Lee Christie (Webmaster) (click on the thumbnails for larger pictures)

Car :	Subaru Impreza Turbo 2000			Quick Links
Registered :	1999 (T-plate)
Age :	26			The Car	ICE
Occupation	Oracle Consultant			Handling	Performance
				Braking	Cosmetics

The Car

I was driving around a Golf 16V GTi as a company car when I was given an increase in my car allowance. In order to use it I decided to get a different car and started the hunt....

Heard a little about the Impreza, took one for a test drive and thought "Yup, this will do nicely." then put my name onto the dreaded waiting list (at the time I was hearing of 12 month wait horror stories). The lease company we use came back and said "If you want silver (my first choice) it will be 9 months, if you want red or green you can have it in 2.". So the green it was then.

2 months passed....and some more...delays...delays...car on a boat...delays...etc...finally it turned up nice n shiny delivered to my door.

Initial impressions were that the performance was nowhere near as good as the demonstrator I had taken out (I did my best to keep it to below-4000rpm whilst running in, honest !) and the in-car audio was less than feeble. Luckily I had known in advance about the audio, and had prepared a replacement system....

ICE

My plan
Whilst I was waiting for the car I started buying various ICE mags and finding out what was decent and what to avoid. I originally planned to replace just the head unit and speakers, and since I don't have any tapes I plumped for an Alpine digital head unit (4x55W which was the most at that time) and a CD Changer. Speaker wise I bought a set of CD-Technologies (aka Cliff Designs) components for the front.

And then it bit. Whilst choosing some rear speakers I stumbled across a review of some JBL Ltd Edition 6"x9". I just had to have them, but their power rating was way above what the head unit could deliver. That, plus the fact that everyone had said I needed a dedicated amp to get the best from the components meant I threw away my original plan and came up with a new system that included a couple of amps and a subwoofer.

Quality was more important to me than outright sound volume so I decided to go for a 10" sub. An Alpine sub had just received a winning award in one of the mags and I decided to stick with Alpine for the amps too. Boot space was important to me (I regularly stayed away on company business) so I invested in a decent fibreglass/MDF enclosure made by SubWorx that fitted snugly into the right hand side of the boot.

Fitment
Fitting the stuff took a couple of weekends and turned out to be a lot more fiddly than I had imagined. The Head unit was a straight swap, but having 3 RCA leads behind it (separate Front, Rear and Sub outputs) meant space was tight. The CD Changer is the only one I know of which can be fitted in the glovebox, and I made a dampening surround from some foam and carpet to prevent it sliding around.

The components were tricky to fit..at some 74mm depth they are the largest speaker that can be fitted in the doors without custom door builds (out of the question as it is a company car). I spent a day making some spacer rings from MDF and fibreglass - the end result being 3mm magnet to glass clearance and a slightly bulging door panel ;-) The crossovers were mounted in the door and some dynomat placed on the door panels. Vibration was an issue so I put a sheet of 1" foam behind the door panel to keep everything tight.

The JBL 6"x9" were a nightmare - at one point I nearly gave up ! In order to gain access to the parcel shelf a bucketload of trim has to be removed, then I realised that the holes would need to be enlarged. Lack of access space and a short temper meant some sheet metal cutters were the tool of choice, and once the trim had been replaced the speakers had to be disassembled, fitted into place and reassembled. Snug to say the least !

A beefy 4AWG Power cable was run down the passengers side in the brake pipe enclosure, and the 3 RCA leads run down the drivers side - this keeps the signal away from any noise interference. At the boot the 4AWG is fed into a distribution block with 8AWG running to the amps. Gold plated connectors with soldered connections throughout. Decent oxygen-free speaker wire was used, different grades for the 6"x9" and sub as they carry more juice.

The sub and enclosure fitted nicely into the driver's side of the boot, and I made a "shelf" for the amps using some MDF and carpet.

The system sounds excellent to my ears, and although aimed for quality, has the power to deliver an exhaust deafening experience :-)

Handling

Having heard so much about the "Prodrive geomery settings" I paid Micheldever £50 to align everything. I have to confess not noticing much difference, but this was mainly due to the fact that the "before" settings were not far out. 1 degree negative camber each side at the front and the rears were equalised.

Due to the expense I have not, and probably never will do anything to the suspension.."low price" and "Impreza" are not in the same sentence !

Performance

Boost Increase
The first mod was a DIY affair. Having learnt and understood how the boost control mechanism works I decided to increase the boost as far as I could before hitting the automatic safety-cut out limit of the ECU. This was done using a simple £20 bleed valve..air is leaked away from the wastegate actuator and returned to the inlet in a similar fashion to the current mechanism.

