Never take on a project this insane!

[Ezra1234]

How long have you been on the forum? 6 figure cars are not a new concept.

 

Isn't it amazing how easy it is to invest six figures in a Subaru? I must say this is our first and last Subaru build. We will stick to American V8 engines in the future. But we have learned a great deal about the mechanical and electrical systems and must say the Subaru is one well built and engineered vehicle. No American car builder builds a car even close to the Subaru. My philosophy in the future will be if someone asks me about the Subaru will be to point out that a good tune-up and good fuel is all you need on the street! Going beyond that is a waste of money and time.

 

I have not been on the Forum in actuality for any consistent length of time. But I have enjoyed reading and sharing the information with my team that I deem valuable to our project over the last few years. How long will we continue to develop this project. We will continue to develop the vehicle up and until we can make clean passes at the strip. Hopefully, in the 8's or maybe a run or two in the 7's. At which time, we will sell the vehicle to someone who will take it out and hopefully race it.

[Ezra1234]

race weight on the wagon is 2995. that's 200lbs of gator & safety gear + ~160lbs of fuel.

 

Yeah, the weight of the vehicle is without the driver who weighs 180lbs. The cage is NHRA Certified to I think 6.5 seconds. We had a sunroof that was removed and never replaced, which was an unbelievably robust and heavy item that was never replaced. Instead, we had an opportunity to use the NASA wind tunnel in Mountain View California late at night to test various lexan wind screens and found one that essentially improves the aero of the car and of course reduces the weight as well!

 

Virtually everything and anything that could be cut, shaved or removed has been removed from the car including. The hood and truck lids have virtually no bracing. No door panels, they were all cut out, nothing under the dash. , no air conditioning, etc...We have found that we can get a 5lb. CF hood for $1500, which we are considering in the future. Our CF driveshaft required lifting the tunnel two or three inches in the rear because the Driveshaft is much larger in diameter than the standard Drive Shaft companies standard product in order to hold up to the power goals we set for this project. We will go to two wheel drive when we switch to the Lenco transmission, which eliminates the front wheel drive weight. and causes us to explore a conversion to a Ford 9" diff and axles and it goes on and on!

[boxkita]

Most of the ppl with high dollar builds have moved on. Mary Fields owns the current record for fastest lgt sedan at 9 something (newest post said 9.9, thought they got 8). Strizzy may still be working on another engine. jmorris (forget handle) was working on another engine at last post.

 

ppl forget these were high 30k-low 40k cars brand new. An engine & suspension was easily 20-40k depending on how many jdm parts you imported. Blowing up an engine was another 10-20k depending on how many extras you "needed".

 

Adding a cage is 5-35k depending on how much your life is worth.

 

Engineering is expensive work even when you are getting a deal.

 

Sgt.Gator estimated it would have take 100k in 2013 to build another race wagon. Today, based on his learning on his STI; it might actually be less. Cage tech has certainly changed.

 

Any race car build is going to exceed roi very rapidly. That's what sponsors are all about. Unless you are doing it for fun, in which case, here's my credit card...can you overnight it?

 

Seems an odd reaction from the forum. Although it's been awhile since a wild build has dropped with no associated build thread.

 

20k for custom heads? Has everyone forgotten how much cosworth stage 4 heads cost, in 2008 dollars?

Edited September 11, 2021 by boxkita

[boxkita]

Ezra posted a bit about the car and tech in this thread: https://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/5eat-track-times-246646.html

[xrayspecs]

What boxkita is saying! it adds up stupid faster than anyone will publicly admit too, I can attest to my own car projects. i added up my receipts this summer form my massive parts list for my street BE and it was more than i care to publicly admit too.

 

the biggest thing when you build stuff to race that increases cost that no one really considers are unexpected parts breaking and anything that rotates becomes a consumable that has its life measured in laps/hours not miles. those costs and labor add up quickly. ive seen lots of killer "track" or "rally" builds on multiple forums that get crazy built like this and once it comes time to race they only go race once or twice because of the cost of consumables quickly turns the whole cost of the build into six figures. then it all disappears. hopefully we can see a video of this thing making some passes.

[Ezra1234]

Ezra posted a bit about the car and tech in this thread: https://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/5eat-track-times-246646.html

Yeah, that was the early days when we knew what our goals were, just not how to achieve them. However, we were relying on the "experts" to guide us on our path to an EASY 1000 hp. We actually blew up three engines before it dawned on us that we needed to sit down and start over with a clean piece of paper. In fact, it was not funny at the time, but we blew up three engines in eight months. The last one flashed about 800 whp ten seconds before it self-destructed I think the only things salvageable were some of the bolts, the Turbo, BOV, water pump and the intake and exhaust. Everything else, even the heads were trashed. Forget the automatic trans we learned that a modified 5eat can handle about 550whp before it dies!

