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

2008+ Subaru Legacy/Outback
west_minist
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v5 Stats

Post by west_minist »

v5 introduce fuel around 2700+rpm
v5 vs Stock.png
v5 vs Stock.png (21.58 KiB) Viewed 12241 times
v5 vs v4.png
v5 vs v4.png (21.49 KiB) Viewed 12241 times
v5 3rd Gear Dynoes.png
v5 3rd Gear Dynoes.png (21.34 KiB) Viewed 12241 times
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v5 Feedback

Post by west_minist »

http://forum.liberty.asn.au/viewtopic.p ... 15#p183152
HyRax wrote:v5, v5a, v5b ROM update

Testing several variants of the same ROM this weekend. This one is all about torque tweaks.
  • The v5 ROM concentrated on improving torque down low from 2,600-2,700rpm in general.
  • The v5a ROM tweaked low end torque from 40% throttle application.
  • The v5b ROM had some closed loop and open loop changes.
Long story short, the car is exhibiting noticeably stronger torque levels all the way through the rev range. This is best felt through drives that put a load on the engine as opposed to simple straight and flat runs. We're talking mountain climbs, long sweepers, etc.

I didn't have time this weekend to prepare a mountain road, so I tried a few local long uphill sweepers and some steep suburban back streets. The car just powers through these turns and thumps up hills with ease. The car was already feeling strong after v5, but v5b in particular felt like this strength was reinforced.

Edward did make an observation at one point that some of my power runs showed a slight degradation in performance which was causing some head scratching. While dirty fuel, old oil and original spark plugs were initially thought responsible (and probably still are), it is highly likely that my front tyre was more directly responsible for this degradation because in the past couple of days I somehow scored not only one, but TWO nails in my front tyre causing a slow leak which reduced the car's ability to accelerate and turn. By the time I noticed it, the sidewall had worn down too much to be safely repairable, so I had to get a new tyre. One of my back tyres also scored a screw through it, but that was repaired. Mental note - stay away from industrial areas when doing test runs!

I also finally burned up my suspected dirty tank of petrol and filled up at a different, larger BP that was more likely to carry better quality fuel. We'll see how this one goes, but at this stage I will need to sort out my next service (which will be a major one) which should improve things again. I racked up a total of 450K's on that tank, which as I mentioned before, was composed predominantly of lead-foot action during the meat of the tuning phase. I would never get even close to 400K's if i was doing that under the stock ROM! Once tuning is over, it will be interesting to see what distances I achieve on passive city and highway travel.

Right now I'm on another ROM, v5b1, which is some more fine-tuning of the v5b ROM. It's been just over a week now since we started this tune, and Edward is still sticking at it, showing me that he has a level of perfectionism that cannot be understated. The fact that he keeps giving me new ROMs almost every day with further fine-tuning shows how dedicated he is to the task and he will not stop until he is absolutely sure he has done everything he can. He is quite literally squeezing out every last bit of performance from my hardware! Of late he has had me reduce the total number of variables I'm logging to increase the resolution of the remaining variables he needs in the logs, and he has used this to great effect. 8)
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Re: Jeff - 2008 Subaru Liberty 2.5i NA 5MT ADM - Tuning

Post by west_minist »

http://forum.liberty.asn.au/viewtopic.p ... 83#p183676
HyRax wrote:v5b1, v6, v6a ROM update

Late Sunday I had an opportunity to take v5b1 for a spin on the Old Pacific Highway north of Sydney. This was a seriously fun drive with the car just egging me on to put my foot down. It was incredibly lively and most of the tighter low speed turns were easily tackled without any sensation of the car bogging down.

Going down the highway was a lot of fun, but of course very easy being a downhill affair. Coming back in a hill climb fashion was where the fun was really at. Once again, the car powered through the turns, effortlessly climbed the hills and responded with every small blip of the throttle. It wasn't a completely fair test of the car, though because I'm still on stock swaybars and I felt the car had a lot more to give if it were not for the body roll around some of the sharper turns, but what was there was awesome - the car hugged the road in typical Subaru fashion and you were able to easily brake late, leave it in third, low throttle into the turn, apply more throttle halfway through the turn and increase it to flat foot it on the way out with ease with no need to drop to second before the turn. It just felt really strong with absolutely no let down the whole way.

Edward also established from the logs that this tank of fuel I was using did appear to be better in quality to my previous tank and I'll probably write into BP to let them know about my local BP's bad fuel quality. There was nearly no pinging on this tank so what was left would probably be fixed with my next service which will include new quality spark plugs.

Late Sunday I flashed up v6a. This ROM was intended to re-test the v0 timings that were causing me to ping a lot on the suspected dodgy fuel I had when this expedition started. This time the pings were definitely reduced, but there was a very different feel about the throttle - it wasn't as "exciting" as the v5b1 ROM was. I gave this feedback to Edward who posted me back v6a with some fuel adjustments which improved the throttle down low but it still didn't feel quite right.

To test this properly, I established myself a repeatable "test course" comprising of slow roads, fast roads, hills and other areas where I could do a lot of stop-start action without bothering anyone. I performed several "laps" under v6a making a note of how this section of road felt, how that section felt under a maintained speed in fourth gear at 3,000rpm, how much "effort" was required to turn up this sweeper, and how easy it was to start from standstill, etc.

After doing about four laps of this approximately 3 kilometre course, I then pulled over and flashed the car back to v5b1 and drove exactly the same way through the course over another four laps, making note of what felt different.

Finally, I pulled over again and flashed back to v6a again and did another four laps for a final comparison to confirm my findings.

