Hi all,
I've lurked on this forum for a while, and it is a greats source of information. So though I may as well introduce the thing that matter, my car a rather boring stock looking gen 5 liberty(I personally like that it looks stock basically bar exhaust tips being slightly larger than stock with a Invidia Q300 exhaust).
About a 2 years ago it had the big end bearing go, at 187000km - it was using oil prior, and had a tune (which probably contributed to quicker wear, but made the care more enjoyable than stock- done by HPF in Dandenong which moved the power from 148-> 158awkw but peak power coming in a earlier in the rev band and about 30% more torque over stock which was noticable).
Pondering what to do, and there being not many manual family sized cars available, decided to get engine rebuilt and upgrade a few thing. I tried GotItRex in Melbourne(which is where I'm near), they didn't return calls, nor when I did call them want to do anything with a Gen V, ADS up in Sydney responded to my inquiries(spent quite a bit of time prior to commiting giving options to engine build- Isaac spent a lot of time answering questions), so ended up getting the car shipped up to Sydney to ADS for rebuild and modifications. They did a good job (they weren't cheap but aim was to get reliable power, and I guess that doesn't come cheap), building a closed deck EJ255 with STi W25 exhaust cams (which was suggestion from US Legacy forum). Moved to a GTPumps 3.5LM (low mount) and PSR headers (for the FA20!), Process West Verti-Cooler , 1300cc injectors, TGV deletes, a surge tank, and quite a few other things.
A strengthened (new ISF treated and shot peened gears) version of the split case 6 speed manual was an experiment (which given satogixxer's experience which I read too late, but at time couldn't afford upgrade, nor was I getting his figures), that didn't work - 2nd gear stripped a cog mid gear So now she has a STi 6 speed in her with R180 diff at back (rear running STi drive shafts, front still running originals, have to move to STi hubs etc for running STi front shafts). On the original ECU (EcuTek flashed) - the car made 312awkw and 600 NM torque at 3700, now moved to a MoTeC with a slight decrease in peak power, at 300 awkw, but power comes in earlier (still awaiting dyno-queen graph post upgrade). Boost comes in well prior to hitting 3000rpm. It is rather drivable.
Anyway, hi all, and thank you for all the awesome information this far, hope I can contribute to it! Happy to go further into my what was done(as there were quite a lot of things done to get the car to that point), but I think this is a long enough introduction.