Revisted: Subaru WRX Rally Car… Powered by Ferrari?!

Welcome to the Tune In podcast.

I'm Andru, your host.

This is just a heads up to let you know that we'll be taking a short end of year break over the next few weeks and we'll be back in action mid January.

So, while we won't be producing new episodes for a few weeks, this is a good opportunity to revisit some of our earlier episodes that we think deserve another listen or, if you're new here, a first time listen.

For this week's revisit, we're heading back to episode 92, featuring Sam Albert, the brain behind a controversial Ferrari V8 powered all wheel drive Subaru WRX rally car.

This is a great conversation that covers a wide range of topics, including the challenges of carrying out such a unique engine swap properly, what competing and living with such a potent and head turning race car is actually like, and the satisfaction of learning how to do things yourself.

Enjoy.

You had this category that was basically between 3.3

litre and 4.5

litre, where you could be an open class and have zero restrictions.

Quickly, on the production side, the Ferrari 458 motor pops up, which is a 4.5

litre, makes in the 500 horsepower.

I was like, well, this would be phenomenal, I could get one of these and put in there.

And then you do a quick Google search and see where you can find one used or salvaged, and then your heart kind of shrinks a little bit.

Welcome to the HPA Tune In podcast.

I'm Andre, your host, and in this episode we're joined by Sam Albert, and if that name itself doesn't ring a bell then I'm not too surprised.

But if you are interested in cars and you're on any form of social media, chances are you've probably heard of his car, or, more specifically, heard his car, which is a Subaru WRX rally car, interestingly engine swapped with a Ferrari California 4.3

litre V8, and this thing screams.

Suffice to say, it sounds like no other WRX you've probably ever heard or are ever likely to hear.

Now, there's nothing particularly unusual with engine swaps.

I'll admit this one is somewhat more extreme, but engine swaps have been around since the dark ages.

What is unique with this particular build, however, is that Sam is not really professionally involved in the automotive industry at all.

However, he has actually managed to essentially single handedly build this car.

Another thing is that he's actually used some HPA courses to help with this build, specifically around the construction and design of his wiring harness.

This interview goes pretty deep into Sam's background, specifically his background in getting involved with rally, how you learn the skills to become a rally driver and how he's perfected these, giving it the point where he was a rally instructor for Dirtfish Rally in the US Before we get into our podcast with Sam.

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Alright, let's get into our interview now.

Alright, welcome to the podcast, sam.

Thanks for joining us today and, as always, let's start by finding out how you got involved in cars and the automotive industry in general.

Hi Andrea, thanks for having me.

I've actually just kind of gotten cars as a kid, growing up with my stepdad who is a mechanic, and I think the thing that got me into motorsports and just kind of cars in general was A having a go kart.

That was just a kind of personal project that we worked on together and got to drive around at our local little regional airport that had a little tarmac pad that we could practice around and all that good stuff.

And then just kind of growing up in Northern California where there's just nothing but logging roads and just kind of exploring those as a young teen with their first car.

And lo and behold, I didn't really know it at the time but turns out what I was kind of doing was essentially rally, but as a young hooligan I guess that's just trying to figure out life and not getting too much trouble.

That seems like a pretty good pastime.

I imagine Access to those logging roads would definitely be a big help In terms of the car that you were sort of punting around these logging roads.

What were you driving at the time?

This was a first gen DSM, so it was a 93 Mitsubishi Eclipse, just front wheel drive, very basic model, nothing special to it, but it was enough to have fun and, yeah, explore.

Now I think conventionally, we've always sort of thought of rally being the home of rear wheel drive, and certainly in the early days it absolutely was.

These days, if you want to be competitive, full wheel drive is the way to go, and most people who haven't been involved in rally would tend to think that front wheel drive doesn't really lend itself well to a rally stage.

So I'm interested to get your take on that.

You can have plenty of fun in a front wheel drive.

Look at some sobs, look at the fiesta.

Nowadays with the R2s whether it's turbocharged or even just the smaller R1s people can have plenty of fun.

And I would say if you're learning and getting started, that's a great place to start too, because it really forces you to carry a lot of speed into the corner and not just rely on the throttle to get the rotation that you're looking for.

It forces you to learn weight transfer and all that sort of stuff, so very applicable if you're on a path of learning how to rally.

In terms of taking sort of a back road, logging road past time and actually becoming a rally driver.

What did that path look like for you?

How did you sort of go?

Legit, I guess we'll call it.

Yeah, at some point you have to grow up a little bit and not jeopardize the people around you, and you become a little bit more mature.

So for me it was really kind of just a matter of having the means to do it.

So I didn't really get involved in rally until after I had graduated from college and had my first real job and had an actual income to kind of pay for it, and so for me I had the car.

So the car that I started with was a 2004 Subaru STI, I think was the second one that my dealership had imported, and so I still have that same one today and it's having that as my base.

And then coming back from my first kind of opportunity to accumulate some money when I was in the military, from a deployment, and came back, well, what do I do with this money?

Do I buy a house?

Do I invest it?

What do I do with it?

Let's put it into the rally car and get a roll cage and some suspension and try to go rallying.

A much more financially sound ideas, I believe yes, absolutely you can get behind that.

Alright, so let's just talk about maybe some of our listeners who are young and have an interest in rally.

Maybe they watch some WRC and think that looks like a bit of fun.

What would you suggest is a viable path for someone who's never competed or driven aggressively on gravel or loose surfaces before to actually start building up those skills?

There's two parts to that answer.

The first is that I would find a mentor, whether that's just anybody that's in the community that competes.

I think finding sound advice from somebody that you trust and you can build a relationship is incredibly valuable.

I was lucky enough to have that when I first entered and found somebody that had reached out.

They actually had reached out to me and offered to be a mentor, and so I've tried to pay that forward with a few people that's kind of entered the sport and just kind of helped them out.

I think a lot of people when they're entering something new, have a lot of questions and they can be scared and overwhelmed.

Just having a trusted person that they can talk to is super valuable.

Then the other half, where you have to build the actual skills, really can be anything.

I think seat time is seat time in any vehicle.

If you're pushing the limits of any vehicle and you're finding where break traction and where the weight moves within the car, you can do that on any surface.

Gravel, loose surface environment is a little bit more dramatic in all that, but the techniques still generally remain the same.

A lot of times I compare the rally line that we drive or teach in school, to be somewhat the same as the wet line on a racetrack, just because you get the most acceleration and braking power in a straight line and you want to minimize the time that you're spent turning so that you can either slow the car down or accelerate out onto your next straightway.

Very much the same in my mind, but you can do that autocross, rally cross for the cheap.

There's everything if you have the budget to go to a full-fledged rally school and spend three to five days honing your craft or getting private instruction.

The sky's the limit, I think, in that regard, but there's plenty of cheap ways to learn how to do it that are fully legitimate.

Just to go back to my youth, I do not endorse, you know, giving around the back rows and whatnot.

Let's be honest, you're going to be far from the only person with that background.

But yeah, absolutely.

We would not recommend that that's a viable path to becoming a professional rally driver.

I'm interested because maybe a year or so back I had the opportunity to sit in and do some professional tuition at the rally ready driving school rally school in Texas and that was a massive eye opener For me.

I've never really got too deep into driving on loose surfaces myself, but what I found from this there is a question here I just need to build up to it what I found from this is some of the techniques that I was taught were quite sort of different to what you would naturally think, coming in with no prior sort of understanding.

Where I'm going with this is if you're just left to your own devices, maybe doing some gravel sprints or autocross or something of that nature, and trying to build up those skills yourself to me I'd see that you could you're going to take a lot longer and maybe miss some of the subtleties of technique which you're going to get very fast if you go to a professional rally school.

Is that reasonable to say?

Yeah, I think that's absolutely fair to say.

It's the experience plus the tutelage that will build your foundation and allow you to explore, and I think the tutelage is just what accelerates all of that.

Yeah, sure, can you talk in a bit more detail about some of the specific skill sets that are at least relatively unique to rally, something we're not going to see necessarily so much in a road race application.

Yeah, I think the number one thing that comes to mind is braking.

So you know and it's really tight to suspension, I mean the whole thing is a system, but under braking a lot of what you're used to, especially if you have any sort of tarmac experiences that you can really get onto the brake fairly hard, fairly quickly and build up that brake pressure, whereas rally you have to contend with the longitudinal load transfer to get onto the front tires, to build up grip so that you can maximize the amount of brake pressure that you build.

