Time for an update, after gathering parts for months, and scoring a garage to work in for a weekend, I finally got some time to work on the car. Unfortunately the day before I was supposed to start, I picked up an awesome fever, which made the entire install a pretty fun experience. Let me start this off by saying, I am not a mechanic, but I thought it best to at least attempt the install and get to know my car, and understand the quality of work performed from the previous owners.
To round up, I got the turbo on (68HTA from a Westernsubaruclub member), installed a samco turbo inlet (the internet is right, this job sucks), and attempted to get some injectors in (850cc bosch injectors from performance fuel injection in high river). I say attempted to get the injectors installed because while I got them in position, I never heard the “click” to hear them engage. From what I have heard so far from Vex, this assumption checked out as it spilled some fuel in their lot already.
Rather than trying to force something beyond my skill set and assume I got everything right, I opted to have VEX performance go over the car before the dyno day with airboy tuning. Based of feedback from a few subie owners, it sounds like this is a good choice. This step is something that I think will be worthwhile as I don’t want to waste anyones time on the dyno day, and would rather know that the car will be in good working order after being inspected by people who work on subarus every day.
Lets begin:
No more turbo, thankfully the engine being out 25K ago meant that I didn’t hit a single seized bolt. I made sure that any exhaust bolt going back on had high heat anti-seize. Surprisingly even the turbo feed line came apart fine, so I have a spare braided line for the future if I need it. Wisely, the previous shop that worked on this motor removed the banjo filter.
Old Vs. New
New turbo in
“Green brakets of death” actually weren’t too bad, the previous shop did not reuse the harder to reach bolts on the back of the head. I will likely modify these slightly to make them easier to reinstall, but I left them off to give Vex easier access to the injectors (along with the short ram intake and air box). This is another area where things differed from various threads, as many said the AC lines were welded to the brackets, in my case they were bolted on.
The injectors, while the stock injectors could likely do what I need for the short term, I wanted to future proof the build a bit, especially as the injectors would be easier to reach when half the motor was apart. A friend of mine with an LS1 240 told me about performance fuel injection, and so far I have been pretty happy with the customer service.
It was at this point below where I really started to question the logic subary had in snaking the inlet through the intake manifold. The stocker did not survive removal, probably for the best that I replaced it. Curiously every soft inlet had a glut of information on “this brand collapses, only buy XXXXXXX brand” which meant that every brand apparently sucks. More on that glut of information later in this post.
And many hours later, with arms looking like they were chewed by small woodland creatures, it is back together for the most part.
Needless to say, after doing the above, I am happy that the car is getting finalized and will hopefully be in good shape after Airboy tunes it.
One thing I did struggle with wasn’t the lack of information, but rather, information overload. I read countless 60+ page threads, all with contradictory information from product types, to ways in which jobs should be done, to year specific issues. While everyone says subarus are like lego, I found my car specifically (07+ forester) had all kinds of “it might be this way” answers. As an example, I was looking at deleting the air pump, but late on Sunday, reading another 60+ page thread from Nasioc, there didn’t seem to be a straight answer on what had to be left in an 07+ car, and was even less detail on foresters specifically (which have small differences from both WRX’s and STi’s). Instead I opted to look at the airpump at a future state, as it was working at the time and I didn’t want to introduce another variable.
This is a clear case where I need to get more involved in the local Subaru community, as a phone a friend option for someone who had done the job before could have helped sift through the noise of online articles and threads.
More updates to come as I hear back from Vex and Airboy, I am looking forward to working with both to get the car back on the road, better than ever.
