price: $400 for a spankin new modified inlet TD05-16g w/ small compressor wheel. Kind of hard to pass up such a deal.

As for headers, these are ported, polished, and jet heat coated stock headers from the WRX/STi. Usually yes aftermarket headers add low end lag, but these however do not. There should be some before and after results coming soon. The but dyno tells that there is quite a difference in low end spool time.
Guessing, I think its 300-500RPM sooner on UP/TBE and custom tune, but I am still waiting to see the actual results from the dyno.

 

There's an independent headers comparo going on by a member named "rainkmaker" on IWSTI and nasioc. They are testing PnP headers, PnP headers w/ X-pipe, and aftermarket headers vs. stock.

So far they've only done PnP headers and the results are kind of disapointing. It's looking to seem most of the gains will be through the X-pipe.

The thing is the ported headers + X-pipe starts to get kind of expensive and you think "I could spend that money on a tmic/turbo" and get better results. IMHO (and this is just my opinion) if I had a big tmic and I had to choose between spending my money on headers or turbo, the difference in power with a bigger turbo is just night and day - I just wouldn't justify spending money on things like CF driveshaft, crank pulley, flywheel, headers unless I already had the core big ticket IC/Turbo/built engine stuff and I just wanted to top it all off.

 

The myth of the VF series turbos not being upgradable/rebuildable is from years ago. They are indeed upgradable/rebuildable.

 

Also be careful what you read on these boards in terms of numbers and technical info.

I remember everyone used to talk about uppipe and downpipe decreasing turbo spool by a good 500-800 rpms. Did you experience this? I sure didn't. Thing is, people like to repeat facts they read on the internet.

There were debates about the lag of a vf30 vs. vf34, and tmic vs. fmic. Misinformation abounded due to the fact people were confusing spoolup time (the amount of time for the turbo to overcome some friction/inertia to spin at full speed) and boost threshold (the actual RPM at which a certain amount of boost can be attained) as the same thing.

With headers for example Gruppe-S did some testing on their uncoated regular old headers and found no decrease of hp/tq anywhere in the powerband. Is this true? I don't know, but almost for every dyno showing "this is better than that" there's another dyno showing "that is better than this". In the end we just try to do as much educated research as we can so we can make the best decision on our part as the consumer.

 

so... BUMP!! I still want a ride in a TD05-16g WRX.

 

crap, the guy already sold out of the turbos. :\ Should have bought one when I had the chance. Oh well.

 

Haha I was about to say. That deal was being posted all subaru forums

EQtuning seems to have taken advantage of that deal and I believe WI/alky + 16g is in store for his car

 

yeah, I told Ed about it before posting and tried to organize a group buy but Ed didn't want to wait. Could have got 3 for $350 each. Oh well.

 

should have read this thread more carefully, What a deal, I think it was actually a big 16g! TD05H is the big 16g I thought. Missed out on it, the first time I read the thread a while back I didn't read far enough into it to see the speedsin link...oh well... new 16g at half the price of a new vf34