Got the STi tuned!

I finally got everything finished up and got her tuned. I had Ray from Turbotek tune her up for me and he was def. a class act guy. He actually got her running smoother than she ever has for me. He was even able to get my idle dialed in 100% so it idles clean without any hiccups.

We did decide to back off just slightly on the boost (23psi) and made the timing quite a bit less aggressive which seemed to actually help on smoothness while making it seem like the car was even pulling harder. IIRC he said that the previous timing was set at 17* or something around there… which was a little more aggressive than I really wanted. I would prefer to keep it reliable and sacrifice a little power to make sure I won’t be rebuilding the engine anytime soon. He also dialed in my AFR’s and got everything running 10000000x better.

According to the program he uses, she put down approx. 375awhp and 378ft/lbs torque… which I am pretty happy with. I know I could have gotten more by pushing the boost and the timing, but I’ll keep the lower numbers to have the added reliability.

Big thumbs up to Ray!!!

I did however have a mild heart attack on one of the pulls though…lol. At full boost we all of a sudden heard a loud pop and the car shut off. I was about to panic and he helped the situation by looking at the data on his laptop and seeing that we had a sudden drop in boost / vacuum. Opened the hood and sure enough the main throttle body inlet hose had popped off. When I did the FMIC I could not for the life of me find a 2.75" - 2" silicone coupler so I used a 3" - 2" and a small piece of silicone hose as a ‘spacer’ for a temporary solution. So I knew that would be my weak point. We pulled the ‘spacer’ out and tightened the clamp down and she was good the rest of the time. But man, when that loud ass pop went off and everything shut off, my heart sank… lol.

Edit: And now, with everything tuned up and running perfectly, I will be leaving it for quite a while so I can actually enjoy it. No more modding for quite a bit (other than finishing / figuring out the gauge setup). Plus I’ll hopefully have a new bike to spend money on, as well as some body mods I want to start working on (new tattoos)

Awesome Kenny! Its nice to see a car guy with enough smarts to back it off and keep it safe like that. Everyone goes balls to the wall to get walk that line for all its worth, then most of them cry about it when they over step. 375awhp is more than enough to make for a blast of a car to rip up back roads with.

popping the coupler, reminds me of one. Got the jetta going with the big turbo and didnt tighten a coupler up enough, and launched the charge pipe, right into the underside of the hood. put a nice little outty dent on my shaved hood too, boy was I pissed. Sounds like a shot gun going off at 26psi though! lol

just crank the 2bolt more, the .250" difference will shrink up fine and hold. Its not enough to deform it or bunch it up and cause a leak. the wide surface on the clamp will keep that from happening.

Reminds me of when a buddy of mine and I were coming home from a tuning session at moon up in lake placid in his wrx a few yrs ago and the same thing happened during a pull on the northway haha. Luckily we were around the corner from another members house on here to get it all squared away. But it was nerve wracking at first and it wasn’t even my car haha

Yea, after that sound and then the engine instantly shutting off I almost cried. Thankfully Ray was there with the data to assure me it was just the piping… lol.

Ticking time bomb is ticking.

haha yep… time to invest in a daily

RIP sti

nice kenny, check vibrant for the correct silicone coupler you need. That’s what i have for my car, still need to swap them on though

I have 2.75" coupler material here. Give me a call

Inb4 new motor/immediate sale

:rofl

…and boom goes the dynamite! not a matter of if, its when…

Its a fact, Start the built motor fund the day you get it tuned.

then once you have the built motor in the car and paid for…start another fund for a slightly used stock motor to replace the built one. then sell the car.

its on page 56 of the owners manual