Went down to Outfront Motor Sports in Buena Park Calif. today to make a deposit on a rebuilt Subaru EJ25 engine for my next car. When I was there last time I got the nickel tour by the owner John Rykowski I suggested to him that a little photo shoot and comments about his operations may be of interest to us over here on SOC. This time John wasn't there but his right hand guy, Jeremy was and allowed me to go into the shop and take some photos. Additionally, you can go to their website outfrontmotorsports.com for more details about the shop and the owner.
This facility is large, modern and well lighted. You can tell that from the photos. Their bread and butter, so to speak, is Subaru engines but they also do repairs on regular Subaru cars at one end of the shop and serious Dune Buggies (with Subaru engines in them of course) at the other. The center part of the shop layout is for Subaru engine tear-downs, parts cleaning and machining and assembly once again. They work on both 4 cyl and 6 cyl engines and put them together as stock versions or highly modified ones. Some of these are putting out over 600 HP when they finish. Some even more. Ron, their engine guy, has been doing Subies for about 13 years and has over 40 years of technical automotive experience. Talk to him and within 5 minutes you will be impressed !
This is the shop that Greg Leach, Vintage Motorcars, sends all his Subaru business to and is a short drive away from his shop in Hawaiian Gardens. I really feel like between the two shops we are well covered. Additionally I live only 30 min away from either ! That's a real plus for me !!
When needed, they employ the use of a chassis dynamometer to do the final checks and tuning before a vehicle leaves the shop. This is really nice because it tells you what amount of horsepower you are actually getting to use on the ground. This is a realistic and valuable number to know.
I'd like to comment that the teardown area; is separate from component cleaning area; which is separate from the machining area; which is separate from the assembly area for obvious reasons. The entire shop is really clean when you look around and that's a real plus to me considering some of the other shops I have visited.
I realize that many of you out there would like to build your own car from the ground up. With these cars that could be a formidable task. I have done it a few times and know what I'd be getting into. Because of this, my last Speedster was a Roller (minus eng. and trans.) and my next will be also (Spyder this time). I put together the engine and trans in the last Speedster but this time I will not. Why ? I'm not familiar with Subaru's that much. Maybe next time. But there will still be plenty for me to do on this next car and I'm looking forward to that. My point is this. If you've been dreaming about putting one of these cars together but are unsure about whether you have the skills necessary to do it, don't worry, just do it. Greg and John both are the kind of guys who will be in your corner to help you thru the rough spots. Both have told me that they wished more of us would attempt to do a "roller build" because it's a break from the routine of what they do every day and a challenge for them to help you while learning something new ! It's exciting to even think about the possibility of doing so ! So just "DO IT !!.......Bruce
