Sure, if $3000 is expensive by his metric then it is expensive. Tell him to stay away from rebuilding a VR38DETT. :) Indeed if it ran with oil starvation, the damage could be significant enough to make rebuild not cost effective.

As am I, so ask away. It is a *great* project for someone that has not build a car before. Very straightforward techniques, lots of room for error and modification, and while it might not be the prettiest car on the block you will probably be able to get plates and drive it on the street.

The sounds depends a great deal on the exhaust manifold. A switch to a equal length changes the sounds a lot (not for the better in my opinion). I like the stock header sound, but of course taste is an opinion. ;)

I’m not sure I would categorize the EJ engines as *expensive* to rebuild. I great deal of the cost would depend on the kind of damage done. If anything, Subaru core engine parts are pretty cheap. A complete shortblock ( pistons, rods, crank, all build) from Subaru directly is under $2k. You can but new a new case for…

I am building an 818 right now ( http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php…). While it might be possible to build one for $15k, it would be very tight. I suspect people that are doing a build on the cheap are spending more like 20k. I’ll probably spend 50-60k, but then again I’m crazy. It is an easy car to build,…

Ah That explains the RX I saw as well! It is too bad I didn’t know you were in town Doug as I live right off Skyline and Germantown, and you could have driven one of your 1990 R32 brother cars (#005565). Hell I’d let you drive my 800hp R35!

I ordered one of these for my wife a few months ago, and it should be delivered tomorrow. Like most buyers we went with the higher end Inscription model, but mostly because of the feature composition. I do wish they allowed a bit more mix and match on some of the upgrades, but all in all compared to my wife’s current…

Oh, and it’s not like we would kick this car out of the house..

I have gone for a number of years, and I mostly enjoy seeing what cars are driving around.

Speaking of something to see, I was walking down to Spanish Bay and saw this:

I’m in Portland, in the west hills. Drop me an email: jeff@sponaugle.com.

Back in 2005-6 I tested some Momentum turbos for the Subaru platform, and they were based on a Chinese clone turbocharger. The power and fitment worked fine, but over time the turbos eventually failed. Turbocharger casting (especially the turbine housing) is a very specialized business and difficult to reproduce…

Absolutely! The weather looks to be great in Monterey. There are some interesting cars at the Auction this year. I was surprised to see a P1 in the mix. Fun times!

Pebble, sweet. I’m heading down there Friday for the weekend. Unfortunately I’m not driving down my R32, since that is like a 10 hour drive from Oregon. Like you described, I’m one of those other types who has since purchasing said R32 spent more time looking over and taking apart things on the lift then driving it!…

True... but there are real gasoline cars that can beat this. The Alpha Omega GT-R does 0-60 in about 1.54 seconds, and it can do that in both directions, many times in a row... and it is a beast of a car at 3700 lbs... similar drag tires as well. Both this car and the Omega on regular street tires would be limited by…

No, Portland, Oregon. However with the 25 year import rule I suspect you will be seeing lots of these around. The Gun Grey Metallic was the most popular color in 90 and 91, so there are a lot of them that look just like that. The Nismo R32 that came over on the boat next to my car was also the Gun Grey Metallic, as I…

Oh yes... Airbags? You mean passengers, right?

One thing that I didn’t realized until driving a RHD car on LHD roads is how the positioning changes the danger of corners. In a LHD car on LHD roads you are just slightly to the right of the center line. That means you can see just a little bit better around a left hand corner then a right hand corner. When you drive…

Yea that is a good price range. I paid 23k all-in for a car with 40k miles, excellent paint, and some reasonable and well done mods. With slightly higher miles and a bit more wear there were several in the 19-20k range all in. A very cool Nismo 1990 was only $25k.

In following in your potentially crazy but still reasonable footsteps, I decided to import an R32 like yours. Mine is the same color, same year (serial BNR32005565), and about the same mileage. I have been driving it for about three weeks, and some of my thoughts are so very similar.