And a lot of people, when we ask them to brake really hard, it's really easy to brake too hard, too soon and you kind of brake faster than the weight transfer is occurring and you get lock up sooner and you end up not being able to actually brake as hard.

And it's a very fine difference between that and braking properly where you can build up the actual load transfer, get the contact patch of those front tires to really dig in and then brake to the maximum potential and really get a lot of weight transfer, get a lot up to slow down, and I think that makes a big difference in you know your overall pace in a rally.

A lot of novices will tend to brake earlier just because they don't trust in the car to do what you'd ask it to do, or they've just been having a habit of applying it the wrong way for too long.

And so when you have to brake deep into a corner, which is going to counter what I'm going to say next, but you know it's just a hard thing to trust and you know your survival instinct kicks in and everything.

And then the flip side of this is everything has to happen a lot earlier because the car is slower to respond and you really have to ask it.

Always, kind of when I instruct, I say that rally driving is kind of like dancing and you're leading the dance and you ask the car what you want to do rather than forcing it, which you can get away with some other platforms.

But yeah, you have to be kind of gentle and patient with the car to get it to respond and you can't just force it to happen immediately.

So if you're a very strong type, a personality, a lot of times you will struggle because you're like, why isn't it doing it right when I tell it to?

And then you're already five inputs further in the path of trying to get the car to do what you want it to do, and everything goes to hell.

So yeah, being patient, for sure.

Now, in terms of comparing rally to conventional circuit or road racing, you go do a lap of a race track and it doesn't take more than a few laps to sort of have a pretty good understanding of the flow of the track and what corner follows what, and you're seeing the same corner lap after lap.

So it gets quite easy to dial in your speed and your line and set to optimise that, whereas obviously a rally stage you see each corner one time.

You don't get that luxury.

What are the sort of tools in your toolbox, so to speak, that you've got to allow you to adjust the orientation of the car, the speed of the car, maybe?

Where I'm getting at here is you've already committed to a corner and you realise, hey, maybe that corner is actually a little bit tighter than it looked like it was.

I need to adjust the car's line.

What sort of tools can you use to do that?

Yeah, I mean I think you kind of start with your three main inputs being the wheel, the accelerator and the brake puddle.

In addition you have the clutch and you have the handbrake.

So generally speaking, you're doing the best 99% of the work between your main three, just depending on your platform and really kind of all platforms.

You could clutch, kick out of and change the attitude of the car in a corner.

You can handbrake, obviously, and lock the rear and get the car to get a little bit more over steer.

But you can also play with the brake and the gas and, depending on what you have and where you are in the weight transfer, you can use that gas pedal to either give you a little bit understeer or give you understeer, oversteer, understeer, kind of the same thing with the brake, but the brake generally just is going to put a little bit more weight up in those front tires and will tighten your line.

So yeah, you can do a whole bunch of stuff.

I would say mostly platform dependent on exactly what result you're looking to gain.

Yeah, I mean, of course, depending on whether you're front wheel drive, rear wheel drive or full wheel drive, there's definitely going to be significant differences with your approach there.

Another technique that I wouldn't say it doesn't exist in other forms of motorsport but in rally seems to be very, very critical is left foot braking.

Could you give us a little bit of a rundown on what it is?

There's a hint in the name, clearly, but a little bit more detail about why it's used and how powerful that technique is.

Sure.

So I would say the basics of it is just if you've ever driven a car, you've probably left foot brake.

So using the brake pedal at the same time that you're using the accelerator sometimes it's referred to as pedal sharing Can allows two main things at least.

One is the reaction time between the two.

So if you switch back and forth or use both at the same time, and particularly and I'll speak just kind of mostly from all the drive backgrounds and that's where I come from it allows you to keep power or torque from the motor applied and keeps your diffs in kind of one spot where the ramps are engaged and you're putting torque to all four axles and keeps the grip very consistent.

And then, as you're applying a little bit more throttle or adding a little bit of brake, you don't have this huge swing in what's being applied through the differential and it just keeps in my mind and from my experience, it just keeps the grip very consistent all the way through.

And then what you're doing through the brake or through the throttle, whether you're trying to get a little bit more oversteer or understeer, is just that much more controlled.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Another obvious part of stage rally is the co-driver or navigator, and paste notes.

So the driver, if everything's going well, has a pretty good understanding of what's coming up, how tight the corner is, what's over a blind crest, et cetera, hence allowing you to actually commit and go significantly faster than if you're driving blind.

I mean, most people listening to this podcast probably have seen some WRC in car and heard all of these calls and I mean it's a lot.

How long does it take, as a driver, to start learning to not only focus on what you're seeing, using all of the sort of visual inputs that you would typically use to drive the car, but also taking input from your co-driver and sort of integrating that with your decision making?

Well, having been in rally for I think this is my 13th year takes at least 13 years.

Yeah, it's a lot.

You'll come back and let us know when you've got it nailed.

Yeah, I mean it's kind of constantly evolving In the states.

For the vast majority of rallies, especially when I first got started out, we had Jumbo notes which were generated by a computer that were run before the event and you were given the pace notebook beforehand and they just called them stage notes and you may or may not be able to do one pass of recce and kind of modify the notes.

And then as kind of time progressed, we kind of advanced in American rallying to where we ended up doing two pass recce and writing your own notes.

So at some point in there, probably about seven years back, is when I ended up switching to writing my own notes and that was kind of like having to do it all over again and develop that consistency and understanding what that is.

And as the driver, the notes are for me to drive as fast as I possibly can.

There's kind of a misconception that the co-driver is the one that's kind of coming up with the notes or writing what they're supposed to be or whatever is really the driver.

The system belongs to the driver and it's the responsibility of the co-driver to deliver it in a manner for the driver to take advantage and then their secondary skill set, of kind of controlling, I would say, maybe temper, maybe just general attitude on how they deliver that note or deliver their notes, to either kind of calm the driver down or kind of get them a little bit riled up and drive a little bit faster, is the art of co-driving.

I guess a lot of that comes down to that relationship that you form between the driver and co-driver, and I think you said earlier that your current co-driver is your girlfriend, which hopefully that's a great relationship, probably a good way for things to go sideways if maybe the notes weren't called quite correctly.

A couple of elements here.

That trust must be so, so critical, because if you are committing to these notes, you're going over a blind brow, assuming that it goes straight and maybe the note's wrong and it goes into a hip and left, things are going to end really, really badly.

So there's that element.

The other element, the pacing of the notes when they're actually called, and that's going to depend on the flow, I guess, of the stage and how fast the section of the stage is.

Is there anything that you need to do in order to get the notes sped up or slowed down, or is that again come down to the sort of ability of the co-driver to read that situation and know when the notes need to be called?

Yeah, I definitely think that comes down to the co-driver.

In my early days, kind of working through a handful of different novice co-drivers, there'll be a lot of kind of back and forth in the car, you know, like calling next or repeat or slow it down or whatever it is.

It tends to happen as people are learning and it makes total sense.

As I got kind of a little bit more settled in with the co-driver, especially when I was going with the Dirtfish car and with Michelle Miller another Dirtfish instructor is kind of when we got to this point where it was, it felt like we had a shared understanding of what our expectations were in the car and it developed to that point and I'll have the same relationship with Krista, who's in the car now with me.

It's this trust and this level of relationship that just kind of develops within the car and when it works it works amazing, and then, obviously, when it doesn't, things can definitely be catastrophic.

Yes, absolutely.

Alright, let's talk a little bit about your experience with Dirtfish.

You just mentioned Dirtfish and you're an instructor there for a year.

I think you had told me I'm interested, you know, seeing so many people sitting alongside you in the car and instructing them.

Did you see any common mistakes that novice rally drivers just make time and time again that are worth bringing up?

Yeah.

So I would say a lot of people will just generally be scared of sliding the car, which, if you're going to a rally school you'd think that that's what you were going there to do.

But it's a hard thing for people to mentally overcome and it makes sense when you spend the vast majority of your life, especially if you're kind of coming out there for an experience and just get a taste of rally and maybe you don't have any motorsports background.

I totally understand it and it takes some pushing to get somebody to get to the point where they'll let the car slide previously and get the car to rotate and all that sort of stuff.

So that's definitely one common thing and the other one is just not breaking hard enough and really getting the car to have weight transfer Actually I'll throw a third one in there, just because it's always there as well is as they get faster, not adjusting where they break and start getting the car rotated.

