TimZ

Any idea what your EGTs look like at cruise and idle? I was fighting very similar issues for years - I had large injectors and could only go so lean at idle before the injectors went unstable, and was controlling idle speed by letting more air in via the bypass screws to get a suitably lean mix, and then controlling speed with ignition advance (retard actually). This generally put my idle EGTs (measured at the turbine inlet) up around 1200 degF. I never thought that much of it since I figured I had everything ceramic coated (combustion chambers, exhuast ports, exhaust manifold, etc) and pretty well heat shielded to boot. 1200 degF was kind of high but I figured that was happening after the combustion chamber anyway so didn't think it would have much effect on coolant temps. This turned out to be wrong. When I went to staged injectors I was able to get much more stable lean mixtures at idle. First thing I noticed was that my EGTs dropped sharply when I leaned the idle mix, which was a bit counter-intuitive. I ended up leaning the crap out of my idle mix and running a lot more advance. EGTs dropped to ~800 degF and my coolant temps at idle stopped climbing above the set-point. I then (CAREFULLY) remapped my advance and fuel curves at cruise to lower EGTs at there as well. I can now run my AC on a hot night pretty much indefinitely without coolant temp issues. Oh - almost forgot... I ran the CSR electric pump for a while, and aside from the nice feature of controlling heat soak by running for a while after the engine was shut off, it did not help my coolant temp issues. At all. As I recall it would be okay for a while and then just go into thermal runaway and I'd have to shut it down and let it run for a while with the engine off to cool things back down. I even tried using a thermostatic switch - controlled Kenne Bell Boost-a-Pump to speed it up if the temps climbed to no avail. I'm currently running a diesel mechanical pump and stock mechanical fan and NPG-R coolant. I don't think it's having a significant effect on my power production.

I keep hearing people say stuff like this on this and other forums, and I would contend that if you are trying to do something with a strut bar that you think the spherical bearings are keeping you from doing, you're probably doing something wrong. Long bars like this are only strong longitudinally, and really can't add usable strength in other directions. In fact if you are applying force in other directions, like for instance, trying to use a single lateral bar between the struts to limit relative fore-aft movement between the struts, you'll likely just fatigue the the mounts eventually. This is precisely what the spherical joints are there to prevent - they transmit the longitudinal force from the bar and pretty much nothing else. In this case, relative fore-aft movement is why the additional two bars to the hood latch were added. It's probably also worth noting that the triangulated three bar arrangement here has essentially gone from having stiffness in one dimension (right-left) to having stiffness in two dimensions (right-left, fore-aft). It still won't do much to prevent relative up-down movement between the struts. It shouldn't be too hard to see that if you try to use the three bar arrangement for this you'll likely just end up twisting the hood latch, which again the spherical bearings are protecting you from. If you want stiffness in the up-down direction, you need to figure out how to triangulate in that plane.

The new versions of this pump do either a high/low speed switch, or variable speed controlled by a pwm signal. This looks like an attempt at a high/low switch, with the switched voltage knocked down to ~4V via the resistive voltage divider. Could they tell you how the older models did their speed control? Maybe the older models used an analog voltage input instead of PWM? That would at least make the values for the divider network make more sense...

This need some clarification. Are you saying that CXRacing told you to send the money as a gift, or did you buy through a classified and the seller wanted to you to pay as a gift? CXRacing sells their wares through ebay, and I don't think they could do that there even if they wanted to. If you bought this from an individual, it's not too surprising that CX wasn't enthusiastic about warrantying it.

Haters that aren't very good at math or physics, apparently...

That is some very nice work there. I am a bit curious though, as to the weight of these compared to the stock rockers, especially the weight at the moving end of the rockers. If they are appreciably heavier than the stock piece you would still need to run fairly high spring rates to keep from floating them. I'd be curious to see how this would end up comparing to a similar valve lift profile with, say, lightened standard rockers and lower stiffness beehive springs. Too bad nobody has that much time (or money) on their hands...