I deduced that both ROMs were essentially identical in their pull factor, both capable of hauling up to redline very quickly, however v6a's application was "softer" making the effort factor feel like the car/throttle was a little heavier. I noticed, for example, that I was putting in a bit more throttle in the stop-start tests to move the car under v6a than I was under v5b1 because it felt as though the car was picking up more slowly and therefore felt like it could stall as I released the clutch (this wasn't actually the case, but it felt that way).

I gave several pull logs and feedback to Edward who immediately took it onboard and sent me v7 to me this morning which contained an enrichment of fuel as the major change. This should effectively incorporate the frisky-feeling throttle from v5b1 with the fuel and timing changes in v6a.

The v7 ROM is on the car now and the throttle definitely feels better already in this morning's general driving. Tonight I will do the requisite pull logs and give final feedback to Edward. Unless he finds anything wrong in these logs, this should be the final ROM, though Edward will probably produce me a v7a ROM once I get my next major service done in about a month's time if it shows that further minor improvements can be made with fresh oil and new spark plugs.

Edward has been great at translating my very non-technical references of the feel of the car into the required technical modifications for the next ROM. On some occasions he's told me not to bother with any logs and just for me to tell him how the car feels here and there, but I've provided him logs anyway as I like pretty comparison graphs. ;)

If this does end up being the last ROM, it's going to be a bit sad really - even though it's only been one and a half weeks, I would come home and gleefully check my InBox to see if a new ROM has arrived, so I could flash it up and have an excuse to go for a spin. Of course this has also been the only time I've ever had to fill up my tank more than once a week too, but the adventure of it has definitely been worth it. :)
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Re: Jeff - 2008 Subaru Liberty 2.5i NA 5MT ADM - Tuning

Post by west_minist »

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

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.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 5:42 PM
To: west_minist@xtremeracingtuning.com
Subject: Re: v8 - results

Thank you very much for your work, Edward. It been a truly rewarding experience and I've learned a lot from it.

You are definitely a master of your art and I'll make sure to spread the good word for you and get you some continued business. Your services are very real, very high quality and produce phenomenal results for what is really not a lot of money for your effort involved.
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v8 Results

Post by west_minist »

v8 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=17C Pull 1 stats.png
v8 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=17C Pull 1 stats.png (3.28 KiB) Viewed 12229 times
v8 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=17C Pull 1.png
v8 3rd Gear Dyno-rpm IAT=17C Pull 1.png (17.96 KiB) Viewed 12229 times
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Engine Load curve

Post by west_minist »

v8 Load Curve.jpg
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Very satisfied - ADM Subaru Liberty 2.5i 5MT NA

Post by west_minist »

http://www.xtremeracingtuning.com/forum ... f=48&t=402
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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v9 Dynoes

Post by west_minist »

Update sent to customer free of charge

Dynoes are up and down a road

IAT's are very hot. Previous dynos were done around 17C. The dynoes are around 39-34C with an average of 35C. So power and and TQ will be low.
v9 3rd Gear Dynoes IATs=39-34C.png
v9 3rd Gear Dynoes IATs=39-34C.png (30.28 KiB) Viewed 12006 times
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 8:44 AM
To: west_minist@xtremeracingtuning.com
Subject: Re: v9

Hi Edward,

The v9 ROM was good. Initially I didn't think there was any noticeable difference. I didn't notice anything until I had something to compare against, and in this case it was simple overtaking of other cars.

I've had five months to get used to the v8 ROM in day to day driving, so that's what it took to really notice what was new - more general driving. At 3,000rpm the car is picking up a little faster than before.
At 4,000rpm, the car feels a little meater there too, with the RPMs picking up quickly. The car feels a little more eager and pulls away harder than before making overtaking easier than before. The overall difference is not massive, but it is there and it feels nice.

In doing the third-gear pulls, I initially didn't really feel anything different by the seat of my pants, but the speedo did appear to be showing a faster speed than I remembered the v8 tests were. As before however, I ran out of road and was not able to pull right up to the new redline.

So in short, the changes are definitely noticeable down low and in the mid-range but nothing new up top. I have to also say I'm particularly impressed with how the car is running despite our local temperatures at the moment - it's 29 degrees with very high humidity tonight. Great performance!

New logs attached!

Cheers,

Jeff.
HyRax

Re: v9 Dynoes

Post by HyRax »

west_minist wrote:Update sent to customer free of charge
And it's much appreciated. :)
west_minist wrote: Dynoes are up and down a road
It's a road with a long slight curve going slightly up and then slightly down. Sadly, it's the flattest road near me that won't attract unwanted attention while doing runs without having to drive an hour out of town.

I did three runs in both directions each. Shows up quite blatantly in the graphs, doesn't it!
west_minist wrote: IAT's are very hot. Previous dynos were done around 17C. The dynoes are around 39-34C with an average of 35C. So power and and TQ will be low.
Yep, that's Australian summer nights for you. Last night's humidity was so bad you could almost swim in it.

The car still feels great despite these temperatures. Under the stock tune, bogging down in hot weather was just something you put up with - it was always unpleasant, but not with Edward's tune. I should also add that the car still accelerates really well with the air-conditioning turned on! There's almost no difference whatsoever! :D

Over the next month or two our temperatures will begin to cool as we head into Autumn (or Fall for those more familiar with American terms), so even once Edward has confirmed that all additional work has been completed, closing the chapter on my tune, I'll get some more logs sent to him later so he can put together some final comparative graphs against the temperatures we originally tuned with.
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v9a Dynoes

Post by west_minist »

v9a 3rd Gear Dyno IATs=28-24C.png
v9a 3rd Gear Dyno IATs=28-24C.png (31.35 KiB) Viewed 12003 times
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