FrenchBoy

I know this is kind of similar to another thread on here but i'd be really interested to get other opinions.

Every since i've had my ppp fitted i've not been happy with it. everyone goes on about the difference in performance being 'mind blowing'. but to be honest i've been really dissapointed. to me the power delivery seems really 'strained' on my car.

ever since it was fitted i've been convinced its not 'right'. apart from my very subjective view that the performance isn't too special, i have noticed that my car does something quite peculiar -

on the motorway at around 80mph, if i floor it in 5th, the car will initially accelerate away but the power delivery is not even, its like it comes in 'waves' of power!! its not horribly noticeable but i asked my fleet manager to try it and he noticed it aswell.

so i took it to the dealer today and went out with one of the techies and thankfully he noticed aswell. the problem is he has no idea why its doing it! but apart from that he says he thinks its ok.

i'm convinced its doing this in other gears aswell, its just not as pronounced. the techie didn't seem to notice it in any other gears but it was only a short drive.

so am i going mad? am i expecting too much?
has anyone else come across this problem? are they supposed to pull so unevenly after 80mph?
is there such a thing as a dodgy ppp fitting?

having never driven another 'ppp' before how can i tell whether i've got a lemon or whether i'm being unreasonable?

please help before i suffer some sort of mental breakdown!!!

(btw before you ask, its only ever been fed optimax!!)

julie1

just got mine last weekend, will give it a burn over the next couple of days and let u know

wakeboardar

wouldent be a bad idea to take a drive in another wrx ppp to see how it fairs against yours
should have thought the techie would have least run a diagnostic

if its a uk car you should have no worries with your warranty

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Not sure about your perception of performance but the 'waves of power above 80 in 5th' problem is common and seen on classics too. Get yourself into another PPP WRX to judge any power difference, if there is none then you may be a victim of hype on here or you've just found out that REAL performance is way more expensive than you first thought.

F

FrenchBoy

Floyd,

is the 'waves' of power thing a 'feature' or is it curable?
i have a horribly feeling you may be right about the performance thing.

blip

Had a similar thing when I had PPP fitted to my 03WRX at the 1k service. On mine it was related to revs/throttle setting. Most noticeable if I was in 3rd just off-boost (say 2800rpm). If I then stuck my foot down hard the acceleration through the next 2000rpm was hesitant/lumpy/stuttering. At higher revs it was less noticeable and seemed to 'clear'.

I had a couple of trips to my dealer, stuck it on the rolling road at PowerStation, switched fuels, even tried a 'stupid' earthing mod I read about on a US forum (lots of them were reporting the same problem).

My findings were as follows:

- The dealer was initially hopeless at noticing/fixing problem
- Several emails to Mike Wood at Prodrive didn't get very far. He did say that they had similar reports from other drivers and were looking into it. He said the symptoms sounded like it was over-fuelling
- Guy at PowerStation said factory always overtightens the knock sensor and that it would give similar symptoms so he backed it off a bit (I wasn't too sure about this!!!)
- The earthing mod seemed to help a bit, but then it quickly returned to normal (just a result of having disconnected the ECU I believe)
- I switched from Optimax to SUL and this seemed to help a bit
- Car also seemed to improve as I put more miles on it and it loosened up
- Next visit to dealer he found 'fault codes' in ECU. Cleared them and the problem went completely

I have not had the problem to the same degree since. I've now done 15k running on SUL and it's much better these days.

It sometimes feels hesitant, but this seems to coincide with either having to stick Optimax in it, or atmospheric conditions/temperatures, or what phase the moon is in

Sorry this isn't particularly conclusive, but at the very least you know you're not alone, and are not the only one that has nearly gone nuts trying to cure it.

Although I think PPP does really improve the car, I tend to agree with you that it suffers from being overhyped. Also, there are a lot of 'mainstream' cars out there now packing serious horsepower. The gap isn't as big as you'd hope. The WRX is also very smooth and quiet in the way that it deploys it's power so it feels 'slower'. And of course you do get used to the power in any car after a while. I'm bored already and want more power

The thing I really hate though is the way the car lurches violently if you have to slightly lift/feather the throttle whilst on full-boost. Makes you look like a learner driver. I believe this is due to the way it 'pre-empts' more WOT by over-fuelling at that precise moment. It p*sses me off anyway.

