New year, new build...v.3.0...R?

Exhaust is finished. I sprayed it all flat black so it doesn't stand out.

 

I'm really surprised how quiet it is in the car. There's no drone. It's just really smooth sounding. There's a little rasp that comes out the tailpipe that you can hear from outside, but once the gates open, who cares?

 

Sound clip: https://youtu.be/fKQxesHrjfk

Sound clip?

I put one in my last post.

And it sounds sweet!

The 1.03 A/R housing ended up being laggier than I wanted. Bought a .82 housing and it's much better. If I want to make some impressive dyno numbers I'll throw the 1.03 back on.

 

I made another sound video. I just can't get enough of how it sounds. I had to move the camera to the side of the car otherwise the sound washed out bad.

 

https://youtu.be/2HdazOQE67s

Edited August 3, 2019 by BrandonspecB

That sound.. it's so sweet!

 

Scotty

Got a nice, new 3.0 under tray and moved into the modern age with a 3-port EBC.

 

Still at 8 psi. It's been too hot to really do much tuning. I also haven't been too motivated to crank it up because it's been pretty fun the way it is now.

Got some AEM 0-5v pressure sensors so I can datalog coolant and crankcase pressure. I want to get some failsafes setup based off that info.

 

Been having some issues with the engine running hot. This car doesn't have A/C, which isn't too big of a deal for me, but having to run the heater to keep temps in check when it's 95 out gets old real fast.

 

Something I found interesting is the 3.0 has the same 5/8" single row radiator core as the 2.5. Almost 20% larger engine, but same size radiator.

 

There are no aftermarket, large capacity radiators for the 3.0, which means I had to rig up my own. I started with a Mishimoto X-Line for the 2008+ STI. This is the same radiator that drops right into an LGT with a 2.5.

 

The new radiator has a 2" 3 row core. With that radiator the stock fans and shrouds won't fit. Luckily Mishimoto makes a low profile shroud and fans for this radiator.

 

Aftermarket fans usually don't flow more air than the stockers, but I really didn't have any other choice and these fans are definitely better than no fans. They do move quite a bit of air when they're on high speed.

 

To get this radiator to work I had to cut off the single inlet and weld in two smaller 1-1/4" barb fittings. The info I could find on the 3.0 radiator said the inlets are 1-1/8". I literally could not find any aluminum barb fitting that size, so I bought some 1-1/4" intending to turn them down a bit. I'm glad I checked the fit before I turned them because the 1-1/4" fittings fit perfectly in the radiator hoses. 1-1/8" would have been too small.

 

The passenger side fitting needed to be set in at an angle because that radiator hose wasn't long enough to go straight on. Once the fittings were welded and the radiator installed, all the radiator hoses needed to be trimmed shorter. Then I cut the connector off the factory fans and connected them to the Mishi fans. The red wire on the Mishi fans connects to the blue wire on the factory connector.

 

Even with the slim fans this setup barely fits. I had to trim down the passenger fan to keep it from rubbing on the engine. The factory coolant overflow doesn't fit. Right now I'm using a plastic bottle for the overflow, but I'll make or buy something for a permanent solution.

 

To top it all off I threw on a 1.3 bar Cosworth radiator cap. Gotta have something from Cosworth on the car, right?

Nice work. You need to make more videos of the car doing pulls and stuff. Go do some canyon driving and record some footage.

Have you considered an auxiliary radiator like the 2016+ Camaro. Mishimoto makes a kit that replaces the side mounted rads. Might be worth a few mins of your time.

Nice work. You need to make more videos of the car doing pulls and stuff. Go do some canyon driving and record some footage.

 

Haha, I'll get some videos and stuff made up. Cooler weather is around the corner, so I'll feel better pushing the car harder. I plan on taking a trip this winter to Phoenix to see a friend and I'll probably head to the drag strip there and get some time slips and video. Our track closed down last year

 

Have you considered an auxiliary radiator like the 2016+ Camaro. Mishimoto makes a kit that replaces the side mounted rads. Might be worth a few mins of your time.

 

I didn't even know they had a radiator setup like that. That's a lot of damn cooling!

 

Honestly, if I hadn't already bought this new setup, running a smaller aux radiator would have probably been cheaper and taken up less space. The heater core was able to pull enough heat out to keep temps stable, so I imagine a small radiator behind where the fog lights go would have kept temps in check and not cook me in the cabin.

So you do your own fab, own engine work and your own tuning?

So you do your own fab, own engine work and your own tuning?

 

Well, pretty much everything but engine machine work and assembly. I have assembled engines for my job, but we have a really good Subaru machine shop here, Metric Motors, and I let them do all that work because they're good at it.

 

I'm a maintenance tech during the day, so I have to be a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to mechanical things. I also have some very skilled coworkers that have taught me quite a bit over the years.

 

I've been tuning cars for 11 years now. I pretty much just tune my own stuff, but I have helped a few friends out over the years.

Very nice.

Maintenance tech as in industrial maintenance?

Yeah, industrial maintenance.

Awesome. Me too.