 

So, over the years to today, we have learned quite a few lessons of what does and does not work with the EJ25 motor and it has been an expensive lesson plan. But we think that today we are on the right path and getting closer to our goal of developing excellent power as efficiently and safe as possible and hitting the 8 second barrier in the quarter mile. But your observation about broken parts and consummable parts replacement is valid. We are racers and we are used to "pushing the Envelope" and as long as our wives will allow us, we will continue to buy more parts and to continue "pushing the envelope", thats what we do!

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ezra1234
Left out some words

[Ezra1234]

Brandon:

I certainly respect your comments and input, which is consistent with the general way Subaru's have been built in the past, which I respect. We tried relying in the "experts" in the Subaru market to guide us in the past in most cases with horrible results. Brandon, I do have one question. Have you ever built a full-on Race Only Car? Because if you had, you would appreciate the twists and turns you run into during the process. There are generally no easy or simple solutions to getting to the next step!

 

However, you may not understand what we are trying to accomplish, which very simply is to re-design primarily the intake system of the vehicle. I am well aware of the 11 Subaru vehicles currently producing over 1000 whp and a number of them will not race on the drag strip, but prefer to roll on on the streets in order to save their transmissions and engines. With respect and applause to their accomplishments they are all running in excess of 60lbs of boost all the way up to 90 lbs., which is why the fatality rate is so extreme at these HP levels. The White Rabbit has been racing Subarus for at least 12 years and should have eliminated the bugs from their platform by this time and rest assured their crew has probably done many of the things we are doing. But they are very closed mouth about the engineering that has gone into their engines over the years. I know I have contacted them and they shared nothing, which I can understand!

 

Our goal is and has been to produce with our new engine (the current engine is our mule) around or in excess of 1000 whp. using 40 lbs of boost, which allows the following to occur. Would you agree that less boost equals more reliability and that it will allow us to use a smaller Turbo, right? Which allows us to create a wider powerband, right? Would you agree that by cooling the intake charge by an additional 20 degrees will help the power as well? Bye the way the Turbo we will be running on the new engine is a highly modified version of the one on the spec sheet and it is designed to meet OUR parameters only!

 

Also, I may be wrong to say that in most of the current over 1000 whp builds that they do not have thier heads or cams specifically designed for their engines. Below I attached copies of the flow characteristics and how we flow our heads. As well as the form if it will download we had to submit in order to get matching cams. This will provide you with a snapshot of how we are developing OUR motor. These are just little toosl that will give you a perspective of the stock, very well known brand of CNC heads and our improved version of the Subaru head. We also have a version of the head that allows us to create a third port totally removing the dogleg and garnering on the bench about a 16% to 20% improvement over our two port version shown on this comparison. We want to run the comparison version first before we run the "Frankenstein" version as we refer to the three port version. As running the Frankenstein version will require extensive additional modifications, which we don't want to do at this point in time. One challenge at a time!

 

DR’s comparison of Stock, CNC’d and RMI Subaru EJ 25 Ported Heads based on Valve Lift!

 

Testing dates were Stock 5/6/2021, CNC 6/3/2021, RMI 6/9/2021

 

Lift RMI CNC Stock

050. 42.4 42.0 60.1

100. 88.7 77.5 96.1

150. 133.3 124.0 126.1

200. 175.1 158.2 148.2

250. 211.1 191.5 159.2

300. 226.5 207.0 181.8

350. 235.8 212.3 187.0

400. 238.7 217.8 187.4

450. 243.4 219.5 187.0

500. 245.4 221.3 188.9

550. 247.6 N/A

 

Total CFM

2088.1 1671.2

(1840.5 Total RMI CFM to 0.500 lift. Difference is 169.3 CFM per lift cycle.)

Avg. CFM

189.827 167.12

(184.05 Avg. RMI CFM to 0.500 lift. Avg. difference is 16.93 CFM per lift cycle.)

 

I tried to download the CAM profile information and all of the roughly 40 factors required along with intake CFM, exhaust CFM and intake to exhaust ratio percentages in .050 increments. However, for some reason it would not download today.

 

As far as the transmission issue is concerned we have chatted with the folks at PPG in Australia and Lenco in LA. We will get the shifting issue sorted out in the near term.

