Fanboi Tears are Best Tears

"Zachary Oberle" (zacharyoberle) 08/02/2016 at 12:25 • Filed to: MotoIQ, Nerd Rage, Fanboi Tears

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There is some great conversation going on about !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Mike Kojima, grand warlock of import horsepower, unloads a couple decades worth of motorsport experience all over five venerated engines. He presents many excellent points about the numerous mechanical weaknesses that make these motors far more delicate than their rabid Fast N Furious fanbase would care to admit.

Behold the mighty RB26 in all its glory! Bow down you pathetic mortals!

It’s a fun piece that’s lead to some fantastic discussion. Be sure to check it out!

AfromanGTO > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 12:39

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That was a good article. I read it before falling asleep last night. It is interesting how the N1 version of the RB26 is the one to have, and they didn’t make too many of those to begin with.

Sweet Trav > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 12:46

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X engine breaks 1000 RPM past its factory redline... What a shock!

Seriously, no need to rev anything except a rotary above 7000.

JawzX2, Boost Addict. 1.6t, 2.7tt, 4.2t > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 12:58

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/remembers his 400+k mile Alfa 3.0l 12V Buso V6 (S-variant), points at VQ fanbois and laughs.

God I miss that engine. It was just so damn GOOD.

then if you add a turbo...

then if you go to town on it...

My bird IS the word > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 13:03

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I concur. Low end power is best power because -unsurprisingly- most of us never race our cars professionally.

Nonster > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 13:17

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The first bit on the 4AGE hurt a bit, but that’s because its true. Toyota strung that little motor about as far as it could go in its 20 valve Blacktop and the 16 valve supercharged versions without sacrificing reliability.

They’re all great engines, but the issues that they point out are probably a lot of the reason why racers/drifters like to just swap in an LS. Yeah, the others character and keep the JDM-ness, but racing is expensive and an LS will make tons of power without missing a beat or worrying about oiling, cooling, or structural issues and do it for less money.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 13:18

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Nissan seems to have issues with their oil pumps.

Tekamul > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 13:32

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Yeah, that was kind of an odd complaint. Stock (precisely chosen to match cost/reliability targets) parts failing beyond the rev limiter. This is not surprising.

Needmoargarage > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 13:43

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The whole time reading the article I was thinking “the EJ257 really should be on this list” as I’m currently rebuilding one in my garage, and have observed some questionable engineering decisions.

And then I reached page 8 as was completely satisfied.

I hoon, therefore I am > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 14:18

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Really surprised this included nothing domestic. I’d have loved to read about the LS weak spots (oil pump and that effing barbell restrictor come to mind, aside from that whole ‘pushrod’ debacle).

Zachary Oberle > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 14:27

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“Seriously, no need to rev anything except a rotary above 7000.”

Say that to import drag racers, who regularly spin their production-based engines up to and beyond 10,000 RPM in order to make “big power”.

Zachary Oberle > I hoon, therefore I am 08/02/2016 at 14:43

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A lot of Mike Kojima’s experience is with Japanese engines. He has experience with Domestic engines too, but mostly in the high-end realm of Formula D. He’s only really worked with top-shelf V8 engines that have had all their major durability issues sorted out by the after-market. Quite simply, he’s not seen that many failures on those platforms.

And as for pushrods being a “debacle”, you’ll have to defend that idea in the face of all the motorsport teams who run cars in which only a pushrod V8 engine will fit. DOHC is cool, but it makes V8 engines HUGE, introducing numerous packaging issues. Diminutive cars like the ever-popular Nissan S chassis or Mazda Miata are simply too small to fit any kind of overhead-cam V8.

Take for example Matt Powers’s LS7-powered S14:

The LS motor barely fits. Look how close the headers are to the frame rails. Even going down to a V6 platform doesn’t leave enough room for overhead cams, the engine will simply be too tall. Only a four-cylinder DOHC engine will fit in there, and then it will need tons of boost to make enough grunt to compete with the big LS. This means that four-banger is going to blow up and fail long before the V8 has issues.

For what its worth, neither Mike nor I think domestic V8s are automatically superior in every situation. Indeed, in the comments Mike himself called out the Ford 5.0 Windsor as being a real turd of an engine.

Zachary Oberle > Needmoargarage 08/02/2016 at 14:49

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Yep, he saved the best for last. Amazing that tuners are able to push up to 1000 horsepower out of that engine despite its many flaws.

My favorite idea for improving the EJ257 is to de-stroke it by stealing the crankshaft from an EJ205. This results in a short stroke, big-bore boxer engine with 2.34 liters of displacement.

The stroke reduction vastly improves the rod-to-stroke ratio, making the engine far happier to live at high revs and heavy boost. These hybrid engines will rip past 8000 RPM without a care in the world:

I want one :D

RallyWrench > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 14:50

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I’d love to see and contribute to something like this for European engines too. Love Mike’s work, all the way back to Sport Compact Car. I’ve messed with the 4AG and SR20 a bit, they do require some work to do anything really cool.

RallyWrench > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 14:52

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But VTAK yo!

RallyWrench > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 14:54

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Good points, all. And I love the 5.0, but like the engines in the article, it requires some work to do anything really cool because it’s just a mass-produced lump, with all the attendant corners cut.

Needmoargarage > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 14:58

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That’s a pretty awesome idea. Not sure I’d want it for a daily...but it would be a fun project to piece together with leftover parts. Now that I’m thinking about it, I do have spare EJ257 case halves laying around...

Watching that video I start cringing around 7k rpm and expect catastrophic failure!

