Funny subaru comment
 

So I meet up with Rob to hook him up with my extra can of brake fluid and after he leaves the guy at the gas pump says to me: That car sure didn't sound good.
I respond with: What do you mean?
Him: It sounded like it was running on 3 cylinders.
Me: It's supposed to sound like that.
Him: I don't think so, he'll find out when he goes to smog it that somethings wrong.
Me giving up at this point: Well, you may be right, take it easy.
:lol:

When I got my first WRX my friend asked me if I already put cams in it because of the loppy idle. I Love the way subarus sound. 8)

Some dope at my work kept telling me I had a misfire. This is the same guy that told me his suzuki convertible suv thingy has 3 timing chains, and like 19.x.x compression ratio

I know what you mean, but not all Subarus sound that way. NA cars (all?) now have equal-length exhaust manifolds. The Japanese WRX and STI have twin-scroll turbos so they do not burble either. Also the new 2010 turbo Legacy GT has a centrally-relocated turbo along with an equal-length header, so "the sound" is gone. And since the new WRX/STI are based on the LGT platform I would guess that is the future for them too. Enjoy it while you can. ;)

I have an idea for N.A. cars that would make them "sound like a Subaru". It is an electronic ignition/fuel box that rhythmically drops out the fuel injector and spark to the cylinders. It would go through all the cylinders one at a time in a certain order and drop them out in a certain way to get "the sound". It would only do this at idle and maybe low throttle. :D

Robs car sounds like grim death. Its definately not running right. :lol:

Haha thanks Joel ;)

John, part of his comment may have had to do with me just resetting my ecu, so my idle drops really low and dies a lot until it relearns. It does give me better mileage when I reset my ecu, so that's why I did it. Either way, I'll take it as a compliment :D

The other funny part is that I'm registered at my parents' house in Carson, so I don't have to smog. Thank you for telling me this story or I never would have had the chance to find out my car is broken! Lol

If you get better mileage after reset, there likely is something wrong! Stock settings should be overly rich and retarded timing compared to learned.

I think he has intake and exhaust on the stock map so it doesn't run too well. I think.

Rob, put the stock intake back on. CAI adds nothing without tuning, and hurts on NA cars...

Juice is right. And I feel more top end with the cai, and it only hurts it at wot below 1800 rpm's. And the stock one has spider webs on it and it's icky ;)

Also dean, I have an RS not a WRX, if that changes your opinion about my intake. If not, lemme know why you think it's bad.

Edit: oops, for some reason I read "our cars", thinking he meant subarus in general, but it really said "NA cars", meaning my car :oops:

You should bail on the intake.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show....php?t=1471819

You likely feel a leaner mixture in open loop which is bad as the knock sensor stops working at high throttle.

Until you get well over 300WHP, and even then it is questionable, the stock intake is fine and flows better than the engine needs and most importantly, that flow is what the ECU is calibrated to!

Unless you have a tune with a map specific to that intake, you should not change intakes. On a MAF car, they and their corresponding map are critical to basic engine function.

It took many hours of logging to get my intake map remotely close to accurate compared to the stocker.

I've read that before, and just read it again. I came to the same conclusion both times: the problem only exists below 1800 rpm's, and then the intake just offers more power than stock after that. Maybe I'm being an idiot, but I'm not convinced I need to remove my intake.

Also, williaty is a bit of an alarmist when it comes to tuning. I PMed him one time about his tuning services, and he seemed to think it's a miracle the engine doesn't blow from the stock tune, and I never even told him my mods. While I do trust his knowledge, I take it with a grain of salt.

It's cool, the motor will only blow up under 1800 rpm. So as long as I just make sure to sidestep the clutch at redline Everytime I'm leaving a stop and make sure to haul ass everywhere at all times, I should be fine, right?

But seriously, I never understand why people bother to take risks like this. Is 5 hp really worth the risk? Or even worth the poor idle and other issues?

The motor won't blow under 1800. It'll run rich. And the problem is really only at WOT under 1800. Is that really risking blowing the motor?

And as for risking poor idle for power, I guess you'd have to ask anyone who's ever put upgraded cams in anything...

So far, the only real evidence (including anecdotal) I've seen about the effects of an aftermarket intake on an NA, maf-based Subaru is the thread on nasioc by williaty (http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show....php?t=1471819)

All I'm saying is "my idle drops really low and dies a lot until it relearns" doesn't sound like the intake is worth it. How much power has it given you? My guess is it's not 20+hp, and if it's not more than 20hp, you're not really going to feel it anyway.

So what you've got is a placebo noisemaker that makes your car run poorly.

I bought a CAI for my first wrx before I did any research. After researching but before putting it on the car I sold it and stayed stock. I know you're talking NA here but at the time, I didn't find anyone that had anything good to say about theirs on a wrx. Sounds like that's the consensus with NA cars as well. "placebo noisemaker" :lol:

If you have to reset your ECU to make your car run in some particular manner, well, better, whatever, it says something you have done has confused the sensors and thus the ECU and it's learning process.

