Enthusiasts and racers all around the world rely on Cosworth Subaru EJ257 engines to win. To celebrate the 400th engine, most of the staff at Cosworth USA gathered around the engine and packed inside of the dyno cell to snap a comemorative picture.
Cosworth builds short blocks and long blocks for racers all around the world. The short blocks start at US$5562 for a stock stroke engine and up to $9269 for an engine with a billet 81mm stroke crank. The long blocks start at $12359 and as much as $16375 depending on configuration. You can see the various configurations of engines here.The ratio of short blocks to long blocks is probably 5 to 1. All Cosworth engines include forged or billet cranks, Cosworth billet rods, Cosworth forged pistons, Cosworth bearings, and new factory engine block castings. The long blocks also include new factory cylinder head castings, Cosworth valvetrain, Cosworth FSL metal head gasket, and Cosworth camshafts. Of course all the engines contain that Cosworth secret sauce which has been developed from building some of the world's best engines for the last 52 years. The engines may sound expensive, but how much did those 2 or 3 engines cost you from other builders? You only need 1 from Cosworth.
So who are the guys behind the engines? The short answer is almost everybody at Cosworth USA has something to do with an engine. During the development process of an engine program, the engineers work closely with builders to come up with specifications, but once the program is up and running, all of the credit goes to the builders. It's due to their ability to build ultra precise and consistent engines and components using their meticulous skills honed over many years of building reliable high powered race engines that has made the Subaru engine program a success.
In the case of Subaru builds, the credit primarily goes to Magnus who builds the majority of the Subaru short blocks and assembles the long blocks:
Here's an old picture of Magnus before he built his “super bay”. This is him building the Sport Compact Car Magazine/Cosworth VQ35 for the Castrol Top Shop Challenge back in 2008.
Magnus has been at Cosworth USA for just over 18 years now. He came to the US from Sweden to try his hand at Indy Lights many years ago, but the lack of funding kept him from successfully finding a ride. He raced Formula Fords in Sweden and he says he's still a quick driver though (sure, buddy). Being a formally trained machinist back in Sweden, he easily found work at Vector building exotic supercars. Yes, that Vector. Eventually he found himself at Cosworth building 850bhp Cosworth XB CART engines. He built many CART/Champ Car engines throughout the years all the way to the last model, the XFE. Last year, he was sent to England to help build F1 engines due to the shortage of trained engine builders at the head office. Today, Magnus builds your Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Nissan engines when he's not building a Sierra Sierra 4G63 EVO time attack engine. Getting to know Mag over the years, I've learned a lot about machining, building techniques, and custom tooling. When we aren't talking about DJs, electronic music, and kids, we're talking about engines and machining. His bay is always blasting electronic music. All you need to do is add glow sticks, whistles, and a wall of subwoofers and you've got a rave.
Here Mag is measuring the main bearing housing diameters for main bearing selection on a EJ257 block.
For Subaru cylinder heads, the headmaster is Steve. Steve can assemble Subaru heads in his sleep. In fact, when he's assembling heads, he only needs to feel the clearances. He doesn't need mics, calipers, or gauges. Those are for chumps.
Here's Steve hand blending some Subaru inlet manifolds. BTW, check out the down draft vacuum porting booths. It's nice to port and blend without metal chips all over the work area.
Just kidding about the feeler gauges BTW. Steve uses specific Subaru tooling to speed up the head assembly and lash process. He uses an Excel sheet to figure out valve lash for each valve because every component is machined within a set of tight tolerances. Even our valve seats are cut by a single point CNC cutter ensuring extremely consistent valve tip heights. He has't used the old Serdi with pre-formed valve seat tools in years.
Here Steve performs batch testing of the Cosworth CNC cylinder heads to ensure we are able to deliver consistent products.
Steve has been at Cosworth USA for just over 10 years now and has been building CART/Champ Car and YDX Formula Atlantic heads since, but in recent years he's been doing seat cutting on the CNC valve seat cutter, developing seat profiles for both the Japanese cylinder heads and the Moto-X heads, and machining/assembling heads. He is the backbone of the head shop. Anytime I have a question about a VQ, EJ, MZR, Duratec, 4G, 4B, or any other cylinder head Cosworth has anything to do with, Steve knows the answer. It's great to have somebody who knows as much as Steve around when you need some info quick. He's also a Subaru enthusiast himself and drives a 2007 STi as his daily driver. He's planning a stroker long block engine build with CNC heads in the near future too. Stay tuned for a build on his car since he just bought a house with 2 x 2 car garages.
