Koni Struts/Cobb Springs review

Ok, so I had decided that after putting a few hundred miles on my suspention set up I felt that the ride was pretty stiff.  I had asked the shop to set the Koni adjustable struts to the half way mark between full hard and full soft. 

Today I got around to checking the setting and was shocked to find that my front passenger strut was at full hard and my driver strut was almost full hard as well.  I quickly adjusted them to one full turn from soft.

After putting another 100 miles on the suspention I can honestly say I now love the ride.  It's the perfect blend of drivability and control.

Mod List

A list of all the modifications on my car, I will be updating this as new mods are added.

Body:

1. Custom blackout front grill
2. Custom blackout foglight
3. Custom blackout tail lights
4. Custom blackout spoiler light
5. Full windows tint
6. Lowered on Cobb Springs/Koni Struts
7. 18x8 Drag DR-11 Rims

Suspension:

1.  Cobb rear sway bar
2.  Kartboy rear endlinks
3.  Cobb Springs
4.  Koni Adjustable Struts
5.  Whiteline Anti-Lift kit bushings
6.  Whiteline LCA bushings
7.  Whiteline Bump-Steer Kit bushings

Brakes:

1. Stock Rotors
2. Stock Pads
3. Grimmspeed Brake Booster/Brace

Performance:

1. Cobb Turbo Heatsheild
2. CNT Catted Downpipe
3. Lightweight Flywheel
4. AVO Filter
5. Infamous e-tune (Stage 2)

Transmission:

1.  Rallitech Transmission bushing
2.  Transmission cooler

Interior:

1. Custom Valentine One radar detector mount

Koni + Whiteline review

I just picked up the car from the shop after having my Whiteline bushings and Koni shocks installed.  After an alignment and wheel balance I feel that I can now give a review.

1. Koni Adjustable Stuts -  I am very impressed with these struts, they make a big, big difference from the stock OEM struts.  I set the dampening one full turn from full soft which seems to be the sweet spot.  These seem to do a great job with my Cobb Springs, they seem to absorb bumps well without the loud crashing I was getting with the OEM Struts.  At highway speeds the car is rock solid and feels like its on rails.  My vibration is completely gone and the car tracks down the road extremely well and smooth.

2.  Whiteline bushings - Much better steering response and the front end of the car feels solid.  I also noticed a reduction in body sway which is always a plus.  I did see a slight increase in noise from the engine and exhaust but I wouldn't say that as a bad thing.

Overall I am super impressed and pleased with how the car handles now.  The best way to describe the difference is before my struts and bushings I could tell that the car and tires seemed to reach their limits at the same time.  Now the tires are reaching their limits well before the car does.

New Purchases

In an effort to smooth out my ride I have ordered the following items.

1.  Koni adjustable Struts - these will replace my stock oem struts that have 74k miles on them.  These shocks are the best money can buy for the 4th Generation Subaru Legacy.  I am excited to dial these in with my Cobb Springs and due to the fact that you can adjust them I am confident I can find a balance between the two.

2. Whiteline Control Arm Bushings - these will replace my oem torn bushings, these should tighten up the car even more and reduce body roll.  There may be a slight increase in noise/vibration felt but most people don't notice.

3.  Whiteline Anti-Lift kit Bushings - these will also replace the other control arm bushings that are old and torn on my Legacy.  Again these will help tighten up the car both in terms of body roll and steering response.

4. Whiteline Bump-Steer Kit- These bushing replace the ball joints and will also tighten the steering response.

After these are installed I will be getting a new alignment and having my wheels rotated and balanced.  I expect my slight vibration at freeway speeds to be a thing of the past.  Stay tuned for reviews.

Suspension Review

I have had some time to drive my car with the Cobb Springs and Sway bar and I am 100% happy with the handling improvement and looks of the car but not thrilled with the ride quality.  Low speed bumps are a bit jarring and I have picked up a slight vibration between 60-70 mph.  I have a feeling that my stock struts are to blame, they have 74k miles on them and are not reacting well to the Cobb Springs.  My lower control arm bushings are also torn and will need to be replaced.  See my next post for my proposed solution.

Moving forward

Here is a quick list of my plans, these should start in August.

Immediate:

1.       Koni Struts

2.       Whiteline Anti-Lift bushings

3.       Whiteline control arm bushings

Short Term:

1.        Front Lip

2.       Rear window spoiler

3.       Upgraded speakers

4.       Valve Body (HexMod F1)


5.   Whiteline Front Sway Bar


6.  Kartboy Front End links

Long Term:

1.        VF-52 Turbo

2.       Upgraded Intercooler

3.       Upgraded Fuel Pump

4.       Upgraded Injectors

5.       Grimspeed Boost controller

6.       Pro-Tune

7.       Double Din Navigation/Stereo

Blacked out rear

I decided to black out my tail lights, black my badges and all the chrome on my car.  I'm a little on the fence about the tail lights but I think it looks pretty sharp.

