Andy_Mac's '06 JDM BP5 GT Spec.B

Figured I'd move this over from sl-i since I'm hardly ever on there.

I had a good two years in the B4 RSK, but i was starting to get a bit sick of the age and difficulty in getting any more power out of them without going single turbo.

So i bit the bullet and picked up a tidy 2006 BP5 GT spec B with 120k km, on the clock.

Spent quite a while searching for a nice one with full leather and manual, suprisingly rare! But finally got there in the end.

Progress so far:

Interior:

AVS S5 alarm

Defi BF boost gauge

JDM tbSTI black headliner w/ alcantara wrapped pillars

Audio:

JDM double din fascia kit

Alpine IVE-W554ABT double din headunit

Polk MM series Front components & rear coaxials w/ JBL GTO1004 amp

Rockford Fosgate Punch P1 12" sub w/ Rockford Fosgate Prime 1200d amp

Exterior:

LED 20w park lights

LED 50w fogs

Work Emotion CR Kiwami 18x8.5 +47

Work RS type lug nuts

Bridgestone Potenza RE003 235/40/18

Whiteline KCA399 offset rear upper control arm bushes for camber adjustment

JDM tbSTI gold Brembo's with rear backing plates so no adapters needed.

Stage 1 e-tune by Cryotune

From a few of the last revision pulls it seems to be sitting around 155kw/285nm

And here she is...

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First day i had it i had an AVS S5 alarm put in (insurance company request)

And next on the list was a Defi boost guage. Went this route as in the future i'll probably get a couple of other gauges. And being a JDM car you gotta have some homeland goodness.

Install was a bit of a mission but managed to get it setup how i wanted. When i get more gauges they'll go in the top cubby and the controller will have to go somewhere else.

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Love the look of the lights. Having matching parkers really cleans the front end up.

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Audio sounds a million times better than the mcintosh system ever did and not having to use a fm tuner for the phone anymore was reason enough to upgrade.

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Interior refresh using a mix of tbSTI interior pieces and self wrapped Alcantara pillars

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Got the wheels all fitted up, just needs an alignment to try get the front end to tuck in a bit more

Work CR Kiwami 18x8.5 +47 w/ Bridgestone Potenza 235/40/18

Got a set of Whiteline KCA399 bushes to give it some much needed rear end camber adjustment. Not a fan of these bushes they were a real pain to install and adjust. Get the feeling they may lose alignment too since the serrated ends to hold the setting chews up the aluminium arms pretty easily. Considering getting rid of them and going for the adjustable lower arms.

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Also have a set of Brembo's waiting for some spare time so they can be repainted. Want to do something different to the standard gold but still can't make my mind up what colour to go for. Were from a TBSTI so came with some rare Brembo friendly backing plates

http://i1149.photobucket.com/albums/o594/andy_mac1/92F98170-89B6-469F-A8C6-6A6ED02C9666_zps8myggrat.jpg

Once the Brembo's and swaybars are in the plan is to save up and get a turboback exhaust, some silicone intake pipes, anything else needed and wind it up to 18-19psi and see what it can make since the VF45's bearings apparently aren't as temperamental as the journal bearing VF38's at that level.

That's a super clean wagon! Wish I could've picked that one up!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So finally got around to doing the Brembo swap over the last few days, figured I'd take a few days off work to do this, and being the final week of The Rock 1000 it couldn't have been a better time for it.

Got a set that came from a JDM tbSTI Legacy which had Brembo compatible backing plates for the rear with 190mm handbrake shoes and STI braided brake lines.

Not much of a size difference for rotor diameter or thickness but the calipers are a fair chunk lighter than the Spec B 2 pot sliders.

The front dust shields are actually identical to the Spec B ones despite the rotors being 10mm larger, sadly I didn't discover this until I'd spent a few hours trying to get the original ones off.

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Other than that the fronts were a breeze. The rears were a bit more work since the backing plates needed to be replaced.

This involved removing the hubs which took some convincing with a piece of wood and a big hammer to get off the axles. Then getting the handbrake cable out of the old setup and into the new one was a bit fiddly but not too bad.

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The next challenge was attaching the calipers, due to the differing bolt spacing of the Brembo's the holes in the trailing arms intended for tightening the caliper bolts no longer line up. The top one could still be accessed but the bottom one had virtually no clearance to get a socket head onto the bolt and the bent over lip made using a closed end spanner problematic too. The only way I could work out was to take a grinder to a closed end spanner which ended up working a treat. Obviously couldn't torque the bolt but I really couldn't see any other way around this.

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Still haven't got the handbrake quite right yet, seems to be doing some weird things in certain situations. Does some clicking and pinging and doesn't always seem to grip.

