Subaru says "around 200" will be made. Why not just declare it at 209?! Hope everyone's having a wonderful day, thanks for watching! I'm hopeful to get to test out one of these rare machines; in the meantime, here's my review of the $50,000 Subaru STI Type RA: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N71CY9M4ZnE.html
Why can't we have opposing cylinders firing at the same time? Obviously boxer and V configuration engines are the ones I mean. I presume that timing the detonation might be the problem, but surely there's a way around this? I would expect the torque and BHP figures to improve hugely. I must be forgetting something simple that prevents this being a simple way to increase performance... :-)
@@James-oo1yq Vibration. You go from having four 120-ish degree power strokes per 720 degree cycle (480 degrees of power stroke, so 60 degrees at a time without power at a higher, smoother frequency) to two (240 degrees of power stroke, with two 240 degree gaps) Effectively you have a well balanced two cylinder engine. It would also sound like ass and break gearboxes like there's no tomorrow
I'm guessing that it's gonna bd one of those cars where each individual car's power output varies a bit. So they don't want to have something to stick to.
My best mate has a 2013 club spec sti and lives with his parents still. That's how he could afford to buy a club spec sti. But his mum doesn't drive him around like Zac Ashs' mum.
ElMosqito because where I live all these frat punks drive WRX’s around, vaping thinking there the coolest things out there lol. Those are the same idiots that think they are Rally drivers and wrap there cars around trees...
@@SantanKGhey1234 An intelligent engineer thinks to simplify things, an insecure mediocre engineer find ways to make things more complicated than it should be......
The EJ25 motor is indeed old, but the fact they installed forged internals is game changer. With a flex fuel kit and upgraded injectors, I could see this platform making north of 400whp easy. Little pricey but since it's a limited edition, they get away with it.
you would think that every boosted engine would get forged internals since its running on boost, heck honda s2000 but forget internals in their engines even though the engine was N/A, kind of shows that subaru are just cheap
Alex Nichols I think Subaru should just stick to making granny mobiles at this point. They literally ignore everything their very large and loyal community asks and keep pushing this garbage on us. I understand it’s forged internals and that’s better suited towards aftermarket upgrades. But you can literally bolt all this onto a 14-15 model sti and be thousands cheaper than they’ll try to sell this money grabbing scheme for.
vr43000gtkid thats what happens when the company gets too greedy, they know people will buy it so they charge 60+ k for an sti thats just slightly modded, i can put 4 k into my 2013 civic si and blow the doors off of this one, i would actually buy a just basic wrx over this one and still have 30+k in my pocket! But yes you are right
Alex Nichols I agree 100% it’s truly a shame when Hyundai is doing a better job at making a car oriented towards the performance community than all the big dogs.
vr43000gtkid you are right, my neighbor bought a 2018 Hyundai tucson fully loaded, it is about 5x better than 2018 subaru forester she looked at, and the price difference was about 10 k, it even has apple carplay and android play which you dont get the subaru!
hot water is actually more effective. it is already closer to being heated to steam and steam relases the most amount of heat energy. Ice would be used in a water to air intercooler system.
I get calcium buildup on my coffee maker. If you're not using distilled water, the IC is going to begin to have the same problem. Owners will have to clean the IC with vinegar.
You coffee maker boils water, this intercooler sprayer only relies on evaporative cooling. The rate of calcium buildup if any will be significantly less on your intercooler.
@@kellygordon103 The sprinkler bubblers in my yard in AZ has a tremendous amount of calcium build up. I have to often chip it off with a screwdriver. Note: the water is NOT boiled.
Lead was not in Flint water, but it came frome old pipes in your home. What Flint did wrong was not adding water treatment to reduce lead leaching from your homes lead soldered pipes. The Rea issue is home owners need 5o remove the old lead pipes from there homes and buildings. Glints water starts out with no lead, but your old homes old plumbing adds the lead...
@@airgliderz no this is wrong. Flint changed water supplies from Lake Huron to the Flint River to save money. The water from the river was much more corrosive and leeched lead from the city's water infrastructure which consisted of a lot of lead pipes. People got sick and the people in charge ignored them for as long as they could get away with it.
@@Fungii001 correct exactly what I allready stated, old lead pipes caused issue, water not being treated with basically fertizer for anti carrisuon to help prevent lead f t pm leaching from old homes plumbing, you can again it was not the water it was Jones an buildings old plumbing as the source of lead, but common in many cities....
