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Ben's Obs2 Journal (Something a little different)

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#1 · (Edited)
Ben's Obs2 Journal


Obs2
Photobucket Album

Edited: 02/22/08
-Pics :)

Other additions as of late
-Whiteline Heavy-duty Front End Links + 22mm Front Sway Bar
-Hella Supertone
-OpenPort Datalogging
-Cusco Type-OS Front Strut Brace
-Removed the STi Decals from the Fog Lamp Covers
-Check Engine Light :mad:

Current State:
38,500-miles
"Special Edition Package"
Leather steering wheel
Leather shift knob
Leather parking brake handle
Center console armrest
Auto dimming rear view mirror/compass
260w Premium CD changer, AM/FM
6 upgraded speakers
Rear spoiler

Steel Gray Metallic / Crystal Gray Metallic

Mods:
Engine
Bone Stock
EJ25 2457cc normally-aspirated SOHC 16-valve
173bhp
166lb-ft
Castrol synthetic every 3-4k

Drivetrain
Bone Stock
5-speed manual

Suspension
Cusco Type-OS Front Strut Brace
Perrin Adjustable 20-24mm Rear Sway Bar
Perrin Solid Rear End Links
Prodrive Springs (for 2004-05 WRX Sedan)
KYB GR2 Front Struts (for 1993-01 Impreza)
DIY Front Camber :) (~-0.6 to -0.8deg each side)
Whiteline Heavy-duty Front End Links
Whiteline 22mm Front Sway Bar

Brakes
Axxis Ultimate Brake Pads

Wheels
"OEM" OEM 7-spoke (16x6.5") +53mm Silver
Bridgestone Potenza RE92A (205/55hr16) escapegoat tires

"Summer" Rota Tarmac II Wheels (17x7.5") +48mm Steel Gray
Hankook Ventus RS-2 Z212 (215/45zr17) 200 treadwear rating
Rays Lightweight Lug Nuts (Black)

*"All-season" JDM Legacy Wheels (17x7.0") +55mm Silver
Pirelli PZero Nero M+S (225/45yr17) 400 treadwear rating
OEM Lug Nuts** Currently in use

Exterior
Black, Blank License Plate Frames
Hella Super Tone(s)
OEM STi CGM Fog Lamp Covers (Debadged of STi Decals)

Lighting
Apexcone/DDM 5000K 35-watt HIDs
HIR-1 Hi-beams
Narva Rangepower Fog Lamp Bulbs

Decals (Power adders :p )
Rally piggies (Gold on mirrors, White on hatch)
NWIC (front doors below mirrors)
NASIOC (don't hate :wtf: on rearmost driver-side window)

Interior
Bone Stock

Audio & Electronics
Pioneer DEH-P4800MP Deck
Pioneer iPod Adapter












1. To Be Installed
1 Hella Supertone
ATE Super Blue Racing Brake Fluid
Goodridge Stainless-steel Braided Brake Lines
OEM WRX Cat-back (MY03)

2. Up Next
Gauges for help w/ tuning (EGT, Wideband Afr)
Quick-release Rear Strut Brace
Steering Rack Bushings
04+ WRX Gauge Cluster (I want a big central tach!)
CGM Front Grille (no more chrome!)

3. Hopefully in the Near Future
Learn to reflash!
Carputer (maybe...)
Koni "Yellow" Single-adjustable Strut Inserts
RCE Non-lowering Front Camber Plates
STi V-Limited Front Lip Spoiler
OEM STi Rear Diffuser w/ Cusco Rear Subframe Brace
JDM Wagon Rear Spats
Injen CAI + Ram Air :p don't ask
Braille Lightweight Battery

Ultimate Goals
All-motor
Daily driver, All season
22mpg+
Track-able
Competitive in autocross
Sub-15sec quarter mile
>200bhp

And yes I have upgrade paths galore (don't get me started)
 

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#2 · (Edited)
Well, I got my start in the Subaru world with a 1999 Impreza Outback Sport wagon complete with 93,000+ miles, a damaged front left fender, and a bunch of hidden emotional baggage.

