Steve’s STi: Doing It Right!

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From the front you get a sense of the width of the track. The FMIC is fairly standard, but when combined with fender flares, splitter, dive planes, and brake ducting you realize that there's more to this car than meets the eye. If you happen by the pit area while Steve is working on it, then you'll notice that it's sitting on a combination of 2×10 and 1×10 planks and the car is still low – and you just start dreaming about what you could do with your own car.
World Rally Blue is simply an amazing color. It's almost hard to picture a STi in any other color.

Steve has moved from a person off of the street to part of the Can-Jam family. His car now has the benefit of a huge racing heritage. Can-Jam has hundreds of race wins in both rally and road racing. Located in Toronto, their reputation and nearby location made this engine builder and race car fabricator an easy choice. The engine has Cosworth high flow ported heads with valves that are 1 mm upsized and topped with a special cam. Subie gear heads will recognize the rotated Cosworth intake manifold that sits on top of the boxer engine. The heads (is it plural or singular for a boxer engine?) have oil system modifications and additional prep for the head gaskets to ensure longevity at high power. WRC head studs – 14mm – are used to hold things together. In the sleeved block, the pistons have a ceramic coated face and moly skirts and are custom made for Can-Jam. The rods are built to Can-Jam’s specifications. 2014 saw no change to the Borg Warner turbo with the Full Race setup, however, 2015 will see a more responsive Borg Warner EFR turbo under the hood. To minimize heat the hot side is coated and a turbo blanket is in place. The Full Race header, up-pipe, and downpipe are coated and wrapped. The front mounted intercooler and rear brake calipers have a heat dispersion cooling. The turbo is a twin scroll unit and the dual Tial wastegates are plumbed back into the downpipe. This ties into a 3” exhaust that has two resonators. One resonator is built with V-band clamps so that it can quickly be removed and replaced with a catalytic converter for the street. The exhaust terminates with a Stromung muffler to keep the noise at a civilized level.

 

Here's a good view of the Cosworth intake, which is rotated from the stock setup, and the top mounted Setrab oil cooler. This oil cooler location allows the cooler to take advantage of the STi's hood scoop but, more importantly, available space in what is a full engine bay. Keeping it out of the lower corners of the bumper also removes it from potential impact spots. It's a perfect spot for the oil cooler. Steve laughs when he recalls a spectator peering under the hood suggest he get a larger 'intercooler'! You can just barely see the top of the turbo blanket behind the intake on the left side of the photo. Notice the custom front wheel tubs, fabricated at Can-Jam. They are simply beautiful – and huge! The camber plates were custom designed to Steve's specifications and CNC milled. Pic by Can-Jam.

You are probably now wondering why I am not going into more specific detail, and for that I am going to respond that to get that detail you will have to get Can-Jam to build you an engine and the race car to surround it, because it is not something that I am at liberty to go into more detail. After all, this is a race team and they would prefer that I do not share all of their proprietary build secrets. And I think that is a fair request!

There's a bit of debris being sucked off the track as the STi flies past! Great detail and an awesome action shot.

Injectors are Injector Dynamics 1300 cc's and they are MTBE compatible to work with most high grade race fuels and ethanol blended fuels like E85 as well as methanol blends. The fuel is sent to the injectors via dual external Bosch 044 fuel pumps via an Integrated Engineering swirl pot to ensure no fuel starvation issues during cornering. One of these pumps delivers 200 litres per hour of fuel at 72psi. Steve runs VP Racing MS109 fuel in his STi at the track and, for the drive home, Can-Jam installed a trick FIA approved fuel drain system to switch to Ultra 94 octane pump fuel. The car is also set up with an Aquamist water injection system. I will not even attempt to describe this, apart from saying that a small amount of water injected into the intake stream reduces combustion chamber temperatures thus avoids detonation. And that I know is very good! Cooling is also enabled by a Koyo rad and, mounted in the location of the stock top-mounted intercooler, a Setrab oil cooler. That is a great way to take advantage of stock options!

 

Looks like most STi trunks, doesn't it? Braided steel fuel lines leading to two Bosch 044 fuel pumps capable of pumping 400 litres of fuel an hour.  An Integrated Engineering swirl pot. This may be atypical!

The guys at Can-Jam were responsible for tuning this setup, with engine management controlled by a Vi-Pec V88. This very advanced ECU has recently been surpassed by the i88, but that does not diminish the capability that it has.  Variable camshaft control, antilag, launch control, closed loop boost control that allows different boost in each gear, multiple fuel maps, and on it goes. The car has been on the dyno and I can tell you that the car easily has 450 whp. I have not seen the dyno sheets nor were they made available to me.

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