timmafod

Hey I know who you are. Nice pics Scott, I like how you used the heat shrink tubing. I was able to remove the pin from the connector on my obxt and my brother's lgt without removing the clip. I prefered to use no solder at all. http://www.absurdflow.com/obxt/maplightmod1.jpg Best mod ever, especially on sunroof wagons.

It's been almost a year since I did this MOD to my wagon. IMHO still the best Mod I've done because there's no light in the front on a limited wagon due to the sunroof pushing the interior light to the back seats. For christmas I bought my brother all the parts for this Mod on his 'new' LGT, maybe $5 worth of stuff. Yep, if you get something silly wrong/swapped, that $5 could easily cause $$$ damage.

Were you able to fix your issue?

Pulling the pistons to check would be smart. I tend to not be smart however. I only had the car for 4k miles, right where I usually change my oil (I use royal purple, wix filters, and commute ~55 miles one way to work). I was at least a 1/2 quart low...when putting the oil in I was half way up the dip stick, at disassembly I wasn't on the stick at all, but there was a "decent" amount of oil in it. I never noticed any smoke at all ever out the tail pipe. The intake tract on the other hand was coated, there seemed to be puddles of oil everywhere inside there. I'll be installing two catch cans (one in crankcase PCV line, one in valvecover vent line) when it goes back in. I see there's clever ports for removing the wrist pins. How do you make sure the small end of the connecting rod aligns with the wrist pin hole in the piston when you reassemble? Oh, when it's out I'll also reinforce the oil pump pick up, I hear these crack.

This is all excellent information. I am currently in a rebuild of my 96xxx mile '05 OBXT after a burnt exhaust valve on cyl 2. After MUCH consideration I decide against also redoing the block with forged pistons. It is a gamble especially with my plans for this "daily driver", but if I loose a cylinder again, I will just have to yank the engine out and fix it. Fortunately these subarus are very simple to work on. With respect to being at stoich under boost, with the factory tune my car did remain closed loop/14.7AFR until around 3-4psi. The "stage 1" tune I am running now, based off a tune posted on romraider's forum, turns off the factory counters for the CL/OL fueling switch and now runs OL much sooner. It's actually off the scale rich on my AEM WBO2 (<11:1) which IMHO is better than high 14's under boost The pistons have major carbon build up even with running two tanks of BG44K and seafoam through it before the tear down.

I finally got around to doing this mod today. I went with a solderless route as I do not have a soldering iron at home but I do have a ton of crimp connectors. Like others here I slip the anode end of the diode under the flat part of metal and around a screw to hold it in place. The cathode end (end with gray ring) gets trimmed a little and crimped to a short section of wire. I used: 1. A package of "IN4005 rectified diodes" from radio shack, #276-1104. I do not know if these are the best for the application but they work. 2. Two "red" butt connectors 3. One "blue" female spade connector 4. One "red" male spade connector 5. One splice connector. 6. a few feet of 18gage wire I disconnected the 20amp fuse (#8 in the engine compartment, used vacation pics to find which is #8), very good idea as it's nearly impossible to not touch the two power terminals together when you swap them in the connector. This took the longest time of the entire mod, figuring how to take the wires out of the connector w/o destroying everything. I had to use one flat eyeglass screwdriver from the wire side to pry one part up/out, and another flat from the terminal size to pry up/out the typical clip, and a third hand to pull out the wires (I used my mouth cause I'm that good). Pics: http://www.absurdflow.com/obxt/maplightmod1.jpg http://www.absurdflow.com/obxt/maplightmod2.jpg Running the wire around the sunroof was very simple, the trim piece just pulls away. I figured it was held on with glue but that's not the case. Very simple. http://www.absurdflow.com/obxt/maplightmod3.jpg A BIG thanks to the OP for this mod.

I am using a cable from ebay that looks exactly like the one you posted. Blue connector, clear/silver cable, same sticker on the "driver" cd. Interestingly enough, the cd did not have a driver on it, but only had a link to the same website in the first post of this thread. However I used the most recent ecuflash and tactrix drivers included in the ecuflash download. New Dell netbook with winXP. Everything works perfectly, including romraider and learning view. I am also using this serial-USB converter with the default winXP drivers to datalog my gauge type AEM UEGO wideband within romraider's logger without issue.

I do not get any chip info anywhere on the desktop/toolbar when I plug in my VAGcom cable to my dad's XP laptop. Regardless, after spending a few hours updating all the service packs on this here laptop (thing was never connected to the internet...ever), I loaded the "tactrix" drivers, which are bundled with the latest ecuflash download off ecuflash's website. Ecuflash version 1.42.2595. I attempted this latest ecuflash instead of 1.29a because of a note on RomRaider's site that their ecuflash definitions only work on 1.31 and up. http://www.romraider.com/forum/topic3808.html Anyway, ecuflash 1.42 worked as far as downloading the rom image from my ecu. I have not tried anything else yet; don't even have romraider installed. I'll attempt that next. EDIT: WTF?! Target boost drops to 8.5psi gauge at redline?! BBBOOOOOOOO. EDIT 2: Romraider's logger is working. It did not at first but after exiting out of the progam, the logger connected on the second try. Activating the logger with the rear defroster switch is pretty slick I must say...

I don't see where you download tactrix specific drivers from tactrix's website. If I click the link on tactrix's site that says "You can download EcuFlash and the drivers for this product here.", it goes to ECU Flash's website, where I can only find various ECU Flash software, NO "tactrix" drivers. (The link for ECU flash 1.29 does not work on that site for me, I had to download it from an mirror site posted earlier here). I borrowed my pop's XP laptop to try it out. If it works, I'll purchase an XP netbook hopefully on killer sale on black friday. Bestbuy is going to have a compaq/hp netbook with XP Home for $180, walmart will have an emachine laptop with windows 7 for $200. Not sure if this cable and software will work with windows 7 though. EDIT after a few days off to calm down: Tactrix is openport 1.3/2.0, right? In that case, I will try ecuflash 1.42 and the openport 1.3/2.0 drivers

subscribed. I just got my LEDs from diode dynamics off this site, going to go out to radio shack in a few to pick up the diodes.

Newb here, with a newb question before I even start downloading software (I received the ebay VAG cable tonight): Do RomRaider (RR) and Ecuflash do basically the same thing? Can I use either to read, datalog, edit and flash the OEM ECU data? If so, which do most of you prefer? Regardless of that software, I still need to download the drivers in post #1 for the ebay cable, set baud rate and com port, etc first? I'm 99% sure that is a "yes" but after reading both threads I want to make sure for any other newbs out there. I'm going to try this on windows 98 with the no-longer-supported VAG cable drivers. My tuning laptop is an old thinkpad with a serial port that's needed for most other ecu and NO software on it that isn't for tuning, so it's pretty quick for what it is. If it doesn't work I will have to steal the wife's work laptop that runs vista. VAG cable has a USB connector on the end, not serial (I saw both on ebay). EDIT: windows 98 drivers installed, VAG cable comes up as a USB controller in the device manager, not a COM port. When choosing "read ecu" in ecuflash 1.29a it does not connect, same errors as below. I will attempt to find a windows XP laptop and try again. Another question, will the fans cycle on and off the entire time you are reading/writing/whatever? How long does it normally take to read and write to the ecu? My neighbors already look at me funny. And...what is the difference between Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers and D2XX drivers? VCP seems like it'd make more sense but I'm not computer literate. I followed the instructions for XP on my desktop computer and the VAG cable shows up at a COM port. That's a good sign.