So it's on us as instructors to get them to adjust.

But definitely see that as you go faster and this is something that happens in stage rally to an actual competition is as people get faster they don't back up all their inputs and try to get the car to rotate and essentially be rotated, as they're entering in the actual corner.

So that comes back to what you were saying earlier, where the car's reaction on a loose surface like gravel is slowed down.

So you have to preempt what you want the car to do earlier than you'd think.

Yeah, and if you don't do that and you're going fast, you'll end up going off on the outside of the corner.

And if you just kind of look at an overhead view, if you can just visualize this like as you start getting faster, the car has to rotate early enough so that by the time you reach that corner exit, it's pointed in the direction that you want to go.

The later that you do that and the faster that you go, the more likely you're going to be reaching that outside.

Yeah, it all makes sense, but I guess when you're learning that is probably still a pretty steep learning curve to get your head wrapped around.

Yeah, if your windshield is pointing at the inside of a corner, you know you're just entering it.

It's an odd feeling.

Alright, and again just in terms of maybe some tips for those looking to get involved with rally in terms of four-wheel drive, front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive chassis, is there a particular direction you would sort of push someone towards if they're getting their first car and going to start learning how to drive rally?

I would really kind of push you to do whatever car you could get your hands on for a cheap and is reliable enough to learn on.

I think all three platforms have their merits to learn on.

There's definitely something to be gained.

Personally, I started in the Subaru and I've been all-wheel drive in competition my entire rally career.

It wasn't until I started instructing at Durfish that I actually have any real rear-wheel drive experience, and that was with our BRZs.

I mean, it's made me successful to a point so far.

I think there's a lot of people that have the mentality that learning on a front-wheel drive car is the way to go, because the points that I had mentioned before.

It forces you to really learn weight transfer and get the car to rotate on corner entry and all those sorts of things, which are definitely fundamental skills.

But that doesn't mean that you can't learn those on other platforms either.

So ultimately the platform's less important than seat time in any platform.

In my opinion, yeah, okay.

Alright, let's dive back into your background a little bit.

So you've mentioned the military there and you're actually not involved in the automotive industry as a vocation, are you?

Which makes what we're about to talk about even more impressive.

Yeah, so the first 10 years of my post-college life was spent in active-duty military and also afforded me the opportunity to get started in rally when I was stationed in Northwest United States, in Washington State, which is located close to Dirtfish.

That's when I reached out to them and I actually started part-time instructing there, on the weekends, here and there while I was still in the military, and that's what kind of built up the relationship and gave me the opportunity to ask about doing a full season with them, which we did in 2018.

So that was the year that I left active-duty military and began working full-time at Dirtfish and racing for them at the same time.

So that kind of transitioned me to the civilian world Another quick stint in the military for kind of a quick job and then finishing grad school.

And then I ended up as a project manager for Leatherman Tool, who makes the multi-tools that you take camping and whatnot.

Okay, so I guess, what would you class your sort of key skill sets as you see them?

Besides driving cars fast on dirt roads, it's a lot of kind of leadership, working with people, strategic planning kind of a lot of the big picture stuff which I didn't feel comfortable going into the business world with unless what kind of led me to go to grad school and get my MBA and enter in but turns out that a lot of what I did in the military does kind of translate very well into project management.

So just working with people, kind of seeing the big picture and figuring out what resources you need to get things done, is kind of my background.

Okay, let's get stuck into this WRX rally car project, because the skills that you've built up to this point other than the fact obviously, you're confident working on cars from a mechanical standpoint there's a lot of other skills that I'm guessing you needed as you got into this project.

So this WRX with a Ferrari engine jammed in the front is pretty wild, and I'm guessing most people who are on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram and have an interest in cars have probably heard and seen it by now.

I'm really interested to first of all figure out what was the idea behind putting a Ferrari engine in your rally car.

Yeah, so the genesis of it kind of came from having a little bit of idle hands.

So my last deployment when I was in the National Guard so this is post dirtfish time so just a few years back, looking through the rule book and kind of seeing what you could do to kind of exploit the rules as they were written, which I think any good competitor should look through and see what you can do and take advantage of it.

And also makes for some great stories along the way in my opinion, and I think one of those is Andy Burton and the Puget of Cosworth and I think that's an iconic rally car in British rallying history and it obviously sounds fantastic and so kind of two things there was like well, what could you do to be more competitive and also what is more attractive to fans and what will people remember and enjoy and either keep them in as a fan of rally or bring in some new ones.

And so it quickly developed into kind of a two part goal of be a little bit faster and also do something pretty cool.

OK, I think it's fair to say that you've definitely ticked both of those boxes.

Let's just come back to that rule book.

So if we look at a conventional 2.0-litre

4-cylinder turbocharged 4-wheel drive rally car Subaru or Mitsubishi Evo, for just two examples there what are the factors in that rule book that limit?

Let's say how much power you're going to be able to make as it stands now?

Yeah, I mean at the basic level, and this is all class dependent, but let's say just open class.

You'll have a displacement limit and you'll have a restrictor inlet on your turbo.

And for American rally association it used to be 34mm, so it just dropped it down to 33mm.

OK, now for those who haven't had EDD involvement tuning turbocharged engines with inlet restrictors.

They really do ruin almost all of the fun and you end up with basically the engines trying to breathe through a straw for one of a better term.

And they'll make quite good power and torque at lower RPM, but generally by the time you get past about 5,500-6,000 RPM the fun's all over.

So you end up with a little boost.

The boost curves dropping away and so does your power and torque.

So you end up with no benefit in revving the engine further.

So generally short shifting them.

Does that sound about right from your experience?

Yeah, absolutely.

And to make matters worse, I still had the 2.5L

, so my power band was about 1500 RPM and it would just be 1,2,3,4,5,6 and then it was just whatever I had left in 6 until I got to slow down again and repeat.

And that's how a rally stage was and, really honestly, wasn't a ton of fun.

No, I can imagine.

I mean the other thing which I think I fell into the trap when I started tuning restricted rally cars, which came from sort of any turbocharged application.

We sort of equate boost to power.

So it's always a case of you get as much boost in there as we can and with the restrictor, particularly at higher RPM and by higher RPM I'm sort of talking probably anything from about 4.5

and above you often actually find well, at least in my experience that you can make more boost but you end up making less power.

So it's all a case of on the dyno, sort of playing with that boost curve and often pulling it back.

You'll find that you're not punishing the turbo so hard, it's not creating so much heat and you actually end up with a little bit more power.

But I mean, obviously there's still a limit.

There's only so much air you can flow through that 33mm hole.

So that's going to sort of limit the fun ultimately Alright.

So that's turbocharged engines, 33mm restrictor.

Obviously there's no sort of black and white to this, but approximately what power would you be able to get out of that 33mm restrictor?

I think if you were kind of looking at the average of the top end cars of what we have here, you're looking around 300, 315 horsepower and anywhere I would just say mid 400s on the torque.

Yeah, okay, that sounds about in line with what I'd expect as well.

Alright, so there's not a huge amount of power on the flip side of that, a few were to go naturally aspirated.

Get rid of the turbocharger.

No inlet restrictor.

Where are the limits in the rulebook on those sort of specs?

So this is what caught my attention In the RAA we already have a competitor that swapped a LS motor into a Chevy Sonic, but you know 6.2L

.

But in the rulebook there was basically another category that kind of fell in this no-man's land where we have our naturally aspirated 4WD class, which is like your older GC8s and cars like that, where you just had an NA 2.2

or 2.5L

and that was kind of like the fun regional class.

And then you had this category that was basically between 3.3L

and 4.5L

where you could be an open class and have zero restrictions.

I thought to myself wait a second, there's got to be some hot motors like instantly off the top of the mind I thought like a Porsche GT3RS motor, like a 4L, one of those like that would be wild.

What could I just kind of think of and that's what sent me down this path of what motor kind of fits there and essentially looked what was the highest horsepower per liter?

And then just, you know, limited that to four point five liters and quickly on the production side, the Ferrari 458 motor pops up, which is a four point five liter.

You know makes in the 500 horsepower.

I was like, well, this would be like phenomenal.

I could get one of these and put in there.

And then you, you do a quick Google search and see where you can find one.

Use they're salvaged, and and then your heart kind of shrinks a little bit.

