new car surprise gas saver

[GasSavers_Scott]

Excellent find, I thought that the sands of time had all but eaten those cars up by now. I used to work at Subaru in the 80's when they came out with the turbo version, it set the import scene on its ear, they were great and fast, this also lead the way for the now famous Subaru WRX rallye cars.

The early Subaru's were fragile if strict maintenance was not performed, with the turbo always keep clean oil in there every 3000 miles like your supposed to.

Get a Chiltons or Haynes manual, they recommended at the time that the heads be retorqued every 10,000 miles. Subarus used to be head gasket eaters, miss the retorque schedule and you'll pop a head gasket. If this car was used for autocross or S.C.C.A, the owner probably retorqued after every race. I just don't want you to have a head blow and you loose interest in the car. If you can, contact the previous owner and get as much information as possible.

One of the cute things about the car and I dont know if it works anymore is the talking computer, it used to welcome you in the car, tell you if you left your lights on, anounce high beams and other things. It was a digitally recorded voice, a first for 1984, the voice box is under the dash, it has a switch on it to turn the language from American to Japanese, loads of fun for unsuspecting passengers.

Those rims look like classic Mini Lites, a favorite amount the road racing scene, you have the long wheel studs, also a favorite, check the local laws, it may be a fix it ticket due to the length of the studs. Long wheel studs are stronger and allow for the use of spacers especially when your swapping rims and racing tires.

The Turbo Subarus were top of the line and grabbed a premium price at the dealer. They were usually loaded with all the power features, I dont know how much is left after racing. The first years did not have an intercooler, later models did. With the current stock set up, a turbo usually increases intake temperatures to around 170 degrees, great for economy, with proper maintenance I have seen those early Subaru's easily hit 400,000 miles.

Once again, great find.

[theholycow]

Interesting. Why are the long wheel studs stronger?

[Philip1]

this car came to me from a Subaru tuner. He built this engine to be incredibly reliable at 14psi, it has head studs instead of bolts an O ringed deck and forged pistons. I am confident that this engine will outlast the car especially since I am running a conservative 12psi. I'm only looking for 130-140hp (well within the capability of this engine) My research has not uncovered any factory intercooled EA82t cars in the US.

[OldCorolla]

Definately a wonderful find , I had to go do a little research on this thing as I had never seen one before this thread.Beef, that 2.3T wont see any noticable difference in the amount of lag time with the intercooler up front and the front mount is more efficient because of the amount of air that can travel over it mounted in the front of the car, and the lack of heat from the engine/turbo soaking back into it whent he car isnt moving. I have built 2 2.3Ts so far and I am going to be swapping one into my 81 toyota corolla as soon as I touch back into the states.

[Philip1]

Originally Posted by theholycow

Interesting. Why are the long wheel studs stronger?

Longer wheel studs are made from higher quality steel than the factory studs the ability to use wheel spacers is a plus.


Today the car followed up it's initial 42mpg with a 37 so it was no fluke.

[Project84]

What exactly is "race" about this car... not that it pertains to MPG at all. Just curious where you get "race" out of this.

[GasSavers_BEEF]

old corolla,

sorry I missed your post earlier. I am new to the world of boost. I was under the impression that you had to pressurize the entire tube and because of that, you would have lag since it doesn't really start pressurizing it until you hit the gas.

is the lag not that noticeable or is it not there. my friend plans on putting a hood scoop on his mustang that goes clear to the front of the car. he was going to use a cowl induction add-on but put it backwards toward the intercooler. he couldn't find anything that really fit what he wanted so he is going to use it as an excuse to fabricate one. 36x12x2-2 1/2 most of the cowl style ones are really wide so he didn't really like them and he wants it to come as close to the front of the car as possible.

he estimated that it would take about 6 foot of tubing to reposition the intercooler to the front which is a lot of volume to fill.

all of this is coming from non-experst (as this is his first forced induction vehicle as well)

[Project84]

you aren't neccessarily "filling the volume" of the intercooler and pipes so much so that you are just using them as a direct route to the intake. You are however filling the volume of the intake, which is where the boost pressure reading is taken.

6 foot of tubing would probably equate to like 100rpm later target boost pressure. That's 100, not 1,000.

If it doesn't make sense, then use 1" charge pipes to make up for the extra 6' of routing.

Also worth keeping in mind is the turbo is spinning at (god only knows the exact number... 60,000 rpm?) enough speed to create 3 or 4 times the amount of boost PSI the engine is setup for or can handle. That's what WASTEgates are for.

[GasSavers_BEEF]

so what are the major contributing factors to turbo lag?

he has the smaller turbo which is supposed to spool up faster (and he wants to keep it that way) so I guess the size of the turbo matters but what else?

I have thought about a boosted car at some point and am kind of curious about this as well.

he also pointed out that it would be quite a job to relocate his intercooler since it is mounted right to the turbo and cutting would be required. I think that's right but I haven't looked at that aspect. it is right after the turbo and right before the intake so the entire distance is all of a foot at most.

[theholycow]

Originally Posted by Project84

Also worth keeping in mind is the turbo is spinning at (god only knows the exact number... 60,000 rpm?) enough speed to create 3 or 4 times the amount of boost PSI the engine is setup for or can handle. That's what WASTEgates are for.

Sounds wasteful...energy goes into spinning it up, creating backpressure, and is then discarded out the wastegate.