My car is running rich, under boosting & under powered!

[Andy]

I've now had the car two glorious weeks BUT in the last few days the car feels like it's been under boosting. Full throttle behaviour has felt right down and the engine hasn't been sounding as sweet as it should have been.

Scottish Scoobies had a rolling road day yesterday so I took it along to see what's what. Not good news but it could be worse

Everyone was getting 2 power runs, I got 6! First run went pretty well and although it only got 306bhp | 295ft/lb the car behaved itself. 2nd and 3rd runs it dropped 8psi of boost and would not correct itself. The engine was switched off and restarted and the boost went back up a little but it still only managed 301 & 302bhp. The air/fuel mixture is 10.5 so its running way too rich.

So my question is, is it worth taking the car back to Subaru and greeting about it? If the car was oly 5-8hp off I wouldn't bother but the way the ECU is fiddling the boost is giving me cause for concern Any ideas/tips/previous cases would be gratefully appreciated

Cheers folks

Andrew

[stijoy]

sounds like you need to take it back to the garage andrew, there are a few members that are very technical and i am sure when they see this will be able to help.

[Scooby Lee]

'We' will need a few more specific technical details before any useful diagnosis can be made!

i.e. At what revs the peaks were reached and what specific boost levels were indicated etc etc...

Do you have any 'Curves'?

[Andy]

I'll scan the dyno sheet tomorrow

I phoned the dealer this afternoon (Sunday) and they aren't happy about it so they will arrange tomorrow to have the car uplifted from my work and taken away until it's fixed

[marky mark]

yes, As Lee says graphs would be useful - if you were on a dyno dynamics set up you should have graphs with boost and Lambda (AFR) on as well.

If you can put them up of the good and bad runs

[The Swede]

Did you try resetting the ECU, Andrew ? Fairly easy to do yourself.

[Andy]

Sorry for not getting the graph up, just haven't had the chance

The car was in the dealer today and they took it out with the diagnostics gear on board. The manifold pressures were lower than they should be, the ECU was reset and all codes removed, test again and back within tolerance

As the car has not been driven hard by the previous owner the garage are going to replace the plugs at the 25k power check for free. Car is now behaving and I'm a happy boy

[chris]

Glad to hear it's being sorted for you.