I'm guessing they come with a fairly sizable prostig.

They do.

But as I was kind of researching the motor a little bit further and you know it's part of the F136 family from Ferrari and Maserati and you see all the different variants that are out there and if you just kind of Google and look for them it covers a wide price range.

With the Maserati side you can have one for, you know, about three thousand US dollars if you're lucky, and then all the way up into you know bare minimum you're looking about 30, 35 thousand dollars to get a hold of a 458, and so for me $35,000 for a motor is too rich for my blood and what I do for to get money in the bank account.

So I had to make a little bit smarter decision and basically what I found was that the Motor from a Ferrari California, which is just a four point three, three liter, so you know, not that much smaller and still makes, you know, high four hundreds horsepower, could still be had for about ten thousand dollars and to me that's essentially the same as an EJ motor.

Oh, absolutely yeah, wouldn't be hard to spend that sort of money on on building an EJ at all.

So I thought, well, if I want to do this, make it somewhat affordable.

But let's, you know, make it fun and get the flat plane crank, have the good, good noise that comes from it.

And you know, I think there's something to be said about just having the Ferrari name as part of the project as well.

That will just get get some attention.

So I eventually just found one after asking a couple of my mentors of you know some pointed questions like is this just a dumb idea?

Like am I just absolutely off my rocker?

One said yes, you absolutely are.

And the other said do it, it would be amazing.

So Kind of flipped a coin on that one and pulled the trigger and next thing, you know, I had this crate showing up with a Ferrari motor in it.

Just coming back to that rule book to me and I'm guessing this is exactly what went through your mind when you read that If you're comparing a restricted turbocharged engine that, as you say, sort of around that circa 310, 315, 300 horsepower mark, I mean it's not difficult and naturally aspirated form to have an engine that's even moderately decent in stock, factory form that's gonna break 100 horsepower per liter.

It's not a difficult sort of barrier to break these days.

So if you're allowed up to four and a half liters straight away, I'd be thinking, well, that's open the floodgate to sort of 450 to 500 horsepower, maybe a bit more.

Is that now looking back at that rulebook and oversight on their behalf?

Quite.

Possibly, to be fair, they got wind of my project and quickly changed the rulebook the following year as I was finishing it out.

So it's now any naturally aspirated motor over 3.3

liters has to be approved by the chief scrutiny.

And so my intent of having this, you know, free-flowing 4.4.3

liter and I'm be eight through the woods kind of almost came to a crashing halt as I caught wind of all the pending rule changes and I'm in the middle of, you know, trying to wire this thing up and I hear that it potentially could go away.

But I think there was enough outcry and support from fellow competitors and Just kind of the reputation I think that our rallying in the States has that they didn't want to get rid of.

Where it's a little bit more, I wouldn't say it's more grassroots, but it's at least maybe a little bit more like by the city of your pants, just like whatever you can do, whatever car, yet you can get, throw whatever motor you have in your barn and just make it work Sort of mentality, at least compared to you know, where you're having homology, homologated cars and everything's you know got to go through the FIA and whatnot.

So that's kind of the difference that I'm trying to make there.

Yeah, absolutely so.

They they were willing to work with me.

Essentially is what I'm getting to, and they were like we want it, we think it's going to be valuable and, yeah, we'll not make it sting too much for you.

Yeah, nice.

I mean, ultimately it's got to.

It's got to be a bit of a balance in there.

I no one wants some competitor to come into a class and just absolutely Wipe the floor with every other competitor.

That's not really fair on everyone else.

But at the same time, I do think that for any any form of motorsport and rally in this instance, something unique that's really bringing the fans along and people want to hear it and see it, you know that can only be a good thing for for the sport in general.

So I guess, yeah, they've got to try and find that balance.

All right, well, let's get into the nuts and bolts of this, because you know, ideas are basically Pretty easy to come up with.

It's the application of those ideas and turning them into reality that's the tricky part.

So, yeah, I would have thought that shoehorning a v8 flat plane crank v8 into the front of Subaru wrx would be difficult, if not impossible.

So how did you kind of Figure out that, yes, this has some potential, it could work?

I think it kind of started with just taking the tape measure out and you know how long is this thing and how much space do I have, because I, to be honest, I I bought the motor not knowing the answer to that question.

Hey, so you see me committed.

So, uh, I mean, that's kind of been the way I've done a lot of things in life, is that I just go all in whether it was a good idea or not.

Um, I think it worked out in this case.

But so, yeah, it kind of just started with that tape measure and just seeing Okay, what can I do?

It Is it gonna fit?

How much do I have to trim away?

At least kind of keep the bumper cover in place?

And you know the the reality of it was that I had enough space where the radiator wouldn't be able to fit but the motor would, and so it's like, okay, I've got enough room in.

You know the location that the transmission is in stock.

So a key element with that for those who kind of aren't familiar with Subaru is the gearbox sits off the back of the engine.

Obviously it's a boxer engine in stock form, so it's relatively short, so that gearbox actually sits quite a long way forward and basically integrates the front and center differential in it.

So you've got your sort of axles for your, your front drive come out.

And I'm guessing there, because I know you've kept that gearbox to keep the thing for wheel drive, which was going to be essential to be competitive the easiest solution, rather than trying to integrate a front diff into the sump of the Ferrari engine, was to retain that gearbox.

Yeah, I mean that was Both a budget decision and just some, you know, out of simplicity, just to use what I have.

You know it was already a sequential gearbox, so Replacing that was just gonna, you know, basically double the cost of the project, at least on the basic components anyway.

So that kind of really Sets some of your dimensional constraints for whether the engine can physically run.

Yeah, I mean basically, if you know, as a simple reference, the back of the motor is right in between the strut towers and there's not much more that I can do about that.

So obviously, again, in comparison to a horizontal post four cylinder, you've got a v8.

It's going to be a lot longer.

The back of the engine is in this fixed location.

Again.

I would think that's going to be putting a lot of weight way forward Of the front axle line, messing with the handling balance.

Is that proven to be an issue, or is it not as significant as you'd think?

So I definitely thought that that was going to be a problem.

To what level, I wasn't sure, because you just look at it, there's obviously more mass in front of you know the axle there.

So the reality of it was that this is both from putting it on scales and from driving it is that it didn't make much of a difference at all.

I thought I was gonna have to drive like an old Audi quattro just you know big pendulums to get the car to rotate, massive understeer.

What I found was that it handles nearly identically the weight distribution, with all of the changes that I had to make with the cooling system and whatnot actually improve the weight distribution, which is hard to believe, but the basics of it was the car with the ej was about 57.4

percent and then it just shifted barely forward to about 57 percent flat Front-wheel distribution.

So, which is still all better than than the stock 58 percent on the flip side, though, if they get heavier.

So our minimum weight for a raise is 2,900 pounds.

With this I had an extra 100 pound weight penalty, so that put me just over 3,000 pounds, and that was kind of the compromise that I had to do with, with making it in the rule book, and so I'm about 3,050 right now.

With a little bit more I can take away, and that might even improve the weight distribution even further.

All right, let's talk about that cooling system.

You've sort of just referenced that.

So basically now with that longer engine, there's no room in the front of the car for a conventionally mounted radiator, so you've mounted that at the rear of the car, correct, all right.

Over the years, I mean, I know this is not an uncommon radiator mounting option.

We see this in rallycross, it's used in formula drift, etc.

The people that I've personally spoken to that have tried rear mounted radiators have Almost always ended up with problems with cooling, albeit benefits in the weight distribution.

So how's that panned out for you?

Yeah, so definitely not without its challenges, and I've made some mistakes along the way and we even had to completely change the routing of the of the inlet and exhaust ducts to comply with some rule changes as well.

So you know the the basics of it is that it's still incredibly difficult to bleed and get all the air out of the system.

I've worked with Mike McGinnis, who you know and is now affiliated with HPA and has been a long time friend of mine, and he kind of advised me on some some technical side of things with Adding, you know, an expansion take and putting a straighter valve on there to pre pressurize the system and things like that to help with this Capacity wise.

You know, I'd size it off of a similar size off-road motor and basically like a stadium Short course, like off-road truck, but I've kind of figured similar power levels, similar size motor, things like that.

And then the ducting was really just a packaging constraint that was on the, at least on the outlet side.

I was required to go through the trunk floor rather than the trunk lid.

So my first iteration had it going through the, the boot lid, just kind of looking like a rally cross car, but then I had to change that.

