Subaru WRX STI Modification Guide (EJ/FA Engines)

all right guys what's going on and welcome back to the channel so over the past year or so you guys have asked me some pretty direct questions of hey i just bought a new wrx i just bought a new sti i don't really know where to start with modifying the engine but i want to make more power reliably so i'm going to give you guys a detailed breakdown of what parts to order in order when to install them and what tunes to use with those ones we're going to cover both the ej series and the fa series so if you are an fa owner you might want to skip ahead up to the fa segment of this if you're an ej owner we're going to talk about you guys first or i mean if you guys just want to kick it and hang out and watch the entire video you boys not going to complain about that either so we're going to kick this off with the ej series first now for all you ej owners out there i'm assuming that you bought the car there's absolutely nothing done to the engine and you want to make some power and you don't know quite what to buy first well the first thing you're going to want to buy is an access port getting that access board is going to be your gateway tool to modifying that car in general same thing's going to apply to ufa owners out there as well now what the access port does is i've made oodles of videos on access ports if you guys want a lot more information on those ones i'll link them down below in the description but what the access port is going to allow you to do is open up that tuning platform so when you're buying parts you can at least put an off-the-shelf map on there if you don't know what an off-the-shelf map is i've made videos on that as well but this is where we're going to break these down into the cobb stages first i know it's not the best way and the most accurate way that we like to refer to parts on a car but for the sake of this video we are going to be using ots quite often now for this first segment you are going to want that access port like i said it's going to open up the gateway after you get that access port it's going to let you put an intake on the car now putting that intake on the car is going to give it a just a small not a lot of power but a small horsepower bump i'm not even going to try to quote you guys on wheel horsepower figures on this because it's going to vary so much from car to car uh engine engine and overall engine health now once you have that intake on the car you can go ahead you can do a couple other things before you need to bump that tune up so you're gonna be on a stage one ots plus two and that's gonna allow you to do an intake and a cat-back you don't need a tune for a cat-back but the stage one plus is going to be for that intake and cat-back while you're still in that stage one plus area i would suggest doing it in this order is intake cat-back air oil separator and then a cylinder for cooling mod that's gonna give you the best reliability that you can get on the car while you're in this segment of platform after you've gotten those kind of knocked off and you want some more power out of the car it's time to bump it up to stage two now for stage two plus this is going to be an intake and a downpipe or an intake and a turbo back except for you 2015 plus sti owners out there you cannot do this because the fueling from the factory does not support this but if you are pre 2015 sti or wrx this is the segment that i proceed that you do is you go ahead you get that downpipe you can go ahead and throw a turbo inlet on the car also just because you don't need to do a lot of tuning for a turbo inlet the car is going to be able to mitigate that just fine and while you're in this kind of platformish area if you want you can really go ahead and throw on a bypass valve i do not suggest doing a blow-off valve you can do a bypass valve and then while you're in there do a radiator this is gonna be kind of the extent of what you can do on an ots tune once you wanna venture outside of that that's when you're gonna have to start going in there you're gonna have to either get an e-tune you're gonna have to get a dyno tune a street tune whatever you have access to but for you ej owners that's kind of the limiting factor on what you can do on an ots2 now if you want to venture past that and you want more power out of it then you can start doing a lot more fun things if you wanted to this is where i suggest you buy a bundle or a heap of parts and then you go get a tune all at once so some of those parts for example are going to be injectors i do suggest getting id1050s if you're just looking for a bare kind of basic cookie cutter-esque build the 1050s are going to get you up to around 400 wheel horsepower i maxed mine out at about 80 duty cycle at about 401 wheel horsepower on e85 so those 1050s are fairly capable injectors but if you're doing injectors you're gonna have to do a fuel pump also the dw 300c or the aem 300 liter per hour are both really good fuel pumps that you guys should or could be using out there they're both drop in no tune required for those fuel pumps either and they're relatively easy to install now for for most owners out there of the ej series i do suggest you pick up cobb's fuel stumble kit uh if you're just looking to run some basic fuel lines on the car if you're not looking to do a fuel pressure regulator fuel lines or anything like that the fuel stumble fix kit is going to help fix that fuel stumble around 3 800 rpm your tuner is going to appreciate you for it because it is going to make tuning the car a lot easier and it is going to help smooth things out a lot better when you're getting on the car and that power band will just reflect that in the actual tune but if you're wanting