[Realjacob]

So, I have been doing a lot of reading. I plan on turboing my 97 Impreza with a 2.2L. I have heard that my ecu is locked, and my car will need tuning but I won’t be able to? I have also heard, that the stock ecu will run it perfectly fine at around 6-8 psi? What is right and wrong? I have read a bunch of turboing NA Subaru’s and I just wanna do it right.

 

[Samurai Jack]

Correct. If your ECU is locked, you will not be able to tune it unless you or your tuner have the code to unlock it.

I can't say if your locked ECU will run fine @ 6-8 psi but 6-8 psi is a standard base tune. Car will run fine at 6-8 psi but power will be very limited.

You will either have to find a good tuner who can unlock your ECU or buy an unlocked ECU off a WRX or STi.
If it turns out you need an unlocked WRX ECU, PM me because I have one.

 

[Realjacob]

I would love to just take yours off your hands then and skip all the trouble of dealing with limited power! If that’s alright

 

[Samurai Jack]

Shoot me a PM and we can talk. I'll need a zip code for shipping and I'll need an e-mail to send you pics

 

[wtdash]

Yeah..Stale, old, forgotten post,......

If the OP is on a totally stock '97 USA model Impreza -the ECUs are not tunable - outside of a Subaru dealership. Neither are any from about '95-'00 for any USA Subaru. I've have multiple mid-90s Subarus, turbo'd a few of them.

There are no plug-n-play tuning options/ECUs. The few tuning options are either a full '02 USDM WRX harness swap, aftermarket EM 'piggy-back' or stand-alone systems such as Greddy Emanage or AEM , Mega/Microsquirt and I read about Speeduino - which might be the best lost cost option. There are other brands, but it's the same steps to make 'em work.

A JDM harness/ECU swap could work - lots of people have done the EJ20G swaps- but the overseas stuff was still OBD1 'til about '00, so their ECUs/Harness won't easily work w/the '95/'96+ OBD2 stuff, and the car won't pass emissions, if necessary.

The stock ECUs have not been 'hacked' to work with ROMRAIDER/ECUFLASH like the '02+ models, to easily modify the stock ECU's parameters to support a turbo install.

I've read of a few peeps purporting to tune these mid-90s ECUs, but they always disappear and don't 'prove' it works. Or may be they got hired by the CIA to perform secret hacker stuff?