gee this looks fun (import talk)

[The Ghoul]

I finaly decided to man-up and stop pussyfooting around the lack of proformance issue with my 2000 subaru impreza 2.5RS daily driver.
To this point I re-worked the exhaust, intake, portmatched and smoothed my TB/intake manafold/heads/header, plugs, wires, and light weight stuff. The engine has 103K miles on it and I figgure if I get this system set up and I watch for knock and it still nukes on me; it would have done it down the road any way so its good that I will have an excuse to make it better!
ah well nuff babble.
this is a TD04 turbo that I wone off ebay.
the Japaneese are great at efficiancy so they realy have not changed the molds for the boxter engines for a long time so all the 2.0L wrx stuff should bolt right on to and fit under the hood of my 2.5l car.

So after its all set up and tuned right I will upgrade the cams, springs, retainers, and prolly pistions and connecting rods then slap the upgraded sti turbo on to it.
any one here have expearence with turbo cars? any thing that I shouldwatch for?
I have lines on;
stock wrx top mount inner cooler
blow off valve
stock wrx plumbing
all the fittings I need to tap into my systems
high volume fule pump
high volume injectors
custome stand alone computer (and a place to tune it)
exhaust manafold
up pipe
down pipe
boost controler
knock sensor light
(turbo came with a boost guage)
after market air intake
any thing else im missing here?
other than a big ugly tack. and a guage pod housing 3 guages when I only need to mount 1?

[The Ghoul]

oops forgot to post pic 

[RD]

ummm... no offense, all that is cool and all, but why dont you put that money into your charger?  just curious is all.

[derailed]

Thats gonna make one hell of a fun daily driver

[Arthu®]

I personally don't have experience with Subaru turbo engines. Well not in building them anyways. You should try to contact Cobb, they are a pretty good Subaru tuner. I know they build a 2.5 turbo even though it was an earlier Phase I unlike your Phase II engine. You might get some great advice from them, they also sell some good quality parts I hear. Never used them personally though.

Arthur

[The Ghoul]

I personally don't have experience with Subaru turbo engines. Well not in building them anyways. You should try to contact Cobb, they are a pretty good Subaru tuner. I know they build a 2.5 turbo even though it was an earlier Phase I unlike your Phase II engine. You might get some great advice from them, they also sell some good quality parts I hear. Never used them personally though.

Arthur

yeah, cobb has always been a great resorce of parts/knowlage. I plan on going thru them when I decide to upgrade the valve train and cams. They have great quality but kinda high prices on stuff where the quality is not that crusial like headers, intakes, underdrive pullies... all the stuff that can be swapped out easy if you have an issue with it.
I think im going to end up going thru rallitek for most of the electronics. They seem to be a well respected name.

ummm... no offense, all that is cool and all, but why dont you put that money into your charger?  just curious is all.

no offense taken. and to answer your question its a fiew main reasions.

first I am sick of driving around this slug!! the rs is great in the winter very fun to drive in normaly intimadating weather. but in the summer hondas zip by me like im standing still and thats tough to get over comming from an LS1 firbird. Yes there is always going to be some one faster but its bad when a stock 4cylinder has its way with you. 

second; the charger is in the new sheet metal stage and requires more time than money, yes I will need to buy patch pannels and what not but those come fiew and far between when your trying to learn to weld and blend along the way.
next question is going to be 'why wouldent you want to invest the time in charger?'
My best firend just got a girl friend over the winter and is going to be all 'twitterpated' over summer, my fenci (how ever you spell that stupid french word) lives about 200 miles away and when Im not at work or the gym Im going to be board as all heck.

third; learning expearence! What I dont know about turbo charger systems / super charger systems could fill books; and has!! I want to one day run a twin turbo set up on the charger and I would like to know what Im doing before I get serrious about it.

Prolly the beast reson I have for doing this and investing the money is the time feels right.
I have always wanted the subaru to have more gutts to it, I have the time/ extra income to do it. The wedding date is set for april '09, after that I wont have 2 nickels to scrape together so Im trying to get all this stuff out of my system before then; also I wont have the money to rebuild the engine if it nukes after the wedding. I figgure piece together the turbo system and drop it in while I still live with the 'rents and have the extra income and have 3 years to get it stable. It will be a selling feature if I do decide to sell it some time; but it will be more insentive for me to keep the car around and fix any thing that goes wrong with it rather than offing it right before the wedding (as was the plan before).

I dont mean this to sound preachy or more in-depth than you were looking for but I have asked my self the same question and this is what I came up with. I understand that I sould be getting rid of the charger, buying a car that is realy no fun to drive but is cheap and sacking away extra money for the wedding, but this seems more fun!
I am in no hurry to finish the charger. It is a slow build for the reason of learning and thats the way it has always been. I have loved old mopar sence I was 5 and i want to learn as much about restorations and every thing automotive so i'm doing it all my self and taking my time, and not cutting corners. Yes it may not look the best when its done but gosh darnet I will have done it all by my self. For me, for the charger, the journey is more important than the finnish product will be. This car is my training wheels. If it has to sit around for a bit of that journey, It would suck, but id much rather have it sit untill I could finish it than to rush and rigg things together just to get it on the road. Thats one of my bad habbits that I am hoping the charger will fix.     

