This morning I started working with Bill at about 8am. I had already gone to the store to get oil for the Legacy that I’ve been building for weeks. I got nice heavy oil for startup. The car was only missing the oil fill tube and I could run it, albeit on the stock injectors but that would be fine to warm the car up and check for leaks. The neck hadn’t arrived so I instead chose to use a funnel directly into the valve cover. It worked just fine. The car started right up and the new engine sounds great. Now all we need are the correct injectors and we’ll be set to go.
While I was doing that Bill was already busy working on a rally car (Subaru) He was removing the 6 speed transmission to sort out a clutch issue, tweaking a motor mount and fixing the left rear wheel bearing, which was frozen. (No wonder it was so hard to push!) We had spent a long time yesterday pushing cars and the rally car felt like two cars worth of weight. While Bill finished the clutch Nick worked on some wiring with the same car, day two of that.
The first real job of the day for me was to install some Tomei Expreme (extreme and performance put together as one word) unequal length headers on an STI. We already tuned the car and the customer wanted a little bit more power. The Tomei header comes with everything. It’s more expensive than some others but it comes with an up pipe, gaskets, studs and all hardware. It’s a really nice package that fits well too. I finished that at about noon and Matt and I got the car strapped down on the dyno. Matt spent about an hour and a half on the dyno with the car before it was done. He was able to make about 25whp more than the stock header and up pipe combo. Not too bad!! The car was very low so extra caution had to be taken to load and unload it from the dyno.
Tomei Header to up pipe flange, 3 bolts and they're included!
Next up for me was Pierre’s swapped Legacy outback wagon. Pierre is a good friend of ours so we can rib him appropriately. Pierre bought the car for about 1000 bucks from another friend. The car is probably worth exactly that. The transmission has already blown. This time it came in on a flatbed and after Nick and I pulled the transmission at about 1pm we realized that the clutch had an Expreme failure. One of the damper springs on the disk had dislodged and then relodged in the bellhousing, cracking it and causing a fluid leak! Awesome! Pierre has achieved about 100 “never seen that before’s” at the shop. Hopefully his luck changes soon. (Before hill climb season!)
Alex G (another Alex G) brought his blue WRX sedan in for an oil change. The first time Alex came to the shop he pulled his car in himself. It’s a tight fit. This is a non-event really but usually people don’t want to do it themselves or for some reason I’d rather do it (usually the latter) but I think that parking’s tight in Siberia where he’s from and he can pull on ramps like a seasoned pro so I don’t mind. We set Alex up with some Motul 10-30 and a nice OEM filter and he was on his way.
Lunch was spent on the phone and simultaneously answering emails. Bill almost finished working on the turbo k24 240sx, some wiring and sensor checking with Matt before we tune it later this week. It seemed like a lot of work to me but Bill did the whole project in a couple of days. While Bill and Matt checked for sensor operation in the 240 and then the rally car with the Vipec, Nick and I worked on a silver WRX sedan that needed a 100k service, clutch and a timing belt. It was the rustiest WRX I’ve ever seen. The body was clean but every single bolt broke removing the radiator and timing belt cover. Unreal. Both radiator support bracket bolts broke, both upper hose clamps, one lower, the alternator tensioner bolts (both), 3 timing belt cover bolts, the rest miraculously came off despite looking like rusty acorns.
The crew stops to breathe. Rusty hose clamp taunts me in the forefront
Tomorrow morning Matt will be tuning the rally car. Later this week the 240 will go on the dyno. One of these big projects will work out eventually!
Headers getting ready to see some heat. Valve cover by Dip-Tech
hey, alex, lets see some Evo X Dyno charts and what mods do to it !! What does it do on your dyno?
id like to say for once i was not beating on the car! It actually broke but itself, i have been babying that car from day one, also it broke down conveniently about 130 miles away from dsg at 630am on the way to Okemo, typical…..Anyhow thanks for the quick service guys!
Angelo, they make like 200 stock, maybe even less. Pretty weak on our dyno. The good thing is that they make a lot of power and you can run very high boost without knock. The cylinder head is among the best ever for a production car. We’ll be tuning an EVO X with a FP Red soon. We’ll post results. There aren’t too many X out there so we don’t get too many in the shop.