Install day

I just installed a bunch of new parts on my Legacy, I can now say that I am 100% out of the dead zone and back into modifying the car.

1.  Cobb Sport Springs-  I tried forever to pick up a set of Cobb Springs on various forums like legacygt.com or Nasioc but could never find them.  Cobb stopped making these springs years ago and no online dealer has them.  Out of sheer luck I happened to find the Springs and a Cobb Rear sway bar handing on a wall at a local performance shop.  The shop sold me both for $150.00, an incredible deal which I of course had to pick up.  I had my heart set on the Cobb Springs because they are the only springs that were designed to work with the stock Legacy struts, and because I am on a budget I did not want to buy struts as well.  In addition the Cobb Springs give a raked look to the car, lowering the front more than the rear.

Below is a before and after shot of the ride height.

I also went out of my way to order a set of Tein Spring silencers as the Cobb springs are known to be noisy.  My initial impression of the Springs once they were installed was 100% positive.  The first thing I noticed was that the car hardly looked lowered, in fact as I pulled up to my car at the shop I wondered if they forgot to throw the springs on.  However once I sat in the car I immediately could tell that the car was lowered.  Also after taking a closer look at the wheel gaps it was pretty obvious, but you don't walk away thinking the car is slammed to the ground or anything.

Driving the car you could tell that it seemed tighter, easier to corner and the body roll was almost all gone.  Granted I had the Rear Sway bar installed at the same time but combined it really helped transform the car.

2.  Grimmspeed Brake Support-  I have read that this inexpensive modification is one of the best bang for our bucks.  It reduces the slack in the brake pedal and gives you a much better feeling when you apply the brakes.  I was very impressed.

3.  Cobb Rear Sway Bar/Kartboy Endlinks- These combined with the Cobb Springs almost completely eliminated any body roll in the car.  I have yet to reach the limits of this set up on the street, I can simply corner as fast as I want with no feeling of roll, or lose of traction.

4.  Rallispec Transmission bushing-  This is the one product that I am unsure of, as of yet I simply cannot tell the difference.  It is supposed to firm up the shifts and improve the feeling of the transmission.  I was told you could experience some slight noise/road vibration and to be honest that is all I noticed.  I am hoping the slight vibration settles down once the bushing gets a few miles on it, if not I may consider pulling this mod as I can feel no improvement in the shifts.

New Rims and Tires

I found a great deal on some used Drag DR-31 wheels on the LegacyGT forums and I picked up some new tires and had them mounted today. What can I say, I love the blackout look.

Moving out of the dead zone

I am slowly moving out of the dead zone, this is the same place I was in with my WRX a few years ago. After I went Stage 2 I hit a wall. I am now focusing on the exterior of the car and some suspension parts. Here are my recent purchases, I should have them installed in a few weeks and give a detailed review on each part. 1. Cobb Springs - This will lower my car and give it a nice raked look. 2. Cobb Rear Sway Bar - This will tighten up the rear end of the car and give it a more balanced feel. 3. Grimmspeed Brake Brace - This will improve the braking feel much like Stainless Steel Brake Lines would. 4. RalliTek Transmission Insert - This will eliminate the slop and some of the delay in shifting.

Final Map Review

Ok, so I received my final revision from Infamous. It's a big, big difference between the Cobb map, in fact going from stock to Cobb Stage 2 is the same difference as going from Cobb Stage 2 to the Infamous eTune stage 2. I am now going to sit back and enjoy the new power, however I have no doubt that there is a VF-52 turbo upgrade in my future.

Infamous Revision 2 and 3

I have been working on loading the map revisions and loging the results. My second map revision took about a week to get to me and the third was a little less. I can see that the whole process may take up to a month. Obviously the advantages of a Dyno Tune is you can have it all done in about 2 hours, however it will cost you about 3-4x more.

No huge gains, just some fine tunning with the revisions. Overall I am pretty happy with the results of the etune, much, much better than the OTS Cobb tune. I can see myself being happy with Stage 2 power for a while.

Infamous 1st Revision review

I received the first revision from Infamous on Monday, much sooner than I expected. I loaded the map and immediately did a log and compared the data to the my base map log. I can see that the timing was advanced and I am hitting a higher boost sooner. This all translates into a stronger and smoother car.

After a few days I will be able to give a better review once I get a feel for the revised map.

CNT Catted Downpipe Review

As part of my Stage 2 build I had to purchase a Downpipe, my first thought was to immediatly buy a Cobb Catted Downpipe. I had the Cobb downpipe on my WRX and knew it was a top quality product, however I ended up buying the CNT Catted Downpipe for these reasons.

