club.liberty.asn.au

Hey guys

So I've got the old 2005 gt with the 2l in it. I've spent a lot of time and love on this car already however the motor is now up to 170k and I'm getting a little skittish the motor is basically stock all I've got is a catback. I'm just after some opinions on what to do. I'm wanting to modify and get more power what I want to know is it to late to mod this motor, do I look at completely rebuilding and modifying from there or do I look for a swap. Cheers for any opinions.

The EJ20 is arguably a better block than the EJ2.5 but doesn't seem as prone to the head gasket issue of the latter. There's a reason Subaru have stuck with them here in Japan until the FA/FB20s came along.

At 170k there's still life in it but a refresh would be a great idea if you plan on upping the ante. There are a few options depending on your budget including swapping in a used JDM STi long engine/turbo, refreshing your engine (rings, bearings, pistons, recon the heads etc), or starting with a fresh EJ207 STi block and add your heads, turbo etc.

Personally, I'd start with a new EJ207 (adding a Killer B oil pick-up and ARP head bolts), recon/upgrade my heads (new/bigger valves, work the seats, springs) and maybe upgrade the turbo to a TD04HLA19T or 20T. If budget allowed I'd add some STi cams to work better with the headwork/better flowing turbo. Your goals could be different but that'd get me a good increase in drivability without sacrificing reliability.

Cheers mate pretty much bang on the information I was looking for. I'm going to get her freshened up I think. Do some decent support mods and then tune I would love to swap the turbo out but finding a replacement is hard work just not a fan of the td04 it's gutless and makes me nervous.

stocko wrote: I would love to swap the turbo out but finding a replacement is hard work just not a fan of the td04 it's gutless and makes me nervous.

There aren't too many bolt on options out there unfortunately. You could change to a VF44/45 which is the replacement for the VF38/TD04 as the stock turbo on the 06 onwards JDM 2.0 Legacy. There's different opinions on them and they seem to be pretty much comparable in performance to the TD04. The VF36/37 STi route will require replacing the headers/up-pipe as well as building a custom dump-pipe and a bit of fiddling around with feed lines to make it all work. You'd probably want a new TMIC at least...yada yada yada. Mick, DR20T, has a fancy TS turbo but then he's put more in to his engine than most do on their entire car. You could also go single scroll and then the sky's the limit depending on how fast you can afford to go.

As long as you're not looking for big power/top end the stock turbo is great as a daily. It spools faster than most anything else from it's time and with a strong bottom end you'd have a great package that won't go bang in any great hurry and not be a headgasket eater like the 2.5s