SUBARU EJ20 / EJ25 - What makes them GREAT? ICONIC ENGINES #13

What's up with the engine bosses today? It's time for the first boxer engine in

iconic

engines

and as you may have guessed, we're starting with Subaru's flagship

engines

, the

ej20

and

ej25

engines. Unfortunately, we're going to have to start this video off with a little bit. of bad news and the bad news is that the

ej20

engine was finished just a few months ago in 2020

subaru

ended production of the ej20 engine and wants a better car to bid for the ej20 than the car that made it famous Of course, the impreza and the appropriately named

subaru

impreza wrx sti ej20 final edition yes that's the full official name of the car it was the last car to have an ej20 and no you can't buy a new one anymore it was only available in Japan so yeah . the ej20 is gone bye bye finite let's have a moment of silence for the ej20 wait wait wait a moment of silence would mean that the ej is dead we couldn't be more wrong the ej is definitely not dead it's still amazing and it's still very popular because it's been around for over 30 years on virtually every Subaru made during that time and defined some truly amazing vehicles.

Plus it has a dedicated base of enthusiasts who work hard every day to find new and better ways to replace head gaskets, yes cliches and low balls apart from ej20 and 25 engines they are amazing and as you will see in this video, are more than deserving of their

iconic

status, although it was impreza that made the EJ engine famous. It is not the first car to have it because the ej engine family started along with the legacy in 1989. Subaru introduced the first generation of the legacy and along with it the ej engine family which was designed to replace the ea engine family now. .

The EA engines weren't bad, but by the late 80s they were definitely old; They were introduced back in 1966 to power the first front-wheel drive Subaru, after which EA engines powered many more Subaru cars, most notably the Leon the Brat and the Tastic XT of the 1980s with their 2-valve-per-cylinder architecture and Three main bearings, EA was pretty obsolete even in the '80s, so Subaru introduced the EJ designed from the ground up. The EJ featured 4 valves per cylinder and 5 main bearings, leaving much more room for growth. In the decades that followed, unlike many manufacturers that first introduced an older high-performance version of an engine and then updated it later in production, Subaru introduced the ej20 and legacy in three different versions from day one: a with single overhead camshaft and double overhead camshaft.

The Legacy version and a turbocharged, twin-overhead cam version were available on the Legacy model and these engines put up some pretty impressive numbers early on, but in 1992 something beautiful happened: three letters combined to create magic: the letter w, the letter r and the letter the rally. Goodness to the masses, if it weren't for the hood and spoiler it would look like just another humble compact from Japan, but it was so much more: it was an incredible car that turned every winding road, regardless of the surface, into a real rollercoaster. ride in 1994 the magic of alphabet soup struck again, this time the letters s t and i were merged to create subaru technica international, which further improved the wrx recipe with even more rally awesomeness and created another textbook example of a wolf in sheep's clothing, the two-liter ej20 engines in These cars produced an impressive 250 horsepower with their blue-printed engines.

In fact, each of these engines received special attention and dedicated tuning, which is why only one hundred of these cars were built per month in 1994. Just one year later, Subaru would prove that I have a winning recipe because in 1995 Subaru won the constructors' and drivers' titles of the world rally championship. In fact, Subaru would win both titles twice more, consolidating its dominance in the world rally championship before finally retiring in 2008. Having achieved its marketing goals and feeling the consequences of the economic crisis of the same year, but despite Subaru is no longer present in WRC, Subaru cars with ej20 and

ej25

and even smaller ej engines are present in all forms of rally sport and remain extremely popular options from the amateur level to the highest international rally competitions. level, the low center of gravity of the flat boxer engine coupled with symmetrical all-wheel drive was and probably will be a force to be reckoned with for a long time. the future in '94 the biggest ej the ej25 enters the scene in japan in '96 was on american shores designed to respond to the instant torque needs of the american consumer the ej25 began life in the interior and legacy but would soon spread Powering the rest of the Subaru fleet, including the Impreza, Baja and Forester, starting in 2004, turbocharged versions of the EJ25 became the engine of choice for the WRX and STI Imprezas, as well as high-performance versions. of the outback legacy in the forester.