...waits for the 'you should learn to drive properly' replies from SN's resident driving gods

gutter-rat

YES!!!
I have exactly the same problem & it's driving me mental too!
Mine is also on an MY03 WRX.
Ive tried cleaning the MAF, the "3/16th's mod"
And I still get the same problem.
I'm currently wishing I hadn't had the work done!
I haven't tried a dealer yet as I'm not confident that they will sort it.

DBY

I also have 03 wrx ppp and find that it performs far better with the air con switched off, when it is initialy turned on it's as if the car has had the brakes on for a second or two.
Also it still suffers from the occasional miss fire between 4500to 5000 revs as it's always done but agian with the air con off this disappears, rest of the time it goes like stink so still very happy.

Regards

John

Pete Croney

Have any of you guys fitted a boost guage?

This sounds like the boost overshooting, then getting over corrected, then overshooting again, then...

gutter-rat

Yeah I've got a s.e.c's unit.
It shows that I'm reaching a max of about 1.4 bar.
Is this too high?
How do I fix this?

GaryCat

Hi FrenchBoy,

I see you're in South Bucks so take it to Power Engineering in Uxbridge. They have a rolling road and will be able run your car at 80mph while monitoring it with the DeltaDash kit.

It will cost about £40 for the R.R. plus a bit more for the diagnosis but it's well worth it to put your mind at rest.

Gary.

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Pete, cars I've seen that do this have had rock steady boost.

F

jhrfc1

I've had PPP on my 03 WRX from 10000mls, and seem to be lucky and don't have this problem. The car runs great, one of the most pronounced differences I found was the performance in 5th, once the turbo spins up at about 2800rpm away it goes, and keeps going.
I think the rolling road ideais a good one, (not sure about warranty though, best keep it quiet), I think the mapping not done on a indiviual basis for PPP, so you should be able to isolate the problem, by reproducing it on the rolling road while loging the ECU data.
I really think it must be a case if the car not being right, rather than you just being less easily impressed than others like myself. Good Luck.

FrenchBoy

Cheers for the replies guys.
The idea of not running it on optimax is an interesting one.

I'm still waiting for the dealer to get back to me as they said they were going to speak to Subaru Technical dept to see if they had come across this problem.

To be fair they did offer to rig up some test equipment and take the car out to see if it was performing as expected. (mainly to put my mind at rest)

If all else fails then i will almost certainly go down the rolling road route, i know there is a subaru specialist in aylesbury with a rolling road aswell as the place that gary mentioned (i'm based in high wycombe).

are there are any other 'concerned' 03 ppp owners out there who would be interested in meeting up to to compare cars?? if so just let me know!!

gutter-rat

Yeah, I wouldn't mind meeting.
I live not far away as I'm in South Beds.
Maybe we could get a cheap deal on the rolling road??
Which dealer did you go to btw?
Also, what's this place in Aylesbury? (didn''t know about that & it could be useful )

NickAdams

iTrader: (5)

Are these problems that you describe not down to the software(PPP)
They use Ecutek now on the 03's for PPP...
The reason I say is that I've driven a couple of Ecutek custom map equipped MY01 and 02 WRX's (And ok not an MY03 but still they are using the same Ecutek software) and have found that when in the higher gears,if you plant your foot fully down at say 70-80mph the boost will bounce and won't hold peak boost (This is noticeable when driving and can be described as these waves of power but easily recognised when running a boost gauge)
I found the solution to gradually push the accelerator down (Rather than just shovin it to the floor) and let the boost build and hold and hence,drive around the problem.I'm taking a guess this is the problem you're all describing.Give what I say a go and let's hear how you get on?

Good luck

Nick

FrenchBoy

Gutter-Rat,

the place in aylesbury is called G-Force Motorsport and can be found on
www.g-force-motorsport.co.uk

some of the wycombe crew from round here went to an open day rolling road there at the start of the month, so it sounds like a preety cool place. (i didnt go cause i only came across it at the last minute and was too shy to just turn up - being relatively new on here!)

like i said i'm up for getting together some time and comparing our sad performance woes!!!

Nick,

cheers for the driving tip, i'll give it a go. my only worry is that this is the symptom of a deeper rooted performance problem that i may be suffering from rather than my driving style.