[boxkita]

rmi? who's that?

[Tehnation]

radio machine interface, i think

[Infosecdad]

Pretty sure it’s a specialty machine shop in CA

[Tehnation]

Lift RMI CNC Stock

050. 42.4 42.0 60.1

100. 88.7 77.5 96.1

150. 133.3 124.0 126.1

200. 175.1 158.2 148.2

 

RMI isn't a person or place I don't think.

[Infosecdad]

True, I thought it might be https://www.replikamaschinen.com/ since they look like a high-end machine shop for racing applications.

[BrandonspecB]

I took my post down because I don't want to clutter your thread. I apologize for being a bit harsh and disrespectful. This is your thread and I won't put any of my bullshit in it.

 

I'm on a path with my car that almost no one in the Subaru community has been down. I'm very aware of sorting things out in custom applications. Almost nothing with my car has been bolt on. I've also helped build, wire and tune a handful of drift cars with various engine, turbo, and ECU combinations. Will be doing a C5 with an LS3 swap and Holley EFI here pretty soon.

 

But this is your thread. I want to see what you're building.

[derp]

"kyb adjustable shocks & struts"

 

kyb makes adjustable shocks and struts? Can you shed some light on that?

 

kyb agx.

[Tehnation]

the agx isn't made for our model cars I thought?

[Infosecdad]

There is AGX for 4th Gen Legacy?

I used to have them on my '01 RSt and loved them, but I hadn't seen them for Legacys

[derp]

the agx isn't made for our model cars I thought?

 

not that i'm aware of, but the agx is the only adjustable kyb i know of.

 

anyway. wild thread.

[Ezra1234]

On the issue of the Kyb shocks. Kyb was apparently were looking at making an adjustable shock many years ago. My son was years ago a Motocross champion and had used Kybs, Showa's and Ohlins shocks on his factory Bikes. He was chatting with the folks at Kyb about something in their shop and noticed that they had some prototypes of some car shocks that they had tested. The technician told him that they were going to crush the shocks someday and he asked if he could have them. Although they were about a 1/2 to 3/4 shorter than the standard Legacy shocks we thought we would re-valve them and modify the fluid circuits to work with our vehicle. I have all the equipment and have re-valved my sons shocks for twenty-years and I have the luxury of having access to the suspension experts at Race Tech Engineering in So. Cal. So after we got the shocks to fit it only took eight attempts to get close enough to a reasonably competent setting be able to adjust the shocks with the compression and rebound adjustments. Lets just put it this way, there are much better shocks that can be bought over the shelf that we should of bought and will buy in the future. The Kybs were just to much work and although they are OK with where we are at today they won't work for the long haul!

[Ezra1234]

Brandon:

I applaud that you are taking on the EZ30R project. We think that is the future of Subaru hotroding and I.m sure you already know that the worlds fastest 1/4 mile Subaru resides in Australia running the EZ30R and turns 204mph in something like 6.9 to 7.1 seconds which is scary fast! Although we will not build another Subaru, if we were it would be the EZ30R platform. There is a guy in San Jose, CA who is way down the road in developing his EZ30R engine. The last time we saw him (about a year and a half ago) he had taken it to 600+ whp. However, I don't have his contact information. I think I lost it! Since you are having to do a lot of pioneering on the platform to get it where you want your going to need a lot of fab work. I've got quite a bit of information on some really good fabricators both on the West Coast and with some in other parts of the country.

[Ezra1234]

Infosecdad:

You are correct. Don Redmon of RMI is a master craftsman / genius when it comes to anything head work. If you are a serious Racer at the top level of your sport you go to RMI. The only problem is you will have to wait five (5) to six (6) months to get your heads. The old term, "take your time and do it right the first time" is Dons mantra. We thought we had purchased the very best CNC heads available to we Subaru guys and that they couldn't be improved then we challenged Don and well, you see the difference in the numbers. Then he explained how he could re-engineer the Subaru heads to produce another 16% to 20% in the flow rates by using the Frankenstein heads, as he calls them. We chickened out, because we have enough on our plate but maybe one of you might take on that challenge and try the Frankenstein heads. Bye the way, just to show you how state-of-the-art Dons operation is he just had a custom built flow bench built that I think he told me is run by a car engine and according to some of the race team engineers we have spoken with Don's bench is the most accurate and powerful bench on the West Coast.

[boxkita]

I looked at RMI's site and read the posts about the bmw head work. Sigh... there's so much want.

[tysparks81]

Very interesting build, thanks for all the info on this so far.