Now this is the case everywhere in the world. world except Japan, where WRX and SDI Imprezas continue to use the smaller EJ20 engines until the end of their production. Did you know that an EJ engine also powered a submarine? Yes, in 2005, the saab 92x was introduced to the US market and as you can see, it is actually not Aesop, but a rebadged version of an Impreza. How the hell did that happen? You're probably wondering. Well, in 2005, GM had some shares in Subaru and also owned Saab, so they decided to combine the two. However, by putting a subface on an impreza, the saab prezza was short-lived because in 2005 GM sold shares of Subaru to Toyota and production of the incense was seized and in 2006

what

was left of the inventory of these extravagant widow cars was sold.

Here's something else you may not know and that is that the ej20 engine existed in twin-turbo form available from 94 to 2005 in the Japanese Legacy and Australian Liberties. It's the same car just with a different name. Can you guess why a twin-turbo ej20 was available only in right-hand drive? Well, a flat-flat boxer engine with a turbocharger in the engine compartment of a compact car is already quite tight. Now imagine putting another turbo, the manifolds, the pipes and everything else necessary for it to work well and making it impossible to put it in a left-hand drive steering rack and that is why the J-20 biturbo were only available in markets with right-hand drive vehicles and as you can imagine, working on these cars is something of a nightmare and owners of twin-turbo Legacys and Libertys claimed to have seen their mechanics cry when they brought their cars in for repairs, but the engines did not they only made cool things for super vehicles, they also made cool things for old volkswagens and porsches, eh, wasabi and virgin, blasphemy, who cares

what

you purist people?

I think the fact is that ej motors saved many of these non-museum pieces cars from the scrapyard, whose restorations would not otherwise be financially reasonable. You can rely on the ej motor which is much more common, has much better parts availability and is much cheaper to maintain compared to the old genuine power plants and as a bonus the much more modern ej motors, They are also much more powerful than the real deal power plants, but wait, there's more because the EJ and EJ25 engines deserve special credit for taking the box or rumble to the skies, yes, the EJ20 and EJ25 conversions.

They are actually quite popular and common in light and experimental aircraft, why? Well, because the low, wide profile of a boxer engine actually suits an airplane much better than the cumbersome profile of many inline and V engines, it is also said that pilots who operate EJ-engined airplanes sometimes are overcome by the spirit of colin mcrae that resides in the engine and instinctively reaches the place where a handbrake would be trying to do a four wheel skid in the sky, as you can see, the ej and ej25 engines have quite a hp impressive but it's more than just a list of achievements because i think brands like subaru, porsche and mazda deserve special recognition for working on engine setups that are a little bit different because when you work on an engine setup that's different than what almost everyone else is working You are on your own and research and development is more difficult and also when new technologies appear on the market, it does not necessarily mean that they are easy to adapt to your special engine configuration, when the manufacturer

makes

something which works very well online. engines and allows all the other engine manufacturers in line to adapt or copy that technology well, the boxer and rotary manufacturers can't necessarily do that and although many brands used to have boxer engines like alfa romeo and citroen they eventually all abandoned

them

, but subaru It didn't and that's why I think Subaru, like other specially configured engine brands, deserves special recognition for turning the boxer into something truly amazing.

Now before starting with the specifications, we must understand that ej20 and eg25 are not just two. In fact, there are a large number of motors within one motor family, now all ej20 and 25. No, actually, all ej motors can be divided into phase one and phase two motors. Phase one covers 89 to 98, while phase two covers 99 onwards and furthermore, all ej20 and 25 engines can be divided into naturally aspirated engines and turbocharged engines. Now when it comes to all of these different engine codes, of course, we have to explain what they mean. Now anyone wants to guess what e means to someone. no the e stands for engine, how surprising, in fact all Subaru engine codes start with an e and that

makes

sense because after all they are all engines.

Yes anyway the next letter denotes the engine family so the j is the engine family and then the next two numbers are the displacement of the engine ej20 is 2 liters ej25 is 2 and a half liters now the last character may be a number or a letter if the engine is phase 1 the last character will be a letter if the engine is phase 2 the last character will be a number and the character or number will denote the particular engine model or revision of the engine within the engine family and the engine size and although of course there are many variations between the different ej engines we can cover the things that are the same for all ej20 and ej25 engines now all ej20 engines of course , they have the same diameter and stroke, the diameter is 92 millimeters and the stroke is 75 millimeters when it comes to the ej25, the diameter is one and a half millimeters and the stroke is 79 millimeters, the power varies from 115 to 190 horsepower. power for the naturally aspirated ej20s, while the turbocharged ej20s cover a power range from 220 to 304 horsepower, on the other hand, the ej25s cover a power range from 165 horsepower to 320 horsepower when it comes of the materials that all engines present, e.g. aluminum engine case with cast iron cylinder liners and aluminum cylinder heads When it comes to block platform design, the EJ is a very rare breed because all three different types of black platform design can be found in the same family of engines.