The stock reset parameters are very safe... Something you have done has made your ECU unable to compensate or learn correctly. That IMHO is a bad position to be in as the ECU is what protects your engine.

If you do not believe us, go log. Even without a wide band, you can get some real good data about how your car is running. If your multiplier is down and fuel trims are all over the place, that would explain what is going on.

Just a suggestion. YMMV...

Do you have a tactrix I could borrow? And I do trust your knowledge (dean and Scott in particular here, but really just about anyone on here), but you weren't proving to me why you were right, which made it hard for me to just believe you. Now it's getting somewhere, so thank you.

And John, I'm sorry we took your thread out back and bent it over a cardboard box and had our way with it ;)

also Scott: that "you won't feel less than 20 hp" comment is more for people who drive cars that come with a lot of power stock. I've felt an increase with all my mods. My intake gave me more power up high (the cai, short ram did nothing), my headers and trackpipe gave me more everywhere, but especially down low, etc. So while it's nothing earth-shattering, it helps a little bit, and will help even more after the cams. I've heard aftermarket cams are really the only thing that warrants an aftermarket intake for NA

Rob I can help you log when I get back in town.

Sweet. You're gonna have to hold my hand every step of the way, but in the end, I think we'll both be happy we did it

:huh:

Sorry Cody, didn't mean to leave you out. You can come too

It will cost you $20. Actually $22.50 because of interest charges.

Hell, I'm just glad it turned out to be beneficial for you :cool:

I'm interested in doing some logging on my car too. I JUST dropped my car off at Injen Technologies in Pomona, CA to have them prototype a CAI on my car. Paul had some insightful things to say about how they engineer the intake and also that they know about some of the stuff that they've seen on NASIOC, but more specifically this thread. I get it back Friday but dont know when I'm going to be back in reno.

That link doesn't work for me...

I think this is the page/thread he meant to link to.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show...1776186&page=6

Note that the important thing to note on the dyno chart is NOT the HP/TQ, but the A/F... An intake alone should not change A/F, and if it does, and you run it without modifying the intake calibration table, you may get burned.

Try this anology... You are about to take a bungy jump off a bridge. Do you lie about your weight (tell him less than you actually weigh) to the guy who is setting the length of the cord so you just miss the ground?

Changing the intake causes the MAF to lie to the ECU unless you change the table to match the intake.

Am I looking at how it is leaner than stock after about 4150 rpms?

Lemme know if I'm going in the right direction with this... So the intake is allowing more volume of air to flow into the engine, but at the same velocity past the maf sensor. This makes the maf sensor think that there is less air than there actually is, since the maf doesn't measure the amount of air, it just makes an assumption on the amount of air based on how much the air cools the maf. Am I getting there?

FWIW, Paul also said that they actually engineer their intake to do that. Instead of changing the tables they modify the structure of the intake using different pipe diameters, filter diameters, etc...

Well if it does that, I would think it would be stock diameter, so the only improvement in flow over stock would come from the filter, so you could just drop in an aftermarket filter in your stock intake. Right?

Diameter alone does not determine the MAF's calibration. Sometime you can need calibration even if the shape of the tube is changed because the MAF sensor "sees" turbulence in the airflow as different flow amounts. The stock maps have been calibrated to the stock intake, so the turbulence in the stock intake is compensated for.

Along the same lines, it might be possible for a high-flow panel filter to create the same issues, but in practice on the Subaru I haven't heard of anyone having issues the way people have issues w/ aftermarket intakes.

So I believe you're saying that the only way to do what injen is attempting to do is via tuning the ecu, and cannot be done by adjusting any of the physical properties of the intake, since the maf is calibrated for the stock intake tract. Right?

Anything's possible, but using an intake to make power without tuning on a Subaru is like using explosives to propell a baby stroller. It may work at first, but Baby will eventually suffer an ugly death.

Even if you could safely lean out a rich area with an intake to make some more power, you're probably going to run lean somewhere else in the power band. You N/A guys can tune your cars now. Stop throwing rocks and bones at the motor in hopes of making power.

No, theoretically you could spend hundred of hours tweaking the new intake's design until the voltage coming out of the MAF matches the stock intake's voltage for every flow amount... but then you've just exactly duplicated the stock intake, so what's the point?

The only way to get the benefit of more flow w/o having potential issues w/ the tuning is to properly recalibrate the MAF table for the higher flow intake.

Lol!
Stop all of this and put a wrx engine in it already! I'll even lend a hand.
Step one: Go to msn money, they have 0% credit cards hehehe, that's how I financed mine :)

If there's one thing I've learned in the past decade... don't finance car mods. Just don't.

I would never finance mods. I'm just gonna buy an STi when I graduate. I've had the intake on since 2006, and if I change back, I'm gonna have to go to my parents' house and dig my stock intake out of the shed and clean it off.