Here's my Photobucket Album for the first car.

Mods were few and relatively far between. In it's prime it had RS springs, Cusco rear strut brace & lower tie bar, Perrin rear sway bar, WRX front brakes & a rear disc conversion.

The car always looked better than it drove.

^^^Case in point^^^ Nothing special but it photographed better than my new car for a long time

The engine went around 142,000-miles. The driver-side head had tons of problems and the engine needed replacement. That leads us to today...
 
#4 · (Edited)
2006 OBS Album

In late July I bought this:


2006 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport Wagon
Special Edition Package
Steel Gray / Crystal Gray Metallic

It wasn't purdy but it was exactly what I wanted. Everything I would have done to my first OBS (Obs1) was already stock on this car. Except for turbo... That'll come in due time (like 12 years :p )


^The first mod. Rally piggy at 103mi or so


Actually, this ^ was my first mod. I carried it over from Obs1

The car was great on drives but the handling left a lot to be desired. The ride was compliant but tall, full of roll, and with a keen knack for understeer. 90deg turns and u-turns would produce jaw dropping understeer and some tire sidewalls folding over on themselves. Still, it was fun.


One of my favorite early pics of the car (Too bad it wasn't lower and with some nice 17s)

After a Pioneer deck & iPod adapter, I finally did my first mod :)


Prodrive P7 Wheels bought on the super cheap from World 1 Performance in Seattle. These were some of the last of the P7s they had after they were discontinued. I got them installed at Gran Prix Imports in Wilsonville, OR, with some Pirelli PZero Nero M+S Tires (225/45YR-17). The color was almost waaaay too matchy matchy with the steel gray. But, I didn't care because brand new Prodrives for less than the price of Rotas was more than I could ask for.

With the Pirelli's, the handling was improved but roll was still a huge issue. Grip was increased and the car handled deceptively well, even at a point of extreme roll. The car held its own on a Subaru drive west of Eugene, OR.

It didn't take me long to realize that the car didn't look that great BUT it always looked good from one angle..

three-quarter, low-angle ass shots :p





Next was NWIC decals

And yes, this is my stomping ground.
And yes, it is called Mountain Rd (leaves nothing left to the imagination ;) It's not much of a mountain tho but it is a 5min drive away from home)
 
#5 · (Edited)
Next up was bulbs. The OEM halogen projectors are great but they leave me wanting more. I contacted Daniel Stern Lighting and got a very good recommendation on what to run:

Osram Super Rallye +65W Low-beams
HIR Hi-beams
Narva Rangepower Fog Beams

An over-exaggerated pic to show just how awesome they are :)


Installed them in a fog. Perfect timing and also threw on some gold piggies.

Whatever I can do to detach from the grocery getters. Subarus are so popular in the PacNW that everyone and their mom drives a WRX wagon.

Got a Perrin rear sway bar & solid rear end links for my birff-day from my mom & brother. Installation went smooth and the car drove smoother. Lift off oversteer was now achievable if necessary or wanted. The tires were a very good compliment to the wet weather and big rear bar.

Sooner than I knew it, it was wintertime and Christmas time. The car rocks in Oregon wintertime rain. It's so easy to bomb around and by this time I had gotten to know it pretty well and had an upgrade path miles long ready for action. Still, a list isn't much help with no money.

A bunch of miles later...


January '07 brought snow which melted into ice which got covered in more snow. The Obs shined above other cars but still wasn't super amazing overall. Braking had to be done very carefully but accelerating and sliding the tail out was easy as pie. The car proved very controllable in low-speed snow drifts. Still, the Pirellis weren't amazing in ice but they still excelled. They got me from Corvallis to Portland on the worst snow day of the year (following an '06 STi all the way there).




The Prodrives proved as strong as their reputation but they were boring me. The color was great and the design was great but they were too 2D for my taste.
 
#7 · (Edited)


March in Portland. No new developments in awhile.

Drove the car on Hwy26 to Bend. Lovely drive.

