We recently finished up this little project that we have dubbed "Project Vader"... more on this later.

First I'd like to thank Paul at DB Tuned for his participation on the project. Paul spent a lot of time on the install and working out the details of the custom pieces. He did a top notch job. Also thanks to Johny at Johny's Hot Rods for his pimp fabrication work

Here's some info on the project:
This customer came to me with a stock 06 STI and told me his goals for the car. He wanted close to 500 crank hp on race gas for occasional track sessions, while keeping the car completely streetable as he drives it through San Francisco daily. He also wanted to keep the stealth factor at a maximum... nothing flashy under the hood and keep the exhaust fairly quiet.

I decided to go with the .63 a/r GT30R for its great spool characteristics to keep the car as responsive as possible. I chose the Perrin kit as it seems to be the cleanest one on the market currently, but I did have to make some modifications. I decided to toss the Perrin intake completely and go with a custom blow through big MAF housing. This has many tuning advantages over a standard style big MAF especially for overall drivability and consistancy of the car. This also allowed me to make a 4" short ram intake without having to worry about pre-turbo MAF placement. Next we moved the BPV mount to a pre-MAF location. I decided to use the stock BPV and plumb it back into the intake to keep the car a little more subtle in the noise department. I may end up moving the BPV to a different location in the future. After the custom work was complete, we sent everything off to Crucial for coating. Keeping everything under the hood black and low key really helped with the stealthiness the customer requested.

Here is the mod list:

GT30R .63 a/r
Perrin rotated mount uppipe and downpipe
Perrin FMIC with custom blow through big MAF
Custom 4" short ram intake with all propper plumbing
Crucial P&P&C headers with injen cross pipe
Helix 860cc injectors
Walbro fuel pump
Greddy SP2 catback
Catback, FMIC, IC piping, intake, downpipe, uppipe, and turbo all coated by Crucial Racing
Crucial Racing Springs
3-port boost solenoid

Here are some pictures (sorry about the quality):






Here is a road dyno of the car in 85F weather on pump gas:


The thing that really impressed me about this car is the boost response. The setup hits 21psi by 3500RPM and holds close to 20psi to redline. Throttle transitions are instantanious and boost recovery after shifts is just amazing. After a little drive by wire throttle re-mapping, I was able to get the car to feel barely laggier than with the stock turbo while just driving around town as well. The result is that the car drives almost like the stock turbo but with about an extra 50whp and much more torque passed 3800RPM. The car picks up quite a bit of power in cooler weather but I have not gotten a chance to dyno it in such conditions. I think this setup will really shine on some real gas.

Soon to come is a race gas map and some track time .

Thanks