Elegua's Badass BR9 Wagon

The background:

 

In 2012 I needed a car, preferably one that could carry all of my windsurfing-sailing,-scuba diving-camping crap.

 

After looking at a lot of underwhelming and over priced German cars and Japanese cars that begin with I & L, fahr_side suggested I not be an idiot and take a look at the 5th Gen LGT Wagon. After a test drive, I liked it so much I bought it right there.

 

As soon as it was broken in at 10k km, I went stage 1, at 16k km I went stage 2 and at 22k km, after swearing I would never do it, I went stage 3. Right now we have about 52k km on the car.

 

The general goal of the build was for the appearance, sound, functionality and reliability to remain as stock as possible while getting as much reliable power as possible.

 

 

Where we are at this point...

 

Where I live car comes only as an EDM 5EAT and currently is set up as follows:

 

T00ning

- fahr-side ROM & MAF scaling

 

Suspension

- Hardrace LCA bushings*

- Whiteline 24mm rear sway bar / 26mm front sway bars*

- Kartboy end-links

- Poly bushings for rear dif

- Koni 8610 1447Sport Front, 8010 1055 Sport Rear

- RCE Black springs

 

Wheels & Brakes

- Enkei SC-24 8J-18 45 offset*

- RE11A 225/45-18

- Front 356mm floating slotted 2 piece,*6-pot CB6P PB claps

- Rear 330mm 4-pot floating slotted 2 piece CM4P PB claps

 

Engine & Exhaust

- Oil cooler

- Tranny cooler

- Racer X TMIC

- Custom hybrid turbo with VF-54 housings and TD05H-18G billet compressor.

- Custom braided stainless steel turbo oil feed line

- Snow Performance Stage 2 water-methanol injection kit with No 5 nozzle

- DW300 fuel pump.*

- Turbosmart Kompact BPV

- Custom SS 63MM exhaust with turbo style cans and resonator

- Custom downpipe 200 cell cat

- EBCS 3-port boost controller

 

Other

- LC-2 Wideband O2

- VBG1 Gauge

 

 

I couldn’t be happier with the car right now: It runs strongly, it handles well, rides smoothly, serves well as my DD and regularly embarrasses much more expensive hardware. In other words I probably shouldn't screw with it….But, we want ….moar…

 

So, this is the plan:

 

- BW EFR 7163 V-Band EWG

- Manley 99.75 Pistons

- STi exhaust cams

- ACL Bearings

- ARP Studs

- Belt & Pulley (Since the engine is out)

- Alloy radiator

- Hardrace engine mounts

- Custom header to v-band and v-band cat pipe

- Custom FMIC from 335i core

- Custom intake

- Omni Power 3bar MAP

- Fuel injectors DW850

- Turbosmart 45 wastegate

- Re-t00n and up the RQ & CT

 

This week we're placing the turbo and mocking up the header pipes...

 

 

 

I'm more than happy to hear any input since this is a bit terra incognita...

Edited October 26, 2016 by Elegua

Cool looking wagon. Wish we had them here.

 

Good Luck with your project.

The headers have been a point of discussion. We've seen a number of the US installations go with a twin scroll type set up ensure the waste gates route efficiently. Currently we're thinking of waste gating from the middle of the 4-in-1. Not ideal, but not sure how to package otherwise.

 

The other big limitation is we're not 100% sure how much torque the 5EAT can take. We think we have a solution with Requested Torque and Calculated Torque values - we've seen that my increasing these numbers we can get the transmission to shift up to 1/10" faster and so far in 30k km of stage 3, the transmission has shown no slippage..but....

 

The t00ning strategy will be to keep a flat torque curve.

Lazy subscribe...

Ended up going in from the front at the v-band for the waste-gate to save ground clearance and try to get a cleaner routing. Still need a turbo oil pan and a bracket to hold this thing on.

 

 

Now we wait for the short-block to be built, intake to be fabbed, intercooler to be fabbed, and will install/fab all the other supporting mods in August.

I can't remember seeing a turbo in that location on a Subaru before, very cool. The last time I was in Taiwan was during the Lunar New Year last year, saw a lot of 5th gen wagons which was a treat. What city are you in?