With both pad adjusters wound right in I had to go digging further to try find a way of loosening it some more. Ended up coming across another adjuster on the handbrake lever itself which I've had a play with and will keep tweaking until I get it right.

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And the finished product of course. Happy with the choice to keep the calipers gold, really needed something that stood out a bit since the old calipers and black rims used to get a bit lost in the lack of colour. Haven't had a chance to give them a real hammering yet but seem to bite a bit sooner in the pedal travel than the Spec B ones used to do.

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I cant see your license plates? lol

Sweet looking ride so far

Not much of an update. Still haven't got to the bottom of the handbrake gremlins. Haven't had a decent bit of spare time to investigate the issue, but had a spare few mins this arvo so decided I needed to trial fit the ****ty little JDM space saver to make sure she actually fits over the Brembo calipers incase I ever need it.

As expected, the rear fits alright but the fronts didn't even come close to fitting over.

Everyone always says its safer to have the space saver on the rear so i guess it fitting over the rear is all I really need. I get the safety side of it but won't it cook the viscous rear diff super fast if caught out somewhere on the open road.

Front barely even gets as far as touching the hub.

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So a few things have been done since the last update.

Finally got around to installing a Spec B STI front lip. Loving the aggressive look it gives the front end. Considering making up some sort of DIY rubber lip protector similar to the one offered by Subaru to prevent it getting damaged on low driveways.

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I've also done a decat on the stock downpipe.

Thought about going for an aftermarket one but due to the massive cost for twinscroll ones and after some discussion with others with much more knowledge than me I decided to keep the stock one. Apparently with the tiny size of the stock turbo's outlet and the stock flow there is almost no advantage going for a divorced or bellmouth one and that the two cats are the only tangible restriction.

Used a hole saw to drill out the majority of it and then smashed the remaining pieces with a large metal pole. Also removed the inner metal brackets and steel mesh.

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Comparison between the previous tune and a couple of current pulls.

First two are the current logs and the 3rd is from last years tune.

Its overboosting quite significantly at the lower end but will be getting it properly tuned for 18psi in S#, and lower for the other modes, so should be able to hold 18psi a bit longer. Definitely gives it a considerable bump in torque with the higher boost though so really looking forward to how the tune gets her purring.

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The cars booked in for a new tune in a couple of weeks to get everything tweaked just right.

Only thing I haven't quite sorted yet is the whistling audible at lower revs. Really can't tell if its a problem or whether that's just how it sounds without the cats to slow everything down. I've checked all the intake pieces that were taken out and pressurized the intake with no luck tracking down any leaks, Learning View hasn't really changed at all in the A/F Learning table either. It's just considerably louder than I was expecting, but without previous experience of a decatted downpipe of this nature it could be me just worrying over nothing.

Yea red and blue are after the decat.

I've got a tactrix cable and originally had an e-tune from Cryotune on here, which is the green graph, but this time round there's an aussie tuner thats doing a NZ tuning trip in a few weeks so a dyno's been booked out and he's doing tunes for a few of us to spread the cost out.

Haven't really noticed much difference in fuel economy, I don't drive mine daily, but driveability is definately hugely improved.

What part of NZ are you in? Might be someone local who's cable you could borrow.

Might pay to get the latest PAK file installed for your transmission too, seems to make quite a bit of difference I hear.

I'm in Auckland. Yeah I read about that PAK file update on ClubSub. Previously I've reset my transmission ECU which made a difference but I'm keen for checking out the PAK file too.

Which dyno has been booked?

Yea resetting it can help get rid of any dodgy stuff its learnt along the way but is never a permanent change like the PAK update.

Not actually sure yet. One of the other guys has sorted it out but not mentioned what one its at. Think its pretty full now but there might still be a spot or two free if you want to try jump in on it.

We'll never got to the bottom of the whistling, had been leak checking for a few weeks and came up with nothing. Had a smoke test done while it was on the dyno and that showed nothing either so think it's just a whistle caused by the decat.

In related news the dyno tune done by Throttlehappy/Matt is all complete. Turned out the definition file that had been used for the previous tune wasn't exactly right which was the cause of the strange boost control its always had, boost never seemed to want to stay down. So Matt wrote a new one up on the spot and now things seem to be spot on.

Got a Grimmspeed 3-port boost solenoid to go along with the tune too. Those two together have made it a completely different car to drive now.

Used to make next to no usable boost in first gear, now gets full boost without even really trying. No longer a slug getting off the line quickly if the occasion calls for it. It's fast but tame in S mode but S# is just wild, needless to say it stays in S# 90% of the time.

Base run on the dyno sheet is Matts first tune revision not the previous tune.

