Driving Sports

It has been a while since I updated my project Dreadnought, and there is a good reason for that: It didn’t run so well. It started when the little 1.8-liter began to lose power. Then there was the constant smell of coolant followed by an over-flowing, over-flow bottle. The head gaskets were certainly shot. Instead of replacing the gaskets and doing a big, expensive service to the little mill, I came to the conclusion that upward and onward was the way to go. So I decided to build a 2.5-liter turbo block.

I started with the EJ255 from our Legacy GT project car since that car had received a fresh short block with new Cosworth pistons. This old “255” block had few miles and the cylinder walls looked good despite a cracked number four piston. The plan was to do a quick refresh, drop in some forged pistons and then use the EJ20G heads with our Delta Camshaft, reground cams.

This, can be easily done, however, there are a few quirks of this build. First, you need to have all the external parts for both engines like coolant crossover tubes, accessory brackets and even the external coolant tank. You will want to use EJ255/7 head gaskets and timing belt. You will need the 20G cam sprockets, and the crank trigger for the ECU you plan to use, this will probably be a low-density trigger like the one that came off our 1.8. Interestingly enough, the 1.8-liter OBD1 ECU will happily run the DOHC 2.5-liter engine. By happily I mean that the engine will start and idle, beyond that you need engine management.

Yet, I never really got a chance to run this engine. A mix-up with rails and injectors caused the rails to leak massive amounts of fuel past the injectors resulting in all that fuel being pumped through the engine and coming out the tailpipe. This I believe, washed the rings out as the engine showed very low compression all the way around once the car did run, that and lots of oil smoke and a very poor idle.

With the diagnosis that this engine was now a worthless lump of parts, I decided that a quick fix to get the car back on the road was in order. A quick walk around the local pick’n’pull resulted in finding lots of engines that showed signs of being open to the rain and elements of the northwest, not a good choice.

In the end, I turned to John Lemly of John’s Subaru in Laural, Ore. John has helped me out in the past and keeps a huge inventory of good, used parts, including entire engines. It just so happened that he had a good 2.2-liter turbo engine, from a Legacy Turbo for a killer price. The EJ22“T” has long been considered one of the strongest engines Subaru has ever made, not only this, but it was from a 1993 Legacy, the same year as my Impreza, so all of the emissions and cam and crank triggers would be a direct plug-in. To make things even easier, I swapped over my original engine harness and throttle body from my 1.8 so that all the sensors, idle controls and other wiring would plug into my chassis harness. You do have to take the intake manifold off to perform this swap, as well as block-off the idle-control valve, but this is easily performed with some flat aluminum stock and some Fuji-Bond.

Beyond this, I did nothing else to the engine. I will probably end up replacing the timing belt and water pump come winter. The engine dropped perfectly into place and fired up on the first go. A faulty coil pack caused a misfire initially, but that was easily replaced with my old unit from the 1.8-liter.

About this same time, I performed the final modifications needed to install the HTAutos.co.uk 22B widebody kit. I did have some help from Dustin Harris of PDXTuning fame, who cut-out and re-welded the rear fenders to make room for our monster 18x8-inch Motegi SP10 wheels rapped in Yokohama S.Drive 245/40-18 tires. I say monstrous because the Yokohama tires are on the large side with very tall broad shoulders giving us clearance issues. This, despite the fact that we have an extra 3-inches of fender on both sides of the car!

For the time being the car is back on the road and driving about. I am waiting on a tune and I need to consider a standalone so that I can add more power once everything is figured out. I am thinking either an 18G or perhaps a Garrett GT2860RS, so compete directly with Ryan’s own Disco Potato, yet I will have more rubber and displacement sitting behind mine.