Legendary Subaru EJ: 1,000-hp Performance, If You Want -- /ENGINEERED

[Music] my name is Vince Griffin some know me as in still the engine builder here at prime motoring I worked at rally spec for a few years learned a lot there I've been working on just Subarus for the past seven years and I've built a lot of cool stuff a couple Rally America open class cars drag cars and tons and tons of street engines today we're going to be talking about Subarus most famous engine the EJ EJ platforms been around for you know the better part of 20 years it's great engine kind of got it figured out a lot of people think that you know the EJ is not really a great platform to you know go racing with because they don't really know how to you know go about building one properly or choosing you know the proper components for their build and things of that nature so we kind of figured out our own little formulas for different types of racing that that work and you know that are proven to be reliable a lot of inline engines and things of that nature they become you know unbalanced and have a bit of a higher center gravity the flat floor is basically just you know a better balanced option if you're looking to make power on a decent budget you know or to have a fun car to drive every day EJ definitely the best platform I'm not going to bash the FI engine although I'm not the biggest fan of it it's still very you know early on for the FA platform so I'm sure you know as time goes on guys are going to figure out how to make it you know better how to stop some of the common issues that people have been having with it you know that are trying to make any kind of real power you definitely you know in my opinion the best subaru platform right now a very common failure that we see on a lot of the DJs in the oiling system is the standard pickup that they use basically be the way that it's held together they break at these little you know braises where they're held together and it's like trying to suck a drink through a straw that's broken it's basically what your engine is doing doesn't get oil needs and then you end up spinning a bearing because 9 out of 10 people don't pay attention to the oil pressure light on their - anyway there's a company that we work with quite a bit called killer bee donor Chris's very very smart guy and he's come out with a solution it's very rigid pickup it's welded together very well it's kind of one of those things why wouldn't you do it it's only so much money why not you know have some type of added insurance policy on your build once you understand it it's it's really simple a lot of the failures that occur are just bad choices or bad tuning or bad you know that driving cast Pistons are just garbage once you try to have any kind of fun with the car regardless of you know who the tuner is for some reason if the cars not I think the cars don't run on like a 85 it's it's like it's just a matter of time it's like a ticking time bomb so that's one of the big things we do here a lot of you know forged pistons have a really key part in in a lot of the builds but basically there's there's different materials to different piston alloys you basically have two types of forged pistons you have 26 18 alloy and a 40 32 alloy and basically the 2618 outlet will you know take abuse a bit better but it does have a bit more of an expansion property whereas with a 40 32 piston it isn't as resilient to you know abuse however it doesn't have the same expansion that you would have under a 26 18 so you can run you know a bit tighter tolerances or you know piscano wall clearances and that sort of thing which may be a bit more ideal for somebody that's looking for you know a forged piston but still going to drive the car everyday and not you know try to make eight hundred to a thousand horsepower top mount intercoolers are our fine um the big thing people talk about with them is you know heat soaking and you know they want they want to or they want to stay with the top mount because they don't want the turbo lag that comes along with the front mount but in reality the biggest thing is the temperatures front mount is going to see much cold air it's not under the hood you know you'll see higher I 80s with you know a top mount intercooler for sure as opposed to you know a front mount but from out honestly is is a better option in my opinion you know you may get a little bit more lag because all the added piping but at the end of the day in my opinion I think it's just better for the car and honestly you know a lot of these kids they build their cars to how they think they want them in and you know and five six months they're they're bored already and they want to upgrade anyway so a lot of guys they want to make you know crazy power right off the bat but a big thing you know for us is have you ever driven a car that fast before you know we'll take the money because it's green but at the same time we don't want to put somebody in an unsafe situation in a car that they think they can handle and they really can't you know and that's kind of a big thing to us we kind of want to know what whether they can drive or not before we go handing them over a thousand horsepower car more and more people think that you know 700 horsepower they're just going to jump right in the car and you know on the streets but it's not always like that there's more to it you got to make sure you have other things like you know braking to stop if your car goes 180 miles an hour but you don't have the stopping power it's not you know not really the greatest situation to be in so if they want something high power we'll build it and you know we'll show them that the car can make the power but we're not going to send it out the door making you know making full power you know let them get used to the car and then let them turn it up you know make the power dial it back down and then you know as they feel more comfortable we can turn it up for them big power with the Subaru I would say you know you're starting to scratch the surface of big power with a Subaru once you start getting into you know 750 800 horsepower that's when you're kind of talking about big power in my eyes you know here 600 horsepower cars are you know the norm for us nowadays so it's not really it's not really considered big power like it used to be you know like six or seven years ago now we're making a thousand horsepower with you know a race car and it's kind of just like you know no problem for us at this point we've kind of got it figured out the right formula choosing a down pipe is more on the the tuners end in my opinion I mean if you're running an internally gated setup I think it's probably best to run a divorce down pipe setup but if you're running an external and external wastegate you know at that point I mean I really don't think it matters a whole lot whether you're running a bell mouth setup or a divorce setup yeah basically any any type of restriction in the exhaust is going to have some type of you know create some type of back pressure thus not allowing the engine to breathe how it should typically exhaust tubing is you're not going to see a whole lot of a difference in range you know throughout the aftermarket you know a lot of the guys some guys that were on four-inch all the way out because they you know they feel it's necessary but we really don't have any problems going eight seconds with you know a four inch out - out - a three and a half manual this controller verse electronic booth controller back in the day I used to be all about the manuals because I was one of those guys that you know thought it was thought it was cool to jump out of the car and turn up the boost and see how much faster we could go yeah I quickly learned that was a bad idea the hard way nowadays electronic boost control is definitely the way to go um only because I mean the tune ability of the