livinon2wheels

thanks for the info underdog...when the time comes thats what I will do.

Im curious, I have an 05 Leggy wagon 2.5i that I am using part time as a track car and it still has the original rack in it. What would be a bolt in upgrade for that car? And would it be possible to just change the steering knuckles at the wheels to quicken the steering without a rack change?

Nice choice of wheels, they look much like the ones i put on my white wagon. Sadly my wagon is non turbo, but it still is a fun place to play. Sadly mine is out of service pending a new transmission. On a good note it should be back in service by spring.

Thanks for the affirmation Brandon. As i have pondered this problem since my last post, my thinking is as follows, if you are building a hi-po street motor, stay with stock pistons and regap the rings like you would if you were building a track engine, and then use a conservative tune. Not as conservative as the factory tune (duh!) but conservative enough to minimize knock events and then enjoy it. `It will tolerate being driven like you stole it for short periods of time most likely without ever giving a problem. If you are building something for the track, don't screw around, put forged pistons in it, with conservative ring gaps and tune it properly and then go have fun, and it will probably hold up for a couple of hard racing seasons if you treat it right. This is probably oversimplified, but at this point in the day I can't wrap my head around anything more detailed than that.

It seems to me that there is likely no one good number for ring end gaps. The gap needs to be progressively larger as your engines horsepower capacity. If you are going to be consistently running high boost, high load then the ring end gaps will need to be larger than for a stage 2 street engine that sees just a few seconds of full throttle and then mostly just cruising along for relatively long periods of time. This is all conjecture on my part. So does anyone have experience enough to say what those end gaps would need to be for an engine that sees regular track use for example, and what be appropriate for a street engine?

This is the most reasonable explanation for ringland failure i have seen other than the excessive knock event reason SOA is fond of using. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between....think about what forces are in play when a ring gap closes up...probably high load sustained like climbing a mountain pass for example. If the gap is just barely closed up probably not a huge deal as long as the is no knock event present, but add a knock event and the ring flexes but not in the way it should and so does the piston crown. Add the two together and you get instant engine damage. Or the extra heat from the knock event pushes the marginally closed up ring into binding mode in the cylinder causing instant ring land failure. I have every reason to believe the rings are several orders of magnitude stronger than the ring lands...any thoughts on this?

I had not stopped to consider what higher pressure on stock injectors would do to the flow...and of course it would be more. Still, as elmer fudd would say....be vewwy vewwy careful! hehe

while i wish no one bad luck at all with their setup...i am by nature cautious when it comes to turbo engines especially their tuning. My comment was only meant to get you to take another look and see how close to the edge you really are. For example, lets say your tune is perfectly adequate for normal driving conditions and the way you normally use the car...now lets throw a monkey wrench in the crankcase by imposing much colder than normal weather which would require more fuel because of the more dense air and also because the colder air turbo efficiency goes up and you have more boost than normal....lets see, lean condition from not enough fuel, more boost than normal...what can go wrong? Ring land failure certainly seems very likely at a minimum with a possible total piston meltdown possible at the other extreme...my caution comes from an exchange i had with my tuner who tuned my 09 wrx...inj duty cycle was nearly 90% when he finished with it and he asked me to do a datalog with that parameter monitored...i asked him about those numbers and his response to me was that its good to have some cushion and 90% duty cycle is a good reasonable max with room for those cases when the engine needs a little extra fuel to avoid going lean. The tuner in question is Bren tuning....and i think they have a good rep in the subie community.

I have serious concerns about getting that kind of power out of stock injectors....I would be taking a hard look at the injectors duty cycle and see if it is maxed out or not....if it is, you have a hand grenade on your hands.

I have serious concerns about getting that kind of power out of stock injectors....I would be taking a hard look at the injectors duty cycle and see if it is maxed out or not....if it is, you have a hand grenade on your hands.

Ok so what did u find out? Cracked ring lands? That would explain low compression and high oil consumption and the motivation of the previous owner to sell

I just recently bought a 2005 5 speed wagon that has right at a 100k miles on it. Just wonder how well the longer gearing would work with the NA engine. What kind of revs are you turning at 60 mph?

I have some pristine 17"x7 WRX rims with the centercaps that came off my 2009 WRX I would happily sell to the right buyer. They currently have a set of all season Michelins on them as 'rim protectors' that would pass va state inspection. Clearly they would need to be picked up rather than have me ship them for obvious reasons. They really are in very nice shape with NO curb rash or anything of the kind. Shoot me a PM with your contact info and a serious offer on the wheels. I can get some photos if you like but they truly look like they rolled off the showroom floor.

this is my first photo upload here, not at all sure if it will work...if it works this is my new legacy...an 07 NA automatic...I know...boring. But we have done a few little things to it to make it a little more spicy than it was when I picked it up a week or so a ago. We did a resonator delete from the otherwise stock exhaust and now when you get on it you can actually hear it. And when you rev it up it sounds pretty good. Replaced the front sway bar frame mount bushings with the Energy suspension polyurethane type and that helped the body roll a bit. Also because they dont make the same bushing in a 16mm size for the rear bar, I took the rear bushings out and ran a bunch of sheet metal screws into them and reinstalled...made them a bunch stiffer than they were. At some point the worn out struts will get replaced, but I need to replace both front axles and the steering rack first, all of them have busted seals. That I will have to save up for. I have the rack, need to save for the axles, then we will do it all at one time...and then do ONE alignment. Lots of work to do. I had a set of BRZ wheels off a performance package car sitting around doing nothing, so I bolted them up to see what they look like, and I like em. 7.5" wide, so better than the stock 7" wheels and look better too. Same weight, added plus of having the Michelin 215/45-17 LRR tires that come on the BRZ already mounted up. Those tires work surprisingly well on that car and are a step up in handling over what was on it and the lower rolling resistance makes the lower horsepower of the NA engine a little less of a handicap in daily driving. I have my own EPA/MY ASS loop that I drive to check mileage improvements that while it isnt truly scientific I suppose, it is at least the same route every time, and that tire on that car is getting measurably better mileage than what was on it before.