The last drive of the season (Probably) FiberFab Subaru Speedster

Nice

Excellent! 

Jimmy, that sure sounds like a pretty good way to spend the day! Thanks for sharing that cool pic. Glad you're enjoying your re-powered Speedster!  @Jimmy V.

Man, am I enjoying it. I can't express how much of a difference the Subaru conversion has made to my Speedster. The work Special Edition did is amazing. Carey really is an expert at converting Speedsters and Spyder's to Subaru power. I had Carey do a lot of other work to the my car while he had it as well, these small changes along with the Subaru power all have added together to make my car a 10 when it started at a 6. The  car feels more solid and connected to the ground. I think the Kafer bar set up and the additional weight made a big difference. I had the rear drum brakes converted to disc brakes. This has given the car the stopping power it needs. I told Carey I wanted to make sure the car never suffered from the "butt sag" that is common to CMC and Fiberfab cars and he designed a very efficient answer to this problem. The specially designed Rancho transaxle combined with a Vintage Speed shifter has made a huge difference from what I had also. The gearing they have come up with is perfectly matched to the Subaru power band. This aspect gives a refined driving experience that has lifted the Speedster out of the kit car feel it had into a purpose built well sorted driving experience. I also had them install a heater which allows driving to work on many additional spring and fall days when the temps are near freezing in the morning and in the high 50's and low 60's in the afternoon. This aspect alone has given me at least a few more weeks each year to drive my Speedster.  I will be driving my Speedster every chance I get. It is amazing how many Speedster's I have seen for sale with hardly any miles on them. To me this means the car isn't fun or possible safe to drive. I look forward to racking up many thousands of miles on my Speedster. This is why I invested the time, money and patience in having Special Edition transform my Speedster from a kit car into a refined purpose built sports car, or a very close resemblance to me anyway....LOL. Thanks for listening.

Glad you got your car in time to have some nice drive time before winter!

That is a great looking widebody. Hope to go Subi someday.

Brian

What a good looking example of a CMC. I want to ask how much you have into it total now but don't want to be rude either 

Great color combo too.

Short answer, approx. $25,000.00 Read below for the long answer if you have time LOL..

I was looking for a Speedster to replace a CMC wide body I had some years ago. I actually owned a red CMC that was a factory built cabriolet with roll up windows and a water cooled Mazda RX-7 Rotary engine. I didn't learn much about this hobby when I had the car and didn't realize it was rare.  Fast forward to August of last year. I saw a Ebay listing for this Fiberfab looking just as it does now but with a 2276 engine. The car had been built by a business in Florida that was going to build and sell replica cars of all types. The owner of the business sold the business and kept this car in a bubble in a heated warehouse for 10 years. It had less than 100 miles on it. When I saw it listed I called the guy and asked him what it would take to buy it now and end the auction. He said $16,000.00 and I bought it. Once I had the car it had a few things to be sorted since it was not driven since it was built. The good thing is the car was built by a professional and everything was done very well. The only issue I had was a loud valve train that I couldn't get to quiet down. Upon in depth investigation I found that the cam had several lopes that were worn (wiped out) almost 1/4". The engine might not have been broke in correctly with the right oil or the cam was a bad casting from China. I pulled the engine and tore it down to find it was a first class build with expensive parts and really great heads. I spent $1200.00 on parts to completely rebuild the engine using a new cam, pistons and cylinders ,bearings and a Raby DTM fan shroud. Along the way I started looking into having Special Edition do the conversion. Once I decided to convert to Suby power I listed the engine and sold it for $6500.00. The price Special edition quoted to do the conversion is $8500.00 for the engine and parts needed plus $2500.00 to do the work. If you want a Special built transaxle that will handle the power and geared for the Suby power band that will be an extra $4500.00 (highly recommended and what I would up doing). Special Edition also charged an additional $1500.00 because the car was not a Beck and would need extra engineering to convert. So, where does this leave us. $16,000.00 -$5300.00(engine less rebuild cost)=$10700.00 +$12500.00=$23,200.00 + heat, rear disc brakes and a few little things I had them do, Grand total= $25,000.00 in the car. I feel like it is under the current market value for this type of car, which means I could probably get most of my money out if I had to. Sorry for the long answer. I was figuring this out as I went also. Please don't show this to my wife LOL.. PS..  I have no intention of selling the car, so it is worth everything I have in it to me. I love it!!!

