Anyone out there looked at putting one of these in a Speedster or Spyder ?? The HP to weight ratio looks pretty good and the price (after shopping around) including the wiring harness etc. looks pretty good. A bus box would be needed too or a Mendeola.....Just thinking...........Bruce
Replies sorted oldest to newest
That looks like a nice engine.
I think the experient with VW 4 cylinders shows that the engine sits pretty high in the compartment but when you look at that and then compare it to the boxer style engine, vw, p, subie which sit low very much like the original 356 you start to think of pendulum weight.
I know also that the tranny and the axle geometry is not easy to maneuvre and the CV joints take quite a beating and become noisy.
Hence the sudden subie surge in the replica business. 
Ray
Acme VW in New Cumberland PA is designing a chassis to accept a Chevy Cobalt motor....they had it on display at Carlisle.
Obviously Henry (IM) built quite a few straight 4 cars including my naturally aspirated version and some 1.8T versions and he has abandoned these for boxer engines. I own a straight 4 but I really think boxer is the way to go.
Make a nice setup in an MG replica. Or an MG Midget. Or an MGA. Or an Atom. Or a--dare I say?--Fiero or MR2...or a Lotus...
I'd like to know what the dimensions are, looks to tall for a speedster. Unless you put a big pro-street scoop on the lid.
Sometime ago I nearly built anew IM with the audi turbo... as IM could get new crate engines
As that ttme a/c engines and parts were getting harder to get serviced north of the 49th parallel.
I instead bought a used IM 2110cc and kept it for 5 years
the market then changed and subie started to become more readily available...
Additional : I now have a subie 2.5L which I think is a great engine, I did not get a turbo for the On/Off effect. Like with every new build, I am now learning the nuances of having a water boxer in a 356. Lots of clamps, lots of coolant lines and rads. It is much more turn the key and go, and I love the torque curve.
IM has retrofitted Audi's for subie's for some clients as far as I know.
FYI, I believe but I could be wrong that crate Audi engines are no longer available
Way back in 2009, when I had Henry restore my IM, he let me drive one of his new Audi turbo powered cars, which put out around 175 hp. When I got back I as him why he wasn't installing Subie engines. He said no one had asked him to install one.
How times have changed. 
$9K USD is not too expensive for what you get new, but when you compare to a Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) WRX turbo for $1800 fully trimmed!
hp to $ ratio clearly puts the used subaru in the lead IMO
check out these motors:
https://www.jdmracingmotors.co...5-motors-impreza-wrx
Regarding the WRX motors: Holy Freaking Cow.
For $1850 you'd get the worlds rattiest 1600 Type 1. Or 300 hp in factory tune.
I may need to rethink my love affair with air-cooled stuff.
$1850 sounds great but you need to pencil in the add on's.. trans adapter, split or get a custom wiring harness, ECM, forward radiators, hard lines and quite a bit of misc.....I know Ed will chime in here
Alan, I think its still cheaper...
crhemi (Bill) poboiinhawaii posted:Alan, I think its still cheaper...
Than a 300 hp ACVW? Yeah, by a factor of 10x.
Because it's possible (albeit a lot more expensive) to build a 200 hp Type 1 (or 4), I don't think I would personally do everything Al outlined for a 175 hp 2.5 L Subaru motor (even though I completely understand why a lot of people would). But 300 RELIABLE hp is unobtainable with an air-cooled flat 4 for any amount of money, let alone for $5000 or less.
It's a brave new world.
I too am interested in one of these 300 hp Subaru engines. How do you tell which one is a 300 hp one. Somewhere on that site it mentioned that an extra $150 would get you the wiring harness and CCU. Thats way better than the extra $2500 for the one for the GM 4cyl crate eng !........Bruce
FYI.all platforms do have some issues Subie motors do have headgasket issues and some oil consumption issues. Jdm motors have idled a lot in traffic ... how can you tell what is using oil or which one has a deffective H gasket?
