Who would have thought, an STi drive-train in a box, LOL. Well that’s what we received for Andrews’ 2003 WRX when he decided it was time to get rid of the inferior WRX transmission and remaining drive-train in favor of the much beefier STi 6 speed transmission and drive-train. Along with installing the STi Transmission we also installed a brand new ACT HD 6 puck clutch kit.

Also some new Power Slot slotted brake rotors were installed in the rear along with Hawk pads to match the front brake setup on the car. Another upgrade we are doing for Andrew along with the STi drive-train swap. This is a brand new Grimspeed Intake Manifold with a beautiful black powder coated finish. This piece is truly a work of art and a very nice addition to this build.

Along with the intake manifold upgrade, Andrew was looking to switch over to E85, as we have been putting the bug in his ear for the past year or so with so many E85 tuned cars in and out of the shop. The plan was always to switch out the RC 750cc Injectors in favor of the Injector Dynamics 1000cc High Impedance injectors, as they will allow much more room as the modifications progress.

These injectors are a direct fit with a top feed fuel system and they do not require the need for a bulky and cumbersome injector driver box to be wired into the car. For fuel rails we chose the brand new just released T1 Side Feed fuel rails over others on the market as we were able to keep more dollars in the customers pocket and still get as good of quality or better than the competition. The reason for the fuel rail swap was that Andrew was already complaining of the dreaded early model WRX fuel smell from the engine compartment while driving, and the fact future modifications are planned.

We ran into a bit of a hang up when we went to install the T1 fuel rails on the TGV deletes that Andrew already had from Grimspeed, but they were from a top-feed WRX setup. Because of this the T1 fuel rails did not line up ever so slightly plus the pitch angle of the injectors along with the height would have been way off. So we called around first to Grimspeed to find out how far out they were on another set of side-feed ported TGV deletes; more bad news as they are out over 2 weeks. A Quick Phone call to Tony at T1 Race Development and we found out at this time they don’t have anything for top-feed TGV’s. So we were on the look out for some side-feed TGV’s as Andrew used his original units as the core exchange with Grimspeed. Luckily we had an extra set in the shop and Scott went to removing the TGV butterflies along with welding up the holes the shafts leave. After this he went to porting and honing them for a very nice consistent and transient flow into the cylinder head.

One last item that was installed before tuning was a Vibrant Performance Vaccum block as before there were quite a few “T” connections for all the various vaccum/boost sources like boost gauge, blow off valve, fuel pressure regulator, etc.  One thing that was sharing a vaccum/boost source was the fuel pressure regulator, and that is something of a tuning concern for me.  The FPR should have a stand-a-lone vaccum/boost source and if it were a speed density car running a map sensor instead of the MAF meter; that as well should have it’s own vaccum/boost source.

After some initial setup of the injector scaling and latencies in ECUFlash, along with re-scaling the MAF meter we started doing base dyno pulls with moderate boost before going WOT.  When everything was finally dialed in we were able to extract 286whp and 249wtq on 91 octane pumpgas with a toal boost pressure of 18psi.  Next we drained the tank of the 91 octane pumpgas in favor of E85.  The first initial pulls on E85 was to make sure the re-scaling of the injectors netted us safe AFR’s during spool up of the turbo.  After some full WOT pulls at 18psi to get the MAF scaled right for E85 we upped the boost to a max of 23psi and were able to make 336whp and 307wtq, and increase of 50whp and 58wtq over the 91 octane tune.

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Craig brought us his beautiful 2006 Evo 9 SE to up the power on pump gas and also have an E85 tune as well.  After some discussion on the power he was looking for along with a clutch to hold the power, we decided on a new Vibrant 3.5″ FMIC and MKC 2.5″ Custom Aluminum  Piping setup to compliment the 3″ Turbo Back Exhaust the car already came in with. 

 The factory air box was not able to be retained with the new 2.5″ Intercooler Piping, so the factory intake tube was retained, and a MAF adapter and cone filter were added to clear the piping.  For fueling needs we added the standard Walbro 255 HP Fuel Pump kit and the tried and true ID 1000 injectors that we use in all of our builds here at MKC.  Along with these parts, we also added some Kelford 272 MIVEC cams which compared to other Evo 9′s that I’ve done on E85 and 3opsi on stock cams; this mod was good for 10 -15whp and wtq over the stock cams throughout the RPM range.

Once on the dyno this car tuned out very easy on both pump gas and E85, most of the time was spent dialing in the MIVEC table for the Kelford 272 cams.  Here are the dyno results of the pumpgas tune on 23psi and E85 tune on 30psi.

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I had the luxury of tuning an exceptionally well built 1997 Honda Civic hatch back this past weekend.  Justin came to us earlier this year for an E85 tune on the ID2000 injectors, but from the outset of that session we were doing quite a bit of troubleshooting as the car came in with a code 9 CEL.  After some discussion of whether to switch to another ecu or tuning solution, Justin took the car back home to talk with HonData about the issue with either the S300 unit or the ECU itself giving us a halt to tuning.

Once on the dyno this weekend we had zero issues whatsoever, besides NOT making power. With a quick sync of the ignition timing it was on to tuning, at 15psi is cracked off over 460whp.  Next we upped the boost to 20psi and it made over 530whp, and at 25psi it was north of 610whp.  After some cool down we turned the boost up some more as the injectors were barely being used, and fuel flow/pressure was fine from the FullBlown Dual Walbro fuel setup; So at 30psi it was just under 700whp, but at 33psi we made 715whp. 

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