Cosworth Drag EJ257

 

Before I started working at Cosworth, the guys here were working on a "low budget" drag Subaru EJ257 engine program. The quotes are there because the term is relative. Low to one person may not be low to another. The budget was low compared to a real motorsport engine program, but probably considered high for the street car/weekend warrior crowd. EITHER WAY, PLEASE DO NOT CALL COSWORTH AND ASK FOR A DRAG SPEC ENGINE (unless you have 6 digits+ US$, not Japanese Yen of course). I'm not being a snob; I'm just saving you the pain of rejection. Anyhow, Cosworth was enlisted to build 2 engine programs: one gasoline and the other methanol. Pictured below is the methanol engine that made 1013...

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Subaru to Race Both WTCC and WRC?

Motorsports improves the breed. Too bad it won't improve the way the 2008 Impreza hatchback looks (I dig the sedan actually), but at least Subaru is racing it. It looks like the WTCC and the WRC are heading toward the same set of rules so now teams can race in both events with minor changes. This is good news. Hopefully the other factories will follow suit. Racing as a whole (outside of redneck dirt modified and circle track stuff) needs growth.

Source: Touring Car Times

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The Red Dragon - Part 2

Progress is slow on the Red Dragon since everybody is busy all the time. Lew is currently working on the suspension. In our search to create a perfect Impreza, I contacted the guys at Whiteline in Australia to see if they would be interested in working with us. Fortunately they were and Whiteline sent us the works. Every bushing, bar, ball joint, bracket, and piece they had for the 2008 STi showed up a week after our email and phone conversation. Thanks to Mike Kojima for setting this up for me; what a cool guy. Mike also set me up with some custom Whiteline sway bars for the [Read the rest of this article...]

Deck Preparation

I really wonder why people don't understand how critical the condition of the sealing surfaces of the deck of a block and the fire face of the cylinder head is to head gasket sealing. Old school engines used paper gaskets so you could get away with some flaws, but modern engines use metal head gaskets which require the block/head is 1)absolutely flat and 2)is free of flaws or defects. As you can imagine, metal doesn't flex and fill defects like a paper gasket can. When I say free of flaws, I mean no scratches, nicks, and dents either. The more cylinder pressure there is (aka boost and horsepower) in an engine, the more critical flatness, surface roughness average, and perfection of t...

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