Peak boost was increased from 14psi to 17psi, and held boost was increased from 12/13 to approx 16. This made a very noticeable difference on the road, mainly at 3500rpm where max torque was being generated. I travelled down to Power Engineering to have a rolling road runs, one with the valve and one with it removed, thus running as standard. 12lb/ft and 12bhp was the difference.
What was more impressive is that the overall power delivery was only a whisker short of the MY99 Prodrive Performance Pack. A test with a PPP-equipped car showed that there was NO difference on the road.

ITG Filter
Whilst the car was being serviced at ScoobySport I had an ITG filter put in. To me this made no noticeable difference in either power or sound. There was a scare put around about oil-based filters fouling the MAF sensor on 99/00 cars, but I can confirm that on mine at least there was no sign of any contamination.

Blitz Induction Kit
A 2nd hand almost new Blitz cone came my way - I removed the airbox assembly and fitted this. More scare stories were being circulated about MAF failures but the more knowledgeable enthusiasts I spoke to believed this was due to vibration of poorly fitted kit.
When I fitted my cone I noticed that using only the supplied bracket the assembly was free to vibrate a fair amount, so I quickly knocked up a second bracket, the unit is held securely now and 12k miles later everything is still fine. Aurally the kit is much louder, providing a fair amount of whoosh and hiss similar to a dump valve. Performance-wise I noticed the engine was quicker to respond to throttle and turbo spool up is slightly faster.

Blitz Exhaust System
Yet another piece of good fortune - a Blitz NUR Spec R system found its way into my hands. This replaces the centre and rear sections of the standard system, removing the middle cat and providing a nice drainpipe tailend. The engine seems to be able to breathe a bit easier, but the real difference is in the sound. The exhaust is deafening compared to the original and the previous 2 owners couldn't stand it, but the boy-racer in me loves it :-)

Link ECU
Through my "contacts" I was one of the first to have a Link ECU although there was a saga...initially the wrong board was supplied, once this was replaced it was impossible to map the engine as my lambda sensor was found to be knackered. I managed to get past all of this and started learning how to map the car. Lack of good documentation meant that progress was slow and my final map was okayish but I felt it was nowhere near complete. The car would sometimes drop revs on tickover which meant occasional stalls and consumption was worse than standard ! Full-on performance was a lot better though.

A visit to the UK Link expert Bob Rawle had the map fixed..Bob managed to deliver the same, if better performance by optimising the fuelling and knocked 3 degrees off my ignition advance in the process resulting in a "safer" map. The idling was fixed and consumption at cruising much improved and I am a very satisifed chappie.

At the time I was running on 95RON fuel and still had the standard downpipe (with huge cat) in place.

ScoobySport Downpipe
Desperate to get rid of the cat and fit the "final" planned mod I had a chat with Pete and had a downpipe fitted. I had some exhaust wrap which I had bought years ago but never got around to fitting so put that to good use. Sound-wise its much the same on cruise or light throttle, but full throttle is much louder. The turbo spins up 500rpm earlier and the engine feels a lot free-er, pulling up to the redline.

Now I run the car on 97RON a visit to Bob is planned to get the map optimised.

Braking

A visit to Pete@ScoobySport revealed that my front discs were cracked (quite common on MY99) cars but since I was doing a trackday the next day they were left. The Donington trackday was great fun and I pressed my brakes to the limit knowing that the discs were going to be replaced.

Sure enough the discs were replaced under Subaru's warranty, what was an extra surprise though is that the pads fell to pieces in Pete's hands !! A quick phone call to the lease company and on went a set of Pagid Blues.

The Pagids are a lot noisier when cold, but stopping power is much much better. The claimed "will last 3 times longer than standard pads" is a little dubious as I went through a set quite quickly in about 10k miles (plus a trackday).

Finally, another visit to Pete's had me coming away with Group-N discs. These have further increased the stopping power. The braking is pretty much as good as it can get without resorting to a full Brembo or AP kit.

Cosmetics

A set of gold alloys found their way onto the car although I don't remember paying for them ;-) and 3 gold scoobysport stickers (worth at least 5bhp each!!) finish off.

Apart from a hands-free mobile phone kit and radar detector there are no other modifications to report. The car has been modified as much as reasonably possible now, the only area of disappointment is top-end power. The car has bags of torque, but due to a small turbo it starts to run out of puff at the higher rpm ranges.