Man, I saw those when I first started looking. SOOOOO many of the older kit cars were junk, but THAT one just looks super sweet. No idea what the performance would be like, but it’s hard to imagine it would compete with modern tech. Still…so cool and I bet it would turn some heads
I’m certainly gaining a bit more respect for these motors, but it was a huge pita to build. For starters, the closest guy to me that could bore the block was 2 hour ride each way and he was so backed up I didn’t get my block back for 4 months. Nobody else would even touch it.
Then one of the headbolt threads let go while I was assembling it. The machinist apparently had some issues with the threads in 3 holes he didn’t bother to tell me about because he chased them out and bolted his torque plate on OK. Apparently putting a steel bolt with FINE THREADS in an aluminum head (including the water jacket) and running grounding voltage through it for 15 years tends to booger things up. I actually had to use my shovel as a breaker bar on disassembly for exactly 3 of the bolts, too, so I wasn’t surprised.
And none of the stuff that goes under the intake can go on later. Since I forgot stuff 3 or 4 times, that was a lot of assembly/disassembly.
But there are no mains, in the classic sense. The crank goes in the middle of two block halves, so those have to get bolted together first and ARE the mains. Which means the pistons go in AFTER the rods, (or else you can’t get to the rod caps) so you’re fishing wrist pins and clips through access holes in the block. On the other hand, no balance shafts, so that’s nice, lol.
Obviously not impossible, and at the end of the day it’s all nuts and bolts. Just nowhere near as easy as some other motors I’ve built or seen built (used to work at a machine shop in the early 2ks, and they taught me a bunch).
The other thing to watch out for is that it’s SOOOOOO hard to put one of the engines together for less than $5k. Or maybe I should say it’s so easy to spend $5k building one. I bought an import kit for a stock build and didn’t upgrade anything but headbolts (arp studs for the win, nothing less in a boosted engine for me). Then again, I expect my car to be about 40% lighter than the WRX, so I don’t need big power. Go check out any of the subaru shops, though, and it’s $3k for parts. No such thing as a rebuild kit -everything is a la cart so it’s easy for “small” upgrades to start adding up, especially after machine work. And speaking of that, some people will tell you that you absolutely HAVE to replace things like the bucket shims (they set the valve lash on these) if your newly machined head is too tight instead of just rearranging them for best fit and tipping the valves where necessary like people have done for…ever. Real easy for other people to spend your money there.
All THAT said, it’s still a pretty good motor, especially for a small displacement 4cyl, and responds very well to tuning likely because Subaru left a lot of power on the table in favor of emissions, economy, and reliability. My friend had his tuned at a shop (something like $600 for the accessport and another $300-400 for the dyno tuning) and ended up with 270 at the wheels by only fixing up the fuel and spark curves. Turbos are AWESOME for streetability, imo, too. They don’t often like to start making boost at grocery-getting RPMs, so that makes them pretty tame overall, and being able to set the boost by throttle position (which these ECUs do) means you can effectively limit your horsepower with your right foot. I’m not sure exactly how steep the learning curve is going to be, but it seems you either want to pay someone for dyno time who has tuned a bunch of these and knows where to start, or be prepared to spend months making small iterative changes.