 

Definitely use many of the skills I've learned over the years while working on the car.

 

I'd love to do even more for me next build but I don't have access to a shop and a lift.

 

I can only take on so much in my driveway. Hoping to change that sooner rather than later.

Wow, cool!

 

I'm really lucky that my work considers after hour shop use by maintenance personnel a benefit. We can use the tools and lift so long as we bring our own supplies.

 

Turns out the Mishimoto fans are a let down. Still had issues cooling with them. I was a little worried when I saw how small the blades are on them, but figured I'd give them a shot.

 

I decided to throw a hail Mary and try and get the stock fans to fit. Turns out they fit ok. I just had to grind down the shroud in a few places and make sure the hoses and fan wires don't get hit by the blades. There's maybe 1/16" clearance between the engine in some spots, but they cool damn good! Temps never go over 195.

Wow, cool!

 

I'm really lucky that my work considers after hour shop use by maintenance personnel a benefit. We can use the tools and lift so long as we bring our own supplies.

 

Turns out the Mishimoto fans are a let down. Still had issues cooling with them. I was a little worried when I saw how small the blades are on them, but figured I'd give them a shot.

 

I decided to throw a hail Mary and try and get the stock fans to fit. Turns out they fit ok. I just had to grind down the shroud in a few places and make sure the hoses and fan wires don't get hit by the blades. There's maybe 1/16" clearance between the engine in some spots, but they cool damn good! Temps never go over 195.

 

This makes me wonder if my OEM fans are a little tired. Sometimes I see 203 degrees in 88-90 degree weather.

I think 203-206F is OK. I see this quite often on both of my cars, especially during idling. But when the fans kick in, it does drop the temp quite a bit.

One day, my temps went as high as 219F . Car was super loaded (road trip), AC ON, very hot and humid weather, stuck in heavy traffic uphill...

A lot of it depends on when you have your fans set to come on. I have both of them set to come on high speed at 195. They run until 190 and turn off. This is just my personal preference. Cooler engines aren't as prone to detonation. If I were to go run the car around the track or up a canyon it would definitely get hotter.

 

I'm not exactly sure about how the factory settings work, but the lowest setting is 195 and the highest is 215. I'm guessing they start one fan on low at 195 and have both on high by 215? Not too sure. When I was using the factory ECU I set all of them 5 degrees lower and left it at that.

Got a few more things done.

 

Got all the sensors wired and hooked up to the Hydra. I also got some new gauges. The Innovate gauges I was using before don't have a 5v output for the oil pressure gauge, so I couldn't log it. I couldn't have mismatched gauges, so I replaced them all with AEM X-series gauges. All X-series have a 5v output. I also got a Summit Racing clock gauge, since the factory clock doesn't work with the Hydra.

 

I was watching Gale Banks' series on Youtube called Killing a Duramax and he made me feel pretty stupid for having my air filter in the engine bay. So I took some spare tubing I had and stuck the filter down in the bumper.

Edited August 31, 2019 by BrandonspecB

Cut out the slots in my foglight cover to get some outside air into the air filter.

 

Made a video of a 2nd-4th gear flyby: Flyby Vid

Edited September 1, 2019 by BrandonspecB

I've been turning up the boost and have had to work through some ignition issues.

 

I started with the plugs gapped at .030. This is my usual starting place with a build. I like to try and keep the gap as big as possible and turn the gap down if I run into misfires.

 

I made it to about 14 psi and it started breaking up. I reduced the gap to .027. This is where I was running my 34 psi, water/meth injection, 550 whp EJ and had no misfire issues at all. The EZ started missing at about 16 psi with the .027 gap.

 

At this point I really didn't want to tighten the gap anymore because I knew that gap would work under more difficult conditions. I started questioning whether the EZ coils were up to the task. I also didn't have any dwell data for the EZ coils. So, whether the EZ coils weren't working because of age, design, or incorrect dwell data is up in the air. All I knew was I needed to work with some coils that I knew were up to the task and that I had good data for to see if the coils were the problem or if I needed to reduce the plug gap again.

 

I decided to see if EJ coils would fit. As you can see in the pics, the coils themselves are identical in external dimensions. The only differences are some ridges on the EJ coil and the length of the boots. The EZ boots are red and are slightly shorter.

 

Now with some known good coils and accurate dwell data I went out and did some pulls. Made it up to 19 psi and called it a night.

 

It's getting fast now. The video below is pretty boring, but it gives a good idea of how fast it is. It buries 4th gear pretty quick. I didn't have my suction cup mount camera with me, so I just stuck my cell phone in the cup holder.

 

1st-4th Gear Tuning Pull Video

So the EJ coils didn't quite work that great. I'm not sure why, but I had some hot start issues with them. They worked great at WOT, but just wouldn't get the car started if it was hot.

 

The EZ coils are back in with a .022 gap and they are doing ok. Every now and then I get a misfire at WOT. The hot start issue is gone though.

 

I ordered some aftermarket coils from Performance Distributors. I found some tests that showed good results on domestic V8s with their coils, so I'm going to give them a try.