A lot of ppl will change the wiper washer system and divert it to their intercooler mate!! :D . Water injection for I/C cooling was used by subaru before 2004 outside US (16 years ago i sold my 22B it had I/C Water Spray)
Did this 20 years ago on my old MR2 TURBO, Washer bottle from a old car, Best mod was Water/ethanol injection pre intercooler, and you don't have to worry about freezing.
16 years and and an additional 41 HP .. so that's about 2.5HP increase per year. Awesome job Subaru! Love the videos Jason, BTW - keep up the great work.
Old, and proven. It is by no means a 'perfect' engine but they have tweaked and improved it over the years and it is a known entity. Whatever they were to replace it with would be relatively untested and would probably take a few years to get up to the same level of reliability and trust that they've developed with the older EJ series. Though I do wonder if they have other reasons as well, maybe technical or legal reasons.
That car is one of the reasons I like Subaru. They take all their engineering know how and put into a one off special car. So, for those of us that want that kind of exclusivity. We can have it with a Subaru. (:
This is a fitting swan-song for the FA chassis STI. I'm excited to see what the next generation brings. Subaru's recent commitment and success in endurance racing should make for an amazing next generation road car.
@@bespinoza66 the Evo has been dead since 2015... And if that's not bad enough, they brought back the Eclipse but made it an SUV. And no, I'm not making this up
@@Fantastika AE92 and AE101 Corolla Levin GT-Z. There was a Sprinter Trueno version of both too. I had the first AE92 version, still had the big port head, unfortunately.
Very nice! It is satisfying to see some wrongs made right for us American car enthusiasts. We finally get the Honda Civic Type R, which I bought and LOVE and now Subaru gives us the STI S209 which I can't get but I am glad my fellow enthusiasts over here are have the ability to buy one. As some people push for more EVs it is awesome to see we are still getting some of the best engineered internal combustion engine cars ever made! These cars will go down as modern day classics.
My 2002 GDA Bugeye WRX also uses water spray over the top mount intercooler. I did this myself and the dyno test proves its worth. Was 196 Kw, now 209Kw. I ran a small copper tube with 9 x 0.5 mm holes drilled, it sprays the water over the whole intercooler. The system uses a 3.5 litre bottle with a window washer pump and the copper tube has a water return for the unused water. The water lasts for a full 12 hours constant driving so I only have to fill it once a week in most cases.
I'm just waiting to see the guys at track day who have removed that "fill half-way" tank and replaced it with an ice chest strapped into their trunk, wrapped in aluiminum foil with a custom fitting plugged into that watter line routed to the sprayer!!! Git'r done!!!
Anyone who owns a WRX STI and is thinking of modding it, would be wise to take notes on what Subaru Technica International did to get the S209 up to 341 HP and follow their lead.
Still using old EJ's in a 2020 model year vehicle? Why not use the FA motor? Or better yet if Subaru wants real power why not make it a flat 6 instead of flat 4? 3.6L flat 6 twin turbo 500hp, will make the WRX STI basically a front engine Porsche 911!
Ya know, I have a 5th gen Legacy with the 3.6 and thought the same. From what I was able to find, the 3.6 (Subaru's version) internals just aren't made for boost (within reasonable pricing). The 4th gens 3.0 is a far better platform for performance and boost from what I could dig up (this was a while back, so I don't have any solid references, I was also trawling forums, so take that for what it is).
@@dodecahedron1 no it isn't. It is a little over half an inch longer than an EJ25 due to the fact one is chain and the other is belt driven. People have swapped and boosted the flat six blocks into Imprezas. It is not at all a big engine.
Yes they blow head gaskets bad because the blocks are almost completely open. You can buy closed deck blocks and them have them o ringed or a company called IAG does what they call a fire lock treatment to the block which allows the block and head to seal much the way diesel engines do. It's all quite expensive though.
I am an Evo owner and I love this new Subie. It is going to be very collectable in a few years. Eventually when I decided to get a new ride it's going to be a Subaru STI closes thing to an Evo.
Not that I'm suggesting this...but what kinds of numbers can we expect if you filled the water tank with liquid nitrogen? Granted, it may make the plastic tank fracture, the pump may not handle the liquid and the rubber/plastic lines and nozzles may not spray it but let's just say for a mental experiment...what are we looking for with that? Let's run some numbers. Great review and explanation of this new Subie. Had a bug-eye years ago and would love to have another one sometime.
Much, much more effective. But yeah, a challenge to implement. Nitrogen exists as a liquid at like -200 deg C, so if you're spraying -200 deg C liquid, obviously the cooling effect on the intake charge will be significant.
@@fersunk I would figure it would probably do damage all along the way. Maybe just put some dry ice in a mesh bag in front of the intercooler. Somewhat like they do in F1 to cool the cars down. Wouldn't be intermittent though.
