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CovertRussian's 2012 Outback 2.5i 6MT Build


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I was actually! I only noticed it while loading the table. I since then replaced it with a 168 bulb, but it looks like the proper bulb is W5W (very similar, just .1w brighter). I'm probably gonna do a LED conversion eventually, like I just did on the LGT.

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Little update, td-d from Romraider was able to find the Rear O2 comps/learning, etc.

 

td-d, or anyone else, can you fine folks help me with 2012 2.5i Legacy/Outback EE5K801W Compensation/Correction/Learning tables? These are different enough that I'm having a hard time telling what's what.

 

Rear O2 comps at 33C6C

AF3 correction at 35C44

AF 3 learning at 344A0

 

 

This is important, because it will allow me to switch (read: build) headers finally!

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bumping this comment up because Engineering Explained actually tested removing the charcoal filter:

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1JmOKKAgyQ]Do Charcoal Air Filters Rob Your Engine Of Horsepower? - YouTube[/ame]

 

Ah right, the whole thing huh. I looked at the service manual, and it's funny that they say "Replace if the filter is clogged, or time for replacement has come." If I were to open it up to inspect, I think I'd just replace as well, after going through all the trouble already. I'm not seeing an interval on the schedule though...

 

Wix is pretty middle of the road, and adequate considering my short intervals (10-15k) anyway. Cost is less than 1/2 a new OEM Denso filter, so I went with the Wix filter to do some experimentation.

 

When I cracked open the airbox over the weekend, there was an additional filter screen/mesh panel between items (7) and (8), ie. after the panel filter.

 

I looked closer at the diagrams for the intake airbox for our year (2012), and what I saw doesn't appear on exploded view. I didn't try removing the mesh panel. from the rear of the airbox. Should I?

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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Interestingly enough, only the 4th Gen (2010-14) Outback 3.6R comes with the larger brakes. Perhaps the 17" determinant derives from the 10-12 'Legacy' chassis and its 17" and 18' GT wheels. Otherwise, :iam:

 

2.5i Rotor Size/Design

Front: 11.6 ventilated front disc

Rear: 11.3 solid rear disc

 

3.6R Rotor Size/Design

Front: 12.4 ventilated front disc

Rear: 11.4 ventilated rear disc

- Pro amore Dei et patriam et populum -
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  • 2 months later...

My struts seem to be done for at 120k miles, that car is becoming unstable at speed and when slaloming.

 

I'm thinking KYB Excel-G, but Bilsteins are not out of question (thought I'm not finding any for 2012). I remember people mentioning that 2013's have better valving (to fix stability issues), thus I'm thinking of getting 2013 struts instead now. Though Excel-G's are firmer then stock as is, so maybe they would be up to 2013 standards even for 2012 model.

 

[b]2010-2012[/b]
KYB:
Front Left: KYB 339225 ($58)
Front Right: KYB 339224 ($58)
Rear: KYB 340027 ($55)
Total Cost (with rebates): $186

Bilstein:
Unavailable

[b]2013-2014[/b]
KYB:
Front Left: KYB 3340131 ($72)
Front Right: KYB 3340130 ($70)
Rear: KYB 3410030 ($53)
Total Cost: ($263)

Bilstein B4:
Front Left: B4 22-278524 ($103)
Front Right: B4 22-278531 ($103)
Rear: B4 19-278544 ($64)
Total Cost: $334

Bilstein B6:
Front Left: B6 22-278555 ($93)
Front Right: B6 22-278562 ($93)
Rear:B6 24-278577 ($81)
Total Cost: $348

 

Getting the 2012 KYB's is the cheapest since Rock Auto has them in stock and since KYB is doing a $40 rebate right now. I'm leaning towards the cheapest route since we are planing to upgrade to a 7/8 seater (hopefully Ascent) in a few years.

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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Interestingly enough, only the 4th Gen (2010-14) Outback 3.6R comes with the larger brakes. Perhaps the 17" determinant derives from the 10-12 'Legacy' chassis and its 17" and 18' GT wheels. Otherwise, :iam:

 

2.5i Rotor Size/Design

Front: 11.6 ventilated front disc

Rear: 11.3 solid rear disc

 

3.6R Rotor Size/Design

Front: 12.4 ventilated front disc

Rear: 11.4 ventilated rear disc

 

 

I believe 10-12 3.6 and GT front brakes were straight BL/BP GT brakes. Rears are different from what I recall helping my son with his 2010 2.5i OB ?