And then it was kind of for the inlet side was well, what do you do?

Do you put it through the roof or do you put it through the doors?

And ultimately, I think you know, being that rally is going to be in the mud and whatnot, I figured if I put in the doors, eventually it's just going to completely clog that thing up with mud and dirt and debris and whatnot.

So I made the decision to go through the roof and just rip the air flow through the wings.

So, just again, a series of compromises, but having only done two and really only one rally with it, and then just some testing and whatnot, I think it does show some promise and that we're making some improvement towards.

You know where it should be.

At the organ trail rally, which is the last rally that we did, it would overheat, but not too necessarily to the level I was too worried about, especially given the climate that we were racing in that weekend.

It was.

It was very, very warm, ambient temperatures were very high.

Everybody was overheating, regardless of what car that you're in.

So so it's a bit of a torture test for for the system, irrespective.

Yeah, and, and I think you know, we have one remaining change to make and it's currently just driven entirely off of the electric water pump on the radiator side.

I had removed the mechanical pump for packaging reasons.

In the front it was just one more pulley that was closer to a crash bar.

So putting that back in, I think, will make a massive difference and at that point it'll just be improving the ducting and trying to really look at the aerodynamics of that of the ducting, to improve that, to get it increased, that pressure differential across, and after that I don't think there's much left that I can really realistically do.

Yeah, and I think one of the areas that is so easy to overlook or just assume that it's maybe simpler and more straightforward than it really pans out to be, which is the ducting both in and out.

And while it's a conventional front mounted radiator in our SR86 race car, we've for two seasons basically chased cooling limitations with that system Kind of works okay when you're tootling around at 15 psi on low boost, but if we want to run it on anything higher, it's sort of originally was sort of three quarters of a lap before it'd start.

The temperature creep up him and we went through a range of changes with that larger or superior I would say, not even necessarily larger a radiator core and, long story short, the actual one of the key improvements that we made to that is the outlet from that radiator comes out through the hood, so not into the engine bay like a normal factory car.

And we already had it was actually a I think it was a Volkswagen Golf TCR hood scoop or duct I should say that we'd used, so we already had sort of a bit of a lip at the front to create a low pressure area, but we ended up dummying up a bit of a gurney flap at that front edge just to again help create a low pressure area and help evacuate the air.

And it was maybe at the most an inch high and we just tried it as a bit of a test piece and it was night and day difference.

So subtle things like that.

I mean.

Obviously, if you're trying to exhaust the air flow out into a high pressure area, it doesn't really want to go.

It is lazy, but we can't see this necessarily.

And actually the tip that kind of led us to that is, we did some testing at one of our local tracks and it was real simple.

We just taped some little bits of wool onto the bonnet and the roof line, up the windscreen and down the back screen Just to see what the air was doing.

It wasn't just for the radiator, we wanted to see if we were getting any sort of separation off the rear screen as well and how that was affecting air flow onto the wing.

And just that really simple free test and a bit of photography.

It was an absolute eye opener to what was really going on with the car.

So just those subtle things that you can overlook can end up making such a difference.

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Let's get back into our interview now.

Coming back to physically getting this engine into the car.

Obviously, making up engine mounts in itself is not a particularly difficult job, but adapting a Ferrari engine to a Subaru gearbox, you're not going to be able to ring up Subaru and ask for an adapter plate for that.

What did you do around that side of the project?

Yeah.

So the design process of getting it to work together and become friends was really aided by modern technology.

I have a friend that has a very nice I'll say kind of pro-sumer version of a 3D scanner.

It's a appeal 3D and it seemed to do the job and it was the first time I ever scanned anything in my life.

So I just kind of went in big, basically just scanned the bell housing and scanned the back side of the Ferrari motor and brought it into SOLIDWORKS, which, as lucky as a veteran, we can get for pretty cheap for personal use.

So just brought in the meshes in there and just kind of started modeling it up.

And at that point it was just like, well, how do I, you know, make sure I have the center line of the crank axis like all lined up between the two, really kind of put a lot of emphasis on the dowel pins and going back and kind of measuring again with a large micrometer and I've 3D printed a couple different little jigs to kind of help, you know, with those measurements and kind of verifying a couple things here and there.

And then finally I got to a point where I felt pretty good with the design of the adapter plate and sent it out to a machinist to be made out of I think it's half inch aluminum and got it back and lo and behold, both kind of solid on fine, and that's one aspect of the puzzle.

It's very satisfying when things just fall into place like that.

I say fall into place.

The reality is there's a lot of steps you just went through.

I'm interested how did you sort of develop those skills?

For you mentioned your friend had the Peel 3D scanner, but the actual SOLIDWORKS modeling yeah, so it always kind of had the interest in 3D modeling.

I remember way back in high school I'm thinking it's Rhino 3D was the program that we learned way back when.

So I just kind of always had a little bit of that interest and knew that you know, within motorsports if you're making beastbook parts you need some sort of CAD software for the most part and obviously you can make drawings and send those off.

But lots of people you know have access to Fusion 360 or SOLIDWORKS and I got the license to have the veteran slash student version of it and with it came a couple of coupons to do the some of the certificates.

So I was like, well, this was during COVID era, kind of have a little bit of time to do some skills, and so I did both of the kind of I think it's the associate and professional mechanical design courses that they had and the tests along with them, and so that was where I kind of got the baseline skills and then everything else beyond that to, as well as making this adapter plate the adapter plate not so much, but the flywheel spent a lot of time on YouTube and asking some friends that have quite a bit more experience with SOLIDWORKS than I do to

get this figured out.

I'm guessing here the in stock form.

In the California this is going to be backed by a DSG gearbox.

So you, on the other hand, needed to run a conventional flywheel with a conventional clutch assembly.

Yeah, and I thought I had a good option because the, the f430, has a manual option and you can get some clutches and you know kind of I think it's a five and a half inch clutch that you can get for those.

I was like, oh, this might be a good option for me.

But I found out that the, the trigger wheel, is set up different, which obviously I could do through through the software with the M1 to kind of set up differently.

But I just wanted to kind of make things as easy as possible.

So I initially tried to chop the, the flex plate I actually don't even know the technical term for it into kind of just like put it in the lathe and milled it out so that I could use the trigger wheel and see if I could find a way to bolt on like a button flywheel or kind of merge the two together to make that work.

And that failed just because there wasn't enough material of how much I had to need to take out, so ended up forcing my hand and coming up with a completely bespoke flywheel, and I'm actually kind of glad that I had to because I learned a lot through that process.

I'm guessing.

Ultimately, though, once you are pretty well versed in using SOLIDWORKS or Fusion 360, really this just becomes a design and packaging consideration as opposed to.

I mean, it's not rocket science, not really sort of reinventing the wheel.

Here are you?

I mean not, I think, the design part, but making sure that it's right and you have, you know, tolerances figured out, like the true engineering, I think, was the part that I was really struggling with.

I think drawing the actual part itself and putting all the features that I needed and having a being able to mount a clutch onto it and have that slide onto some splines and all that.

I think that was the easy part.

It was.

Am I doing this right?

It was kind of the thing that was always lingering in my mind.

So ultimately just kind of consulted with a couple of my friends who are engineers by trade and have the experience, and they kind of set me on the right path.

Yeah, great, alright.

So at this point, mechanically, the engine can physically be bolted up to the gearbox.

There's obviously a lot more to it than that In terms of the fabrication elements.

So obviously we've already talked about the rear mounted radiator, the cooling lines that are going to run from the front to the rear of the car.

You've got an exhaust system, you've got engine mounts.

Are you dealing with all of that work yourself?

Yep, I think the only thing that I didn't do myself was the machining of the adapter plate and the flywheel that was this one off to somebody that actually had the machinery for that and then some of the aluminum tig welding, which I'm very novice with, and there was some stuff on the intake manifold that I had to ask a friend to do, just because it was something that was kind of a critical component that I couldn't afford to have, you know, messed up, so I had to do it.

The vast majority of everything with the engine mounts and all the other fabrication was mostly done by myself.

That's impressive.

Moving on with the other elements of this, getting the engine running is obviously going to require a lot of wiring, and then there's ECU considerations.

There you've already mentioned you're running a MoTeC ECU, so that obviously was decided.

What were your options when it comes to the ECU order?

You're already committed to going that path with the MoTeC M1?

.