to go a step further and you don't necessarily want to do a fuel stumble fix kit you can definitely do fuel rails fuel lines and a fuel pressure regulator on my old ej build that we had in the car we did an aeromotive a1000 iag fuel lines and iag fuel rails the car loved them uh that's when we were running e85 as well which leads us into the next point is if you have access to ethanol e85 is a very good option to be able to run also so here kind of in this gray area of tuning if you really do want to be on flex fuel you're going to want to grab a cobb ethanol sensor or something similar now you can definitely make your own ethanol sensor if you wanted to but it's going to cost you a lot more and it kind of goes outside the bounds of easy plug and play parts about that cob one is pretty simple to use and then if you're really looking to go and feel like continuing to push the balance an external wastegate and an up pipe are very good parts to add on that list as well a grim speed up pipe with a tile 38 millimeter external wastegate is going to be able to get you by for most of the time typically you want a smaller 38 millimeter external wastegate when you're running higher boost intervals and you want a larger external wastegate around like 44 millimeters or that 45 millimeter point when you're running a little bit lower boost but that's really going to depend on the turbo application that you're running and how much power you're making which goes into the turbo so this is kind of the area where if you're going to start doing turbo swaps this is going to be when you do them that's why i'm saying if you're going to do all this buy all of these parts save up for a while install them all at once get a base tune on the car and then go drive the tuner to get pro tuned but if you are looking to do a turbo if you're looking for a really good turbo for a stock block the cobb 20g or an fp blue are very good turbos if you have the 2019 and plus sti type ra short block you can do an fb green and that will also make a lot more power people have been pushing those blocks pretty high in the power bands uh so if you wanted to put a slightly larger turbo on that one that's when you would want to do that and then with the additional exhaust since you're doing that up pipe external wastegate turbo you're going to want to be doing headers also now a lot of you guys ask me on equal length or equal length headers it's all going to boil down to what you want the unequal length is going to keep that subaru rumble that all of you know and love so much however the equal length headers are going to give you a little bit better top end power they're also going to help reduce egts and cylinders two and four which can also help reduce the amount of knock that your engine might be seeing so equal length headers are always going to be my suggestions out there for you guys i kind of skipped over this one uh but i feel like it's a little bit obvious as you're coming into going into a protune you're also going to want a three-port electronic boost controller they all pretty much do the exact same thing uh pick whatever brand you like whatever price point you want but the kind of kind of the base tune of how you're going to want to sandwich all of these together is if you are going to get a protune is select what you wanted out of that last list that we kind of covered there pick and choose the ones you want talk with your pro tuner and then he'll kind of get you set up in the right path of what parts you're going to need exactly but those are pretty much the cookie cutter recommendations that i have for you guys because they're proven parts they've made power before it's pretty much the exact same build that we had on my sti when it was running in ej257 in it and it's a pretty proven setup all right now for you fa20 owners out there this is going to be relatively similar over to that ej setup but it is going to be a little bit different now within that stage 1 category you're going to be able to run an intake i do suggest an air oil separator iag's street series is always going to be my recommendation to you guys for that one and then you're gonna want to cat back also so that stage one tune on that access port is gonna clean up a lot of the rev hang that everyone hates when it comes to that fa platform a plus running that intake and that cat-back is really going to make a difference uh cleaning up that rev hang getting a little bit more induction noises and getting a little exhaust note out of there it's pretty much what most people are all right with but for those of you want to take it to the next level a j pipe on a stage two tune with a low pressure fuel pump and a charge pipe are going to be what you want so within that balance of that stage two you're pretty much all right doing those modifications there but once you start wanting to do more that's when you're gonna have to venture in getting into an e-tune or a protune so with the fa20wx when you start getting into that e-tune and protune category you're gonna be looking at like an egr and a tgv delete now for those of you that don't know what those are your tgvs are essentially going to look like this these are my lower tgv housings off of my eg 33 that we're swapping into my sti if you were to look inside of your stock ones on your wx you would see butterfly valves inside of all of these ports and what those butterfly valves do is they open and close on cold start for emissions control although they can really hinder the amount of air that's getting into the cylinder heads uh coming from the intake manifold just because you have a large butterfly valve even though it's all the way open it is still disrupting airflow and then you can also be doing that