Ken Block Jump Car 2 and Cosworth Power

I grabbed this from the Cosworth USA website. I helped Vermont Sportcars spec the Cosworth components and some of the ancillaries selection, but the credit all goes to Vermont Sportcars for building a good car and to Ben Hoyle at Cosworth Electronics in Cambridge (UK) for the engine calibration with the ECPro. While Ben is no stranger to EJ engines (he was the head engineer for Prodrive's WRC engine development for the Subaru World Rally Team), it was Ben's first time to tune a full Cosworth engine. After the Baja300 event, Ben called me up and asked me in his fairly thick English accent, “What's that thing got in it? It makes some SERIOUS power.” I said, “Naturally of course. It's got Cosworth power.”

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Cosworth have teamed up with Vermont Sports Car on another exciting project: the Ken Block Jump Car 2.

VT Car has built Ken Block's infamous Subaru STI “stunt” cars-with the latest example fully loaded with a Cosworth CS600X 2.6L Long Block engine assembled at Cosworth USA (Torrance), Cosworth 12mm high volume oil pump, Cosworth High Volume Inlet Plenum, Cosworth Kevlar Reinforced Timing Belt, and the new ECPro engine control unit.
 

The car was shipped from the USA and cleared UK customs on the night of 17th July and was transported to a rolling road in Oxfordshire (Owen Developments) where it was met by Ben Hoyle who began the initial setup and calibration of the car. Then the car was transported to Millbrook Proving Ground where some additional driving assessment took place and a final trip to the rolling road, where the car made over 500bhp at the wheels -ATW! (600+bhp at the flywheel based on the rolling road coast-down).

The car was then transported to Arman Schwarz's Baja300 Powerdays where the Pectel Control Systems team met it to provide on-event support.

Ben Hoyle (Cosworth Electronics resident Pectel Applications Development Engineer for the ECPro): “Even the already robust 2.5L Cosworth engine needs to be maintained in the best of health and after scooping up a large amount of sand into the intercooler and radiator intakes (on one extremely soft and deeply rutted corner) the extensive range of safety features in the ECPro were utilised to keep the temperatures under control.”

Roland Meister, Brand Manager – Electronic Performance Parts: “The
ECPro range has been a real long term project and it's superb to see it on Ken Blocks car!”

This is a fine example of how the different elements of the Cosworth Group work together to please our customers and achieve success. Stay tuned for further exciting updates on the project.

Find out more about the car here!

Some more links to Ken Block and his 08 STi :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQHeQNAjgBM

http://www.vtcar.com/

 http://www.kenblockracing.com/#home