If it was possible and practical, i think the intercooler would be clogged up by ice on the inside and slowly stop the flow of air. The car will also start to activate cold engine choke at some point giving you less power. If the right temperature balance is found and if the engine would otherwise knock or overheat and if more fuel can be added to go with the denser colder air, you will get more then just 5-10 hp in a car like this.
true, but Subaru has has water sprayers on the intercooler for 25 years now. Its not something they just decided to do but rather more of a heritage thing or they like living in the past.
You have to give it to Subaru they will not let the EJ die. Which is fine by me... The aftermarket has proved them to be a capable design when the right combo of parts are thrown at it. Thanks for the prompt video Jason.
Anybody else feeling like this is exceptionally underwhelming engineering? Subaru just effectively pointed the windshield washers down at the intercooler and builds 200 cars...?
What's even more underwhelming is that they were doing this back in 04. I always thought it was a bit gimmicky, but still cool. They stopped doing it, just to bring it back over a decade later as this "new" feature only for this super-limited model.
I like the video, but there is one thing wrong. It’s not the most powerful Subaru ever made, Subaru released a more powerful version of the current STI called the diamond edition, it’s limited like the S209 and only sold in one country. So the diamond edition STI is the most powerful production Subaru to this date.
Oh my, looks like you're correct! Here's what Subaru's headline for the press release says: "SUBARU TECNICA INTERNATIONAL UNLEASHES MOST POWERFUL MODEL EVER WITH LIMITED-EDITION STI S209" So... I'm not sure where the claim is from, but I believe it means STI made it, versus the South Africa team? Not sure haha, thanks for pointing this out! Edit: Here's the link - media.subaru.com/pressrelease/1388/1/subaru-tecnica-international-unleashes-most-powerful-model-ever
South Africa only - 345hp. Japan had the tc380 in December 2018 - a special developed with Arai, their rally driver and HKS tuning - had 380hp, 43/50 sold in around 45 minutes.
Even though this engine is incredible, I still can't believe how AMG managed to squeeze 380hp on a 2 liter 4 cylinder engine of the A45. And even more impressive is how the next A45 will probably have more than 400
Nothing new here had a v7 WRX STI with a factory IC spray that worked automatically or could be turned off and only work off a switch. Why the big deal about this old tech?
Sorry Jason but the only positive thing about this I believe is nitrous modding that button and get a real kick out of it!! Also gonna put that forged internals to the test!!!
Some kid with a regular WRX did a video where he re-routed his windshield wiper jets to spray the intercooler, and swapped the wiper fluid with water. Genius! Um... until his windshield gets dirty.
This is a cool feature even though realistically your not going to notice. Sounds like subaru have over enginered this engine for only a 10% gain in power. This engine with forged internals will take insane boost levels. It's almost as if subaru expect it! Shame we don't get this in the uk
I'd love it if you did one of these on the VW 1.0 TSI like the one used in the UP GTI - loads of cool stuff going on, re 3 cylinder timing (no balancing weights apparently), charge cooling integrated into a plastic intake manifold, electric wastegate, exhaust manifold integrated into the block, petrol particle filter, two coolant circuits for the engine (one for the head, one for the block), high pressure direct injection(sort of like a diesel), sodium filled valves. It's a very interesting little engine.
It's nice to see a meaningful increase in power output from the WRX STi, even if it is in the form of a low-production run special edition. On a side note, if it were my car, I would use distilled or deionized water to refill the intercooler spray reservoir to reduce the risk of scale formation.
vodka doesnt burn that good. and it doesn't burn long enough to ignite whatever is around it. But when it burns it creates heat that we obviously don't want. So there is no risk to the car, just a "will it work" risk. So I think someone should just try it XD
Intercooler water spray was a feature of WRX RA sedans going all the way back to 1993. There were even two modes of operation: automatic, at high boost levels, and manual, so you could dose the intercooler whenever you wanted. From memory, the sprayer system had a tank in the trunk. Most of those cars got the DCCD, too - the Driver Controlled Center Differential, where you could manually direct more power to the rear. Nice cars they were, too: very simple, very light, and very quick! I think you will find that the cooling offered by the water spray is not mostly from evaporative cooling, it's from heating the water as it gets blasted through the IC by the oncoming rush of air. Not much of it evaporates while it's in contact with the IC, but rather, it evaporates when it hits hot engine parts underneath the IC. Ideally, you would spray a very fine mist into the inlet of the cooler, from multiple spray units, in such small droplets that it all evaporated before it reached the Intercooler itself, lowering the temperature of the inbound air. But such fine jets would be very difficult to maintain.