Yeah, I think what really drove me to choosing an M1 was that the engine is direct injection.

There's only so many ECUs on the market that can control that as well as also do the dual drive by wire throttle bodies, so that kind of really limited my options there.

I'm guessing it's is that continuously variable cam control as well.

Excuse my ignorance with Ferrari California engines.

Yeah, on both intake and exhaust.

Yeah, so you've got a very advanced naturally aspirated engine.

There's a lot going on there.

So I mean there was some thought of I come from using a Vipec ECU on the old version of the rally car, so I was thinking of staying in the you know kind of the link family and then getting some ignition modules to control the direct injection.

But then, as I thought about it, like the complexity of basically piggybacking systems onto one another to make something work just didn't seem worth it and I was like, well, I'm already this far and I might as well try to do it as right as I possibly can.

And that's what kind of led me to do in the M1.

And then also knowing that I was going to have John Reed do the tuning for it, since he's local to me and has already done Turks 4586.

So it's right up to speed with all things Ferrari and MoTeC.

I figured he's got it pretty well figured out at this point.

They're close enough.

You know motors to one another so I figured I do what would make him happy.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Alright.

So building this wiring harness, what was involved there?

And you know, have you got previous knowledge and skill set with constructing wiring harnesses?

So this is the second harness that I've ever done.

The first one I did was just an engine harness for the Subaru and that was pretty much right after I got the VIP package at HPA and took the wiring course and I was like, okay, well, let's put this to use, and so took a lot of those skills, kind of reviewed a lot of the material and just went into planning.

And I, you know, I think, as most people know, with wiring harnesses a lot of the work and reward is kind of done in the planning side of things.

So once you have that all figured out and well documented, then once you come to actually building the harness, it makes it way more fun and less confusing.

Yeah, I think that's probably a mistake that I see a lot of people make and I kind of it's understandable I've probably done this myself in the past is you want to make a wiring harness?

Well, where do we get started?

We get started with wire.

So you sort of just jump in boots and all with a few spools of wire and some wire strippers, and you know, if you don't have that really thorough plan and then create your plan and convert that into documentation, it's very easy to get overwhelmed and you're almost certainly going to get lost.

So, while on face value I wouldn't say it's the most sexy task, the time spent on the planning and the documentation.

I mean, I'll spend probably significantly longer on that element than the actual construction of the harness, but it just makes everything else go so much more smoothly, doesn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, and that's really what took up the vast majority of the entire project.

I just kind of thinking back of the timeline of things.

I didn't really start working on the car, on the swap, until June of 2022.

And then I had the motor and the car on engine mounts and everything mounted up by September, and then it wasn't until about February the following year that I actually fired up, because that was all done on the wiring harness.

It took that long.

It took longer than actually getting the motor in the car.

Yep, that sounds about right.

People think it's going to be a reasonably quick job, but to do it properly, it absolutely is not.

What level are you working to here?

Is this Just a engine harness to the M1 and integrating with the existing chassis electronics, or was this a front to back rewire of the entire car to put your new found skills to use?

Yeah, so that's fair to mention.

It was a complete front to back rewire of the entire car so it did take a fair bit of time and trying to do it as best as I could and I do everything concentric twisted.

Many parts of the engine harness was just because I did need the flexibility of how I was routing it.

But it's DR25 over everything and trying to seal up as much as I possibly can and keeping it at watertight.

I mean that's pretty relevant for rally as well, because you're in pretty harsh environments, there's water and mud.

So a harness while you absolutely could use one, a fabric braid harness or something of that nature is going to not necessarily have the resistance to all of that sort of environmental impact that you will get with DR25 and heat molded boots, correct?

Yeah, I just think of the dirt and debris that you can get into that flex braid and what it would do to the wires over time.

Unless you're going through and disassembling your wiring harness and cleaning it all, I think you would find that you'd be shorting things out in short order and rally if you didn't have proper protection.

Yeah, yeah.

What about the rest of the electronics package then?

Given that you are doing a full rewire I'm going out on a limb here did you take the opportunity to integrate a power distribution module as well, for the sort of power fusing and distribution?

Yeah, so the car previously had a PDM 15 in it.

I ended up getting a second one just because I was starting to run out of circuits and I wanted to kind of make things a little bit cleaner and easier to diagnose instead of just branching things off.

So I opted to double my capacity there and then beyond that I was running pretty tight on the budget so I retained my aim dash and then beyond that it just has a gear indicator for the sequential Okay, I'll just circle back.

I do make some assumptions, as I'm hosting these podcast, that people kind of follow along with the terminology I'm using.

But PDM or power distribution module, just for those who maybe have been hiding under a rock, it's essentially solid state electronics that replaces fuses and relays and then we can electronically control the power supply to the different circuits.

Some big advantages there in terms of simplifying the wiring.

It takes a long time to wire up individual relays and fuses.

Plus, you need to be able to control those circuits.

So often there'll be individual switches which all need to be wired.

With these PDMs we can usually use a grey hill or a blank marine can base keypad, which really simplifies all the wiring.

So, yes, there's a cost involved for the hardware the PDM, the can keypads but the bit that's easy to overlook is the time that's saved with the wiring, the actual installation, probably more relevant.

Of course, if you're paying, a profession would do it, you're doing it yourself.

But when it came to that task, how did you find wiring for a PDM and can keypad?

Again, I'm assuming you're using a can keypad here, yep did you use a can keypad?

I couldn't imagine it doing it any other way.

To be honest, like if I had to do all the relays and fuses, the time that I would spend doing that would just the benefit of going with the PDM just far outweighs doing that.

Much more work.

I mean obviously possible, but just the simplicity, the ability to diagnose all the benefits that come with the PDM are definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Yeah, it's one of those things I think, once you've experienced it, you've had one, you've used one, you've wired one it's very difficult to go back In terms of getting wiring information for a Ferrari engine.

How difficult is that?

Pretty near impossible.

I don't know how many times I applied to the Ferrari technical site to try to get some documentation and how many times I was denied.

So there was a lot of just kind of reverse engineering, some things.

Most of the electronics on the motor are Bosch.

So taking your standard Bosch part number, looking it up and realizing okay, well, this is a Ferrari encoded version, but it looks very similar to this one.

What are the chances they are at least somewhat the same or at least have the same pin out and are going to be close.

So there was a lot of that, a lot of time spent just researching all the different components and different sensors and actuators and whatnot to try to figure out what's right.

So I never had any true reel for our documentation to do it, so it was just basically working backwards.

What do I have?

What does it seem to do?

Just kind of answering some basic questions and then actually just trying to try and test it.

Do I have to change the pin out, et cetera.

Does that become a bit of a hardened mouth sort of leap of faith, though, when you're also building a sealed, professional, concentric, twisted harness that ultimately they're very difficult to alter if you find that they're not right Although I guess a lot of this would ultimately still just be changing pin outs at the actuator or the sensor, for example.

Yeah, I did leave provisions when I first built the harness, kind of either at the end with actual connectors to the sensors or actuators and whatnot, and then also on the ECU side.

I left that open so that I could just go back in and change what I needed to and then seal it up later, just so I could get everything done that paid off to some degree.

Not actually a whole lot changed, I think it was only maybe two wires on the ECU side that I actually ended up having to change Everything else.

Somehow luck or just due diligence it all kind of worked out and everything fired up and ran.

Let's put that down to HPA education and due diligence, not luck.

Eh, absolutely Alright.

So one of the elements that is quite tricky with a direct injected engine and I've tuned a number of them, but I've actually never been in the unfortunate situation of setting up a standalone direct injected ECU from scratch with no documentation.

But getting the calibration of the high pressure fuel pump, which is normally driven off a cam lobe, is quite tricky and needs some specific information around that.

Is that something that you were involved with, or did you just offload that to John Reid and let him do the heavy lifting there?

Yeah, so we actually started with what Turk had in his 458, which didn't exactly work out the way that we were hoping.

It is quite a bit different.

So we did spend a lot of time and this is mostly just John and me kind of watching over his shoulder, of trying to dial in the direct injection pumps and figuring that out.

We spent a good time on the dyno just working on that.

Yeah, it took a few hours.

Okay, and obviously John here is involved in the tuning, as you've already mentioned.

So how, once it's actually up and running for the first time, were there any other sort of unexpected surprises, or was everything pretty smooth from that point on?

I think, if we go backwards to when I first fired it up, there was a surprise in that I didn't actually have the firing order correct.