Hi. My take on this is that it's "directionally correct", but I'm not sure how much heat that pipe can end up transmitting to the intake air, since it moves by it pretty fast. I guess to say it more accurately, I doubt that the amount of heat that you end up transferring away from the pipe is enough to significantly raise the temperature of the large amount of air passing through it. It _will_ probably help quite a bit with heat soak before warm starts, though. That said, it _is_ directionally correct - every little bit helps, and it's not like you spent a lot of money on it. You could even pretty it up by wrapping it in some nice heat reflective tape! Also, this mod will probably not be directionally correct on the turbo-to-intercooler pipe, since it is likely hotter than the engine bay air.

Oh, for ****'s sake...

I've been thinking of doing this for some time, but I've not been able to find a set that seems appropriate for the L-series heads, especially if you need to accommodate significant lift. The ones that I keep finding are either too large/small IDs or too long (coil bind doesn't allow high lifts with the installed heights I'd need), and often way too stiff. Have you found a combo that works with, say, .540 lift?

It's a "tuned mass damper". Basically they found an NVH issue really late in the game, and this was a quick and dirty way to address it. Presumably there was something in the rear suspension that was resonating audibly at some speed range. Adding the mass lowers the part's resonant frequency to a range where it no longer gets excited under normal use. This is actually a really common practice and still happens today - it's not the most desirable solution but if it's two weeks to launch it starts to look like a really good idea...

This is kind of what I was thinking as well, especially given your observation that you get varying resistance when you rotate a wheel by hand. U-joint halfshafts don't like high deflection angles, and they don't like forces that result from bottoming out the telescoping shaft. I'd take another look at your deflection angles throughout the suspension travel and especially around your normal ride height, and also make sure that the shafts don't come close to their minimum length at any point in the suspension travel. Also, I believe that the right and left shafts are different lengths - could they be in backwards?

One thing possibly worth noting is that the mustache bar arrangement allows considerably less rotational movement of the diff in the roll axis, compared to what you would likely get if you put the bushings at the diff itself. Not only does the longer lever arm limit the amount of angular movement for a given bushing deflection, the force on the bushing is correspondingly lower with the longer lever arm, resulting in less bushing deflection in the first place.

Lotsa room over there now that the intake is on the other side... Just sayin'

I'm currently using their digital FPR. I don't see stallouts from the FPR trying to go too low, but I do still randomly have issues with the pump not spinning up at key-on. As I recall the pump will sometimes stop running if the engine stalls out, which gets really annoying in traffic. Usually cycling the ignition cures this but not something you want to be messing with when the light turns green. I saw this behavior more often before when I was trying to use my ECU to switch from low to high, and it did stall out while running in this mode. Tell me about it - I have the 42401, rated at 170gph. Same as you I thought I was solving all my fuel problems by sumping the tank and going with a monster pump. I just ended up creating a whole slew of new problems. I had to pull the tank a couple of times and change the internal plumbing, but at least now it seems to be running pretty well.

Dang - I coulda got you an employee discount on a Focus ST or RS (when it's available)... That said the WRX is a great car - I've been a fan of those for some time!

If I recall correctly they _might_ be able to set the low switched speed to a lower setting if you ask real nice and send it in to them. These pumps work great, but don't live very long if they start cavitating due to inlet restriction or fuel vaporization. Making sure that you have a good low restriction inlet and cool fuel is really important, so the lower you can keep the pump speed the better - the pump itself heats up less and the FPR is dumping less warm fuel back to the tank. They state is their literature that you want to keep the fuel temp below ~130 degF, which is REALLY low, especially if you live in hot climate. One other small annoying detail is that "0-19% PWM is off" part. 0% PWM looks an awful lot like the DC "low speed" switched setting (okay exactly like it). Since they don't have another method of knowing which thing you are doing, it appears that they use the logic that if they see a PWM signal at all and it goes to 0% then they shut the pump off. If they never see PWM then they assume that it's the low speed switched setting. Sooo... if you get any noise on that line at startup, it shuts the pump off and you have to cycle the ignition to get it to come back on. Why exactly you'd ever want to kill the pump via the speed controller has never been clear to me. This always seems to happen at the worst possible moment too, like when you are tuning low speed drivability and accidentally stall it out in traffic. Engine stalls, pump stops and won't come back on. Have to cycle the ignition switch until the pump fires back up before you can move again. If this happened in an OEM car it would be grounds for a recall.

