Official 3.6R Mod List

The headers are 2.25" at the flange. Then we have 2.5" section of SS mandrel bent pipes running all the way back to the Magnaflow 3" catback with the stock cats welded back in (2.5" ID/OD) in stock location, a flexible section of mesh pipe and the Vibrant resonator moved even further upstream (sounds great this way, 0 drone!!!). AutoMaster reused all the stock mounting locations for the mid-pipe. Al is a welding genius.

I will have moarh pics and videos up by the end of the day.

 

Uploaded.net and YouTube are giving me some tech grief for some odd reason.

 

Here is a DynoDynamics plot from last night. Both with the headers installed (before and after tune).

Power is up almost everywhere post tune, but not a great deal - maybe 10-15% as Raptor predicted, especially post 4K RPM - look how it opens up!

This is expected behavior with headers, top-end power gain.

 

Rob was also able to smooth out the funky torque dip between 3.3-3.5K RPM that our engines exhibit on all dyno runs.

Notice how it was still present with the headers and without a tune (violet plot) and almost flat with a re-tune (dark blue)?

 

But the real icing on the cake is the torque! Its marvelous and much higher than pre-header install.

When Al got the stock headers off the car, he said they belong on a 1.6-1.8L Honda motors, not a flat 6.

He suspects Subaru used this design to keep the power output down on our cars for all their legislative/marketing/target reasons.

 

Word of caution! AMR Performance Rob needed to re-do a lot of the tune once we got the car back on the rollers!

Without a re-tune the car had lost power (5-15hp) vs. previous tune, so effectively, as a bolt-on, without any tuning changes (except perhaps from bone stock, no tune) - adding the headers without a tune results in a power loss. Mainly an issue with running very rich and un-optimal timing.

Rob was amazed at how much the headers changed the way he needed to tune the motor.

More than he typically sees with turbo-backs on FIs or header installs on NAs.

 

Once he made all the adjustments, the car picked up the expected gains you see below.

 

Depending on the shootout mode used this is showing ~ 296bhp (221kW) / 340ft-lbf (461Nm)

Edited October 20, 2014 by Perscitus

What do you think of the stock cats? Is it worth upgrading?

What do you think of the stock cats? Is it worth upgrading?

 

With these results I wouldn't mess with cats unless you plan on tracking the car and getting every possible horse out of it. Then again, if you can find metal cats with a bung at center like oem, dew it!

 

Holly €rap, Perscitus. Very nice.

Any sound clips?

good bunch over there yesterday at amr. was great to meet rob and 3.6Rob in person. it was like watching fast n loud or some socal street race shop. got to see their world record holding 7sec sti too which looked amazing. mikes car is defiantly a work of art as well as the pro tune. the final sound after install was complete is worth every penny. was a treat hanging out and thanks for inviting me. I hope we can do it again soon... and when I'm not half dead lol.

Any sound clips?

yup, 1080p wot pulls on the dyno uploading to youtube tonight.

these look promising http://www.ebay.com/itm/140942069195?item=140942069195&viewitem=&vxp=mtr maybe these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Magnaflow-99355HM-Heavy-Metal-Catalytic-Converter-Round-2-25-w-O2-Port-/111216590574?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item19e5067eee&vxp=mtr , the way I look at it if I don't do cats now I probably will never do them so I should at least do some research. I wont be doing ceramic and im not gonna spend $300 to do it but I might do $140. I cant tell but it looks like these are ceramic even though it doesn't say. Edited October 19, 2014 by stevenc1703

Good find. Looks like both may be metal...please check with selleres. Beware of knock offs on ebay though.

On the topic of cats, Al AutoMaster, who fabricated my setup said the only thing we can do is either go full catless or much thicker, just as short cats with 2-2.5" IDs ODs. Hes thinking older diesel or gas truck cats.

 

In essence, hes suggesting short and chubby cats with plenty of ughmm girth. Bigger as in longer is not better for our application. We just need as much surface area as we can get and a relatively short cat so it can reach operating temp quickly. Transferring the bongs should be no issue, especially if we just keep the wideband sensors and ditch the secondary regular o2s. Both can be tuned out if needed.