1. Much Cheaper than the Cobb product, around $200.00 cheaper.
2. Positive reviews from those who have purchased, installed and tuned one.
3. Let's face it, who cares if it's a Cobb or CNT, as long as the performance is there.

Once I unboxed the Downpipe the first thing I noticed is the gaskets that were provided looked like crap. The edges were fraying and coming apart and there was no way I was going to use the cheap gaskets. I immediatly ordered a new set from Grimmspeed and sitting side by side there was no comparision, the Grimmspeed gaskets rocked.

Once I inspected the Downpipe I was very pleased with the quality, everything looked top notch.

My installer mentioned to me that the downpipe installed with no problems and he was impressed with the quality. I was also impressed with the sound and it reminded me quite a bit of my old Cobb Downpipe. Overall I am very pleased with this product.

Link to the product is here:

Cobb Lightweight Main Pulley Review

I decided to purchase and install a Cobb Lightweight Pulley for my Legacy for a couple of reasons:

1. Cheap, at only $135.00 it's not going to break the bank.

2. It does not underdrive anything, so it wont have any negative side effects.

3. It comes highly recommended for those of us with the Auto 5EAT transmission.

So with all that being said I can say that it was defiantly worth it. Without the pulley the Legacy was very slow off the line and didn't rev as quickly as I would want. Once I installed the pulley my off the line performance increased substantially. The car seemed much more willing to rev and felt much more spirited. This cheap and easy modification is a perfect match for a stage 2 upgrade in my opinion.

Link for the product is here: http://www.cobbtuning.com/products/?id=6092

Infamous eTune day 2

Just more proof for me that the ECU really does need to be shut down a few times and some miles driven to fully learn the new maps. The Infamous base map feels even stronger after a few days, I am now getting much closer to that "afterburner" effect where the car really pushes you to the back of your seat. At this point I would say there is a significant difference between my Cobb Stage 2 map and this eTune map. The eTune feels much smoother and powerful. Again I am really looking forward to some map revisions to get this really dialed in.

1st eTune Log sent

I manually kept my car in 3rd gear and starting at 2k rpm went full throttle until redline. I did this while logging data on my Accessport. The scary thing about doing this log is by the time I hit redline I was going well over 95mph so I had to find a nice long open stretch of road.

I then exported the log into a spreadsheet file and sent it to my eTuner, I expect a map revision based on this data in about a week. I will then have to repeat the log process and wait for another revision.

Infamous eTune base map loaded

I received my base map from my eTuner and loaded it today. The base map is just a generic map much like the Cobb map so I was very interested to see how it compared to the Cobb.

I can say with confidence that the Infamous eTune base map feels stronger than the Cobb map. It seems smoother and the boost hits a little sooner. Nothing drastic but the difference is there.

The next step is to use my Accessport to log data and send it back to Infamous who will then customize the map and send it back to me. That is when the fun will start, I expect some nice gains.

Etune ordered

I ordered a custom eTune from Infamous Tuning, I look forward to testing out this tune verses the Cobb OTS tune.

I will be sent a base map and then I will log data from my car while doing a 3rd gear pull to redline. I then send the data back to Infamous and they send me back a revision of the map. We do this back and forth until my map is dialed in.

Full Cobb Stage 2 Map Review

So I've had enough time driving the car to now give a full review of the Cobb Stage 2 map. At stock power you really had to drive the car a specific way to feel the power, manually down shifting to keep the RPM's high and so on. With the Stage 2 map you no longer have to think about down shifting manually, the boost comes on soon enough that you now know your driving a car that wants to go fast.

At up to 3/4 throttle the boost seems to stay right around 10psi giving a nice even push until the car shifts at around 5k rpm. At full throttle the car really starts to pull hard but runs out of breath above 6k rpm pretty fast.

It's an interesting map where I feel that it's a big power improvement over my Stage 2 WRX but it still feels a little unrefined and I am sure there is a ton of performance being left on the table with this being an OTS (over the shelf) map.

I do really like the SI drive feature in the car, you can put it in "I" mode and the car feels stock, throw it in "S" mode and it like a Stage 1 and "S#" mode give you the full HP/TQ.

With all that being said I think I'm going to upgrade to a custom Etune. This is not a dyno/ProTune but a vendor that is remote and will send me a base map. I run the car with the base stage 2 map while logging certain parameters. I send the log back to the vendor who analyzes the data and sends me a revised map that is custom tuned to my car. We do this up to 6 times until the map is dialed in perfect for my car. I can expect some big gains in hp/tq and overall performance.

Stage 2 plus???