You are correct about the price/value.

Carey's done you a solid. The work is not cheap but it is considerable work to do, and for what he & his crew did, it's not at all unreasonable. 

I say this as a guy who did the conversion personally in a rather less common donor. 

You did very well to get the car you got for the price you paid. Congrats!

Now drive the bag off it.

Jimmy V. posted:

Man, am I enjoying it. I can't express how much of a difference the Subaru conversion has made to my Speedster. The work Special Edition did is amazing. Carey really is an expert at converting Speedsters and Spyder's to Subaru power. I had Carey do a lot of other work to the my car while he had it as well, these small changes along with the Subaru power all have added together to make my car a 10 when it started at a 6. The  car feels more solid and connected to the ground. I think the Kafer bar set up and the additional weight made a big difference. I had the rear drum brakes converted to disc brakes. This has given the car the stopping power it needs. I told Carey I wanted to make sure the car never suffered from the "butt sag" that is common to CMC and Fiberfab cars and he designed a very efficient answer to this problem. The specially designed Rancho transaxle combined with a Vintage Speed shifter has made a huge difference from what I had also. The gearing they have come up with is perfectly matched to the Subaru power band. This aspect gives a refined driving experience that has lifted the Speedster out of the kit car feel it had into a purpose built well sorted driving experience. I also had them install a heater which allows driving to work on many additional spring and fall days when the temps are near freezing in the morning and in the high 50's and low 60's in the afternoon. This aspect alone has given me at least a few more weeks each year to drive my Speedster.  I will be driving my Speedster every chance I get. It is amazing how many Speedster's I have seen for sale with hardly any miles on them. To me this means the car isn't fun or possible safe to drive. I look forward to racking up many thousands of miles on my Speedster. This is why I invested the time, money and patience in having Special Edition transform my Speedster from a kit car into a refined purpose built sports car, or a very close resemblance to me anyway....LOL. Thanks for listening.

 

@Jimmy V.

I'm not convinced you like the conversion. Again, this time with a little more enthusiasm.

edsnova posted:

You are correct about the price/value.

Carey's done you a solid. The work is not cheap but it is considerable work to do, and for what he & his crew did, it's not at all unreasonable. 

I say this as a guy who did the conversion personally in a rather less common donor. 

You did very well to get the car you got for the price you paid. Congrats!

Now drive the bag off it.

X 2 what Ed just said. Getting a pro conversion like Carey and the crew does is a HUGE VALUE at that price. I'm surprised at the low price and you know they do it right and stand behind their work. 

Your final numbers might be just a bit off....I keep getting  $27,700 but I won't tell your Wife... and it's still a great car for the price. Maybe I got the numbers wrong ?

You are correct David the total is $27,700.00. I was using my phone calculator and messed the addition up. I thought it sounded a low as well.  My bad. Good thing I did it the long way as well.

In defense of my math, I did say approx. on the amount, LOL.

It sounds like you are a happy customer to me, so it really doesn't matter how much it cost. Enjoy the ride......

I resemble that remark Danny!

Jimmy, What size wheels do you have? Do you know the backspacing of them? Where did you get them EMPI?

Thanks

Tom

The wheels are replica Fuchs. 15 X 7 fronts 15 X 8 rear. I am not sure of the back spacing. I am running 205/50/50 tires on the front and 225/50/15 on the rear. Spacers were needed both front and rear to fill the flared wheel wells. I could actually run the rears on the front with no spacers and run a 9 or 10 inch wheel on the rear with a wider tire and do away with the spacers. The wheels and tires came on the car so this is what I have for the time being. I did hand paint the Porsche crests on the center caps myself.