 

Im likely staying with the stock cats. They looked very good at 55K. No clogs, no damage, clean

On the topic of cats, Al AutoMaster, who fabricated my setup said the only thing we can do is either go full catless or much thicker, just as short cats with 2-2.5" IDs ODs. Hes thinking older diesel or gas truck cats.

 

In essence, hes suggesting short and chubby cats with plenty of ughmm girth. Bigger as in longer is not better for our application. We just need as much surface area as we can get and a relatively short cat so it can reach operating temp quickly. Transferring the bongs should be no issue, especially if we just keep the wideband sensors and ditch the secondary regular o2s. Both can be tuned out if needed.

 

Im likely staying with the stock cats. They looked very good at 55K. No clogs, no damage, clean

This is interesting, ultimately I want to hear stock is prefect don't switch cats but I don't want regret either. Either way with raptor not getting headers in till December I'll have some time to decide.

Any sound clips?

Turn up the bass!

 

The tone and sound is 50% of the awesomeness of ItalianLegacy's Raptor SC + Header + Invidia setup.

 

Inside the cabin its quiet, even under WOT (actually quieter than the catback + resonator only setup). The car purrs and the exhaust noise has moved back, just as ItalianLegacy's did when he added the headers.

 

Custom header-back exhaust component pics.

 

You can see the stock 1/1.5"ID piece that was removed and the 2.5" ID replacement in the last few pics.

 

AutoMaster Al re-used all stock mounting points (hence the bracket), cats and heat shields.

He also added a section of flexible braided tubing (typically used on FI exhausts).

 

I think it's actively contributing to reducing exhaust noise under acceleration and chassis noise when going over road imperfections/potholes/bumps.

Edited October 20, 2014 by Perscitus

Did you bypass one of the o2 sensors?

Nope, both still used.

 

The ones facing up like you see in the pics are the secondary set (regular narrow band o2s).

The primary widebands come off to a side just at the very front of each cat.

 

You can see their associated bongs in the third pic in the first row of attachments

(look at the inlet to the cat that's further away in the pic).

Edited October 20, 2014 by Perscitus

Custom header-back exhaust component pics.

 

You can see the stock 1/1.5"ID piece that was removed and the 2.5" ID replacement in the last few pics.

 

AutoMaster Al re-used all stock mounting points (hence the bracket), cats and heat shields.

He also added a section of flexible braided tubing (typically used on FI exhausts).

 

I think it's actively contributing to reducing exhaust noise under acceleration and chassis noise when going over road imperfections/potholes/bumps.

 

Perscitus...did they cut off the sub 2" collar of the cats on both ends and weld on new collars, or did they just weld up flanges to the smaller cat collar?

 

By the way, I completely hate you now. My plan was to not spend any more money on my car until after property taxes in Dec and April. Thanks a lot for helping derail my plans.

lol, I hate myself too. I should take a reverse mortgage out against the non-existent mortgage I still don't have.

 

We cut the collars off and re-welded new ones in, or rather cut as ItalianLegacy suggested (effectively the second weld line you see on each cat; the elements inside are even further/deeper in so they are not damaged if you do this) and then mated that up to the 2.5" pipes, welded all around.

Thanks...good to know about the element location. Aftermarket cats are not needed for DD if you can get larger pipes on there. That was my only concern.

Found some goodies on the AU sites:

(pause and play @ 1.07, then skip ahead to 2:57)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStnaJeNgzE&feature=player_embedded]Subaru Liberty SC 2 - YouTube[/ame]

 

http://forum.liberty.asn.au/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22082&start=210

 

http://forum.liberty.asn.au/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=17494

That's great to hear the feedback on the Raptor header.

 

I do entirely agree with the retune comments, we recommend the same for EZ30 from experience, the gains are just some impressive.

 

Good to see well documented gains, exactly what I was needing to confirm.

 

About 45 days from now there should be more stock, there will be plenty.

That muffler right at the front just after the flex joint - PURE GENIUS, we did that with one of our first EZ30 customers and it just made the whole arrangement PERFECT. No cabin drone and such a sweet exhaust note.

 

I dont know how to go about getting our STAGE 4 RAM AIR KIT onto this model but I would expect to further raise power - and by a decent amount too, it will be a huge benefit to the strangled '36

Going well Percitus? A couple of days motoring under the belt now, all good?

