Man, what a difference a small tune up can make.

It's snappier with stronger, smoother pull all the way through the power band.

So I started yesterday with a bunch of plans, air filter, oil change, plugs, wires, msd coil, 95 ej22 intake and grounding kit.

First snag was I had the wrong ngk wires. I bought them second hand, but still new, but they are meant for the SOHC engine, not the DOHC in my 97 gt. So they were way too short. (Selling them $40 shipped, once I can confirm the right engine). In the end I ended up with just the stock coil and wires, my original oem coil was bad.

But I did get new plugs, air filter, and the 95 intake in place. I love the added growl, and it has some great added power. But I bet most of that is from replacing the plugs, air filter and bad oem coil. Oh and I also reset the ECU.

Anyway, just need the right wires and I'll finish her up. This way at least I can see the difference the msd coil makes. And throw on the grounding kit.

Oh it's a 97 legacy gt for the record, with 140k.

that's awesome! sometimes it's the little things

If you are running without the snorkus(intake piece in the fender) then the power could be a bit different. I've never seen a dyno chart proving it, but I did notice a bit of top end pull when I pulled mine. Plugs do make a nice difference if the old ones were worn out well beyond specs.

One major point of the snorkus has to do with resonance. If you remove the snorkus vibration will cause a voltage spike from the MAF (it thinks tons of air is coming in) so then the car runs extremely rich at low RPM. What I did was just replace the intake tube between the MAF and the TB with one from a 95 impreza. The intake on the 2.5 was different in two ways, it was built with a torque box and a 'silencer'. By replacing it with the 95 intake tube I eliminated both. I gave up a bit of lower end torque for mid-high power. But it also got very noticeably louder under heavier acceleration. For the record, my snorkus is in place, I just replaced the intake tube between the MAF and TB.

I did actually see graphs showing the voltage spike caused by removing the snorkus and/or installing CAI.