kimokalihi's 91 SS EJ20 Swap

[sqc151]

Damn STI/WRX owners and their saturated aftermarket selection. Most of them don't know what modding a car is. I feel like I've hand built this car from the ground up.

best statement ever!!!
btw im stealing it facebook style...

[kimokalihi]

Stealing what? I'm confused.

[sqc151]

stealing your quote like facebook.

[kimokalihi]

Oh gotcha. Ha!

[Deride]

I think your engine management is hurting your build big time. I know you don't want to spend the money but is it worth another block or two? You could also look into doing a WRX harness/heads/ecu which should be quite a bit cheaper than a standalone and would give you a much better option for tuning.

[kimokalihi]

I've considered sti ecu with harness but is that as good or close to stand alone? What are the limits of tuning with access port or whatever they use. A lot of the cost of stand alone is paying someone to tune it who knows their shit. Most of the blown engines people get are from bad tunes or trying to tune it themselves without experience.

[beatersubi]

Damn STI/WRX owners and their saturated aftermarket selection. Most of them don't know what modding a car is. I feel like I've hand built this car from the ground up.

A fact that you should take pride in rather than spite those with more money than sense for.

SVO does, in fact, sport an iron block and head turbo 2.3L 8valve engine. Same one thats in my XR, in fact. Hey!, maybe we should 'race' some time.

I've driven your car. It's not slow.

Wise man say: comparison is the root of all discontent.

[Alphius]

If there's something else causing knock, being too rich won't necessarily cover it up and make the knock go away. I don't like your statement of not seeing why you still have knock at 10:1, since that is still absolutely possible.

10:1 is too rich. However, 13:1 is too lean. I've successfully road and dyno tuned many N/A and boosted vehicles on MegaSquirt and factory ECUs. I always like to shoot for somewhere around 12:1 on a forced induction car with an intercooler, but no leaner than that. N/A usually is where you want to see around 13:1. My tunes usually end up around 11.8:1 or so and that is decent for power and yet still plenty safe for the street and its varied conditions.

With default settings on my RevTronix chip, it usually seems to stabilize around 10.2:1 after a reset, but since a feature of this chip is changing the full throttle fueling I have it dialed back to around 12:1 at 18psi and it feels much smoother and faster, yet there's no learned knock correction stored and the octane factor stays at 100% all the time.

Good story on the SVO. Those can be built up pretty strong. I've always like the Merkur Xr4Ti with that engine. The other day on the freeway I pulled on a tuned SR20DET swapped S14 240sx, so I know my car is not slow. I walk away from my other friend's stock SR20DET S13 swap like he's standing still, but that's only 10psi of boost for him. I need 13 to keep up with his stock SR20 car at 10 but at 18 I blow him away, no contest. As beatersubi says, if you had no basis for comparison you would probably be happy. For me, the Subaru is just a cost-efficient daily driver while my real fast car is the Camaro. There's no way in a million years my Subaru would ever hang with my Camaro without a lot more money and time.

MegaSquirt is cheaper than most other standalones, and I find it has at least a comparable feature set if not a better one in some cases. The amount of work is a little more, and the learning curve is a little higher, but you can build one easily for under $500 and the sense of satisfaction from doing so is worth a lot to me at least. I keep weighing the positives and negatives of 'Squirting my Subaru, but haven't pulled the trigger yet since it's my daily driver and it runs just fine right now. It would be nice to have more control though.

[Legacy777]

I'll throw my two cents in.... 11 - 11.5 to 1 is really a good compromise. For higher boost, I'd say 11:1 is where you want to be. You may be able to get by with 12:1, but that is on the ragged edge, and from what I've seen AFR's can vary a half to one point on AFR. My tune starts at 11.5:1 at the lower boost levels and then down to 11:1.

With that being said....a stand alone ECU is a double edge sword. You have lots of control and tweaking you can do, but getting it setup correctly can be a real pain...especially if you go MAP based, because you really need to have the car tweaked/checked anytime you make any change that could affect the engine's volumetric efficiency.

The Accessport and Open ECU tuning does open up a fair amount of options. They may not be as flexible and configurable as a stand alone, but would more than likely suit your needs.

[Deride]

You have to realize that your ECU was designed in the late 1980's and nearly anything is better than your stock ECU. As Legacy777 said "The Accessport and Open ECU tuning does open up a fair amount of options. They may not be as flexible and configurable as a stand alone, but would more than likely suit your needs." The ONLY reason I would go Accessport is if I wanted to run 2 different fuel maps, Open ECU with a good tune will suit almost everyone's needs.

[kimokalihi]

Wise man say: comparison is the root of all discontent.

That's a good quote. I think I would still feel the same without comparison though. Maybe not the embarrassing part but I'd still think it was slow because I've gotten quite used to it and it doesn't get my heart going like it used to. Plus since switching to this block it's quite noticeably less snappier in the low end.

One of these days I'll build my EJ257 block and probably go rotated manifold front mount or AWIC and I will need a different EM for sure. I'd like one now but don't want to spend the money. I hear it's expensive to pay a tuner and I don't want to risk tuning it myself and blow up an expensive build.

[kimokalihi]

Picked up an 06 LGT BPV and found out the bolt pattern is different than my 06 WRX TMIC and I think the shape of the base also. Bummer. My BPV is too restrictive as well as the piping to it and it causes compressor surge and I want to fix that.