power range is really you know at your fingertips are at the tuners fingertips at that point you know if the turbo wants to get wild you know higher in the higher and the power range and you know or boost wants to you know creep up a little or if it wants to you know kind of die off we can we can play with that a bit and kind of sort of you know make sure that the boost is doing what it's supposed to do because everybody's cars different regardless of whether it's the same parts or not the added tunability of you know the wastegate duty and you know boost is you know pretty important I'm going to say that doing injectors you know as early on as possible if you're actually looking to go the modified route is going to be the smartest thing to do only because you know you get a final power goal in mind and then you know you buy the fuel system that you know you're eventually going to need even if you don't you know have all the parts that you're looking to run because with a stock turbo car injectors and a fuel pump is still going to net you you know a decent amount of you know gained power with you know a pro tune for sure so one thing a lot of guys overlook is they want to put you know an intake and a down pipe on the car you know right away those are two of the biggest mistakes that you can make you know when you're looking to modify your car with an intake the car will run super lean and with a down pipe the car will over boost without any type of tuning so those are two two huge mistakes that you know a lot of kids make tune aside from making sure that your engines built properly is definitely definitely you know the most important thing from a builders perspective you want to know that whoever is going to be tuning you know your engine or your customers engine is you know going to do a good job and they're not going to throw too much timing at it or let the eg tease get too high or let it lean out or you know something like that so whoever's timonin the car has to be able to you know see all these things happening and if one of them you know goes out of whack if you know the car starts to pull timing or starts knocking or starts leaning out or you know any of these number of things that can happen on the dyno you know they got to know to back off and not to you know finish the pull because at that point you're damaging you know someone's someone's brand-new investment you know what I mean so tuning definitely definitely I'd say most of the most important part for sure when is it smart to think about reinforcing the block when you're starting to get into like the the 550-horsepower area is kind of when it's kind of when we really start to see a lot of the you know the cylinder failures you know basically the cylinder liners cracking you know and that sort of thing basically when you close deck and engine or reinforce it or sleeve it whichever route you choose to go on you know basically you're looking to prevent the cylinder from distorting under you know extreme pressure and heat the the difference between sleeves and closed deck is a closed deck here basically retaining the factory the factory cylinder the factory sleeve and basically they machine a ledge into you know and onto the onto the cylinder and into the edge of the block the water jacket and basically these inserts are you know are pressed in and basically cut to you know be a perfect machine finish for the for the head mating surface whereas a sleeve you have to make sure that it's like in a temperature controlled environment everything's got to be real precise and then you bait you actually cut out the factory sleeve and then you would press in you know then you the next sleeves as a builder I personally prefer sleeves only because you know you're you're completely eliminating the factory the factory cylinder at that point you know so there's no question in the back of my mind that you know the factory liner could possibly still have an issue for a road racing and rally stuff like that turns lots of turns lots of you know tight corners should we go with you know a smaller turbo of course but something that's going to hold up to you know high rpm all the time whereas with you know a drag drag setup cars not running you know for nearly as long and is being rebuilt you know more frequently than you know the rest the pro drive car that mark Higgins was racing on the Isle of Man that he just set the record for you know pro drive even came out and said that every four hundred miles the cars getting you know torn down and rebuilt you know four piston rings alone so depending on the amount of you know horsepower your cars pushing and you know your driving habits nothing lasts forever but you know we can choose the right parts to make the thing less you know 100,000 miles if it's you know if it's built properly and tuned properly and not driven ignorantly you know there's no reason why it shouldn't last for a lot of the street cars we build here you know injectors fuel pump you know protune at minimum for auto across and stuff like that a lot of guys will choose to go with like an upgraded crankshaft only because you know the cars going to be seeing high rpm all the time and in terms of power looking for you know a real mid-range type of setup not something that's going to be you know crazy top end power but not something that's going to run out of steam you know on the straights and you know stuff like that a big mistake would be you know here in your engine making a ticking or a knocking noise and continuing to drive it if you hear any kind of funny ticking or knocking coming from your engine shut it down and get it towed to the nearest until you can hear some mechanic and then go from there to your oil changes on time a lot of these you know dealerships will tell you you know you can change oil every 7500 that's fine from an engine builders perspective is not fine and that's a way for them to you know gaeta buy a new engine you know later on down the road synthetic oils usually like daily driven not crazy power you know you can get away with you know every five thousand I I'm still a part of the every 3,000 rule unless you know the guys running 85 in which case that actually will dilute the oil so only 85 cars we still recommend that the oil be changed every thousand miles on the high power cars again nine times out of ten that run in the e85 so we're telling them to change the oil every thousand miles regardless of their oil separator that they're running I'm typically not a fan of you know retaining the factory PCV valve anywhere on the car the regardless of you know power the car makes over 400 horsepower I don't really like the idea of having a PCV valve anywhere on the car so we typically run the competition series arrow oil separators which you know eliminates that completely if you're looking to modify your car the best thing you can do as soon as possible is put in our oil separator on the car it's another one of those cheap insurance policies for your engine basically eliminating any type of oil that could be being sent into the charge system thus lowering octane and you know causing knock and all that unhappy stuff a lot of these kids you know they get a 506 on a horsepower car and they think you know just because they got a built motor and you know all the stuff nothing's ever going to happen you know nothing can break I mean you know we we built thousand horsepower cars but you know again we tear them down and refresh them because you know again like I said nothing lasts forever but you know you come to us so that we can give you the formula to make what you're looking for lasts as long as possible [Music]

Channel: THE DRIVE

Views: 988,066

Rating: 4.8796077 out of 5

Keywords: Subaru, Subaru STI, Subaru Impreza, Subaru Impreza WRX, WRX, Subaru WRX, WRX STI

Id: zRIeZbhaGFs

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2017