Edited by SubOperator

2005 LGT Wagon Limited 6 MT RBP Stage 2 - 248K

2007 B9 Tribeca Limited DGM - 258K

SOLD - 2005 OB Limited 5 MT Silver - 245K

SOLD - 2010 OB 6 MT Silver - 205K

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  • 2 weeks later...

As I mentioned in the other post, at 120k miles my struts/shocks are done. When doing quick transitions (slaloms) the car would start to get very unsettled and then there was an after quake that would stick around shortly after. It wasn't bad by most people's standards, but since I like my cars to handle good, it was time to replace them.

 

Front

First thing I did is marked the camber bolt position, that way I can reset it later and not have to do a realignment (look at that rusty strut)

attachment.php?attachmentid=275628&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Removing struts is real easy so gonna skip that step and go straight to spring removal. Using two spring compressors I was able to get it compressed enough.

attachment.php?attachmentid=275629&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Using a 6mm Allen key and a 17mm through socket wrench I removed the retaining nut

attachment.php?attachmentid=275630&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

I went with KYB struts meant for the 2012:

Front Left: KYB 339225

Front Right: KYB 339224

attachment.php?attachmentid=275631&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

All the items in order:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275632&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Spring retainer installed, notice the two holes, the strut mount u channel needs to be centered to them:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275633&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

All together and ready to install:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275634&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Front Torque Ratings:

Strut Piston Nut to Top hat: 40.6 ft-lbs

The two knuckle to strut bolts: 114.3 ft-lbs

Top Hat to Body: 14.8 ft-lbs

 

 

Front before and after:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275635&stc=1&d=1557886659

attachment.php?attachmentid=275636&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

 

Rear

Rear shocks are a little tricker to get to and remove compared to the front

attachment.php?attachmentid=275637&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

To get the rear shock out you must unbolt the shock from the lower control arm and the lower control arm from the knuckled. I huffed and puffed but without removing the knuckle side you simply cannot extract the shock. To further reduce the pain, I raised both rear wheels at once, that way I wasn't fighting against the swaybar too.

attachment.php?attachmentid=275639&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Removed the trunk liner and removed the two strut top hat retainers

attachment.php?attachmentid=275638&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

After that the rear shock came right out

attachment.php?attachmentid=275640&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

I forgot to take a pic with the removal of the spring, but the process is the same as the fronts (easier for rears since there are more coils). Here are the two shocks side by side:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275641&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Installed on KYB shocks part number: KYB 3410030

attachment.php?attachmentid=275642&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

All done and installed:

attachment.php?attachmentid=275643&stc=1&d=1557886659

 

Rear Torque Ratings:

Shock Piston Nut to Top hat: 18.4 ft-lbs

Shock Lower Mount to Control Arm: 88.5 ft-lbs

Control Arm to Knuckle: 59 ft-lbs

Top Hat to Body: 22.1 ft-lbs

 

Conclusion

I verified my toe, and it was still at about the same that I last left it (1/32" toe in front 3/32" toe in rear).

 

The car feels much better with the new struts, though I will say I don't think it's as good as it was when I first bought it (at 90k miles) even with my poly superpro bushings in the front LCA (rearward). Maybe something else is due for replacing too?

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Edited by covertrussian

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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  • 1 year later...

I've been a bit of a hermit when it comes to car work, digging my new driveway/planning a house expansion stole all my motivation from touching the cars.

 

What got me out of the woodwork? A bunch of maintenance things on the Legacy and Outback :lol:.

 

Up first is the Rear Right Wheel bearing, its been about 20k miles since I replaced the left one, well now it's rear rights turn.

 

I was tempted to try SKF rear bearings for $20 more, but figured since I know Timken worked fine just continue on with it:

attachment.php?attachmentid=285464&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

I got all the bolts loose but was having a hard time separating hub assembly from the knuckle, tried the slide hammer:

attachment.php?attachmentid=285465&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

This broke the wheel bearing apart but the rest of the assembly was still rusted into place. Since I couldn't wedge anything between the knuckle and drum brake baking, had to try to beat it out with slide hammer again. With enough persistence it finally walked out enough to stick a big enough flathead between the knuckle and drum brake back plate:

attachment.php?attachmentid=285466&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