Again, trying to find documentation just even finding the reliable firing order for that motor was difficult, so the one source that I tried to use turned out to be the wrong one, and then I found another and got it fixed and it went from sounding like a tractor to actually like a Ferrari.

This is the problem with the age that we live in and that information is absolutely everywhere, and I think the new skill that people need to learn is to understand how to sort fact from fiction.

When you're researching something like this, I mean, you're dealing with something mainstream, an engine that everyone's put in every car obviously all that information is pretty rock solid, but when you're starting to edge around the sort of extremes of what people are doing obviously less reliable information it's very easy to see something on the internet or on a forum and just blindly believe that, but more often than not, sadly, that's going to end up coming undone.

Alright, so it's on the dyno, john's doing his thing.

Where do you sort of get to in terms of power torque, what's the sort of red line and what is the usable range of this Ferrari engine?

Yep.

So I'll start with the RPM.

We tuned it up to 8500 but we have a restriction from ARRA with an RPM limit of 7500.

So loss, you know, 1000 RPM there, but not a total loss.

Actually the car does kind of plateau, power wise, right around that area, which makes sense, considering the California was much more meant to be a road car.

You know driving around California.

So you know it kind of makes sense for what the cam was designed around and at least compared to the 458 where it climbs all the way to where its red line is.

So that makes sense.

On that basis did you dodge a bullet there, not ending up with a 458 engine with that higher usable rev range and going with the cheaper California engine?

You know, I thought that might be the case, but once we overlaid the dyno numbers from both cars we found that I am missing out on some fun.

Okay, unfortunate.

Yeah, unfortunate, the 458 is just well, looks very similar.

There's some advanced things going on there that they really take advantage of, so just missing out on some extra tech and engineering that goes on there, but still plenty healthy Power numbers.

So I initially did the tune on just pump gas with 93 octane, or actually 92 octane that we have here, and without going specifically on the numbers, it would be pretty much exactly what you would expect a stock for California to be going through a novel drivetrain.

Okay, yeah, so no big surprises there.

With the fuel on 92, 93 octane, are you not limited?

Is there a benefit there to going to a superior fuel, a higher octane gasoline or alcohol based fuel like E85 or some ethanol blend?

So what's interesting is we didn't notice it so much on the pump gas, but then when we had to switch, we ended up having to go to a spec fuel, another air regulation, which is the same fuel used for the R5s or rally twos it's from VP and we had the RPM limit put in and then another restriction on the throttle bodies where we can only open to 75%.

We actually found that we were pushing the timing a little bit differently, in a different way, and developed some knock on that fuel and so ended up having to pull that up, and we didn't actually realize that until we were on the street.

So sorry.

Just to be clear, you were running into problems with knock on the VP spec fuel.

Correct, interesting, okay.

So until we did our first couple stages and looking back at the data logs and we found some knock in a couple spots and so we just dialed the map back a little bit to just make it on the safer side.

Something to investigate further, I think.

But yeah, we did have a little bit of knock.

Ultimately.

I mean, I do know that the M1 product's pretty well and the closed loop knock control strategy in that ECU, as long as it's set up and validated properly I'll assume John did a stand up job of it is amazing.

So while it's not ideal to run the engine and to knock, the ECU is there to sort of protect and safeguard the engine in that event.

So good to pick it up, good to be able to adjust the timing mapping and get rid of it, but at least the ECU's able to do its job in the meantime as well.

Okay, so in terms of driving sort of perspective versus turbocharged engine, first of all, what's it like with the power delivery and the power band?

Obviously zero turbo lag.

How does it compare?

Yeah.

So the first thing that you notice is that you have all the way until red line, which is something that I'm not used to at all.

So I just kind of went back to old habits the first time I drove it and I was short, shifting the car and I'm like, wait, what are you doing?

And I still am having to force myself and you know I just little tricks like extending my shift light so that it's a long, gradual climb all the way to red line, instead of kind of coming on quick which is what I did before just to kind of like retrain me to use up all that RPM range.

And the side effect to that is that the car is so loud inside at those RPMs that I can barely hear the notes.

So it's a little bit of a tricky trade off there.

But on power delivery, I think the biggest thing that I noticed was how much easier it was to control the car mid-corner, and what I mean by that is kind of going back to our earlier discussion of pedal sharing, of when you get on the throttle with a turbocharged car and kind of depending on the level of anilag that you have on it, the car can kind of be a bucking Bronco and you suddenly get that boost mid-corner and it comes on hard and you have your whatever 20 something pounds of boost just suddenly hit.

The car wants to step out very aggressively and unless you have a really hard left foot braking strategy going on, the cars can be difficult to control.

So I just found with the V8 and the linear aspect of its power delivery to be very easy to control coming out mid-corner and then how you roll onto full throttle on that corner exit again very controllable and very linear.

A couple of elements on that note and I have discussed this off and on in the past, but I will reiterate for those who haven't heard me go on about it before.

One of the big issues I see with turbocharged engines is that they are really, really good at making boost and what that means for the most part is, let's say, we're above the boost threshold, so an area where the engine can actually make maximum boost.

So we're there, we go to full throttle and the turbo spools up and let's say, we hit our peak boost and maybe that's 20 psi, just for example.

So sweet, we've got whatever power and torque the engine's making at that RPM and 20 psi of boost and we're at wide open throttle.

And then this is very, very obvious when we're on a dyno and we do it under steady state conditions.

If we back the throttle off from 100% throttle to 80%, you'll probably notice almost no difference in power and torque.

It'll drop a little bit, but we're talking maybe a few percent and generally it's not until we get down to about 50% throttle that we actually start to see a really noticeable drop off in the power and torque.

So what this really translates to is that we've got a very nonlinear relationship between the torque that the engine is delivering and the driver's throttle pedal position, because once that turbo is spilt up it does a really good job of kind of staying there, whereas with a naturally aspirated engine we can get a much closer to sort of linear relationship between the driver's foot pedal position and the engine torque.

Now, yes, if we go back to turbocharged engines, there are tricks we can do with that our boost versus throttle position.

We can change the relationship of the drive by wire opening to the driver's pedal as well.

So there are elements that we can improve, but still we sort of tend to see this discrepancy Kind of the other element there is.

I mentioned the drive by wire mapping relative to driver's pedal position.

So have you had an opportunity to play around with that with the Ferrari engine or, if not, do you see this potential for benefits there?

Yeah, so if I remember correctly off the top of my head, the way that it kind of looks is somewhat exponential fairly early on and then curves off and approaches a limit as you reach 100%, and so I think that in my brain that does make sense of how you would want that power delivery and you would want it to come on fairly quickly and also gives you a little bit of movement as well.

Let's say, you're at 100% throttle pedal and you're driving on a rally stage and you're hitting bumps and whatnot.

You want to have a little bit of kind of dead band built in there so that you're maintaining that 100% throttle.

So yeah, I haven't played a whole lot with it yet, trying different strategies.

This is what John had recommended and had programmed in there, and immediately it felt fantastic to me.

So I don't really have a reason to change, unless we're going to have some testing time and opportunities to purposely trace something else out.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, if it isn't broken, there's no point trying to fix it.

Really, In terms of I know that you haven't had a lot of rally miles with the car to date it's still reasonably fresh but what have been the big sort of takeaways from any obvious problems that have popped up?

Anything else that you think needs to be addressed?

Yeah, I think the overheating problem was number one and still remains number one, but beyond that I haven't seen any issues with fatigue on the adapter plate, on the engine mounts, on the flywheel, anything like that.

So I think structurally things are fine.

No changes needed to the wiring harness.

I think there's some suspension optimization that needs to occur because with the more weight up front I think there's something that I could do there.

Maybe a little bit stronger anti roll bar to counteract the a little bit higher center of gravity by the motor, things like that.

It's not a huge effect, but I think it could just be further optimized if anything.

Yeah, I mean that makes sense.

You can't expect to go through a project of this magnitude and sort of go out for your first test stage and just think, oh, that's actually perfect, I don't need to change a damn thing.

Given the amount of interest the cars had, are you expecting to either, first of all, see any other competitors go down similar paths and I'm not necessarily talking about putting a Ferrari engine in a WRX, but obviously there's a multitude of options in that sort of up to four and a half litre high revving, high power NA V8 that you could choose from?

You kind of alluded to that at the start or, alternatively, are you expecting to see, each season as it goes by, further restrictions from the officials?