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Next project currently in progress is Getting some o2 sensor bungs welded into the stock headers and downpipe so I can attempt to do some back pressure testing and see how restrictive the stock exhaust really is. Results should be interesting

nice spec b, love Jdm subarus.. you are exporting cars from japan?? an which country belongs this forum?

nice after markets, brembo, front lip, how did you get done to change mcintosh speakers?

also 6speed manual thats cool

good luck NZ to rugbyworldcup final

an which country belongs this forum?

Not quite following you there? The majority of this forum is USA based if thats what you're asking.

NZ imports huge amounts of 2nd hand cars from Japan, as in maybe 1/2-2/3 of the cars on the roads are ex Japan ones at a guess. So most of the time if you're looking for a 2nd hand car it'll be imported from Japan

There are ways to do it using the stock HU but I just ripped everything out and replaced the lot. So new HU, speakers, amps, sub, power and speaker wiring. Took a huge amount of time but was happier doing that than trying to integrate it with the stock wiring.

Have now completed the swaybar install, well sort of...

Very dissapointed to be completely honest. Install was relatively easy but operation is fairly sketchy.

Front bar hits the tie rod even with very little movement, had the endlinks set as short as they can. Even with them undone and the bar moved by itself it hits the tie rod almost straight away so don't think even shorter links would help, one side touches before the other too. Have since reinstalled the stock bar and there is no noticeable difference side to side with that one.

Need to get hold of Whiteline and see what they have to say about it, can't see any way for this bar to ever correctly work.

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Rear isn't quite as bad, still have it installed and can hear it knocking on something but haven't had the chance to work out exactly what the problem there is.

Couple more bits I've been doing lately

Haven't installed these yet but feel i'll need to once the STI pink springs are installed to get a bit more rear camber.

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Also got this set for the intake side

Install wasn't as bad as I was expecting, unbolting the hard breather line and BOV line from the back of the intake manifold made all the difference for getting the new turbo inlet hooked up.

The top mounted breather line was the only real problem, there was just no way for the engine cover to fit over it with it being as tall as it was. Managed to get it sorted by cutting it down and raising up the bracket the cover attaches to. Probably cut it a bit shorter than I should have but she doesn't seem to leak at all.

Got rid of the intake resonator too, isn't all that much louder but does have a bit of a weird noise it makes at certain RPM's, undecided whether i'll keep it off or not.

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As expected, the BOV was too tall for the engine cover so took to it with the grinder, still need to tidy it up a bit but she fits pretty well for now.

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Think i've managed to get to the bottom of the rear end knocking today. Turns out i'd just installed the bar clamps in a way that the clamp bolt would hit some of the surrounding steel in the bars natural rotation. Just needed to twist it to a position that it wouldn't touch and she's knock free.

Worth noting for anyone else doing them to get the orientation correct, and cut the bolt shorter if needed. Sticks out well past the clamp so negates the curved shape of the clamp, isn't completely needed though.

Wish the front could have been that easy...

Haven't got as far as installing the STI pink springs yet but for those interested there's the identification dots for the two options I went with.

Front: ST2033021010 - 2 x orange dots - GT/4-cylinder specific

Rear: ST2038021020 - 2 x blue dots - Wagon specific

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Ended up contacting Whiteline directly, showed them the same pictures I have here, who without hesitation sent a new bar out to me.

New bar definately looks slightly different even though the part number is the same, guessing there has been a product revision at some point recently since even the bolt hole sizes are 1-2mm smaller with the new bar, along with a much longer reach, mildly different bend angles and different style lateral clamps.

All in all, happy with this turnout, every company has their stuff ups from time to time and they've handled it well.

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Couple more bits I've been doing lately

 

Haven't installed these yet but feel i'll need to once the STI pink springs are installed to get a bit more rear camber.

 

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This arm scares me a lot. It replaces the suspension arm that acts as a rear bump stop on our cars, and is not designed to handle the load of a sudden impact (large bump in the road).

Breaking a suspension arm means complete loss of control of the car. I'd be very wary of installing it.

This arm scares me a lot. It replaces the suspension arm that acts as a rear bump stop on our cars, and is not designed to handle the load of a sudden impact (large bump in the road).

 

 

Breaking a suspension arm means complete loss of control of the car. I'd be very wary of installing it.

That had actually crossed my mind. Half the reason they haven't gone on yet. Especially with the very limited suspension travel in these cars. Was almost touching the bumpstops when stationery with the stock springs and boot fully loaded up so not alot of available travel to soak up some of the force before the bumpstop touches.

And there is next to no information on these or any of the other brands with a similar design tested out in the real world. They do come with an engineering safety certificate which is required to pass the vehicle safety compliance here in NZ and have been given the ok by those certifiers but as far as i'm aware they do not actually test them to breaking point, only that the design and manufacturing quality is sound.