IT RUNS!!! - My 500whp build - Element motor and Moore Performance Twin Scroll Kit! by dexterous

10 minute(s) of a 312 minute read

Thanks man.

So everybody keeps wondering what I am doing and here's the answer: I am please to say that I have decided to rebuild. The car will go back together exactly as it was but with all new parts.

This is one of those times where getting up after falling down so hard was really tough. The work, time, etc was really not all that bad, my primary issue has been paying for everything twice. If you figure that a rebuild at Element is $6500-7000 and a new motor is well north of $10,000 you have to know that I am out some serious cash. Keep in mind that I also have the turbo rebuild (it was smashed) and all the consumables to deal with as well.

That being said, I would like to extend a very large thank you to the following vendors for offering me some serious help:

Adam @ buddsautoparts.com
Phil @ Element

I can say with 100% certainty that without Adam @ buddsautoparts.com and Phil @ Element I would have parted out the car for sure. Their offers of assistance represented a second chance for this project and I will never forget it. Thanks guys!

In addition, I would also like to thank Ryan @ Moore Performance and Justin @ Comp Turbo for all of their assistance as well. They have also been a major part of my road to recovery.

9-27-2011

The motor came from Dale's (garagedefeat) Forester. It wasn't a secret, I thought everybody knew (especially the locals). He had the motor built late last summer, had Element do the initial startup, put breakin miles on it and had it tuned. I purchased it from him only a few weeks after he had it tuned and in those few weeks he had it to Pittsburgh Raceway Park (drag strip) one time. He told me that it had 3-4 passes in the 11s and some street driving on it and that was it.

The graph in Ryan Moore's post from a few months back was Dale's Forester and the motor that I purchased (the blown up one) running a turbo similar but somewhat smaller than the one I have now.

9-28-2011

I just got an email telling me that my new head casting has arrived. It should be shipping to Element within a day or so and then it begins all over again. Guess the good thing is that once element gets the motor back to me I only need an afternoon to get the car running again.

I haven't ordered anything else yet because it's going to be a month before the head is finished. As soon as I get an eta for the head I will order the rest of the parts and get those to Element ASAP.

In other news, I am buying a car trailer from a friend who used it to pull his STI (race car) to Auto-X events. I have two trucks near by that could easily be borrowed and one of them is owned by a guy who wants to split the cost of the trailer with me.

I am not sure if all the surprise is form the fact that my now blown motor started out as a factory long block out of a wrecked car or that I wasn't the original owner. I am under the impression that most built motors begin by rebuilding a preexisting stock motor (typically blown), is this not true? I know that Element's built motor thread in the vendor for sale section lists prices for rebuilding your stock motor. I also know that of the dozens of turboed Subaru owners that I talk to on a regular basis, only two of them purchased new blocks for their built motors.

As for me not being the original owner, sorry if that wasn't clear. As I pointed out earlier, all the locals that know both Dale and I knew about it so it was very public info. I didn't specifically post it because I didn't think it mattered at the time.

Heres the story and time line to augment the info in the original post: I first started to envision this build in mid 2009 and originally planned it for the winter of 2009/2010. For a number of reasons I decided to hold off and get one more year out of my factory motor which was putting out over 470 to the wheels at the time. In August 2010 I started to draft the original post in this thread using MS Word but I never actually posted it up until nearly the end of October. During that late summer 2010 timeframe I spent tons of time researching fuel systems, talking to Phil and working out every small detail (more info on that process in the original post). I had an official quote form Phil for an Element Pro Comp motor, I was putting the finances together and I started to acquire parts. In late September I was asked by Ryan Moore to bring my STI to an invite only car show that he and Dale were also attending. At some point during the car show Dale told me that he was interested in selling his motor and we started to seriously investigate the possibility. Dale and I compared notes and discovered that the motor that I had Phil quote for me was identical to his in every way except that he had high compression pistons (9.8:1). I was a little apprehensive about the high compression but after a phone call to Phil my concerns were gone. A few days later Dale and I worked out the final details at a Starbucks just prior to a local meet and I had my self an Element Pro Comp motor. Basically, since I knew the motors full history and it was coming from a local guy that I trusted I figured that it was a pretty reasonable way to save both time and money so I went that route.

On the third or fourth pull during the very first tune with the original Evo turbo kit (in April 2011), Phil pointed out that I had a significant amount of steam coming out of the breather system via an Element breather can's filter. We weren't super concerned about it at the time but this symptom continued to happen when the car was run hard (on the dyno) and became dramatically worse just prior to the motor letting go. We will never know for sure but its my theory that the steam was the first symptom that the sleeve was cracked. If this is true it means that the motor was already compromised when I took ownership. In addition to the steam, I also noticed that my overflow bottle would bubble after I shut the car off (think failed head gasket symptom) which is another sign that something was going wrong. Since the car never had any overheating problems or other obvious signs that a leak was present we didn't really look into it much until the failure. In addition to the symptoms, if you look at the picture of the piston below you will notice how clean it looked when I pulled it out. This tells me that it had been steam cleaned over time, not just in the instant that the motor failed and flooded the cylinder with coolant.

Since we know from Phil's research that most of the stock blocks can take a few hundred more WHP than my motor did, I don't think its fair to write off the stock block due to this one failure. I guess the lesson here is that buying a second hand motor regardless of the advertised condition is a pretty significant risk. To that we can add the strong suggestion that new blocks be used for high HP setups even though its been done many many times before without a problem.

9-29-2011

Absolutely!

9-30-2011

I have a very high quality 200F mocal thermostat which works really well. I have all -10 oil lines and hardware which makes the difference between a spun bearing and a well running motor. If you run anything smaller than -10 lines there will be to much oil pressure drop at high RPM. I purchased the mounts, the 24 row Setrab*oil cooler and the special Setrab fittings from B-Line. I purchased the lines, thermostat and the other misc fittings from BAT Inc. The B-Line guys were really nice and offered great customer service but it was pretty obvious that they didn't have anywhere near the knowledge and experience that the people from BAT Inc. had.

10-7-2011

Yeah, I am getting tired of it too especially since its been working perfect for TWO YEARS. Any way, here's the current status:

I may have actually caught a major break. According to Element, the drivers side head (including the valves) may actually be ok! We wont know unit they get it to the machine shop but its possible. Personally, I am giving it 50/50 odds because that's about the best my luck will support these days.

I also got word form my local machine shop that all four rods seem to be ok as well. I had them check the rods for straightness and magnafluxed so I am not sure what else could be done to ensure their integrity. They also checked the crank and said that it was in pretty good shape too. They said that it had 7/10ths of a thousandths of run out. Does anybody have any idea how good or bad that is?

As we all know, the passenger side head was totally destroyed and had to be replaced. I ordered a new head from Buddsautoparts.com and had them drop shop it to Element late last week. Phil emailed me yesterday and told me that he would be sending both the heads in for the required machining early next week and should have some kind of ETA on that part of the project next week.

I am going to wait until Phil has an idea when the heads are going to be back from the shop before I purchase the rest of my parts so I can spread the cost out a little more. As soon as Phil gives me the world I will place my final order with Buddsautoparts.com.

A this point I am honestly not expecting to get the motor back until early November but we will see.

10-10-2011

In other news, Abby has a fascination with my smashed piston.