Damn son....

That's the stock location for 5th Gen LGTs. I live up north...

 

 

The bumper bar will need to be cut The cut metal will be welded back on the remaining bar. Might be better just to get a crash bar...

 

Tacking up the end pipes on a 335i intercooler

 

The charge pipe into the intake manifold angles look OK...Will probably powdercoat black to keep it low key and use black sillycone.

 

 

On this side the meth pump will need to be moved and the washer tank have a bit cut off. On the other side we'll need to re-locate the oil filter.

 

Oil cooler will move to the current location of the TMIC.

 

Moved the waste-gate a bit so the OE tray will fit...might give the Subaru techs a suprise when they take it off.

Why we are doing all of this...

 

Stockier than stock oil pan with adapter for the new turbo and turbo oil lines fabbed up as well as the oil filter re-locator. Still fits above the tray - yay!

 

 

Bumper cover cut and partially prepped for painting. The OEM plastic trim will be cut and glued back into place along the top and black mesh will cover the cooler. The cooler itself will be sprayed back. There will be some aluminum plates to block air leaks between the cooler and the bumper.

 

 

Oil cooler and transmission cooler will be re-located to the stock intercooler location. This will open up flow at the radiator

 

 

They fit under the OEM shroud and will have aluminum plates fabbed up to ensure that the splitter fit tight and air goes through the coolers and not around them. You can see the oil filter relocation in the upper left hand corner. For now the intake will remain stock until the engine is broken in. All pipework will be powder coated black.

 

 

Right now the plan is to put everything together on the stock engine while another short-block is built with forged pistons. This is to ensure everything works as intended and to get some understanding of the basic parameters. Since we still have the stock injectors at this stage, we'll limit ourselves to approximately the same power, which given the higher flow, should occur at lower boost. Once it's ready, we'll install the built short block, add the cams and injectors, and break it in on the stock intake. Once broken in we'll add the larger intake and re-tune for that. The key question at the end of the day will be how much torque the 5EAT can take, so we'll be raising boost slowly. We've been running around at 350 ft/lb for about 20+k KM, so that will be our starting point.

 

This first part of the build will be complete next week - then I will finally have my car back.

 

Looks like we can't get ahold of the Mahle pistons, so it looks like we'll go with the Manleys.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Elegua

Thanks for the updates.

Let's see that biatch try to boost-creep on us now!

Wrapping the header pipes.

 

 

Key connections on the turbo

 

Everything back in place

 

Coolant and top up the oil and after a couple of spins to get the oil around, she started right up

 

The bad news is that there was a small exhaust leak at the v-band, so we'll need to cut off and re-weld the down-pipe fitting.

 

Now all that is left is the meths tank (going in the spare well), cut and weld the washer tank and get the cosmetic bits on the bumper sorted.

 

T00ning is scheduled for Monday, fingers crossed.

Is there a seal that will fit in the v band ? I know back in my Air Force day's as a Jet Engine Mechanic we used to put a steel seal in on the engine bleed air ducts v bands.

That's an interesting idea. But it needs some welding work anyways. They placed the WB02 bung in the wrong place; after the cat doesn't help much ...

Are those Sched 10 pipes or Iconel ? Excellent looking welds and header! That BW snail is going to make insane trq throughout the range, nice build

Moved to 5th Gen forums. Not engine build-specific

Engine build is coming later in August. Getting bored out, forged pistons, STi cams, injectors. But that's not really a full engine build.

If you're doing it yourself, then by all means, put the engine build in the build forums

No, I'm getting some help for that too. I'm not as talented as many on this forum. Edited June 26, 2015 by Elegua

Subbed

That's an interesting idea. But it needs some welding work anyways. They placed the WB02 bung in the wrong place; after the cat doesn't help much ...

 

 

Never mind. You need a bung post-cat for the rear O2 sensor anyway.

 

 

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Very nice. Cant wait to see some dyno numbers when that is complete.

Very nicely done!

I was thinking about running the 6758, but may hold off if this pulls out better!