Car proved to be an awesome road trip companion. Way more room than my girlfriend and I could use and enough grip to be fun on any road we encountered. Still, it was smooth enough to keep the girlfriend from grabbing the 'oh shit' lever constantly. There are some pix that really pointed out how freakin much I needed to drop the car like it was hot.

Smith Rock State Park


Construction near home

Then, in May, I put my Prodrives up for sale on eBay and, to my surprise, my Buy It Now was met in 2 days :eek:. So, I guess I had to sell them. This was my 2nd last shoot with the P7s.. It was a blue moon

The one and only interior shot I've taken in an artsy fashion

Needs more lighting!


By mid June I had finally shipped off the P7s (took a huge f'n hit on that shit) and ran my pops' OEM LGT 17s. They looked great. I wish I took more pix because the ones I did take did not do any justice to the wheels. They have more complexities than you'd notice. It sorta sucks that every base Legacy had them because they would've been special wheels.

They made the car look pretty sleek... Longer and leaner than it is. They grew on me quickly and was sad to see them go.

But... I was happy too!

Replaced the P7s with Rota Tarmac IIs which I got from SubyDude thru eBay. Tires are Hankook Ventus RS2 Z212s ordered thru DiscountTireDirect.com. I had them shipped to a local America's Tire and installed soon there-after.



The low-profile 215/45s really showed (again) how much a drop was needed and also, how I needed some super sexy brakes. All in due time, I guess.
 
#8 · (Edited)
The new wheels photographed soo much better than the P7s on the Obs.




The added grip from the Hankooks has never been surpassed. They always stick like glue and no turn can make them seem inadequate. I love them to death! Also, I installed Rays Lightweight Lug Nuts with the wheels to keep unsprung weight down (and add some race sexiness).

I just couldn't stop looking around for photo-ops
Here are some pix in PDX

Front Ave



The side profile showed the OEM wagon ass sag. It's factory tuned to be like this and probably for a handling reason. The ricer in me just couldn't take the SUV front wheel gap.


Trip to Seattle with the girlfriend and 3 friends. Fit 5 comfortably with gear and shit for a 3-day weekend. Rear legroom was probably a tight fit but no complaining. Car averaged 26mpg with hundreds of extra weight and 80-85mph crusing thru southern Washington. This was mid to late August.

September I snatched a pair of Crystal Gray Metallic OEM STi Fog Covers off eBay for $12 shipped :D. I figured what the hell. They clean up the front but I'm still not sure if I should de-badge them or not...

This was the last really good wash and multi-stage wax the car will probably get for the rest of the year.

It really shines up nicely!

And really changes shades depending on mood
 
#9 · (Edited)
This leads us to October. Some little detail mods like:

Blank license plate frames off eBay. The front is a nice aluminum, black, blank frame. The back is plastic. I had to find a more shaped rear to show the Oregon registration tags.

Here's the name-less front license plate frame. Yes, these front low-angle shots really show off how much ground clearance this damn car has. Yes, I bought an OBS. Yes I knew I wanted to lower it... Am I strange?! Lol.... No comment...

No more advertising for useless Subaru dealerships...

Got an alignment around 29,500mi and started the 30k tune-up. It's a biggie. Installed some Axxis Ultimate Pads (front and rear, bought off eBay for $100 for the pair) and was hoping to flush the fluid with ATE Super Blue... The bottles of super blue are still awaiting install along with Goodridge lines (both the fluid and lines from SubaruWRXParts.com). Argh why do I have to have other crap going on?

The Axxis pads are great. Pretty good cold start performance and even better when more heat comes into play. They do squeel a little bit from the passenger front and they dust like crazy. My steel grey Rotas became flat charcoal Rotas real quick. The dust comes off pretty easy but the Tarmac 2s are a pretty complex wheel and are a pain to clean!

November now and 11/4 is a day to be recorded in my history...

I finally dropped the OBS! I've had Prodrive springs laying around the garage awaiting struts but I couldn't wait any longer.

Prodrive (2004-05 WRX Sedan) Springs
KYB GR2 Front Struts
OEM Rear Struts

This is a relatively temporary solution to body roll and wheel gap.


