2005 Subaru WRX Build

A lot of you have probably seen some of the pictures along the way on the Subaru forums on the build up of my WRX. It's had just about every product from our Perfect Fit Product Line installed in it at one point or another. The car is mainly used for R&D work and if it gets put back together in time demos our products at shows and events in the area.

The current system consists of

Diamond Audio Hex 6, 4, and tweet (front doors in custom pods)
Diamond Audio D6 300.4 & 1000.1 (mounted in our Perfect Fit Amplifier Rack)
Diamond Audio D6 12 D2 (mounted in our Perfect Fit 12" Subwoofer Enclosure)
Alpine 9856 Deck (factory location with Subaru Forrester pocket)
Cascade Audio sound dampening and spray (doors & floor)

I've got two Phoenix Gold 4 gauge runs stretching from the battery (optima yellow top) up front to the rear, running through the outer fender and into the unibody channel all the way to the rear. No big lumps under my carpet! Three separate Phoenix Gold 16 gauge wires run into each of the front doors and one in each of the rear doors. Phoenix Gold was also used for the interconnects, three 19' rca's run through the center of my car and into the rear. 19' is longer than you need when just going behind the rear seat, but I like to have the extra length for when I change it up later.

Battery Pics Here

Not exactly sure what will stay and what will go for the new build, but to start here's some pics of the battery and fuse mount. It's made out of 1/4 inch aluminum, painted black and sanded on the edges. It's actually used to mount the battery down and provides mounting holes for the two Phoenix Gold 4 gauge fuse holders. There's a piece of 3/8 inch tinted plexi that covers and protects it all.

In the up comming weeks/months I'll be re-doing some stuff, the interior is going to be getting a make over and probably the first things done. The rear will stay the same for the most part since it shows our Perfect Fit Products.

PDX Tuning has a couple of things planned for the car as well, we'll be showing you pics of that work here too.

Be sure to click the links for the rest of the pics!!

March 10th -

After talking with Jarrad from PDX Tuning I decided we needed to get the Subie scootin' down the road a little quicker. They had already done a Stage 2 on the car with a TurboXS turbo back exhaust and a reflash of my ECU so we weren't starting from scratch.

The Plan

Water injection kit, upgrade from the factory turbo to a Forced Performance TD05H 16G turbo paired with a TurboXS front mount intercooler, Walbro fuel pump, modified injectors and to make things a bit difficult throw a rotated intake manifold into the mix.

Perrin's PWI-1

Perrin's new water injection kit (PWI-1) would be installed and tuned with the current Stage 2 setup to see what it's capable of. We choose to run a 50/50 mixture of water & methanol for the kit. The PWI-1 is a pretty complete little setup and all you really need to add is a tank for the water/methanol mixture. Knowing I wanted to have a custom tank welded up we went with the stock STI intercooler water sprayer tank to get the kit initially setup and tuned.

With the Stage 2 work done and the ECU flashed with one of their base maps the car put down 224 hp to the wheels and 238 lbft of torque. After the water/meth injection was turned on and tuned the car ran 249.1 hp and a impressive 271 lbft of torque to the wheels!!

Stage 2 With & Without Water/Meth Injection

Water / Meth Tank Build

Completely happy with the setup and the car's performance we brought the car back home and I started to come up with different designs for the new tanks. Trying to do something a bit different from everybody else's setup we came up with the idea of using three separate 4" diameter aluminum tubes stacked one on top of the other. With a new interior panel fabricated from scratch to show them off and blend them seamlessly into the trunks interior. Each tank would have fittings that would allow the water/meth mixture to flow between all three tanks, with the primer pump being installed on the bottom and a filler tube and cap on the top. With the tanks connected togehter there is just over 1.5 gallons available.

Dustin from PDX Tuning cut and welded the tanks together, because of fitting into a cramped space one tank is slightly shorter than the other two. To make everything work and fit into the car I had to make a temporary jig to hold the tanks in their exact position in relation to each other and their position in the car. The jig also acted as a starting point in which the new trunk panel would be fabricated from and would also be used to mock up all the connecting lines.

All said and done all the fittings/connections between the tanks will be hidden behind the panel on the end of the tanks. With just the middle of the tanks showing we should have a pretty clean little setup!

March 26th -

Tanks are back from powder coat!!

Since the trunk area of the car holds our Perfect Fit Enclosure and Amplifier Rack all covered in matching O.E.M. carpet I wanted to add some color to the mix. The tanks, along with all the new custom piping for the rotated manifold got shot a candy red color. I'm real happy with the way they turned out, should stand out and make a nice contrast to the dark carpet everywhere.

The wood jig got transfered over as a template to make a plexiglass version. I used 3/4 inch clear plexi that is polished on the top and bottom but the face is lightly sanded. All said and done we'll use some red led's to shoot a little light up through it. The light will pass through the clear sections, but light up the sanded edges making for a nice accent.

The top portion of the trim panel has an oval / pill shaped insert flushed into it. This will also be made from plexiglass and allows the filler tube to come through. There's a couple little things planned for it, lazer etched markings and a led indicator for tank levels. We'll have to get the tanks re-installed and working again before that gets tackled though.

April 9th -

Well it was a mad scramble to get everything back and into the car before SubieFest 2 but we made it! I transfered the oval pill shaped insert that goes into the top of the trunk trim panel into 1/4 inch plexi glass and dropped it off to get lazer etched. Nothing too fancy, just labeling the mixture and then a bar graph to indicate the tanks level. This will be usefull when filling the tanks as well as checking their level when in use. As the tanks fill up the led's light up, tanks empty & the led's turn off. I've got wires heading up front as well so later I'll have the same indicators for viewing when driving.

The plexi glass mounting for the tanks light up with 8 red led's on each side, a total of 16 for all the tanks. Hard to find led's in the configuration I needed so I just made my own. 4 led's got soldered to a board and wired with the proper resistors for the 12 volt application. The led's sit just under the edge of the plexi, shinning light up the vertical edge and into the tank hole cutouts. Both the tank levels and lighting is wired off the trunk trigger, trunk open you have light, trunk closed and the led's go out. Didn't get time but we'll light up the rest of the etched words later, probably in white.

Water / Meth Pics Here

Rotated Intake & Custom Piping

Once the powder coat was finished we got the custom pipes and intake back over to PDX Tuning so they could put it all back together. The custom piping along with Perrin's fuel rails were all shot the same candy red as the water/meth tanks. The intake, TGI's and PWI-1 got shot a wrinkle black. There was plans to do more but time and money ran out so that will have to be a later project.

Without being around their shop much during the fabrication of the pipes and the rotating of the manifold I can't fully grasp all the work that went into it, but you can tell by the details in the pipes and routing of the new lines that it wasn't easy! Keeping the car totally functional with the AC poses a huge problem when rotating the intake, custom spacers were used from a previous build ( Thanks Kendrick!! ) that allow the pipe to get up and over the alternator (which was moved as well)

I can't thank the guys enough, Chris and Dustin (PDX Tuning) but in some long hours and detailed work to get everything dialed looking great for us. With PDXT just getting a new dyno and Subiefest right upon us we didn't get a chance to have the car tuned, Jarrad got it running with the new 16g and we'll be back to get her dialed when time allows. Can't wait to see how it does!!

Rotated Intake & Custom Piping Pics Here