Out of ideas, give me some of yours!

[09anderson]

Okay, I recently bought a 2006 Leggy GT.

I have owned a bunch of Subarus and this is my 3rd LGT. The guy I bought this thing off of was an extreme half asser. I am extremely OCD when it comes to my vehicles so I started tearing all of the junk out of the car and realized there are a lot of things that have been extremely half assed.

The Good: AVO FMIC, Acessport, Invidia Race turbo back, catless up-pipe w/ Tial EWG

The bad: Awful miss during start-up(goes away after a couple of gurgles from the exhaust.

Boost control solenoid wires cut and pigtail removed.

PCV connector(white one) with the plug is missing.

Half assed catch can with smaller hoses crammed into larger hose and “heat taped”( I have removed it and reconnected all lines to the factory hard line.

The bracket that held the factory BCS and other sensors is gone and all connections are jumbled together.

Car doesn’t throw any misfire codes while warming up while missing and cutting.

Very strong fuel smell while warming up.

The car has a tune that is currently on it that is labeled Precision Stage 2. Not very sure wether this was a pro tune or an e-tune.

I am trying to track down what could be causing these issues and any help would be greatly appreciated.

[tysparks81]

Although it isn't throwing any codes I would start with new spark plugs, which will allow you to check the coils as well.  Replace any that have started to separate or rust.   The fuel smell leads me to think might be a problem with the evap selenoid or with the fuel pump (good time to upgrade).  I would say fill the tank and if it is slow to fill or you have trouble starting it is the evap.

Have you tried going to a stage 1 or stage 2 cobb tune?  The car should still run with those tunes.  As well if there are any CEL deletes in the protune/etune they should pop up with the OTA tune fairly quickly.

Hope that helps.

[KZJonny]

53 minutes ago, tysparks81 said:

Although it isn't throwing any codes I would start with new spark plugs, which will allow you to check the coils as well.  Replace any that have started to separate or rust.   The fuel smell leads me to think might be a problem with the evap selenoid or with the fuel pump (good time to upgrade).  I would say fill the tank and if it is slow to fill or you have trouble starting it is the evap.

Have you tried going to a stage 1 or stage 2 cobb tune?  The car should still run with those tunes.  As well if there are any CEL deletes in the protune/etune they should pop up with the OTA tune fairly quickly.

Hope that helps.

+1

Don't forget to back up the current tune before throwing and OTS tune on to see what is going on.

[relative4]

If I understand correctly, you're asking about 2 issues:

1.  Fuel smell during warmup - this is commonly due to the silly little hose clamps scattered around the fuel lines under the intake manifold going from the regulator to the injectors.  Those can be tightened up and then, if you're OCD, locked into place with additional M4 nuts.  If they are the culprit, the smell should be most pronounced in cold weather.

2.  Missing/stumbling during startup - BtSsm will give you misfire (roughness) counts on each cylinder, great for watching misfires under the threshold for a P030x code.  I'd start with that to see if it's one cylinder acting up, or all of them.  Could be as simple as low fuel pressure caused by the aforementioned loose fuel line clamps.

[09anderson]

1 hour ago, tysparks81 said:

Although it isn't throwing any codes I would start with new spark plugs, which will allow you to check the coils as well.  Replace any that have started to separate or rust.   The fuel smell leads me to think might be a problem with the evap selenoid or with the fuel pump (good time to upgrade).  I would say fill the tank and if it is slow to fill or you have trouble starting it is the evap.

Have you tried going to a stage 1 or stage 2 cobb tune?  The car should still run with those tunes.  As well if there are any CEL deletes in the protune/etune they should pop up with the OTA tune fairly quickly.

Hope that helps.

Yeah I switched to the Cobb stage 2 ots map.

Didn’t really change much. Still the same problems. I am starting to wonder if the Intake manifold gaskets might be a  potential cause of the rough idle and misfiring sound.

From what I have read they almost essentially seal up after the motor is warmed up.

 

[09anderson]

13 minutes ago, relative4 said:

If I understand correctly, you're asking about 2 issues:

1.  Fuel smell during warmup - this is commonly due to the silly little hose clamps scattered around the fuel lines under the intake manifold going from the regulator to the injectors.  Those can be tightened up and then, if you're OCD, locked into place with additional M4 nuts.  If they are the culprit, the smell should be most pronounced in cold weather.