Took the car for a drive on the Columbia River Scenic Highway. The car's squat is nice and purposeful. Very sporty.

The drive is better than stock although the ride is a little under-damped. There is a bit too much bumpity-bump on the little small bumps. Still, the car dives less under braking and squats sooo much less under acceleration. Before, the little 2.5L could produce generous weight transfer to the rear even under light accel. This was not because of the huge power of the bone stock EJ25 but the suspension tuning.

That night, fog came in super form.

I absolutely love the drop. It is perfect! Can't wait to save up and get some nice Koni adjustables!


The ride's still good and comfy. A little harsh but no one really noticed. My girlfriend mentioned that she forgot we were lower until we went to sushi and had to take the lowrider angle :p


Parked at work. Picked up some winter wheels and awaited time to swap to the Pirellis again...

Then it came. Nighttime flurries but nothing special. It "snowed" for 5-10min and that was enough to remind me to throw the all-seasons back on. Here's the last pic w/ the Rotas/Hankooks for quite awhile

Notice how freakin dirty they are. Thanks Axxis :mad:. Great pads but dust galore
 
#10 ·
The Rotas gave way to these:

:trumpet:


JDM Legacy 17s :D :D
I absolutely love them. On my way from school to work I took a little detour and some pix. They photograph sooo well! I really sorta wish I painted them but I figured safety in foul weather was probably a little smarter
I couldn't figure out my favorite pix so here's the majority of the lot :)





 
#13 ·
OpenEcu Project Begins!

My OpenEcu Project Begins!

So, today I got my OpenPort 1.3 usb cable for drive-by-wire normally aspirated Subarus and began trying to pull some information from my ECU. I hope to start by datalogging and learn a little bit more about my car and the way it functions.

Well... A few developments.

First, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't read my ECU. I'm using EcuFlash with, what I thought was the newest definitions but it must not be(?). Everytime I go to read the ECU, the supported cars/ECUs are never the new ones :mad:.

So, after an hour or so trying to grab a ROM and save a base ROM, I decided to screw that for now. I then moved on to at least getting some datalogging out of my damn $79 cable (from tunertools.com).

I am definately going to try to flash my ECU sooner or later but for now, I am sticking to the logging and gathering of info.

So, using Enginuity I was able to use the OpenPort cable to log tons of sensors and information from my car. It was exciting to see things like accelerator pedal angle and intake air temperature in realtime. By now, tho, my stupid lil Dell notebook (Inspiron B120 ftw :rolleyes: ) had been 3% from dying four or five times. One thing I definately need is a damn cig lighter charger for this stupid laptop. Also, because I had no battery, I wasn't able to capture any pictures or 'print screens' of the logging activity. I am still a little confused as to how to record a serious of logs. Somehow I did log some activity when I was stopped but I'll figure that out tomorrow.

Next, I wanted to communicate w/ my car thru a program called PCMScan. It has a good deal of parameters and monitoring tools but the things I was most interested in were the rolling dyno and drag strip utilities. I have an ElmScan bluetooth (bah humbug) scan tool that works fine and I finally figured out how to get PCMScan to communicate with the scan tool. I did get one dyno run in but there were all these text prompts that I didn't read because it was 11:30pm and dark and I was driving :/

So... Cliff notes:
-Logging sort of worked
-Reading my ECU did not work yet
-Rolling dyno also sort of worked but my computer died so I didn't see any numbers and I haven't figured out a good technique to get a relatively accurate figure


Software:
Enginuity v0.4.1b
EcuFlash v1.34.1435
PCMScan v2.1.1

Hardware:
ElmScan Bluetooth Scan Tool
OpenPort 1.3 USB Cable for Drive-By-Wire Subarus
Some stupid lil bluetooth adapter
Dell Inspiron B120 Notebook w/ shitty battery

Tomorrow (err, today technically) I will experiment some more. I want to get some logs on the drive to work in the morning... There is one up side to working at 5:15am.. There is almost no one on the road :devil:
 
#14 · (Edited)
Logged, Read Ecu, & Feeling Awesome! (albeit super nerdy)

So, 3 days into the OpenEcu thing and I love it!

