Project Legacy GT – An Introduction

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The Invidia Q300 exhaust uses thick flanges and three inch mandrel bent stainless tubing for excellent performance and durability. Being in the salt belt makes a stainless steel exhaust as much a maintenance item as it is performance.

Shortly after this 2005 Legacy GT came into our lives, we did what every Subaru owner does; we fast tracked it to stage two status, bro. For those reading who might be less than familiar with the jive lingo of flat brim hat wearing Monster energy drink enthusiasts, I’ll break it down for you. A three inch mandrel bent stainless steel Invidia exhaust was added post-turbo, along with a catless up-pipe, and a new opensource tune. Using our trusty laptop with RomRaider software installed and a Tactrix cable to communicate with the car through the OBD2 port, we loaded the new tune onto the stock ECU. The big difference here was the increase in our peak boost target from the wimpy 13.5psi that was being huffed out by the factory to a much more satisfying 18psi.

Project Legacy GT all strapped down to the Mustang dyno at Kelly Moss Motorsports.

After our changes to the tune and exhaust modifications were complete it was a night and day difference using the butt dyno, but since ours hasn't been properly calibrated in quite a while we decided to use a more objective means of measurement as well. We decided to take the wagon over to Kelly Moss Motorsports in Madison, WI and had it strapped down to their Mustang dyno to get a baseline run for our new setup.  The results were pleasantly surprising.

The EJ255 nestled within the engine bay of the Legacy GT was rated from the factory at 250 horsepower and 250 foot pounds of torque at the crank. When considering parasitic losses of the drivetrain and the fact that our wagon had accumulated over 110,000 miles since it was built in 2005, we were pleasantly surprised with the dyno results. Averaging out the two runs gives us 225 horsepower and 271 foot pounds at the wheels, not too shabby! Top end power drops off fairly quickly with the factory equipped IHI VF40 turbo. Another run or two would have been nice to gather more data, but the stock top mount intercooler was already heat soaked by the third run with power dropping off substantially.

New headlights with Morimoto HID projectors from Nordic Retrofit give the front end a nice look and great light output that doesn't blind oncoming traffic.

Fast forward a bit and the car has received minimal changes since it hit the dyno a couple years ago, with the addition of only a couple minor bolt on parts that didn’t yield much of an improvement on the stock turbo. More recently the headlights were given a fresh look by Nordic Retrofit. The housings were painted black, the high beam reflector bowls were tinted yellow, and a proper HID retrofit was done utilizing high quality components from Morimoto. Light output at night is fantastic, and the crisp cut off line prevents the newfound visibility from blinding my fellow drivers. Don’t be that guy with obnoxious and dangerous lights by putting a cheap HID kit in your halogen headlights, do it the right way with a proper retrofit.