Just adding a blower with monster boost doesn't make for a reliable car, though, so there needed to be some beefing up of the internals. The fast-thinking, quick-speaking and immensely capable Mr. Leung addressed the potential reliability pitfalls of running category 5 hurricane-force winds through a stock motor by using a YimiSport Stage 1 short-block. Additional YimiSport parts and pieces used to ensure that the Subie boxer didn't explode in a mass of smoke and fire at 8000 rpm included 1mm oversized valves, a set of ported heads and a YimiSport air-oil separator.
To handle the staggering amount of air that the Full-Race twin-scroll turbo forced through the flat-four, YimiSport fabbed a custom front-mount intercooler along with a custom 4-inch intake. The post-combustion release of air was vented out through a set of Full-Race custom-fabbed headers and down a YimiSport twin-catted race exhaust with what appeared to be stock exhaust tips. The sound at idle was raspy and very Subie in its lopey rhythm, but it turned into a sharp, ripping pitch of fury at full throttle and full boost.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly to both performance and reliability, YimiSport looked closely at the engine management side of the equation. The guys ultimately decided on a Cosworth ECPro stand-alone unit. Perhaps Leung put it best when he said, "The Cosworth ECPro allowed me ample control in mapping out a tune that gave us plenty of power but with a wide margin of safety for circuit racing." Indeed, despite several laps running in testing, we had no engine management issues, and I really did run the car as hard as I could.
Although it was clearly very important to make the '08 sliver missile a streetable machine, YimiSport still thankfully felt compelled to address the suspension tuning to help the car in track use. They used a combination of KW Clubsport coilovers with a gaggle of Whiteline bushings, sway bars, anti-lift kits, end links and various chassis-stiffening braces. Hoping to make the most of the suspension upgrades, we decided to roll on a set of the same super-sticky Hankook autocross slicks that we had used the previous year, except that they were well used (what do you expect for $25 a tire?). In the end, even though our budget may not have allowed for it, a new set of the Kooks probably would've been a far better choice, but we still made the best of it.
Race day for the shootout dawned cloudy but dry, and we were all pretty excited about seeing what we could do in the driving portion of the event. The strong dyno pull put us just behind the GST car that cranked out an absurd 600-something whp, and we all sensed that we might have another shot at the top three again! The weather decided not to cooperate, however, and just before the autocross portion of the event, the heavens opened up and turned the autocross into a full skating rink.
We went full soft on the suspension all the way around and popped on a set of used rains and decided to just go for it. I basically just did what I could on the tight and twisty autocross, but to be honest, I struggled in almost every respect. I found it difficult to put power down, I missed my braking points a couple times and even flat-out got lost when the windshield fogged up on me. I could tell the two Pauls at YimiSport were a bit disappointed in my lackluster performance, and frankly, I was a bit bummed out myself. You learn pretty quickly in this sport that a) you can never quit, and b) you have to roll with good and the bad-it's just part of how it all works. While I think I probably could have done better on the first driving event, I was eagerly looking forward to the time attack
Once the points got tallied, however, we were still solidly in second, making us all feel quite a bit better. Our runner-up position was partly due to Crawford not running its car in the atrocious rainy conditions and as such Tarzan Yamada took a big points hit.