The first turbocharged ej engines that the ej20gs had closed. aluminum deck engine blocks but they went out of production in mid 94 and in 95 we see many open deck blocks in the ej engine family which remained in use for many naturally aspirated ej engines as well as vehicles equipped with ej205 engines, but as of 2001 or so most turbocharged ej engines feature a semi-open block deck, the compression ratio varies between 9.5 to 1 and 10.71 for naturally aspirated engines and between 8 to 1 and 9.5 to 1 for turbocharged engines. When it comes to cast blocks, cast blocks are pretty much the best. Same for the ej20 and ej25 engines and the ej25 achieves

great

er displacement by using a longer stroke crankshaft and drilling the block;

However, both the EJ20 and EJ25 engines use connecting rods of the same length, resulting in a different connecting rod ratio between the two engines. it is forged on all ej engines and is even nitrided on some select ej20jdm engines when it comes to the crankshaft as you can see it is much shorter on a boxer engine of course compared to an inline engine and also what You may notice is that the counterweights are very small and thin, this is the consequence of a flat boxer engine being inherently better balanced compared to an inline engine. Now when it comes to the boxer engine, the crankshaft is located in the middle between the pistons in a single plane and this means that the secondary forces associated with the movement of the pistonsPistons actually cancel each other out in a boxer engine and this is good because it means that a boxer engine is inherently better balanced and smoother compared to an inline engine and the consequence of this is that no large counterweights are needed and heavy on the crankshaft of a boxer engine, which is

great

because the crankshaft is lighter and this helps it spin more freely and reach higher rpm more easily.

The connecting rods are also forged in almost all ej engines and the pistons are now made for all naturally aspirated ejs, while they are hypereutectic in many modern turbocharged ej engines, but there are also some ej engines that come with factory forged pistons . There is now much debate about which engines exactly come with forged pistons, but the general consensus seems to be that the early turbocharged ej20g and ej20k engines found in the jdm imprezza wrx sdi r8 came with forged pistons from the factory and also that the ej207 engines They were in the seventh generation, the seventh version of the wrx sti.

They also have factory forged pistons, all cylinder heads feature four valves per cylinder, and boom combustion chambers. Additionally, most EJ 20 and 25 engines feature 36 millimeter intake and 32 millimeter exhaust valve diameters, although there are some exceptions to this, especially among older engines, cylinder heads also exist in overhead camshaft configurations. single head and double head camshaft. When it comes to single overhead camshaft configurations, we have two intake lobes and one exhaust outlet with the single model. The exhaust hope drives both exhaust valves through a rocker arm. Some ej20 and 25 engines also have avcs or active valve control system, which is subaru's cam timing technology and what the avcs does is retard or advance the camshaft timing depending on the engine rpm and others. parameters to Delivers optimal performance and economy under all operating conditions.

The avc began appearing in 1999 and is found on the intake side only on the ej207 version 7 and above engines, the ej204, ej254 and ej255 and ej257 engines, while the dual abc appears on both. Intake and exhaust camshafts can be found on 2008 and newer ej257 engines. A lot of different turbos have been used throughout the production of the ej engines, but the majority have been ihi vf and mitsubishi td turbos in single and twin scroll configuration, although the single scroll configuration is more common: the Previous engines used smaller turbos such as the VF22, 23 and 24, with some exceptions using Mitsubishi TDO4 and TDO5 turbos.

The eg207, for example, uses larger vf-30 and vf-37 turbos, while even larger turbos can be found on the ej25, such as the VF-39 and VF-38 turbos, the tuning aspect of EJ motors is full of misconceptions and over the years these misconceptions have refused to go away resulting in EJ motors having a bad reputation with many describing

them

as weak. and fail under boost and fail when tuned etc etc etc the fact is that ej motors are good and these misconceptions are just misconceptions and the vast majority of ej motor failures are not due to the motor design but to incorrect tuning. or the wrong parts or both, a very common example of an EJ error is clearances, you need those coins with large bearings and coins with large pistons to prevent your engine from failing.