I think the second question I answer first and I'll say I don't expect any major changes to the rules going further, because I think they have recognized and realize the value of it, Because the attention isn't just to the car and me and the team.

It's been to American rally and it's you know, even if it's just eyeballs, it is you know, fairly measurable, and so they're able to see that and I think it's proven, it's worth.

And then, as far as other competitors, yeah, I've already had a good number of people reach out and be like, hey, what do you think of this idea?

Or, and to be fair, a few people had already recognized this and, like, had it in their minds.

They just hadn't pulled the trigger yet.

And I was just the one that was either dumb enough or brave enough lucky enough to be the first one to do it.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it could be worse than seeing a whole bunch of home built hot rods like this that sound amazing, pop up across rally stages all around the US.

So if that's the way it goes, so be it.

One of the things I'm interested if this sort of has been a consideration or concern in your mind is there's hundreds, if not thousands, of workshops that are going to be pretty competent at rebuilding a Subaru EJ series engine, and the parts relatively speaking, not difficult to find or hugely expensive.

What happens when this Ferrari engine maybe needs a little bit of a freshen up?

Well, I kept the EJ for a reason, but in all seriousness, I think it just kind of, you know, depends on the level of care that it needs If it's you know the motor has sleeves and pistons in it.

I know there are aftermarket pistons for that family of motor and it's also not too hard to get some custom pistons made that really, you know, realistically don't have to break the bank.

So I think there's some, some basic things that could be done to keep the motor fresh and running.

I think if it goes on the catastrophic side, it would take a lot of diagnosis to see, you know, what the damage is.

And is it repairable by, you know, my friends that are good machinists and myself, or is it to the level where we need to?

You know, buy a $6,000 crankshaft and well, maybe I just buy another motor at that point or just return back to the EJ.

So there's a kind of a cost benefit analysis that kind of will have to be taken into account depending on what it needs.

Cross that bridge when you come to it if you come to it, for that matter.

It's a pretty solid motor and you know.

Yeah, and ultimately it's still a production engine making production power Now at a reduced rev range, so realistically, you should be able to expect good reliability out of it.

After all, I mean, ferrari put these things out with a factory warranty, so they're not going to do that if it's a time bomb or a hand grenade, really are they Correct?

Alright, looking back at the project in its entirety, now that you're at the point where you got to, is there anything significant or major that you would have changed anything?

You regret any sort of mistakes?

I think I probably could have just asked for a lot more help along the way.

And that's kind of a two-sided thought too, because partially it's forcing myself to learn and get better at whatever it is, but at the same time I think there was a lot of people that had interest in helping and in many ways I deprived them of the opportunity to help.

So, double-sided thought on that.

Ultimately, a lot of people want to be part of it and just be part of something neat and fascinating in general.

So, yeah, I definitely think I would have involved more people if I were to do it again Would be what I do.

I think that's probably something I struggle with as well.

I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and, rightly or wrongly, I always sort of have that if I want something done right, I have to do it myself mentality.

And the number of times where I've ended up either with a project that's gone nowhere or taken a hell of a lot longer than it should have because I haven't accepted help that's been on offer because I wanted to do it myself, it is problematic and it's something that I find I still struggle with.

So I kind of I do understand that after you've completed a project of this magnitude that's had this much sort of public interest, it's sort of hard to go back to building average cars.

What's the next big thing you've got on your mind?

Because generally, once you've done this, you have to go bigger, better and crazier each time.

Yeah, I think what I would say is that the car isn't done and so I had.

Are they ever?

Yeah, but I've had in my mind of doing significant suspension upgrade on the car for a while.

The motor just somehow kind of came first, and so getting the car to have more modern suspension geometry for a rally is a goal that I have and started to scan all the corners of the car and starting to put that back into solid works and work on what the next iteration of suspension will look like in that car, whether it comes.

You know, try to take dampers from a Fiesta R5 and figure out how I can fit them in, and you know.

Something to that level, I think, is what's coming up next.

Yeah, okay, I mean, I guess that makes sense.

There's no point having all the power in the world if you can't actually put it down.

And obviously, particularly with rally, the suspension is absolutely so critical to every element of the car's performance.

This might be a bit of a difficult one, but if you had to put a ballpark on it in terms of seconds per kilometre of stage, I guess miles per stage I'm sorry we don't speak metric, do you?

You know, what sort of difference would you see between the turbo EJ and the Ferrari engine?

I don't even know if that's a question that's sort of easy to answer, but obviously everyone's going to want to know how much faster is it.

So can you give us some kind of line in the sand as far as that goes?

Sure I could get an exact number and actually all of our rallying within our team we do with kilometres, so when we do track that so it's makes me a little bit easier, but I would say somewhere in the realm of about a second kilometre faster.

And I say that kind of thinking about the times that we had at Oregon Trail Rally where we're generally about four seconds or so off of the factory Subaru team, a second kilometre off of them, and then what we did just in this last race.

So there was definitely an improvement and just generally speaking, with where we'd normally place.

I would say based off the competition that was there, we would expect to be consistently in third and fourth place for each stage we were now P2, p3 every stage.

Well, okay, well, I think that's an impressive change.

I mean, a second per kilometre might not, on face value, sound like a lot, but in rallying that's a lifetime.

You need to do a lot of work to pull out a second a case.

So, yeah, great work.

Alright, sam, I think we'll move towards wrapping this thing up and we'll finish off with the same three questions we ask all of our guests, and the first of those questions is what's next in the future for you?

Yeah.

So I think right now we're kind of in this consolidation phase of getting the car to work right and finish up the R&D, and then we want to get a full season together.

So whether that happens in 24, 25, not entirely sure, but definitely want to take this car across the country and hit all the events that we possibly can and get another full championship under our belt.

Yeah, sounds good.

I mean, obviously there's a significant financial investment in doing a full season of rally, I can imagine as well.

So good luck with that.

We hope it all goes well when you do get to that point.

Next question is there any advice you could give to a younger version of yourself or perhaps one of our listeners that would help reach where you are today in your career faster?

Now I want to twist this one around a little bit.

I mean, obviously you're not specifically pursuing a career in the automotive industry, but as an enthusiast with the skill set that you've built up, if we focus around that side of things, yeah, I think it's.

I'll bring it back to finding a mentor and asking the right questions, but also trying to find ways that you could add value to them as well, whether that's you know helping them out in the workshop or whatever.

You're just finding ways that you aren't just a drag on that relationship and just you know building that relationship up so that it's mutually beneficial.

And why I say that is that you don't want to be that person that is always pestering for questions and looking for answers and you create a richer, more fuller relationship with that person.

And I think that's just a critical aspect.

And I think many times the times when I do ask questions, I was just doing it for my own benefit and I think that's an easy trap to fall into.

But I think if you want to have something that is much more long lasting, to kind of think of both sides of the equation and that will end up paying dividends for you later on in life as well, that's really solid advice.

I think that the mentorship side of things is an excellent way to learn and I think in the automotive industry there's a lot of older players that are only too happy to give back and help out younger enthusiasts and pass on their knowledge.

But, like you say, there does have to be a two-way street.

So just rocking up to someone who's professional and knowledgeable and sort of saying, oh well, you meant to me, that's not really normally going to work too well.

So it's about what can I bring to the table?

What skills do I have?

Is it just time that I've got available and maybe the mentor doesn't have a lot of time?

What can I do in order to help sort of ease the burden there?

And if you can make it work as a two-way street, I think yeah, absolutely, it's going to be better for both parties.

Last question for today, sam people want to follow you and see what you're up to, hear this insane Ferrari powered WRX ripping along a rally stage.

How are they best to do so?

Yeah, I'm across all socials.

You know Instagram, facebook, tiktok and YouTube.

Really easy to find at Sam Albert Rally or search for the Ferrari powered Subaru and it'll get you there pretty quickly.

It will drop some links in the description or show notes, I should say so that it's even easier for people to find.

But yeah, highly recommend people who haven't seen and heard this thing before check it out.

It is in my opener and I do congratulate you on building an insane car and definitely one of the best sounding rally cars I've heard in a long time.

Thanks for your time today, sam, and we wish you all the best with the rest of the development on this car and I look forward to seeing how you go once you do get into that full season of the rally series.

Thanks, andre, appreciate you having me.

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Revisted: Subaru WRX Rally Car… Powered by Ferrari?!

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