Garage99

We all love our cars, and many of us want to somehow improve them… to make them truly OURS… to make them “better”. This may involve making some aesthetic improvements, installing a stereo system, or stiffening up the suspension. For me, this idea of “better” typically revolves around adding power. Over time, I’ve developed a pretty good idea of what parts do or do not work to make cars faster, especially with respect to a budget. My experience with many cars with many different parts on the dyno has allowed me to better understand what parts offer the best bang for the buck. This is the story of what happens when a customer is receptive to the advice and guidance that Jan and I offer when presented with the question, “How can I make my car faster without breaking the bank?”.


The car in question is a 2006 STi; the parts list is surprisingly simple:

• Blouch Dominator 1.0 with 7cm² turbine housing (49 lb/min turbo… think “FP Green”)
• Externally-gated uppipe
• 3″ turbo-back exhaust
• Turbo inlet
• Cold-air intake
• TurboXS top-mount intercooler
• 3-port boost control solenoid
• Samco blow-off valve (the stock bypass valve is slow to close)
• Power Enterprise 850cc injectors (NOT “hard to tune”, as rumored on the interweb)

With my tuning, this combination of parts resulted in a strong setup, putting down about 330 whp and 330 ft-lbs of torque on the heartbreaker dyno.


Track results:
(please excuse the phone camera quality)



11.83 @ 119.3 mph, run at Milan Dragway on 93 octane pump gas

It’s always nice to hear back from people with their results at the track. In this case, the car is a 2002 WRX wagon. It is running the stock 2.0L motor, a used VF39, 93 octane pump gas, and was tuned on the dyno by yours truly.

Got a chance to take the wagon to track earlier today. I spun hard in first and bogged second, but managed a 1.8 60ft and a 12.5 at 113mph. With a little more practice on the new setup im sure I can do better. I’m very impressed with the car. Thank you so much for the killer tune. STis with GT30s and WRXs with FP18Gs couldn’t even keep up! And my all time favorite is the LS2 GTO cammed, intake, full exhaust that I put a car on from a roll! Nobody sees it coming. Thanks Again!

This car made 260.8 hp @ 6000rpm and 257.4 ft-lbs @ 4250rpm.

How many “350 whp” cars have you seen or heard of that aren’t this fast?

Mikey has been wanting to turbocharge his RSX for a long time. Over the past winter, he put lots of effort into this project, fabricating many of his own parts. In the end, everything came together very nicely to produce a car with a strong and wide powerband.


The parts:

• Garret T3/T04E 57 trim turbo
• Bosch 750cc injectors
• Hondata K-Pro
• Treadstone manifold
• custom downpipe
• AEM 3-port boost control solenoid

The results:
294.3 hp @ 8000rpm and 207.0 ft-lbs @ 6500rpm


The short story is that Mikey put a turbo on his car and picked up 109.3 hp and 71.7 ft-lbs over the old NA numbers at only 10psi. A higher-reading MAP sensor is on it’s way, so a bit more power will be made soon.

Compared to his last NA numbers:

This 2005 STi was brought in by a customer from Windsor. Due to the emissions testing done there, the car was equipped with a catted downpipe. An off-the-shelf Stage 2 map from Cobb was flashed into the ECU with a version 1 AccessPort, but I knew there would be room for improvement.


The parts:

• TurboXS catted downpipe
• TurboXS standard cat-back exhaust (2.5″)

The results:
253.4 hp @ 5200rpm and 294.7 ft-lbs @ 3700rpm


Compared to the Cobb map:



Compared to our stock ’06 baseline:

This Supra arrived in need of some help. For the most part, the car was mechanically sound, but there were a few loose ends to tie up. Once those issues were addressed, I took at peek at what was going on in the car’s AEM EMS.  From the first glance, it was obvious that the tune was pretty haggard… there would be lots of work to do.


The parts:

• Garrett GT42 turbo
• AEM EMS
• 1680cc injectors
• fully built motor
• HKS 272 cams

The results:
After correcting the basic parameters within the AEM EMS, the car behaved beautifully. Once the car was running nice and strong at the wastegate level, I started to turn up the boost and the power output just kept on rising. Somewhere north of 25psi, there was a hint of a miss at high RPM, so we decided to take a look at the spark plugs. The plugs Jan removed from the car did look a bit old, so he replaced them with new ones that he had in stock. This alone resulted in a gain of 30whp.


730.6 hp @ 8250rpm and 532.5 ft-lbs @ 6750rpm

As compared to our “measuring stick” stock ’06 STi: