells under the cam cover.
  
• Clean the ignition coils using brake cleaner or similar that evaporates. Don't use WD-40 since that sticks to the surface of the coils since it attracts dirt and causes problems later.
  
• Make sure there aren't any vacuum leaks that would throw any tune off.
  

After the maintenance work you should drive the car for a few miles to let it settle down and make sure that you haven't missed something during the process.

 

If out-of-the-box tunes are working for you depends on if you have mods like a different air filter or downpipe than stock.

[NickCawks]

From my looking into base maps, it seems very hard to find a none custom tune which suites for any one particular setup. Your best bet beyond getting a dyno tune would to be use one of the stage 1 maps that is designed for a fully stock car.

 

These tunes work fairly well with a stock setup, however there are some factors which can not be accounted for on such a map things like altitude, temperature, and humidity can and will effect a tune.

 

On top of that many of the stage 1 base tunes are reported to throw CELs with changes as small as running a k&n drop in over a stock filter.

 

One important take away - nothing you do is permanent. Try a map and if it doesn't feel right flash back to your stock map.

 

Also look around Craigslist and ask at the local shops. You'd be surprised by how many people you might come across that know how to Tune a car. I had a guy for years that would rent a shops dyno on Saturdays and tune people's cars for 150 an hour

[covertrussian]

...... the things needed to take care of on a stock 2005 Legacy GT, will getting a Cobb stage 1 tuner take care of them?

I'm talking about the lean to boost and other things of that nature.....

I'd like to get a custom tune, but if I can just get something out of the box and do it myself..... well, ya knits.....

 

I believe Cobb Stage 1 does disable all of that, but it will also run more boost.

 

Sounds like your like me, where you want stock boost levels, just with safety added. You might be better off with a Open Source route, Tactrix cable + Laptop, and you can easily disable those Subaru stock tune baddies for 1/3 the price of AP.

 

See this post for details on what needs to be disabled.

[CUCUY]

Oh, the car is completely stock. I just wanted to take care of the known issues and I don't mind paying if it's plug and play and can easily do it myself.

There are local shops and local guys who can do it for a fraction of the cost, but I'm pretty big into doing stuff on my own vehicles.

 

I was just wondering if anyone else has had any experience with the Cobb AP and what their consensus was......

[CUCUY]

I believe Cobb Stage 1 does disable all of that, but it will also run more boost.

 

Sounds like your like me, where you want stock boost levels, just with safety added. You might be better off with a Open Source route, Tactrix cable + Laptop, and you can easily disable those Subaru stock tune baddies for 1/3 the price of AP.

 

See this post for details on what needs to be disabled.

 

In the link you posted, can this be done with the Cobb unit?

[NickCawks]

Cobb APs are great because they make tuning more accessible to the average person, but they do take a bit of knowledge (more than I have).

 

That said my tuner is constantly preaching how awful the Cobb is and that open source is much easier to get a detailed tune on.

 

You can indeed do pretty much everything listed in the tuning guide with a cobb