One of the big reasons I bought a Legacy GT was it's ability to modify the car. I knew that if I ever got bored of the stock power I could quickly and easily jump up stage after stage to increase my power. I have listed below where I was, where I am now and where I could be going.

Keep in mind this is HP at the wheels, not at the crank as reported by the manufacture. Add +25 to get a rough estimate of crank HP.

Stock: 191 whp and 190 lb-ft
First day I bought the car, it had never been modified. At stock levels it was almost as fast as my Stage 2 WRX but lacked the head snapping power.

Stage 1: 210 whp and 210 lb-ft
A couple of weeks after I bought the car I bought the Cobb AP and flashed it to a Stage 1 map. This smoothed out the power band and gave a little boost in power.

Stage 2: 230 whp and 250 lb-ft
I just installed the Down pipe, Light Weight Pulley and Transmission cooler plus the stage 2 map. Review is pending but first impressions is that the car is now much faster than my Stage 2 WRX.

Stage 2T: 254 whp and 275 lb-ft
This will require an aftermarket Inter cooler and a new custom Etune Map.

Stage 3: 300+ whp and 300+ lb-ft
This will require a VF-52 Turbo, bigger injectors and fuel pump plus a new protuned map.

Stage 2 day 2

After having the car shut down overnight I drove it around this morning and was surprised how much stronger the car felt. I wonder if shutting down after I flashed the map and starting her up again helps the ECU to learn? Something I did not do last night when I initially flashed the ECU.

I am seeing 17 pounds of boost and the car really feels like it wants to go fast. Boost is coming on a lot sooner than before and I am starting to feel impressed with the new power. I also did a few quick launches from a dead stop and I can tell a big difference with the light weight pulley. The car rev's much faster allowing me to hit boost quicker all resulting in faster launch.

I will be taking a 200 miles trip tomorrow with the car which will allow me plenty of time to do a proper review.

Stage 2 complete

All the parts are installed on the LGT and I flashed the car to a Cobb OTS Stage 2 map right in the parking lot of the shop. Driving the car home it was really hard to get a feel for the map due to downtown traffic. My first impression was that the car pulled harder through all the gears and the car sounded a little different. Overall I was not blown away or even that impressed however knowing from past experience with my WRX that the ECU can take several hundred miles of driving to learn the new map I was kind of expecting this.

Stage 2 parts purchased

I have now purchased all the parts needed to go to Stage 2 with my Legacy GT. Here is my list, I should be ready for an install next week.

1. CNT Catted Downpipe.
2. Tru-cool Transmission cooler
3. Cobb Light Weight Pulley
4. AVO Air Filter
5. Grimmspeed Gaskets

Brakes done

The very first thing I did to my Legacy GT was to have the brakes replaced and rotors resurfaced. That got rid of the shaking I experienced when braking at high speeds.

Windows re-tinted

When I bought my car I noticed that the back window seems cloudy and in the dark headlights would double up. It soon became apparent that the car had a bad tint so I swung the car into a local shop and had the old tint removed and a new tint applied. I went 5% in the back and the max legal 50% in the front.

Big improvement!

Stage 1 complete

I sold my old Cobb Accessport and bought a new one for my Legacy GT. I immediately flashed the car to a Stage 1 map. Here are my impressions:

1. The car pulls harder at higher RPM's, but still runs out of steam the closer to redline you get.

2. The turbo seems to kick in a little harder.

3. Overall the car seems to run smoother, not a huge increase in power but I would judge the car to be just a bit slower than my old Stage 2 WRX.

Radar Detector installed

I had my Valentine one radar detector installed and hardwired. I mounted the remote display in the clock pod just like I had in my WRX. I also have a mute switch below the shifter.

I love the radar detector and highly reccomend it.

Car purchased

I traded in my 2005 WRX for a 2008 Legacy GT. In stock form the Legacy GT has almost as much power as my Stage 2 WRX. The Legacy is in great condition with Leather/heated seats, power everything, sunroof and 17" wheels. The Legacy is better in almost every way, here is my list of pro/con VS the WRX.

Legacy GT Pro's


Power: in stock form it is almost as fast as a WRX stage 2. Going stage 2 on the Legacy puts it as fast or faster than a stage 2 STI.

Size: The Legacy has more legroom in the back and front and the truck is at least 3 times bigger than the WRX.

Comfort: Here the GT really shines with Leather seats and a much more put together feeling than the WRX. Also I find the seats to be more comfortable than the WRX.

Appearance: I find the GT to be a better looking car and much more of a sleeper car which I prefer. In my WRX it seemed like every kid in a Honda Civic wanted to race me which got old fast.

Legacy GT Con's

Cost: You have to pay to play and the Legacy is not cheap.

Size: This is also a Con for the Legacy, it feels much bigger than the WRX and less willing to swing into the corners hard.