Zen and the search for more power - Turbo Phase 1 - Meditation

[JoeT]

I've gone as far as I wanted to go without dismantleing my engine completely, and the thurst for more thrust is ever present. My mind wanders and wallows in thought "will it ever end", I ask myself. The answer, "I don't care"!!!

Once you've reached that point, it's downhill from here. So where do we go from here?

Forced Induction

Here's a journal of my journey in my search for more power. The criteria was really specific, I wanted my car to remain driveable with tons of low end torque for acceleration, yet to remain reliable as can be, because it was my daily driver.

The search begins: Two questions came to mind, in this search. Supercharger or Turbo?

Ideally I wanted to supercharge the car, because I could have tons of torque when I wanted it, or when called for. I started building a parts list and an "ideal world" plan on how to achieve it.

It went something like this:
Me wants torque
Me wants Driveability
Me wants to spend nothing

What do I need to do?

Option 1
Supercharger, roots type (Big Bucks) 2K or more for an MXX series
Engine Management: None available for the 2000 Legacy, EJ25 with WRX crank and cam trigger.. Grrrrr!
Fuel Injectors
Bracket Fabrication
Intercooler piping fabrication

realization no space under the hood of my Legacy to house a supercharger without taking out lots of necessary equipment. Grrrrr!!!

Option 2:
Turboooooooo
TD04 Turbo used 400 bucks (much less now)
WRX Cross member 150 bucks (wreckers)
Maxim Works WRX Headers 2200 bucks New.. Shiny
WRX Injectors 80 bucks USD (that's like 2 million CAD)
Custom Air Intake 60 bucks (K&N Cone Filter)
Custom intake piping ???
Custom Downpipe ???
Metal Core Catalytic Converter 700 bucks
Brullen Exhaust (Sold my old NA Maxim Works header and exhaust assy and bought a brand new 2.5" setup from Brullen)
Custom JA Injector Adapters for WRX injectors
Autronic Custom SMC / SMD ECU with experimental Ver2.0 chip and reluctor interface. Big Bucks
MR2 Intercooler modified to fit: Free Free Free
Lots of Wiring
Custom Fabrication
Modification of the WRX crossmember to fit the Legacy
Modification of the Maxim Works up pipe to clear the EJ25 heads
Lots of messing around with startup files trying to figure out and program the Autronic ECU just to get it started.
Lots of hair loss and experimentation
Bully Clutch experimental 6 puck (disaster)
Bully Clutch experimental 4 puck (on the car now)
Blitz SBC-ID Boost Controller (really neat gadget, specially scramble mode)
Greddy EGT Guage

Bolting everthing up was the easy part, so was the fabrication. Figuring out the seemingly hundreds of parameters for the engine management computer was quite the chore. Converting Sine Wave outputs from the triggers to the required square wave so the timing and injector duration can be figured out was also interesting.

But all that is in the next story.

Pics of the home made kit:





Stay tuned for Turbo Phase 2 - Realization

[PaulH]

Ah yes, those were the days!
Stay tuned (pun intended) as it gets very interesting from here on in.
Paul H

[Navigator]

This article has me craving some Woooossshhhh. 8-) Anther great article and teaser. Looking forward to the next.

[Nuwan]

good stuff :-) ....

question: you have the wrx i/c pictured, why use the mr2 one instead? just curious :-)

[JoeT]

We tried to make it fit, bottom line is, Not!

We cut the top tank to shorten it, tried to relocate the inlet piping, etc. Lots of aluminum welding and hacking along the way.

The problem lay in the distance between the firewall and the throttle body and the space between the bottom of the intercooler and the dogbone. Next attempt is to try to fit in the new Forester XT intercooler, it's thinner and wider than the WRX version, so it should fit with minor modificaions.

[Nuwan]

Ah, I see... I expected the newer legacies to have more room than my car between the throttle body and firewall but I guess not... it was still a very tight squeeze for me