2.  Missing/stumbling during startup - BtSsm will give you misfire (roughness) counts on each cylinder, great for watching misfires under the threshold for a P030x code.  I'd start with that to see if it's one cylinder acting up, or all of them.  Could be as simple as low fuel pressure caused by the aforementioned loose fuel line clamps.

I will check those out! Thank you! 

[rhino6303]

Do you know if there was a protune before you flashed the cobb ots tune?

What are all of the modifications on the engine? I know you listed some but give us a single post with all if you can. Thanks.

Intake, Injectors, Turbo, Downpipe, Intercooler, EBCS?

[09anderson]

12 minutes ago, rhino6303 said:

Do you know if there was a protune before you flashed the cobb ots tune?

What are all of the modifications on the engine? I know you listed some but give us a single post with all if you can. Thanks.

Intake, Injectors, Turbo, Downpipe, Intercooler, EBCS?

To my knowledge, the only thing that was on there was the precision stage 2 tune(that’s what it’s labeled). But I don’t know if it was a pro tune or if it was an e tune.

Engine mods from what I can tell and what I’ve been told:

Custom short ram intake, Avo fmic, factory vf40(Supposedly billet wheel upgrade), new fuel pump( to my knowledge it’s a factory replacement), EL headers, full catless turbo back.

Injectors look like factory yellow tops, the wires for the EBCS are clipped and spliced into some eBay brand looking boost control solenoid and it wasn’t hooked to anything at all with both ports unhooked. It also has the cheapest looking MBC I’ve ever seen. The lines were put on a tee from the compressor housing, bottom port of the ewg and the top of the ewg also.

He also told me he paid $800 to have the intake manifold gaskets replaced and I don’t know where he had those done( dealer or local shop).

 

[09anderson]

**Update**
The half asser took the cheap way out and replaced the spark plugs with Autolite Platinums.

1 problem down, will definitely be switching back to Iridium asap! 

[09anderson]

So I still have the weird idle on cold starts. I upgraded today back to factory iridium. It still does the very rough idle until it warms up and then it straightens itself out. Any ideas?

[rhino6303]

I think it's time for a compression test. This is simple and will at least point to or rule out whether an internal issue if it exists.

[09anderson]

20 hours ago, rhino6303 said:

I think it's time for a compression test. This is simple and will at least point to or rule out whether an internal issue if it exists.

While I’m waiting to do a few other things to the car. I decided to take some time and fix a few things that I knew I could do easily. I have an exhaust leak at the manifold because one of the studs has backed out of the head. Is there any quick fix for this? Also, I was logging during startup and noticed that the air fuel ratio during startup was 25.xx. When I started hearing the gurgles that I’ve mentioned before I noticed that there was roughness counts coming on cylinder two and three. The gurgles are when the roughness starts, and then after it has roughness a few times on the cylinders the idle straightens out and the car starts running perfectly fine with the air fuel ratio at 14.xx . There are no more roughness counts after the car has done the gurgles and starts running normal.
Could this be an issue with the injectors or is it something in the tune that I’m currently running?

[KZJonny]

Studs + bolts are cheap, even at Subaru. Easy fix. Good chance the bolt is rust welded to the stud, so get both.

I’ve never heard the technical term ‘gurgles’….  Video may help?

I tend to agree with @rhino6303. More data is better. Compression test will be valuable information. Fix known problems before chasing down issues, so do the manifold first.

Maybe smoke/pressure test the intake system to look for leaks there as well?

Ruling out the easy stuff goes a long way.

[09anderson]

Here’s a quick little pull from earlier.

[rhino6303]

If you're having fuel issues I wouldn't go WOT at all. It's a recipe to explode and melt things. Lean under load = bad day.

Misfiring and high afr at idle is commonly a vacuum leak. You should log the following on your AP:

Short term a/f correction, Long term a/f correction, AFR #1, MAF, Load, RPM.

Post these values at cold start, cruise, and warm idle.

[09anderson]

Will do, I will try to post them tomorrow.

Thank you guys for your help