Jeff - 2008 Subaru Liberty 2.5i NA 5MT ADM - Tuning

Jeff - 2008 Subaru Liberty 2.5i NA 5MT ADM - Tuning

Postby west_minist » Sat Sep 17, 2011 10:01 pm

Info
Owner: Jeff - Australia
Rom: E2TB102M
Tyres: 215/45-17
Car Weight: 1365kg
Driver Weight: 105kg
Total Weight: 1470kg

Mods
NA

Transmission
1st: 3.454
2nd: 2.062
3rd: 1.448
4th: 1.088
5th: 0.780
Final Gear: 3.9

BP Ultimate 98 octane

All dyno'es are based on RPM.
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west_minist
 
Posts: 1131
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Car: 2000 Subaru Impreza 2R 4EAT

Stock Performance

Postby west_minist » Sat Sep 17, 2011 10:02 pm

http://www.xtremeracingtuning.com/forum ... f=40&t=400

Image
Stock Criticals

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Stock 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=19C

Customer feedback on the first rom release: v0a
The car is definitely pulling better giving me a lack of "lag" on the throttle, being more responsive in general, and there it feels as though there is virtually no effort in climbing hills. I had to remind myself about the difference by quickly flashing back the original ROM to compare.

While the car is overall much more driveable with much smoother gear changes, I'm having a little trouble doing slow stop-start driving in traffic in 1st gear without using copious amounts of clutch to compensate for me accidentally over-revving the car as I'm used to putting more throttle in with the original ROM. Over the day of testing, however, I managed to handle this a lot better so I know there will be a period of personal adjustment as we go through each version as I found myself almost stalling the car late in the day when I went back to the original ROM to compare against.
Last edited by west_minist on Sat Sep 17, 2011 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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west_minist
 
Posts: 1131
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2008 1:51 pm
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Car: 2000 Subaru Impreza 2R 4EAT

Tuning completed - v8

Postby west_minist » Sat Sep 17, 2011 10:03 pm

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 11:17 AM
To: Edward Millington
Subject: Re: v8 - results

Image
v8 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=17C Pull 1

Edward, you are a scary, scary man. You have turned my car into pure evil with this ROM!

The throttle response from v8 is phenomenal - it ramps up the rpms so quickly no matter what gear you are in! I also didn't think the new rev limiter would make that much of a difference, but in a basic 0-100 test, being able to change gear later has allowed the car to get an approximate time of 7-7.5 seconds!! That is INSANE! I will have to formally time this with the appropriate equipment one day.

Revving right through the range , I could feel the power flatten off a bit at about 5,500rpm, but it still climbed up pretty quickly from there to 6,500rpm (I haven't been game to take it all the way to 7,000rpm yet
- the engine is revving seriously fast up there). It feels like such a long gear when revving that far, but it has made a very positive difference.

I'm not sure how, but the throttle is somehow lighter and more responsive than v7 is again - it's VERY responsive and touchy underfoot to blips in the throttle and I found that the car rolls along on its own inertial force more easily with less resistance from the engine slowing it down.

I only did one pull tonight because frankly, it scared me. The extra high rev limit meant I actually ran out of road and had to brake hard before I hit the rev limiter, but I did get past 6,000rpm.

Fourth gear at 2,000rpm shows the car pick up 5kph in just under 2.5 seconds when flat to the floor.

There is a lot of meat between 2,000rpm and 4,000rpm - every gear, even fifth on the highway, pulls excellently, with the best performance occurring from 3,000rpm in high gears. You can go as low as about 1,800rpm before the car starts to shudder a bit because the gear is too high for that speed. 1st and 2nd gears just rip up the road in a very linear fashion all the way to 4,500-5,000rpm.

I attempted a "stole it" run, but because of the sheer pickup in speed of the car and the fact that it's a very dark night, I'll really need to go find a good twisty mountain drive during the day to do it some justice - there are too many corners that I more or less have to come to a complete stop to ensure it's safe to get into, and doing it at night with nearly no street lights doesn't help. I need a long winding mountain road to really see what this car can do now.

You have provided a very "turbo" feel to the car now. Lag is non-existent. Lurching between gears is non-existent. I can now go very deep into the gears before changing. The car does not in any way shape or form feel like a 2.5 litre car. It feels like something much more powerful and is going to leave a lot of my passengers fooled. It is now, for all intents and purposes, a weapon.

I'll be able to test this properly this weekend. I'm just not being able to get absolute hard results driving in suburban areas, at least not without risking drawing unwanted attention to myself!

More feedback tomorrow when I can do some general day driving.

Cheers!