N/A can give 175hp ... turbo is even more HP
rads, piping etc
I still think that going forward the subie boxter is a natural fit
Seems to be the best bang for the buck these days!
$5k to do a sloppy home-brew N/A install all told. Stroud did his much cheaper originally but he's like that.
Oil pan: $350-ish (Stroud skipped this)
KEP adapter and starter, flywheel and clutch ± $1,000
Wiring $750 (Stroud skipped in favor of a megajolt rig @$350)
Engine (with head gaskets done) $2,000 (your mileage may vary, but probably won't much)
Exhaust, rad, pipes, fuel pump and sundries, $1,000 or so.
Your labor=??
That is for 135-185 hp, give or take, stock EFI.
Turbo is gonna be more. Turbo=engineering, because the amounts of heat to be gotten rid of increase by 2 or 3x. I've not yet seen it done in a way I know is legit reliable under U.S. road conditions. Whoever has one set up like that running cool and neat, you'd need to copy that cooling system carefully at whatever the cost.
Again, I would admonish those thinking 300 hp is better than 150 hp to consider the platform, from the transaxle to the front suspension, tires and chassis, before proceeding. Horsepower is a bit like cheap red wine: a little is good, sometimes a lot can be better, and too much results in unanticipated headaches.
Here's my story regarding big Subi HP:
My latest dyno, done about one year ago, shows 353 HP, 344 ft/lbs of torque. The power is awesome. However, there are BIG downsides. I'm still not finished engineering an all-weather/all-temp cooling system. In Sept, I took the car to Paso Robles, a local spot with reliably high air temps. At 3100 rpm, coolant temps got as high as 215F. That's not a deal breaker, but I'd rather have a reliable 200F, irrespective of engine load or ambient air temp.
From my experience with the SAS Subi turbo engine these last 3 years, there are no experts regarding cooling. Owners have to figure out how to make it work. I've done more mods than I can count, including but not limited to, changing rad size, location, shroud, ducting, fans; installing new air/water intercooler, adding Davies Craig electric water pump as booster, replacing rear deck lid with mesh, using only water with surfactant as coolant, adding 2 front mounted heat exchangers as i/c rads, and the list goes on and on.
It's like the old joke about fiberglass guys around boatyards: there are lots of old guys, and there are lots of fiberglass guys. There just aren't lots of old, fiberglass guys.
There are lots of experts on our platforms with a/c engines, and there are lots of Subi turbo experts. However, there aren't any experts with 356 replica knowledge with big Subi HP. Anyone who attempts what I'm doing has to prepare for a long haul.
There are 3 fundamental areas to be addressed in cooling Subi turbos in our cars: rad size, coolant flow speed, and the amount of air through the rad. Sounds simple to analyze and diagnose, eh? However, you quickly realize that our platforms don't have the space available on other cars. You need some knowledge in a wide variety of fields: mechanics, fluid and thermal dynamics, air movement (laminar vs. turbulent), and the list goes on . . .
I like to think of myself as fairly smart, but I've continually felt inadequate in my quest to solve my overheating problems. I've actually made huge progress, but I'm not quite where I want to be. I don't want to sound discouraging to others, but I'm not sure I would have gone down this road if I knew how twisty it would be. Still in all, trying to figure things out keeps my old brain working. YMMV, as usual.
Actually Jim, I still feel the big issue is rad location when cooling a Subie. All the builders who place it in the front seem to have an easy time of cooling their cars.
I personally like to look at those who have success in a venture for my example so In my opinion the rad(s) have to be in front.
In fact you need to have TWO and place one behind each headlight. (I have this)
You also need to keep the water pump flowing by adding an auxiliary pump, otherwise you cannot be idling the car in traffic without overheating it. Add one fan per rad and You could use a scoop to force more air as well into the rads much more easily if you have them in the front of the car and finally use Evans cooling to prevent hot spots and overheating as it boils at 300 degrees F and does not freeze at minus 40F... when you turn off the car the engine temp will not boil away the coolant in the heads.
This is the summary of my research when I built my car.
