Mixture - Visual Clues?

Sorry, but I don't dare ask this on any of the 'fight your way in' forums. Well, I could ask but wouldn't stand much of a chance of getting a decent answer.

2018 Subaru WRX, direct injection turbo, just turned over 10,000 miles.

In my day, and we're talkin' carburetors, mechanical chokes, mechanical timing advance, collisions with dinosaurs, you could tell a lot by looking at the exhaust. What you wanted to see was a nice gray color. This is my newest car and I'm having a hard time accepting this black sooty appearance. And (starts jumping up and down and squealing like a little girl) it's under warranty! Does this indicate it's too rich or is that just an observation from a time long ago?



(In case I still don't have the photo posting process down - My Exhaust

Sorry, the attachment still didn't work. :silly: But I can visualize.

I'm gonna guess that's normal? :huh: Just based on my observations of newer vehicle tailpipes, not just Subys. I sometimes wonder if it's a product of aggressive catalyst warmup strategies. No evidence for that, just speculating!

I'll ask my teammate on Wednesday. He just came from the Subaru dealer and worked on these engines.

But the link to the photo should work. I mean, if you want to see it. Not trying to be pushy.

I assume it would be ok to start a thread in off-topic to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong with images? I find that this sort of thing goes a lot smoother with photos sometimes.

You need to use scandata, these engines have a wideband sensor that should keep.very tight control of the fuel-air ratio when the engines is in closed loop. The easiest test is a snap throttle test looking for how quickly the air-fuel ratio returns to normal after a snap throttle.

Roger that. So there's nothing to see by looking at the tail pipe these days. I'm not shocked, I just thought I'd ask.

Link to my photo