egr delete if you do live in a state or a country that has pretty lenient emissions regulations so what it's going to do is essentially stop recirculating exhaust gases in the car and kind of block that off so that way it really cleans up the it really cleans up the air going back into the engine so that way you're not reusing a lot of that exhaust gas now for you fa20 guys out there a lot of you ask me uh should you run on equal length headers should you get equal length headers my suggestion to you guys is always going to be get the equal length headers yes tome does make an unequal length header for the fa20 and it does make it sound a little bit like an older wrx however you are sacrificing a lot you're essentially increasing egts because you are increasing two of the runners off of that header you are decreasing your fuel mileage you're giving up a lot of the benefits that a twin scroll turbocharger offers so it's just there's too many drawbacks for me to suggest the unequal length setup for you guys but if you are looking for a solid equal length setup two suggestions is going to be the killer b external wastegate header it comes with two tile 38 millimeter external waste gates it really does help with boost control it also allows you to run a catless j pipe if that is something that you guys are interested in doing or if you do want to keep it internally gated the parent header for the fa20 is also a very solid option to go with and then when you start dipping into the protein category like we've been talking about in intercooler is something that a lot of people swap over to you guys ask me top mount versus front mount i have an entire video dedicated to that topic go watch that one if you're kind of on the fence about which one you want but an intercooler something you're going to be wanted wanting to do at this point to help really bring down those iats because nobody wants to be pushing hot air into their engine we no one wants that and then exact same as the sti and older wrx if you're wanting flex fuel at this point that flex fuel sensor is something that you should be swapping into uh just to be able to run that flex fuel now a lot of you guys ask me what injectors do you need for your fa20 you do not need to buy injectors for your fa20 unless you're looking to make big power and in that case you're going to want to swap over to an intake manifold from a brz which runs port injection and direct injection but the direct injectors in the fa20 wx are more than capable of making all the power that you need and they are e85 friendly as well and then that last little sprinkle on top for you fa owners out there for anyone that does want to do this is a turbo swapping out the turbo on those fa2s can get a little bit a little bit expensive since they are a twin scroll setup but they do make really good replacement turbos out there i know steam speed makes some forced performance makes a lot of them too so this is the category where if you're going all out wanting to give it the beans swap out that turbo so these are kind of the bounds of what you guys are limited to doing within these like access port ots maps and then going into a protune if you're looking to go into that protune category for either an ej or an fa that's when things kind of open up a little bit you guys got to do a little bit of research on your ends to say all right this is what i want this fits my budget my tuner said that these parts are the ones that i should go with these are the ones i should stay away from and then build your list off of that going outside of the balance of that stage one stage two kind of area where i said what parts you can it or what parts you should do are really the limits of what you should be doing on an ots map keep in mind ots maps are general maps created for everyone to be able to use and not for just a specific car out there they need to be able to communicate with every ecu every car that they are uploaded regardless of region engine health engine mileage all of these other factors that do go into a protune so i do hope this video helps some of you guys out and answer those questions of hey i just bought this wx or sti i don't know what modifications to do hopefully this answers that for you but that's all i got for you guys on this one pretty chill video today i do have some more eg 33 stuff coming up for all of you guys i actually want to show you guys something real quick the fuel rails did come in for the eg33 i'm incredibly stoked on them uh these are some big boy fuel rails these are a dash 8 fuel rails for the new motor which i'm super pumped about but i got more stuff to show you in upcoming videos so like i said if this video helped you guys out go ahead hit that like button and turn it blue like the chassis on the subaru and if you're not already subscribed to the channel hit your boy up because we always got good stuff coming up i mean i don't got to explain it just hit that button if you want to and if you're not already subscribed to the ch i already said that i did already said that but with that i will catch you guys in the next one peace out homies [Music] you

Channel: Smeedia

Views: 33,922

Keywords: Subaru, Subaru WRX, Subaru WRX STI, JDM Subaru WRX, Subaru BRZ, Scion FRS, Toyota GT86, STI, WRX STI, JDM STI, How to modify a WRX, how to modify a STI, Where to start modifying your car, hot to modify your car, what order should I modify my WRX, FA20, EJ207, EJ205, EJ255, FA24, Subaru WRX STI Modification guide, How to modify my car, what tune do I use, Cobb tuning, Cobb accessport, accessport, Subaru WRX STI e tune, Modifying for dummies, modification walk through, how to mod

Id: LntH72rmXu0

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020