[The Ghoul]

wow I talk to much! 

[Arthu®]

You got to know this about turbo's though, the whole picking of a turbo is not as easy as you think. It easily becomes too big or too small of a turbo. The problem with that is either no gain and with the low compression engine you will not gain an hp from the turbo, the other is lag. Once you have chosen too big of a turbo the engine flow will have trouble getting the tubo to generate more pressure but than once it does you will have enormous amounts at once. This will be hard for you since you have a boxer engine you have 2 exhausts the best way to make sure you don't have any of these troubles on a V or Boxer engine is to use two turbo's. One smaller one larger with an overlappig area. Btw I only experienced once that a car had too big of a turbo. This was in a bone stock BMW 2002 turbo. It was all fine and dandy over 3500rpm than I got into a corner halfway through get to 4k rpm, turbo kicks in and sends me spinning. Hit nothing luckily but that has to be one of the scariest rides I have ever had.

Arthur

[The Ghoul]

I am right there with you on this.
I chose the wrx stock turbo because I dont want to pop all the money for the sti turbo (which will be more along the lines of my engine as far as displacement.)
I also did not want to spend the mucho big bucks for custom matched turbo for my applacation.
I am basically using the wrx turbo to get every thing set up and running reliably before I start tweeking for power.
I totaly understand what you are saying about the turbos. It's a great example of the trade off theory. with proformance stuff you have to find the happy medium. If you want big boost your going to have to deal with long spool.
What I like best about my project is vertually all the wrx stuff will just bolt right on to my car because they changed verry little between the 2.5L and the 2.0L turbo..... on the outside that is
I also see what your saying about having to pulse match the exhaust, and there presssures for the best proformance. It's nice that there is a big aftermarket on this stuff!
*see pic below*
Its not equal length but its closer than Id ever get trying to do it on my own!!
I looked into the sequential twin turbo's they ran on the 2.2L sti's in japan, unfortunetly if you tried to swap this stuff onto a usdm car the drivers side turbo would try to occupy the same area as the stearing linkage!!. this would require custome exhaust manafolds and as stated before I just dont want to put that much money into it just to get it stable for now.
I actully am making plans to reduce the output of the turbo for the first fiew months just so I dont shock things too much... that and I dont trust the pre-programmed maps on after market computers so I will be watching for detonation like a hawk!!!
I guess what Im saying is Id rather have a little bit of knock at low psi before i notice it rather than alot of knock at high psi!!!
keep in mind, I am slapping this turbo onto an old stock engine that has relitivly high compression without changeing any of the internals.
After I get every thing working happy together I will start collecting the turbo cams, stiffer valve springs, forged pistons and connecting rods, and all the gaskets, rings and barrings I need to rebuild the engine. Its going to be a slow collecting process but I antisipate that i will need them by the time I get them all collected!! but I will not start pushing for serrious power (new turbo) untill I have those parts. at that point If I want to upgrade I will talk to specialists to eye up my set up and match a turbo to my system for me. Thats in a best case right there!
If I set every thing up and no matter what I do I cant get more power out of it, or I cant run the thing without knock I will still have all the turbo stuff for when I have the money for it... that or sell it off as a turbo kit 
also attached is a recent pic of the car just for giggles

[The Ghoul]

BWAHAAHH
I found some usfull information.
It seems the 'breaking point' of my engine is above 5psi. so it is strongly reccomended that you dont push that.
next bit of info
I was correct in thinking that my map sensor based system would freak. Here is what my sorce had to say about it
" IMO you don't need to do anything for timing for only 5psi with the way the stock ecu is set. if your car is a 2000 then you will need to go to radioshack and get a 5.1volt 1 amp ziener diode and splice it into the map sensor wire. The stock map sensor runs 0-5volts and when under boost it sends the map over 5volts and cuts off the ecu cuz it can't read it. You splice one side into the mapwire and ground the other end of the diode to the chassis. This allows only 4.98volts to run to the ecu and ground the rest of the volts to the chassis so it won't go heywire."
so thats $400 saved!!

da new plan:
set up the stock wrx turbo, stock boost guage.
the diode trick for engine manigment.
Pop for a good top mount innercooler
good exhaust manafold, up and down pipes
good recirculating bypass vlave (never been about the loud bov thing)
eather an extral waste gate or put on a very weak internal actuator and then get a boost controler to regulate it.
still keep the knock sensor light idea.
and modify my exhaust system to accept it.
then its all about finding out where every thing goes at that point which the wrx shop manual on cd is on its way to help with that!
run it with the 5psi (that my friends say is not worth the hassel) till the funding for the engine rebuild comes thru  (which now has $400 in the right direction by my count)
its 2am im rambling and I have class in the morning.
Im going to sleep happy tonite!

[Kryp2nitE]

holy shit cudaeh where the hell have ya been?

how much stuff have u purchased for the RS?

leave the mitsu stock and lets start buildin up a turbo 400 for ya!


i dont think 5psi on your Rs is gonna make that much difference (at least worth the work anyway)

how far are ya on the engine?