Ramsey loves car talk!

And so does everyone else!

In light of my recent car purchase discussions, I decided to document what has been done to the Impreza since we bought it.




Modding a daily driven car is not a very good idea. Usually when a car leaves the factory the engineers involved in its creation have been fairly thorough. That being said, it is hard to explain the compulsion that some of us feel to do weird things and "Mexify"* our cars.

(one of Ramsey's dear friends called our car a "mexy" car. If I ever hear that crap again they will be retrieving the offending person from the trunk of a Tijuana cab. And that person will be removing baked iguana from unmentionable places with tweezers and a flashlight.)

Believe it or not, there is a difference between going to pep boys and gluing a combat double decker death wing to your geo, and systematically upgrading specific areas of performance of your car. Despite that, I can appreciate someone wanting to modify their car and just not knowing what they are doing.

When a car is redesigned, or introduced for the first time, it has to meet certain compromises. Noise, comfort, fuel economy and emissions, and last of all cost. If you want something from your car that isn't a factory option you are usually left with one recourse. Modding.

Everyone has modified their car in one way or another. Non oem tires, new wiper blades, different speakers and deck etc.
Sometimes, you can get more aggressive than that and the results will make you feel differently about your car.

Factory turbocharged cars usually leave a decent amount of power on the table.



The nature of turbos usually makes it so that there is at least a little you can do to change the nature of your engine and throttle response.



The first order of business with this type of modification is "engine management".
The "powertrain control module" or "pcm" is the computer that tells your car how to start, how to idle, how to run, how to cycle the a.c. clutch on and off, and how to load and unload the alternator. The science behind this is the single biggest difference between old-school "hot rodders" and modern "tuners".
Our car utilizes a factory pcm reflash. In other words, I plug into the car's computer, and I tell it that I want it to increase the boost, advance the timing, take advantage of the aftermarket exhaust, and utilize the 93 octane fuel available to us.



This is the device that I use to re-flash the pcm. It is the Cobb accessport v.1.
Using this tool, I haven't had one day of problems with the car, even in it's fairly heavily tuned state. Combined with the exhaust, the car is rated at 285 horsepower, 285 lb/ft of torque. Stock ratings are 227 hp, 217 lb/ft of torque. These increases are from just the exhaust, and the reflash. Everything else power wise is factory. that is nearly 30% more than stock.



Power is only part of the equation for a balanced car. You can have 1000 horsepower and be slower than a 100 hp car.



Factory tires are rarely up to the task of performance driving. Aftermarket tires are usually the biggest bang-for-the-buck mod you can make.



There are always fun odds and ends that you can do. Not everything has to be a hard core race ready type of mod.



Sometimes other mods are to fix things that the engineers didn't do so well. You know that if it takes a "grounding kit" to stabilize the voltage through your headlights that perhaps the electrical engineers weren't the ivy league types.

There is alot more to our car than what I have listed. It is scary to think of how much money has been spent on that car. Really it isn't that bad. I buy things used when I can, and I have never NEVER had a wrench on that car that wasn't my own. My labor billed hourly would probably double the cost of the parts on the car. It is a riot, and is much much faster than any street driven car should be. I would guess a flat 5 seconds 0-60, mid to low 13 second quarter mile, and I call tell with certainty that the car will go faster than 140 mph. All of this from a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engine.

The only downsides have been how loud it is, and how rough the ride is. We have had 0 reliability issues with it, and the fuel economy is actually better than stock. If you drive in boost it will get fuel mileage in the teens, but if it is short shifted we can get pretty close to 30 miles per gallon. That is amazing for an all wheel drive rally car.

This is where cars will head technology wise as mileage rules get stricter. Ferrari and Bmw have both stated that their current engine R and D programs are focusing on small displacement high boost engines. Ford is developing a group of "eco-boost" low pressure turbo v6 engines to go in their trucks. Audi/volkswagen have used the 1.8 and 2.0 turbo engines in just about everything for a very long time.

The current trend of mega horsepower v8s is going to come to an end very soon, for the same reasons it did in the 70's. We just can't afford to waste our resources as they become progressively harder to come by. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a C6 z06 corvette, or a charger SRT-8, or challenger, or G8 GT, but these are all v8s with more than 6.0 liters of displacement. When we have technology that lets us use less fuel with similar power output, it just makes sense. The U.S. auto manufacturers are all up in arms about the corporate fuel economy (wiki C.a.f.e. standards. interesting read.) but it is because they don't have the infrastructure in place to move away from those huge inefficient engines. Ford has to buy hybrid technology from toyota for petes sake! LACK OF VISION!

If you are open to change, hot rodding will never die. It will just evolve. In 20 years Beck may very well be explaining to me how to up the power on our family electric car, or how to add cells to our hydrogen sedan. Imagine how fun that will be!