CobraJoe > I hoon, therefore I am 08/02/2016 at 15:04

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I was really expecting the 2V 4.6 Ford to be on there. The amount of work to power gained ratio is horribly skewed for a modern V8.

Sweet Trav > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 15:09

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“big power” out of an imported engine so like 400 hp?

I hoon, therefore I am > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 15:11

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The sarcastic font must have been kinja’d out. I’m generally an “LS-everything!” guy, given the packaging issues of more “modern” configurations. And having had worked on my fair share of engines, both domestic and foreign, has solidified my opinion that it is indeed a great platform from both a maintenance and performance standpoint.

As an aside, I was under the impression that the VQ was universally hated (I loved mine, with the understanding that NA power was expensive to come by). Maybe I should venture outside of Jalopnik every once in awhile.

And how can you hate on the Windsor? It was literally designed back when the ‘blue’ in blueprint actually meant something, and is essentially no different than the General’s Gen I small block. Its not its fault that it was outclassed nearly two-decades before it was finally retired.

Zachary Oberle > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 15:16

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Yea, exactly, hence the ironic quotation marks :P

Zachary Oberle > I hoon, therefore I am 08/02/2016 at 15:20

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“Its not its fault that it was outclassed nearly two-decades before it was finally retired.”

I mean, that’s kinda it’s flaw, no? Ford should have updated and/or replaced the Windsor platform far earlier than they did. If an OEM builds a car in the late 80's and early 90's then that car should be compared to its contemporaries, even if the engine platform is from decades in the past.

That said, the Saleen S7 made 700+ reliable horsepower with a Windsor-based engine. As Kojima said: enough money will make anything go fast.

Sweet Trav > CobraJoe 08/02/2016 at 16:02

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Durable as hell though, if you can keep the intake from leaking.

Sweet Trav > I hoon, therefore I am 08/02/2016 at 16:03

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The key problem with the Windsor block is how weak the actual block is. Pretty common to break the block after 450hp.

CobraJoe > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 16:07

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True that. Well, other than the blowing out spark plugs and leaky valve seals that the early 2V engines had... and the tensioner pulley bearing that loved to fail.

I’ve experienced every one of those problems, but to be fair, every time it broke down it still got me home.

Sweet Trav > Zachary Oberle 08/02/2016 at 16:10

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The thought that de-stroking an engine would decrease ring land failure, is only half true. While this would slow down piston speed, i don’t think it would actually fix the root cause of the failure. The better option is open up the ring gap. Most of the time when a ring land fails its because the ring gap is too tight and it causes the ring to cantilever up and crack the piston. If it was wrist pin failure de-stroking the engine would have a greater benefit.

Sweet Trav > CobraJoe 08/02/2016 at 16:12

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My biggest issue is “what could have been” with a domestic SOHC V8. They were suck with a small bore, poorly breathing engine because Lincoln had to make a front wheel drive Continental which demanded a smaller bore spacing, and therefore a smaller bore than the outgoing engine.

CobraJoe > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 16:24

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Don’t forget that they wanted a V10 using the same bore spacing, they just had to make it a so called “Modular” setup and then proced to change minor but important details nearly every single year and build it in two different plants with different designs.

That’s why I gave up on my idea to put 4v heads on my Thunderbird. I’d need a timing cover from a specific year of Explorer or something to fit the 4v heads and have the dowel pin in the correct location, and same with tensioners and who knows if the Mark VIII intake would fit right and then there’s the joy of wiring up a custom RPM window switch to get the intake manifold runner controls working or you wouldn’t have much for low end torque.

I hoon, therefore I am > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 17:50

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But, but... Mexican castings! (I completely forgot about how weak the block is.)

Zachary Oberle > Sweet Trav 08/02/2016 at 18:42

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There’s more to it than the ring-lands, and they mostly fail for reasons Mike explained in the article . A big bore makes it hard to get good emissions with the EJ257 so Subaru engineers gave it an incredibly short top ring-land:

This issue is exacerbated by the fact that the pistons are very brittle due to extremely high silicon content. The stock pistons are just garbage. De-stroking will help them survive, but they are still the weakest link in the engine by their own failing. There’s just nothing good about them from a performance standpoint.

The main thing that makes de-stroking an EJ257 so good is the vastly improved rod-to-stroke ratio . The ideal rod-to-stroke ratio is 1:1.75 , and this fact is true regardless of engine platform. This immutable aspect of engine performance is rooted in basic geometry and you simply cannot engineer your way around it in a highly stressed engine.

Khiem Dinh gets into the nitty-gritty of why this is true in his own highly informative MotoIQ article .

The EJ257 has a rod-to-stroke ratio of 1:1.66. By going to an EJ205 crank you lose 4mm of stroke. You are then free to use a combination of a longer rod and/or a piston with a lower wrist pin to make up the difference. This moves the needle in the correct direction and you can get a rod/stroke ratio anywhere from 1:1.80 to 1:1.76, the latter of which is basically perfect .

This idealized geometry just makes the EJ257 a happy engine . It revs more freely, tolerates more cylinder pressure, and is just more robust overall. You can also take the opportunity to vastly improve the pistons. A lowered wrist pin and taller top ring-land make huge strides towards correcting the problems with the OEM pistons.

The 2.34 liter EJ257 is just a superior platform compared to its ‘stroker’ brethren, despite the reduced displacement. It may seem crazy to make an engine smaller to get more power, but that’s exactly what the EJ257 needs.

Sadly, the bone-headed tuner mentality of “ more is always better ” generally gets in the way of this truth. Very few tuners have capitalized on this great configuration compared to those who choose to up displacement instead. Word is slowly getting around though, so like it or not you will definitely be seeing more of this manic little engine in the future.