(Btw, I bought the car from Adams in Aylesbury, but refuse to have anything more to do with them. I'm now taking it to SGT, who are so far being very helpfull)

mattstant

I can only say my PPP is absolutley fine.
I second the comment about power in 5 th gear it pulls all the way from 70 to.....ahem no problems at all there ia hardly ever any need to change down on the motorway and no heitancy or surge whatsoever.
I only had abog standard uk MY 99 to compare it too but the 0-60 quoted figure of 4.8 certainly feels acheivable

johnfelstead

agree with pete croney, this sounds like classic boost overshoot because the PPP hasnt matched the turbo dynamics properly. Testing on a Rolling Road wont show this and you wont notice it too easily with a boost gauge. The best way to show this is to get delta dash on the car and log a power run on the road, you will see the boost oscilating until its settles down.

If it is doing this then the PPP needs a tweek, which i would expect Prodrive are doing all the time anyway, even though they wont tell you that. It might be improved upon with some playing with the boost solonoid restrictor sizes.

Butty

iTrader: (2)

I can't find this bouncing on my MY04 PPP - it just takes off from 70 mph in 5th very smoothly. It is only just run in though and a bit more abuse may show something up.
I have Delta Tek and will do some data logging to spot anything up with the boost.

With all this talk of RR's is this leading up to a WRX PPP day?
I've used Power Eng before and the good thing is that they are principle Ecutek dealers and will be able to monitor any problems during the run.

Nick

Jasoon

my newly fitted PPP seems fine at the moment

PaulSTi

I'm new to the scooby world. I collect my new car on Sunday. An MY03 STi with PPP and full de-cat. Are the WRX PPP cars that are mentioned a different model to the STi?

Thanks

Paul.

FrenchBoy

Paul,

thats right, the WRX is the model below the STI, we have 225bhp and a slightly softer set up, whereas the STI has 265bhp as standard and is a lot stiffer with a few more goodies thrown in too.

WRX with PPP = 265bhp
STI with PPP = 300bhp

dont worry, you've got 'the fast one'!

PaulSTi

Ah, you have the one that will loose value slower, cost less to fuel and insure! Also less atractive to the vandals? SSsshhhhhh, don't tell the wife

Paul.

FrenchBoy

not so sure about the fuel bit!!

but yes, marginally more stealthy than yours!!

what colour did you go for?

PaulSTi

Black with Anthrasite OZ wheels, lower spring set and it has the flaps fitted (I understand the fronts scrap, so they'll be removed pronto!)

Paul.

barneyrubble

I have 03 WRX PPP, the performance is much better and maybe people expect too much, the facts are clear 0- 60 in 4.8 seconds and 265 PS rather than 225BHP - a pretty fair increase but it won't feel twice as fast. The main difference to me is the low down performance and torque, it still runs out of power higher up the revs unlike the STi PPP.

The wobbly throttle seems common amongst scooby owners, Optimax certainly makes this a worse on mine but returns me slightly better mpg than SUL. SUL makes the car run smoother and gives more even power delivery through the rev range.

I also have started to get the jerky response when lifting off the throttle - it's only happened since I had my waste gate solenoid replaced a thousand miles or so ago at the 10k service. The ecu showed an error after the car momentarily cut out on full boost coincidentally the day before the 10k service. The jerky back off problem doesn't always happen and didn't do it before so I think it must be a set up thing or ECU error, I'm calling in at the garage so the service manager can experience it but he didn't seem to recognise it as a known fault - unless he was not letting on. Maybe it's just a characteristic of the car! No one on the general technical forum answered my query re this a few days ago (Waste Gate Problem??) so I'd still be interested in an alterantive opinion.

As for the dip stick responses you mention from other members re learing to drive your car properly, I would have thought backing off the throttle without the thing jerking like hell was not exactly a driver error issue - idiots!

Barney

FrenchBoy

Paul,
the car sounds great you must be busting your nut waiting for it!!!

Barney,
your the second person to mention the Optimax/SUL thing so i think i'm going to give that go at the next fill up (which is never far away!)
think you're being a bit harsh about the driving tips though.
know what you mean about running out of puff further up the rev range aswell.

GaryCat

I have a MY03 WRX with a Prodrive backbox, decat centre pipe and ecutek remap from PE so it's a very similar setup to a PPP. I haven't experienced any of the problems you PPP guys are talking about and I always use Optimax. When I floor it at 80mph it just pulls and pulls

Gary.

Jiggerypokery

FrenchBoy,
Have you seen this? :

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=304973

"...when i was in 5th gear at 100mph+ when i floored it, it would accelerate to full boost 1.3bar and then ease 0f for a split second to about 0.6bar then go back to full boost then the same again on off on off as i was accelerating though 5th gear."