Going well Percitus? A couple of days motoring under the belt now, all good?

Running great Tim.

 

Here is some feedback I shared with the tuner (Rob @ AMR):

 

· Fuel Trims cleaned up nicely - within 0-10 (usually 0-5%) for Bank1 and -5 to +5% for Bank2.

· No more excessively rich measured AFRs (vs. what's commanded) under WOT - nothing south of 12:1.

· No more negative timing data points (not even any transient blips).

 

I've logged the trip up to Danbury (before) and trip down back to New York (after) to get a direct comparison of logs. I've also logged some more Sunday and Monday to see the after trends continue.

 

Fuel Trims - much improved (even vs just adding the honeycomb airflow straightener)

15% throttle and up, they’re almost always within the +/-10% bracket, both banks.

 

Looking per bank at both LTFT and SFTF, you can see how the STFT adjustment swings are smaller.

Far fewer cases of the larger negative STFT swings. If anything I see a few more positive STFT swings.

 

Even fuel mileage seems up (I’ve gone through half a tank with some spirited driving since leaving Danbury and I’ve clocked 250 miles thus far; that’s ~32.3mpg!)

Of course I’ll monitor this more over a few tank-fulls.

 

*We forgot to tweak an inherent fuel trim offset we see between Bank 1 vs Bank 2. Ecutek software usually commands changes to Bank 1 only but there is a way to force a hard adjustment factor to Bank 2 for some compensation. Its decreased a LOT from pre-header tunes to a point that it’s almost gone. But, I wonder if getting rid of it would net more power or just a sign of an injector performance difference in one or more of the cylinders between the banks.

 

AFR - also improved (leaner under load). I don’t see any more dips into 10.x:1 rich territory.

15% throttle and up, the richest it got was 11.93:1, typically in the 12.5:1, very close to what's commanded.

 

Timing Advance – has generally gone up. And no more pulled timing! In fact, I see positive timing advance even under WoT.

While crusing, I can typically see +35-40 degrees now. Plenty of +40-45 degree data points.

No negative timing values! Under WOT the lowest I see is +4.5/5.0 degrees!

Seems like it hit that a few times. Before the headers and re-tune, we had a few random -5.0 degree data points.

 

MAF – no issues. Still rock solid at idle. Since you rescaled the sensor (changed transfer function?) I’m seeing lower g/sec ‚readings‘. With the new scale the highest I’ve hit is ~208g/sec.

 

IAT vs AAT Temps are still good – now that its gotten colder, I get within 2-5F of reported ambient while crusing.

After a trip, when the engine heat soaks, the intake only reaches about 110F (used to be 140-160F)

and the intake temp drops back down below 70-80F much much faster once you get going.

 

Data log plots attached:

This is all >15% Throttle Position to remove low throttle, low load noise.

 

Legend:

SATURDAY AM (BEFORE HEADER INSTALL): 1st section, to the immediate left of the red vertical line

SATURDAY PM (AFTER HEADER INSTALL): 2nd section, to the immediate right of red vertical line

SUNDAY AM/PM (AFTER HEADER INSTALL): 3rd section, last continuous section of data toward the right (180K to 225K on x-axis).

Your tune had negative timing and your ignition advance was not at 1? I thought I had read that this is bad. I had read that you should always be at 1 on ignition advance and pulled timing should never be more than -2 consistently. Please help me understand if this is not correct.

Oh no, my previous tune and current one were/are fine.

 

It was the intake R&D changes we made in-between tunes that created some transient pulled timing blips as you either got on or off throttle (2-5 data points out of say 200-400K data points).

 

2nd row, 3rd plot from the left shows before/after Timing Advance data across ~ 8 hours worth of logs:

 

Check out the count of data points below 0 on the left side (very few, but they were there).

And then compare to the right side - not a single one

 

With the headers installed and Rob's latest re-tune, he was able to take advantage of not just the headers but the intake changes. Latest tune has 0 instances of negative timing (no matter what I do), in fact even under WOT (where timing can sometimes get close to 0, its now never lower than +4.5/+5 degrees, which means there is advance even under full load, high RPM, WOT.... this is great and means that there is potentially even more room for improvement.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Perscitus