Thanks everyone for some great input and feedback
I will try and reply to some of the posts
I'd definitely be doing an AOS and the sump upgrade (just the baffle and pickup) in stage 1 as part of the reliability factor. KillerB themselves have said the pan itself is overkill for street use.
I did think of the AOS, but am not sure if its needed on a new car. A regular check of the PCV during the reported intervals should suffice along with oil level checks? If I have too much oil going in, I think I may have bigger problems
I might put this under Maybe (the Grimspeed one I guess), and either include as part of reliability or put it as a mod when I've gone through the rest of the list. It also doesn't need a tune so can easily squeeze in by myself when my Mrs isn't paying too much attention to my parts bucket
If I do go Flex Fuel then my plan is to use the COBB hardware, then ECUTEK for the Flex tune.
you do not need to upgrade fuel even with a downpipe
if you aren’t tracking the car, you won’t need the oil pan
Thanks! Definitely helps. That is interesting, I was not interested in going for Flex kits, but kept reading that downpipe changes needs fuel upgrades, hence thought if I am doing fuel upgrades, why not make sure it supports ethanol setup. I will have a chat with a tuner about this.
What’s the use of the car in the OP?
Spirited road use. I have a daily drive 4wd, so sometimes I use the STI as a daily driver, doing highway/city traffic, sometimes it goes up some windy roads up and down a mountain. I don't intend to track it any time in the near future. (If I were to, then most likely I'll have another car to replace the STI as the weekend fun car, and the STI will get stripped down for rally and I'll do some amateur local stages
)
Is there any actual data that the current oil pickups fail, or there’s something that wrong with the stock baffle, or is this based on ~2005 and that the current versions “look” the same? I can see them making sense if you’re rebuilding or upsizing the pan, but it seems like a heck of a thing to take the oil pan off for on a newer car to be such a universal recommendation on here.
For the gauges if you want to simplify or potentially leave room for more gauges in the future, you can sort of infer temperature from pressure (like I wait until I idle at a certain range before pushing), but it comes down to how much info you want.
Pretty much based on discussions and information off the older STI threads. I don't have much knowledge about the new gen STI. For the gauges, especially the oil temp/pressure, I was looking at some of the dual read ones.
Innovate Motorsports 3913 MTX-D Dual Function Oil Pressure (0-145 PSI, 10 BAR) + Temp Gauge Kit
You wanna modify? ELH, DP, keep stock airbox, then tune. Maybe throw the cyl-4 cooling mod if you want. If after adding those parts you have fuel problems, then think about fixing it.
Don't need the killerb pickup, fuel upgrade, AOS, etc with those mods on stock turbo.
Thanks! This is helpful and most of the comments here are steering me away from a fuel upgrade. I've heard the stock intake holds up well. TBH, I want to do the Intake mod so I can hear the darn intake sound
Can't put BOV in Australia, BPV maybe, but that is just noise with no performance bump. If the aftermarket intake gets me even 20 ish odd bump, that's bonus
I have been eyeing the Grimmspeed Stealthbox as well as an option.
Why get tuned twice when you dont need to? Did you randomly decide what to do in your phases?
Thank you! This is a very helpful post. I did randomly put out the two phases based on the purchase plans I had, with the ELH as the first thing on my purchase list.
Reading the posts here, it seems I don't need to do the whole fuel upgrade with a downpipe upgrade and nor do I need to do the oil pan mods. So I can squeeze it all in one go.
get a wideband air/fuel gauge instead of EGT
I would just log those and skip adding gauges for them.
Oil temp&pressure gauges would be nice, but not necessary at this level of modification.
I guess if I am not doing any flex fuel mods, I might just stick with Oil temp and Oil Pressure? Should I still get a wideband EGR? I am using a combination Oil temp/Oil pressure (and if I use the dashboard twin mount around the steering column, I'll have another slot empty) I am not sure if ECUTEK would log EGR by itself without being connected to a laptop if I have the sensors installed when am installing the headers.
^^^ Yup I agree! I guess do the reliability mods first if you really want. I like the idea of the oil temp and pressure gauge. Id say add an AFR if you want to as well. Everything else ehhhhhhh, the car is new, I wouldnt say totally needed. To each their own I guess.
Phase 2, yeah do it all at once and bang it out. Protune once and be done. Id throw in a fuel pump, turbo inlet, ECBS, and a fresh set of spark plugs as well. While you're there, replace PCV valve too. I personally dont think you need fuel lines and fuel rails for a stock turbo car.
Speak with your tuner and see what they say
Thanks!
From the looks of it and after following the comments, my revised list would be:
Phase 1 for reliability and slight performance bump for spirited drive:
Phase 2 [Optional]: at a much later date, if I want to push the car more for performance:
- KillerB Oil pan upgrade
- Cobb Fuel Upgrade Kit
- Flex sensor kit
- Bigger turbo
- PCV replacement (I think its part of the service schedule around 25K kms?)
- Revisit FMIC vs TMIC
- Retune with ECUTEK
For anyone who uses ECUTEK, is it hard to re-tune if you have new mods added later on (like my Phase 2 list?) The last car (Mitsubishi FTO GPX) I worked on, I used a standalone unit (GREDDY Trust E-manage) and I wasn't limited to tunes. But mostly had to take it to a dyno every time. I've read I can get my tuner tune my car remotely while I datalog off a base map with ECUTEK, which could be pretty handy. I will be booking it for a dyno tune on Phase 1 though.
Thanks again everyone
