Whether this is the final part of the journey for Mo or not but the journey certainly got a bit more exciting yesterday when we mapped up his new 2.1 stroker kit on the ESL ecu daughterboard for 97/98 imprezas. The TD05 20G with clipped wheel from Turbo Dynamics certainly seemed to do exactly what Turbo Dynamics said it would.  They estimated 390bhp but we managed to get just above that but despite trying it would not quite hit the magic 400bhp yesterday, but none of us were really expecting it to do it to be honest and Mo was delighted to have got this far (as was I). Always love mapping at Surrey Rolling Road and this car was a joy to map –)

547bhp …  That was the power figure produced by the ESL/Racedynamix demo car after I mapped it at RCMS, which is a decent result for a standard location GT30 turbo on a forged 2.0 litre and ESLs latest generation management system. The car still starts on the first turn, idles and drives like OEM whatever the season until the taps are turned on and then it makes off like a stabbed rat. 

This is running Mafless and a 20% methanol mix – I love mapping with methanol  

A bit of history; Originally Stan Stancombes, this 97 UK Impreza was bought a few years back with a decent spec at a good price but Andy said that it felt quite slow for a 20G on a 2 litre and was using alot of oil.

The car was equipped with a PPG gearbox, 2.0 Cosworth bottom end, STI 3 heads, 780cc injectors, bosch pump, 20G turbo, AP brakes, Quaife ATB diffs front and rear and some basic coilovers.

In addition, the combination of a GEMS ECU and paddle clutch did not make for a relaxed drive as it was a poor starter and required some deft heel and toeing to stop it stalling at junctions.

The head gasket quickly let go and a teardown revealed cracks to the skirts of all four Cossie pistons.

ESL had a few bits and pieces lying around and decided to change the spec a bit. An RCMS bottom end, version ¾ heads, ATP stock location GT3076 Turbo, 4 bar MAP sensor, EU six speed box and some BC ER coilovers seemed a promising mix.

With this spec we put the new ESL 97/8 ECU in which improved both performance and driveability dramatically.

Andy was sent to North Weald running relatively low boost to compete against a large field of Ferraris, Porsches, TVRs and some well known sprint Subaru’s and Evos, and it beat absolutely everything with the exception of Duncan Cowpers TA Pro winning Dax Rush. We though this was pretty good for a £5000 car (worth less than the carbon wheels on one of the GT3s) with a £295 ECU. The link to the results is here (No. 28):

http://www.enduringsolutions.com/13Mar11.pdf

This was despite the new BCs not having been properly installed (the top mounts were left loose at the rear) which explains the wayward handling and knocking sound in this video:

The car was then used to test the new motorsport features. Here is a quick shot of the Launch Control in action from the speedos perspective (excuse the tardy shift):

The next job was to up the power level a bit. I mapped it on the RCMS rollers and while it managed a decent 482bhp, we couldn’t get the boost much above 1.75bar.

This was tracked down to a loose wastegate actuator. When fixed, the car immediately started boosting at over two bar, so it was straight back to RCMS to see what it would do hence the dyno graph at the top

This is an ongoing project and I will add bits to this when I can … really as an example of what can be done on the ESL … more to be added soon