Hes the offending part, same failure as before. It's hard to say if my reground kit helped or not because this bearing was probably starting to fail when other one failed. Guess we'll see how long the Timkens last (~20k on the left one so far)

attachment.php?attachmentid=285467&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

 

Next up is my front tire shoulder wear. Ive been driving the outback a lot more then my wife, and I think my aggressive turn taking is showing :lol:.

attachment.php?attachmentid=285468&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

The wagon is already a bit tail happy in inclement weather, so I really didn't want to give it too much more front grip, but oh well. I maxed the camber out (to 10, not 11 like on my legacy).

attachment.php?attachmentid=285469&stc=1&d=1593972678

 

 

Finally, with close to 130k miles on the clock, its time for coolant swap. I went with Valvoline Zerex Asian vehicle coolant (had it sitting in my garage for 2-3 years!) This process is more or less self explanatory, but I did mod the plastic molding to allow for easier coolant swaps:

attachment.php?attachmentid=285470&stc=1&d=1593972678

RearRightWheelBearing_001.thumb.jpg.f39d6621642355446dad13a76a331024.jpg

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12OBP_FrontTireWear.thumb.jpg.34d6edbfc9c98a32e1b1876a841a14f9.jpg

12OBP_FrontCamberIncrease.thumb.jpg.ec816acd82951ee622d3bcefe644478c.jpg

12OBP_CoolantFlush.thumb.jpg.c90ec623cb725f805bdaa054040ffee3.jpg

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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  • 1 year later...

It's been a while since I've updated this thread, I've been a bit too busy with house construction to bother with the cars. BUT the frustration of how slow and sluggish this car got this summer forced me out of hibernation.

 

Knock Knock

First thing I did was check the Learning Views and IAM was sitting at basically 0, which explained why the car was sluggish, but didn't explain why it was worse this year specifically. Either my heat shields were rattling and the car thought it was knock, my Shell's 87 got worse, my motor is on it's way out (had an odd vibration at some RPM ranges), or I simply started driving the care more and pay attention more (probably this since my legacy mostly sits). Fixing the rattles and replacing the air filter didn't help at all, so I started going the tuning rabbit hole again. IAM being at almost 0 told me that it's timing/octane related most likely. A couple years ago I did try 87 re-tuning a while ago, but overall the car felt worse then when it would self tune, and there where no peak gains, and multi-map deal was too frustrating, thus I went back to factory tune.

 

Retuning the Timing

After some testing I found that it was mostly knocking at 2,000-3,500 RPM which would knock the IAM down and the rest of the RPM range would be crippled too. I found that if I reduced the timing in 2-3k RPM range IAM would stop pulling nearly as much timing (IAM is very crude/aggressive), but feedback or fine learning would kick in and be more graceful. I kept on adding timing in until it reached MBT (Minimum Best Timing), in the end the map didn't look TOO different from the ECU self tuned map, but it's as much as 10* less then what the ECU wants to run (which I think is over MBT even with 93 octane):

attachment.php?attachmentid=293600&stc=1&d=1633918071

 

Here is the before and after dyno map, after first glance it doesn't seem like all that time and effort helped much at all right? This is why I gave up tuning this car before too.

attachment.php?attachmentid=293602&stc=1&d=1633919381

 

Now if you look carefully at the 2-3k rpm range, look at the torque difference... This was VERY noticeable in daily driving (1-3k RPM range), the car felt much more powerful, similar to when I would run 93 gas. Tuning out this little section of the RPM range made all the difference in the world in drive-ability. Unfortunately this part is really hard to graph, since the software doesn't graph things below 2k rpm well/consistently.

 

The Air to fuel ratio difference is related to D learning, which would reset with each reflash. I went ahead and disabled D Learning to stop wasting fuel mid range and higher, since it clearly doesn't help with power.

 

In the end did I get earth shattering results over stock adjusted timing? Nope, MBT for mid to high RPM range was basically what the ECU self tuned it too, what this brought was the consistent power on a 90-100F day, similar to what I would get on a 50-60F day.

 

 

Also the IAM is now constantly staying to 1.00! This really surprised me at first, since I had full timing up top. Lets just say Feedback/Fine learning knock controls would get pretty angry.

 

About the Primary/Reference Cruise and Non Cruise Maps

I've tried messing with the different maps and I found that my car mostly uses "Base Timing Reference Non-Cruise" for cruising and non-cruising. I've seen it use the timing from one of the other maps at some points, but I think it was a weird combo of IAM/VVL/Water temp.