Pardon my laziness, but I forget - is this going to be turbo or NA?

If your ecu can do the 500-1500Hz PWM signal that the pump needs for variable speed control then you're set. If you need to do the high/low switched method, you'll only be able to reduce speed by ~50% as I recall. The PWM method allows much lower min pump speeds, like 20% or so. The electronic FPR is pretty cool as it runs closed loop, but it does make the pump make some weird sounds as it rapidly adjusts speeds.

Seems like a lot of work to go through just to lower your octane by ~ 2 points. But hey - enjoy your "pure" gas. And your detonation.

I've been noticing the same thing. Hey - at least it appears that he is using the search function!

That does seem like a pretty large gap and I don't remember mine doing that, but I don't remember what brand I used offhand. However, the main reason for going to a urethane rack bushing is to get a tighter fit with more bushing "crush", so that you get less rack movement and more precise steering. It wouldn't surprise me too much if you saw that much gap when you just slip the bushing onto the rack, and the manufacturer's intent was for the gap to close as he half-moon clamp was tightened. If this were the intent, then it would need to be possible for the bushing to slide a bit on the clamp as it is tightened - in fact in your pic it appears that the bushing might be pinched in the clamp ("bottom" side of the clamp in the pic), which would prevent this from happening and make the gap worse. I would suggest starting over and applying some of that super-thick bushing grease to both the inside and the outside of the bushings where it contacts the clamp and crossmember, and then try installing again. Also, make sure you tighten the clamp all the way down until you have metal to metal contact, and watch to make sure the bushing isn't getting pinched.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like you still have the stock timing tab on the front cover - is that correct? If so, why not just ignore the marks on the pulley (at least for the time being), note/mark the point on the pulley that lines up with the tab's "0" mark when the engine is at true mechanical TDC, and then use the tab to verify timing? Alternatively you could use a "dial-in" type timing light and _only_ use the zero mark. In fact if you have a "dial-in" light, then you could just put the engine at true TDC and make your own corresponding Zero reference marks on the pulley and front cover...

It sounds like all of these measurements were made with the manifold reference connected to the FPR, correct? If you are seeing 40 psi at idle, then your fuel pressure at 15psi of boost should be whatever vacuum you were pulling at idle plus 15psi. So it sounds like you must have been pulling around 10" of vacuum (~ -5psi) at idle. Normally you set the base fuel pressure with the manifold reference disconnected, and then idle pressure will be lower than the base pressure and boost will be higher. At cruise, your manifold pressure/vacuum will move around a fair amount as you adjust the throttle, so this is likely not a huge problem. If you are seeing big spikes in the pressure when the throttle is being held constant, then I would suspect that to be due to some lean backfiring in the manifold.

That doesn't appear to be the same shock as the one in the AZ Zcar instructions, so I can't tell exactly what the end of your strut rod shaft looks like, but there _should_ be two shoulders at the threaded end of the shaft - the first one is at the bottom of the threads, and brings the shaft's OD to the correct size to fit in the camber plate's ball joint (probably 5/8"). You can see what appears to be that shoulder in your pic: The second shoulder is a bit below the first and the bottom of the ball joint (or possibly some spacers under the ball joint) should rest on that shoulder. When you tighten the nut, it should be clamping the ball joint between the second shoulder and the nut. That's how the top nut does it's job, and this is why people are telling you that it is not the gland nut. The potential problem that I see is that in your pic the first shoulder appears to be approximately flush with the top of the ball joint. It should not be - it should always be a bit below the top of the ball joint, so that the nut can apply clamping force between it and the second shoulder. If the first shoulder is flush or a bit proud of the ball joint then the nut just bottoms out on the shaft itself and applies no clamping force to the ball joint. This allows the shaft to move vertically inside the ball joint and could pretty easily shake the nut loose as you have observed. A simple washer used as a spacer to sit between the second shoulder and the bottom of the ball joint would alleviate this problem. Hopefully that explanation made sense - it's kind of hard to describe without pics.

Do a compression check. I don't think you are going to like the answer...