Not that I don't believe you, but the one thing I can't get past is this: if it is so detrimental, why have I never hear of anyone having an engine fail due to their intake? And I've also heard that an intake is suggested with delta reground cams, because try actually do warrant the additional airflow capacity. I'm really not trying to argue with you about this, I'm just trying to learn

I've heard of people running lean and hurting turbo cars due to an intake. But I don't follow the N/A side much so I don't know if it's caused as much of an issue. Like it hasn't, simply because N/A cars are harder to blow up.

But that said, just because it may not blow up the car... if it doesn't actually do anything positive, and causes issues like idle problems. Why in the world would you want it on the car to begin with? Certainly if you get cams and suddenly the VE of the motor is increased, you'll want an intake to be able to make use of the extra power available (assuming the stock intake would be a bottleneck). But again, doing that without tuning for it is a waste... not only a waste of money on the intake, but a waste of money on the cams too.

Ideally, anything you do to the car should be tuned for. We live in an era of easily modifiable computer controlled engines. Hell, even in the "dark ages" of carburetors, people re-jetted and retuned for power mods.

Again, you may not be hurting anything, but the fact that you have to reset your ECU to make the car run well is very telling.

Go visit your parents, do some laundry and get the intake. They probably want to see you. ;)

Swap it back on and see how the car runs. If it doesn't change anything, then the issue is with your exhaust.

What exhaust do you have?

Do you still have the O2 sensor in, or did you plug something in its place? Cat or no cat?

Oh, the other funny thing with many intakes is that the cones actually have less surface area than the OE filter. I'm not sure, but I think the volume of the air cleaner box also acts kind of like a capacitor evening out the intake pulses...

It is definitely the intake, I remember having the issue after installing it. Although I think the mileage issue is due to my catless exhaust. I left the o2 sensor in, and I have a cel from it. I've read that the engine runs richer when you have the P0420 code, which I have seen to be true. Doesn't make much sense, if your cat is going out then running leaner would save the emissions, not richer. It is what it is tho. I think that is why my mileage improves, not the intake. It has to relearn that my cat is out, and slowly adjust to super rich again.

And I just saw my parents cuz yesterday was my birthday haha

Scott: everything I've read on nasioc says that these are fine without tuning. Obviously I'm leaing power on the table if I don't tune or my mods, but the car is supposed to be fine without tuning. There's a guy on nasioc (Matt Monson) that has everything I have, plus cams, and he's never been tuned and it still runs great. He lives in Colorado, and said that he dynos at the same power as a stock rs at sea level, which I believe is 20-25 over what he had stock

How'd he get the dyno from CO to sea level. ;)

Maybe he is getting more power, maybe it's even safe for the motor, but how do we know that your car is running safely and performing as well as it can until you get it tuned?

Since tuners are now able to use OS software, tunes are like $300. How much are you going to spend on those cams?

I plan on tuning after the cams. I figured it was pointless to tune before, since it's perfectly safe from what I've read. And yes, I know I could make more power from a tune, I just haven't gotten around to it.

He only knows what he dyno'd at, and what stock RSs generally dyno at at sea level. He compared it to what he's seen, not one particular dyno sheet. So I guess I meant around what they dyno, not at. Sorry.

Basically what I'm getting at is that with an NA motor, tuning is not nearly as necessary as it is for turbo'd subes, from everything I've read. I was wanting to learn how to OS tune myself, but I just never got around to it. And in order to make sure it's running right after a tune, I'd have to buy a bunch of gauges and pods for them.

At least you don't need a boost gauge. :P If you have a good tuner tune it, I don't think you need any gauges, personally, but that's just me. You can always add them down the road. Maybe grab an EGT next time you fuss with the headers.

I really don't know dick about N/A Subarus. However, I can tell you that my car would run fine on the stock map since it's a bugeye (well I'd probably want to ditch the MBC or never drive under partial throttle...), but I'd imagine that I'd be giving up like 30 WHP and the smoothness of a custom tune. I'm glad to hear that you intend to get your car tuned once you do the cams. Can't wait to see the results. :)

Are you going to get tuned for 91 octane?

Tune that thing for 87 and get NOZ!

So, to kind of bump this thread and maybe provide some relivant information, I didn't get my CAI. I got a call on the day I was supposed to pick it up saying that at max, they could only get 5 HP out of it. He didn't say why or what they tried, but I suppose that the stock intake was so well designed that there really isn't a good upgrade to it. So I picked it up from them and they'll continue the work at a later time (about two weeks) on a different car. They'll still send me one when they're done with it though...

Nice info to hear.^

Cody- I'd like to get a map for 91 tuned for max power, and one for 87 or 89 tuned for max fuel efficiency. That way, I'll have a fun map, and then I'll have a map for when I'm running out of money during school haha. I'm planning ongoing with ed at eq tuning, so I'll talk to him about all of that before I just do it.

And the guages comment was for if I tuned it myself. I figure then I'd want a wideband o2 and egt at the least.

Cool. Make sure you tell Ed to give you a dyno graph for each tune. It'll be interesting to see exactly what you leave on the table when you run the max fuel efficiency map.