 

I was hoping to use them based on IAM to have a low octane and high octane maps, but sadly the switching logic is just not that simple. Thus for this reason I took the WOT sections of my Non-Cruise map and blended into the cruising sections of the other maps. This gave me the most consistent performance.

525940965_12OBTimingBeforeAndAfter.thumb.png.3b651ab868baca67fc6bf5f93a7fca4c.png

2080720955_12OBTimingDynoBeforeAndAfter.thumb.png.068940a4d68e51c8d3a379ad86840a41.png

Edited by covertrussian

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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Thanks for keeping the informative posts going on this car.

 

 

 

My wheezy '11 6MT and I are real jealous of your new torque curve. I haven't gone down the tuning / self-tuning rabbit hole at all -- which am generally happy about given an almost total lack of free time -- but this is making me reconsider.

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Thanks for keeping the informative posts going on this car.

 

 

 

My wheezy '11 6MT and I are real jealous of your new torque curve. I haven't gone down the tuning / self-tuning rabbit hole at all -- which am generally happy about given an almost total lack of free time -- but this is making me reconsider.

 

Thanks! In some runs it's was a significant difference, but I couldn't tell if it was another factor (like launching at different rpm) or actual gains, so defaulted to the one that seemed the most accurate.

 

I didn't realize how much time this car spends in sub 2,000 RPM range even. I'm so used to tuning for higher rpm's with my turbo cars, thus was really bummed to see NO gains 4k+ and thus would always just give up and go back to the stock tune.

 

Part of me wants to fill it up with 93 again and make a tune that maxes that out, if there is significant gains then build the maps around that and use IAM pull back as octane based tunes. Forgot to mention, my current tune IAM has been sticking to 1.0 no problem!

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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Thanks! In some runs it's was a significant difference, but I couldn't tell if it was another factor (like launching at different rpm) or actual gains, so defaulted to the one that seemed the most accurate.

 

I didn't realize how much time this car spends in sub 2,000 RPM range even. I'm so used to tuning for higher rpm's with my turbo cars, thus was really bummed to see NO gains 4k+ and thus would always just give up and go back to the stock tune.

 

Part of me wants to fill it up with 93 again and make a tune that maxes that out, if there is significant gains then build the maps around that and use IAM pull back as octane based tunes. Forgot to mention, my current tune IAM has been sticking to 1.0 no problem!

Mind giving a brief rundown of the setup you use to tune? A little while back, I tried to track down ECU defs so I could monitor with BtSSM (which I had used in the 05 OB XT that preceded this car). I recall coming close but never finding an exact match for my ECU ID 75221A7707.

 

 

I'd love to make these improvements but I'm starting from scratch and don't have a whole lot of time available to play around.

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I'm using RomRaider and ECU Flash, my original ROM wasn't defined, but fortunately a newer version with WQC-39 Recall was (which my state is technically not eligible for): EE5K801W

 

What I would do is see if you can find a defined version on RomRaider and switch over to it. For example here is one for 2011 CVT Outback: https://www.romraider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9904

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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  • 2 years later...

It's been some time since I last posted related to this car.  It's been a great and reliable daily driver so no reason to do much.  With that said I did try to change out the ugly stock grill with the Legacy one since some people mentioned it worked.

Stock Grill:

20230507_162207.thumb.jpg.b2913f4fe2aaaa18494b26d29d038b1b.jpg

 

The goal is to go for the Crosstrek Sport style look:

CrosstrekSports.thumb.jpg.790832ff898d626bf3f6c9530c868461.jpg

Here's an example of another outback owner using the legacy grill

OutbackLegacyGrill.jpg.2e8e2ea66b926b01573a0c834d564479.jpg

 

Ordered the Legacy recessed grill similar to the Sports one:

20230507_163227.thumb.jpg.487a426c83d2a88442fb41e3ecb682ec.jpg

 

Drum roll.... Yeah no go on this sadly, would basically have to get the Legacy bumper to make this look right.  Maybe could do some kind of a dark surround to hid the bumper guts, but not sure it's worth the effort.

20230507_163726.thumb.jpg.447104246548d7b2d32e3e3b71091b32.jpg

05 LGT 16G 14psi 290whp/30mpg (SOLD)

12 OBP Stock 130whp/27mpg@87 Oct

00 G20t GT28r 10psi 250whp/36mpg

22 Ascent STOCK

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