I've gotten some successful logs although it took me a few tries to figure out how to save the logs instead of just arbitrarily having my computer datalog in my passenger seat :p. I've logged w/ Enginuity and Ecu Explorer and I think I like Ecu Explorer's logs better. You can read them in Ecu Explorer or in Microsoft Excel. Pretty slick.

Here's 2 logs from 2nd gear

1500-rev limit (after 1-2min of driving)


Log 2 (same deal but after 12-14min)


Enginuity does have some cool digital dash stuff and you can monitor and log with it while Ecu Explorer is pretty bland and to the point. It'd be cool to have a dedicated carputer/carPC that's constantly logging or at least at the flip of the switch (both of the programs can be set to start datalogging when the rear defrost button is hit). It'd be real easy to just throw the ECU images and logs on a flash drive and read them in the house as opposed to bringing the laptop everywhere. Either way, that's in the plans for a little later.

Now, I just need to get more familiar with reading these logs. There are so many parameters you can monitor that it seems ridiculous. I love it!

Also... I finally read my ECU! Omg when it happened it was the happiest I've been in awhile :p

Here's my ECUs info that EcuFlash was able to extract:



I mean, how fuckin cool is that? I set EcuFlash to "beginner mode" because I ain't trying to fool nobody. When it comes down to it, I don't know jack about what I'm doing w/ tuning. Hey, this is stage 1 and everybody's gotta start somewhere, right?

All beginner mode does is limit how many parameters you can edit on your ECU.

Fuel Adjustments


My car's "Open Loop Fueling" Map & Graph :D

EcuFlash has these cool little graphs. Editing a setting is as easy as clicking on the cell and modifying.

This is how the same info looks in Enginuity. Still cool as hell but the graphs look kinda freeware. The graphs are rotate-able in both programs and adjustment is just as easy.


Ignition/Timing


Base Timing


Maximum Timing Advance
 
#15 · (Edited)
Misc.


Speed & Rev Limiters ;)

Yes, that's a limiter above 133.5mph and below 132.3mph

Idle

Not sure what all 5 maps are for but there are some subtle differences between a few and others are almost identical
B=C=F
D=E
Possibly one has to do w/ air con or something? Not sure but I do remember instances where my car will have a "weird" idle around 1800 or so for a few seconds. This explains it all :)


Next step, edumacate m'self :drunk:

-Ben
 
#16 · (Edited)
More pix

Well, she hasn't gotten a wash in forever but that doesn't mean no pix...








Matte silver looks hawt!

Christmas Eve Day








Snow of Christmas Day! (For the first time in 70 years in Portland)








Some random pix


The Cusco strut brace


My Datalogging setup (complete w/ Orbit gum to hold my USB in place & a missing "M" from the wagon mafia word)
 
#20 · (Edited)
Whiteline 22mm front sway bar is in the mail :)

I've been craving some power too but sooner or later I'll begin to reflash (read below)

williaty said:
Actually, that's a good point. I've been tuning my 05 RS with Enginuity this month. How are you coming with yours, what are you changing, and what do you think of the changes?
Right now I'm not sure. Currently, I'm just datalogging and trying to see what my car is doing and why. After I grasp that a little I'll begin to delve into the world of actually tuning it. Right now, I'm having a ball just logging. I'm in no rush to increase power until I have my car at a handling stage that can compete.

Thanks for the compliments guys. I'm just loving the ride :p
-Ben
 
#25 ·
Whiteline Front Sway Bar Yeeeeah Baby


And my other Christmas present :) :)

Ordered Whiteline front end links today but the local scoob shop won't have them in till Friday. Oh wells. Next weekend, the front sway + end links should go in :D
 
#27 ·
It's the Pacific Northwest... Subaru's are all over heh. I have a few local shops and all are pretty well know :D

PDX Tuning :word:
Rallitek (I've had some gripes about them in the past but they're still pretty good)
Not to mention that Perrin "World Headquarters" is like 15min from my house heh gotta love it. Oh, and there are 6 Subaru dealerships within 25-35min. It's a bit ridiculous.
 
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