My driver's side lock cylinder snapped inside and the lock just turned for days and didn't work. I removed it today and grabbed one from a 91 wagon and I took them both apart and swapped the tumblers from my 91 SS lock into the 91. Cleaned it up and lubed it up and now it works better than ever. Awesome.

I forgot to get a picture for comparison but the 91 lock design was just slightly different in that they really beefed up the area that snapped off on my 91 SS lock. So I think it must have been from a newer car probably 92-94. Plus it was missing one of the springs for the tumblers so someone had taken it apart further supporting my theory that the locks had been replaced before. It's beefy enough that I don't think it could ever snap that way again.

[kimokalihi]

Also is there a way to fix the locks so a worn key can't open them or is it just a poor lock design? A friend of mine opened my door with his key when my car was locked and that worries me because I know a lot of cars are stolen this way or broken into and robbed.

[Legacy777]

It's probably a function of the lock design. Short of getting a new lock cylinder with a different key, not sure what else you can do.

[kimokalihi]

Scored a free trunk lid and spoiler. I thought about swapping the whole thing but it was too much work and more of a summer project when it's nice out. I washed the spoiler and polished and waxed it. My spoiler was badly chipped in several places and this one only has a few tiny chips.






I kind of like the wingless look though.

[beatersubi]

That is a score!
The wingless look is pretty smooth. It makes the front of the car look disproportionately larger than the rear, though. If that makes any sense.

[kimokalihi]

I was thinking that as well. Especially with the front lip. Makes the back look small.

[SILINC3R]

Not a big fan of wingless look. I think if you got the window rear spoiler thing it would work out though. Wish my car was as clean as your lol.

[kimokalihi]

Meh its got dings and dents and the hood and trunk and door handles are different shades than the rest of the car. Busted windshield. Its in decent shape but looks better in pictures than in person.

[SILINC3R]

Lol, well then sounds a little like mine.

[Legacy777]

Yeah, I prefer the rear spoiler look, which is why I added one to my car

[kimokalihi]

I tried installing a charcoal canister yesterday and was checking all my vacuum lines with the vacuum diagram and found out I have had a vacuum nipple open the entire time I've been driving my car. Well over 10,000 miles. Cool. It goes to the purge solenoid under the manifold. Which was routed to a vacuum nipple on top of the manifold. The reason I didn't know it was open was because my throttle body is mounted upside down so the throttle linkage doesn't hit the IAC and I didn't notice it because it's almost impossible to see it under there.

I have it hooked up to my purge solenoid now and I plugged that vacuum nipple on top of the manifold for now.







I wasn't able to hook up my charcoal canister because one of the nipples on this check valve is broken but I think mike-tracey is gonna send me one. It's bolted in place and all I have to do is connect the hoses one I get the check valve and I shouldn't have to worry about pressurizing my gas tank and all that jazz.

[kimokalihi]

Installed my new GrimmSpeed master cylinder brace just now. About $88 shipped on ebay. Or $100+shipping and probably tax from GS's website. Pretty easy to do, especially if you have removed or relocated your washer reservoir which most haven't but I have.

You'll need a 15mm (stupid) wrench, 10mm wrench, 5mm allen wrench and I used a pry bar to remove some plastic tab that was in the way and was serving no purpose. It looks like it was supposed to hold a brake line or something but nothing was there.






You have two options here. Use the supplied (way too long) bolts for the back of the bracket or you can use the short stock bolts that were previously holding the fuel filter bracket in place. It's a PITA to get in there to tighten them and the only thing that fits is a wrench so unless you have a nice ratcheting wrench (I lost mine) then I'd go with the stock bolts. It will save you time and frustration of turning a wrench 1/4 turn at a time on a long ass bolt. GrimmSpeed should have given shorter bolts unless there's something else on other cars that needs to be bolted on top of their bracket.








This brake line on the turbo legacy (pretty sure it's different on NA) had to be bent back towards the firewall a little. Maybe 1/4"-1/2" because it was in the way of the bracket. Obviously not designed for our cars specifically.







You can toss the bracket that used to hold the starter wire loom. The GrimmSpeed bracket has a hole to zip tie it to if you want but I've relocated that whole harness so I didn't need it anyway. Get the brace snug up against the MC and then turn 1/2 to 1 full turn on the inside night and tighten up the outside nut and put your fuel filter and bracket back together and you're finished. 30 mins tops.

[PhyrraM]

Unless the nut is self locking, that's going to work itself loose fairly soon Kimo.

You need another nut on the opposite side of the plate to lock the assembly, if there is room. If there isn't room, you will need a longer bolt to add the locknut - or a shorter bolt to completely bottom out and lock with just the one nut.

How do the brakes feel?

[kimokalihi]

You think? That's how grimmspeed said to install it. They're not locking nuts but they're pretty tight together. They also have those ridges on the inside face of them to help prevent them from coming loose.

I haven't really driven the car yet. I drove it 2 blocks down the road and back but didn't really notice any difference. I think I need to replace my fluid with new pads and rotors and bleed them. I also have some bleeder screws to install with the one day check valve in them that have been sitting in my garage for 3 years since I haven't done anything with my brakes yet.