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Somewhat New Subaru Owner, 2002 Forester


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Hey guys, I have been lurking around forums for quite a while and I have been a member of the Subaru Forester forums, but now that I am beginning to do an engine build, I figured joining here would be more beneficial. 

I picked up my Forester in Janurary this year after my beloved Mini Cooper got smashed by a box truck (No injuries, car totaled due to cost/value). Chassis has about 240k miles, engine has ~120k. I drove it home from Seattle after visiting family for the holidays, then instantly tore the engine out to do the head gaskets. 4k miles in and no problems

I also, pretty early on into owning it, ripped off the front bumper and began mocking up a quick sheet metal bumper. It still has a lot of work that needs to be done, and I need to finalize my hard mounts, but I will be picking up a new MIG here soon and plan on ripping apart the front sub-frame and suspension too. It will be getting a sub-frame spacer and I will be running some ~8" travel Fox's on a custom double wishbone setup I have in the works. It's in CAD right now, but I am hoping to get the sheet metal cut so I can start mocking it up soon. I just graduated and have started a full time engineering job so time is a little bit constrained. 

On the side, I just picked up two SB's, a ej18 and an ej22. The 18 I have no idea what I want to do with, and the 22 I have some plans, as I do with the EJ251 in the forester:

For the 22, I am looking at cutting open the deck and press fitting some custom inserts to "close" the block. They will be lattice filled, so it will be more of a uniform-semiclosed deck. This should give me the support I want for high boost while also achieving being more thermally efficient than a close deck. Block still needs to be cleaned, but I am hoping to order the pistons here soon, measure up the deck, then begin working on the inserts and running thermal simulations on them to see the final strength and thickness. After that, turbo and standalone then plop it in a Mini Cooper with a blown engine. I have always wanted a turbo all wheel drive, +250 hp toaster ;)

The 25 I want to do the same thing to the deck, but I want to do more engineering and redesign to it once the time comes along. No further plans decided.

 

I look forwards to being around here, I will make a build thread here shortly and throw more pictures of the forester on there.

 

-Tanner

 

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1 hour ago, carfreak85 said:

Don't waste you time closing the deck of an N/A engine and adding boost.  Your time and money is better spent buying a factory-turbo'd Forester...

Yep, I am aware, thanks for looking out though!

-Tanner

Edited by TanStin
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3 hours ago, el_freddo said:

Welcome to the forum! 

Interesting ideas and project goals you have there! I’ll be keen to read where you go with this. 

Boosted EJ in a mini sounds.. er.. different! 

Cheers 

Bennie

Well, Mini is one route. Track width/wheelbase is nearly identical to a forester, and you could beat the hell out of it.

 

As far as the deck inserts, this might give a better idea. I plan running a thermal analysis on them first, but also adding support bridges for the HG and head. I'm on the fence if I want to build my 2.5 or not. I have the 2.2 already cleaned, split, and ready for machining, but building a 251 would be quite fun. 

 

I'll make a separate thread soon.986756944_TopMesh.thumb.PNG.b718e114f4afd99cf0d4a386fcd13d53.PNG

 

-Tanner

Edited by TanStin
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16 minutes ago, carfreak85 said:

Yeah, there are companies out there that already do this.  If all you want is a fun side project, knock yourself out, this seems like a fun thing to try if you have the means.

If you want to actually make power or have a reliable engine to beat on, start with a factory turbocharged engine.

@GeneralDisorder

Sorry, I may have been a bit a bit curt;

-A 1.8 and a 2.2 got dropped in my lap. Whenever something like that happens to me... I tend to **** around and, usually, perform destructive testing at some point :ph34r:.

-If I just so happen to come across a 257 block, i might build that instead. I still need to get the block tested, cleaned, and prepped, so I still have a ways to go before I start buying parts. 

By no means am I an expert, however like you said, I have the means to machine the block (in house, almost free) and have means and funds to drop almost $2k on these inserts, purely because one of my professors and I have been experimenting with this idea for a while but haven't done any execution.

-Tanner

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