Jeff.



http://www.xtremeracingtuning.com/forum ... f=48&t=402
HyRax wrote:I came across Edward and XRT quite by accident when perusing the Australian Liberty forums. Initially I didn't pay too much attention as he was "just another tuner" but I noticed that a lot of people were posting up crazy reviews about this guy who was able to achieve tuning amazing results without ever seeing or sitting in your car. This intrigued me as I didn't know you could tune-by-email.

As I explored further I discovered the wonders of RomRaider and open source tuning and wanted to know more. The idea of tuning my own car didn't enter my head until I saw a post from Edward asking if anyone would like to explore the idea of tuning a 2.5i. I looked around and found that no-one had answered his call, so I had no way of determining whether or not anyone else had done it and if there were any results to examine to decide if I wanted to do it myself.

Edward had, however, tuned a lot of 3.0 cars. Since they are NA I figured that they can't be too different to my 2.5i. I read several 3.0 reviews and they were all glowing. Some of the improvement figured reported were downright amazing.

Since I couldn't find any negative opinion about Edward other than the paranoid types who think that plugging a laptop into a car is a good way to turn it into an all-wheel-drive brick, I took the plunge and emailed Edward some questions, which he promptly answered right away. Yes, he'd never done a 2.5i before and was looking for a suitable candidate. What also surprised me was his price - it was very cheap and this also spurred me on to consider taking him on.

But I was still up in the air about tuning a 2.5i. It's only a 2.5i after all, so it can't possibly improve as much as you can improve a 3.0 or a GT, surely? Edward asked me to send him a copy of my car's stock ROM so he could examine it and compare it to a 3.0 to evaluate where gains could be made. I went and bought a Tactrix OpenPort 2.0 cable and got him a ROM. I figured even if he wasn't able to support it, I could have some fun monitoring the car with the cable.

The next day Edward gets back to me and says the 2.5i and 3.0 ROMs are different beasts, but they do share a number of similar tables and Edward found other areas in the 2.5i ROM that he thought could use some tweaking. In short, he would definitely be able to support it and some gains should be achievable. I had already figured if I can get the driveability of the car improved, especially from-standstill acceleration, then this would be a Good Thing (TM). I was still with the expectation that I couldn't expect much in the way of more power or torque from a 2.5i, though.

Well, I was proved wrong. Very wrong.

It only took 12 late evenings, 14 ROM revisions, four tanks of fuel, more than 1,600 kilometres of test driving, and a partridge in a pear tree to arrive at what I now enjoy today - a road weapon! Edward has increased my power from 101kw at the wheels stock to 111kw, and raised my torque from 175nm stock to 193nm! That's 10% on both sides! For a naturally aspirated car with no modifications, that is massive! On top of that, my throttle is now incredibly responsive responding to the lightest of touches. The car is so easy to drive, doesn't feel "heavy" anymore and feels like a car that wants to be driven now, instead of being sedate and boring. The difference is so massive, that it's like comparing chalk to cheese and I am absolutely shocked that Subaru would sell these cars in such a massively detuned state.

To those who believe that just because your car is low-capacity and non-turbo that you can't expect any performance improvements, I am telling you right now that you are wrong. Edward has the expertise to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your hardware, and while mods can help, my improvements have come without a single modification - I am 100% stock and I am absolutely loving the car now.

Edward spends the time to properly custom tune your car not only for best performance but to your driving style. You tell him what you want and he delivers. You don't have to be a car expert either - just tell him in plain english what you feel out of the car, how you'd like it to feel and Edward will translate that into the technical modifications required. Your car is FINE-TUNED to ensure it's clean and most of all, SAFE. Safe for your engine and a more responsive car will also make it safer for you as the driver to be able to immediately respond to situations on the road. You will gain more power and torque and the tune will actually be safer for engine longevity than even the factory tune is which in my case showed how easily it could ping under regular high load! FOr the greenies out there, Edward will also deliver a fuel saving too, so his tune will quickly pay for itself over the next couple of years of refilling.

If you only ever do one thing to your car in its lifetime, then make it an XRT tune. It's cheaper than wasting money on buying a full exhaust system for fat sound or bling wheels to look good. A tune gets you so much more out of your car. It's the best bang-for-your-dollar investment you can make.

It has been an honour being Edward's first 2.5i to tune and now every other 2.5i owner can reap the benefits as well. I would also encourage anyone with a 2.0R to come forward and let Edward bestow the XRT nectar to you - you won't regret it! Subaru NA cars are actually really good cars!

Edward is a tuning master. He is always available on email and IM (he never sleeps!), he encourages you to ask questions and he will ask them of you too. He is very open and approachable and this level of communication makes working with him an absolute pleasure. I just cannot recommend XRT highly enough to you if you want to extract extra performance out of your car for minimum outlay. Why are you still reading this? Email Edward NOW! :D
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