Be careful how much power you put into it. You don't want to experience the numerous complaints that resulted from the similarly numbered ED-209 machine, created by Omni Consumer Products for OCP in Detroit originally.😎
The idea is that it can be used for 1 or 2 hot laps, not intended for everyday driving. Its really going to be more useful for cooling the IC after a few laps to keep heat soak from hurting performance on track days. The bonus power is a side effect of what is really intended to fix the inherent issues with a top-mount IC.
Subaru Guy Here: My opinion, Overpriced Slightly Tuned STI, thats all it is, just a little bit of a boost crank, little turbo upgrades, and a little better internals, different wing, thats it? And that whole Intercooler Spray has been out, I have that system on my 2004 STI, I heard after the 04-05 they took the system down and now they introduced it in this one? You can literally get a 2019 STI, Slap a bigger turbo on it, maybe some different internals as well, and there is your 209, for WAYYY less. I dont like what subaru is doing now, but one crucial thing to notice is their 2019 Cars are still Manual, THANK YOU SUBARU FOR THIS
How's the Evo doing these days? Haha, I'm messing with you, but it's also kinda silly to bring up "who had what feature first." Should we shame all the companies that use turbos because Oldsmobile did it in the 60's?
not only did the gc8 sti ra had them. there were plenty of subarus back in the 90s, which had this feature across all markets. legacy gtb and some standard impreza wrx models in japan are just some to mention
@@EngineeringExplained It's not even that the water jets' feature should be anything to brag about, as I'm sure it wasn't hard to engineer and implement. It's just the fact that they are using the water jets as such a big selling point when they should really be bragging about the forged internals, aero, etc that the car possesses
Love subies. Have 2 but wtf is this Subaru?? Same EJ and small horsepower upgrade. GTFO with that and release the new generation already with a different motor.
@sneeky7 4G63 was reliable AF so I could see why people got mad. "IF aint broke, dont fix it", but the EJ has proven itself not reliable and cant hold power on stock internals. At least the 4G63 replacement (4B11) was a good reliable motor. Every manufacturer has a weak spot. Subaru has amazing STI tranny but the EJ has to go.
relax dude there's only going to be 200ish of them. The S-line subies are for track people and collectors. If anything, this model should be good news to you, as it is the last hurrah before the new platform comes out. Its US market presence, unlike the S208 or S207 signals the end of its production cycle.
It is insane how much effort Subaru is putting into making their engine a tiny bit more powerful. They need an extra water tank, some lines for the water to travel to the intercooler, the pedals on the steering wheel have to be connected too. All that for an optimistic guess of 10 hp more. Surely there are easier ways to achieve that, but Subaru's way is probably the coolest of them.
@@danieljensen2626 no he's saying that a heavier car with a more powerful engine is still getting better mpg than the STI. So STI isn't as efficient as these other cars.
It doesn’t use actual water injection, which is when a water/methanol mix is injected into the charge pipes, but simply sprays the inter cooler, which improves the thermal efficiency of the intercooler.
Great job on your video, but it is ridiculous to call this special just because of a lame water spray gimmick and some tasteless aero. What is going on with Japanese automakers, nothing but let downs left and a right. I'm sure the so called supra will be a great performer, but they should have called it something else. There's nothing Supra about. If anything, it does look like a higher trim BRZ.
Your wrong. It is clearly not a gimmick. It is proven reliable technolgy used succsessfully since WW2. The only gimmick is your incorrect comment... LOL
@@equiman85 No, I again your wrong. By your measure turbos, multi valves, superchargers, performance intakes, and performance parts, performance cams and nitro is old tech you won't and don't use cause it's a gimmick and to old for you. Water injection is proven reliable affordable technology that works very well.
I dont know how you can say water spray is a cool thing? Really? Engineers should focus on how to develop a better cooling system to keep the temperatures down and not do a "DIY HACK" by spraying water on it. "Its cool "..when you are in high school and dont know any better.
"Anytime that you can push a button on your steering wheel that provides more power is quite neat, in my book." *Que Fast and Furious Naaws warp-drive*
It's a fine looking automobile indeed, with the exception of the 'Fast and the Furious' wing. I always enjoy your well thought out and informative videos. Keep up the great work!
Just to be clear, the water isn't being sprayed directly onto the intercooler. Based on the pictures you showed it looks like the water is being sprayed into the airstream through the scoop. I would guess that having water jets pointed right at the aluminum intercooler could potentially lead to corrosion issues down the line. Hence why Subaru just squirts it into the airstream, allowing it to better vaporize and cover more of the intercooler in a less direct manner.