This is incorrect. Coins that are two by two are as bad as those that are also two by two. tight, you need the right coins, the specified coins because a wrong clearance no matter which direction will cause engine failure over time and leaving big clearances is just a band aid for something else that was probably done wrong at that. engine in particular and today people who know these engines who have real experience and knowledge are building them to over 1000 horsepower and if that is not proof that the ej is good and capable then it really is not That is said, the EJ motor does do it. has some weaknesses, I mean what engine doesn't have them, but ej has a very long history and a lot of smart people working on this engine who have identified these weaknesses over time and created solutions to address these weaknesses , an example of This is the oil pick up tube, the original one can fail and by failing it can also create a knock on the dipstick and ultimately destroy your engine, but today you have an upgrade, you can pick it up, install it in your engine and save your investment, and this is good because it means that today, if you decide to build an ej engine, you can rely on this great knowledge base and the availability of aftermarket parts and spares to build this engine correctly, so no science forums only science and ej will reward you so how to do it?

We get great power from the ej and perhaps an even more important question: how much power can the stock internals handle well? As a general rule, a well-maintained engine that has had regular oil changes with everything in spec can consume twice the original horsepower. So as a rule of thumb, around 500 horsepower from stock internals in a healthy engine with a very good tune, now simple things like injectors and an upgraded intercooler, some exhaust stuff, a downpipe, a good tune can take it to around 350 to maybe 400 horsepower if you win to improve things with bigger turbos manifolds, even bigger injectors, upgraded fuel pump and more things you can expect around 500 horsepower in the components stock internals, beyond that you are looking at forged pistons and upgraded forged connecting rods, the crankshaft can remain and is I will replace it with a billet crank only if you want to go above 700 or 800 horsepower.

Another hot topic when it comes to EJ engines is block boosting and sleeve changing, and many people claim that you need them if you want to increase boost at all or even if you are going to increase it halfway, do you need them ? Well, it depends on how far you want to go with your engine. The fact is that many people have pushed ej engines well beyond 500 or even 600 horsepower without any block boosting and they did so by relying on tuning best practices for good tuning because tuning is, I still say this in my videos, really very important, is often the most important factor that could have block inserts made of diamonds. a bad tune will still break them and a bad tune will destroy an engine no matter what you do to it, no matter what kind of hardware and incredible boost you put on the engine, a bad tune with detonation at certain revs is going to destroy it, so yeah, Now, when do you need the reinforcements?

If you want to go beyond 600 horsepower, maybe that's when you should consider reinforcing the block, what kind of reinforcement you should do right. This really depends on who you ask because different people report. Different success rates with different things some people claim that pinning the block works very well. Fixing the block involves inserting pins in strategic places to reinforce the hole, while others say this will warp the block and you should reholster it or use it. Specially machined inserts I really believe that what is more important than what is made is who makes it and how it is made.

All of these block reinforcements are complicated and require skill and experience and should be done by someone with a lot of experience. Good results, otherwise you are just wasting your money talking about blocks, here is something interesting, this is the ej20 engine block and this is the ej25. Now as I said in the specs section the ej25 achieves a larger offset by drilling the bore, it has a larger but it has the same engine block casting and this results in the ej25 in this area being thinner than the ej20 and this is the reason why some people prefer the ej20 and take it to high power levels because it is more robust and can handle more power again.

The engines are good and you can take them both to really high power levels if you do things right, but it's undeniable that the ej20 with the factory Ford pistons is a great starting point for a high horsepower build without the need to replace no internal component of the other. On the other hand, many prefer the ej25 because it has more displacement and offers better drivability and there you have it with ej engines, really amazing power plants that have a lot of things going for them, I mean they have this really cool little center of gravity , they're soft.

They have torque, they make a lot of power, they have an incredible soundtrack, and they also have a lot of rally history. I mean, what more could you ask for now before continuing with the usual embarrassing summary? I have a bit of a test question for you, remember that wrx sti is the final edition japanese ej20 from the beginning of the video, well they made only 555 of them so I'm waiting for your answers in the comments section and now the embarrassing packaging , my name is ex. and I am the engine that brings the roar. I'm living in a four-door compact that seems a little humble, but I'm horizontally opposed to being slow.

Get ready because my drive level is about to grow and who cares if I just explode. my head gasket, you had a lot of fun with me, you better throw his pants in the laundry basket. I'm the engine that turns drivers into winners, but guess what, I'm not for beginners. I have to get someone to sit behind a camera. and do