40k for a 700 whp turbo brz? Pics inside
 

Long time lurker, first post. But I need some advice.

I bought a 2017 brz new from the dealer several years ago with the intention of doing a turbo build when I finally finished schooling and got my first big boy job.

It finally happened about two years ago. I got in contact with a reputable local shop and asked them to do a build for about 400 whp with a budget of 20k.

It has taken legit almost 1.5 years from then for them to almost have the car done (still not done). So the initial plan was going to be a closed deck IAG engine, my heads, turbo kit, tune, and fuel system capable of e85. They did that plus a lot of custom fabrication and added a gigantic precision 6870 turbo.

The car made 480 whp on the dyno yesterday without turning up the boost. It had a misfire and sounds like it blew a valve spring.

They gave me a new invoice for the work done so far. In total so far I will have given them about 34k. They have gone way over budget but they did do a lot of custom work and the car is pretty bad ass. I’m pissed that they didn’t ask me before going overboard like this, but I am excited to own this car. It is something truly special. They think that it will be another 3k or so to take my heads off diagnose and fix the problem.

Does almost 40k sound reasonable for a completely custom build capable of over 700 whp or are they using me as their personal bank?

I’ve never done a custom build like this so I have no barometer for how much this is supposed to cost.

I’d really appreciate any help or advice.

You’re getting penetrated with no condom my guy. My performance shop told me they would install a IAG short block for $8k and they would boost it for $1.5k as long as I supplied FI kit. That’s roughly $15k for the whole damn thing.


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I forgot to mention, the 40k includes the parts which they supplied.

Yeah so I’m saying my shop said a reliable boosted build with an iag block would cost $15k for everything. But they probably upped the cost on parts as shops normally do.


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However if your car can push 700whp reliably. Then you’ve only spent roughly $65k for one of the fastest cars on the road. You would shut on a hellcat.


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This is the answer I was looking for. When I look at other builds capable of that kind of power it rarely shows the totals of how much it cost. So I don’t know what kind of money is reasonable. When you put it like that it doesn’t sound so bad.

Wait, you paid full price for a BRZ (roughly $30K) and sunk an additional $34k-$40k (more than the price of the car) into the car while having barely driven it?

And it sounds like it still has problems. I think the 86 is a great platform but not that great. Sounds to me like you got robbed. There’s a billion other done cars especially at nearly $70k (Porsche) in that would’ve given you want you were looking for. Sorry this happened to you, sounds to me like the shop just views you as a long term cash cow. But this is just my opinion. They should’ve been able to do more on the original budget you set.


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That was an absolute terrible waste of money. I'm sorry man. What were you thinking? The awesome cars you could have had for that kind of money.

I hate to be that guy,. but if you can't do it yourself, it costs however much the shop is asking you to pay.
700whp is nothing like 400whp. It requires so much more. Axles, better fueling (including returning it to the tank and probably quite a bit of pieces to regulate and pressurize this system), transmission swap/upgrade, huge cooling upgrades, etc.

Just a transmission to support it will be at least 7-8k, because you'll need to pay labor for install, and buy a clutch to support the power at those levels.
Axles will be another $1000. A differential to put it down (A 1.5 way LSD would be optimal), a wheel/tire setup that can lay it down, ducting so that your cool new cooling system is effective. Not to mention all the custom -AN fittings, lines, all that stuff adds up fast as well.
Maybe you'll need to go with a standalone ECU? There's another 5-10k.

Get it running as it is, and enjoy 400 to 500WHP. You'll kill 95% of the cars you could find who will race you, and you can still replace the broken parts with something from subaruparts.com or O'Reilly's

I think you spent way too much, but I don't think you got robbed either. Custom fab probably nearly doubled the cost. Just send it and don't worry what others think.

I'd hope you are not paying for the head issue if they did the work and it had a failure already.

Thank you for being that guy. This is very helpful. I Will need a new transmission gear set and differential in the future when Im ready to make more but everything else that you mentioned is already done.

and I absolutely can not do it myself.

thank you. that's really helpful. I don't care what anyone else thinks, I just don't want to be robbed blind.

There is a point of diminishing returns on this platform, and you've gone well past that, hence the cost. As others have said above, all the custom work required for these power levels will push the cost up immensely. Whether you want one of the fastest street brz/86's on the planet, regardless of cost, is up to you.

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Have not seen a single FA20 make even 500whp reliably, a few dyno pulls or handful of passes on a strip sure, but reliably driven at 500whp for a reasonable amount of time, no chance, if done right 450whp seems about the reliable limit on E85 with full built longblock.

This is not even close to a reliable 700whp build. Unless there is a long long list of things you are leaving off the table this isn’t even a reliable 500whp build. 35k for a reliable 450whp on E85 wouldn’t be unreasonable, but this price should include a full CD009 trans swap

In for a penny; in for a pound…

Well guess you’re committed now. Did you clearly lay-out goals? How did you ask for 400whp and then get double that and charged? It sounds like you gave them a blank check, then they ran with it. I would think work authorizations would be a norm, no?

To further this point. Look at BHP per Liter engine records. How few manufactured cars in the world hit even 200bhp/L (not even WHP) and the price on those cars, even the price of 185bhp/L. 225whp/L is probably about 260bhp/L or 450whp/520bhp out of a tiny 2 liter, which is pretty crazy but still potentially doable. 700whp or 350whp/L is probably 400bhp/L no possible chance, maybe one pass on a strip or dyno pull but zero chance at reliability.

DM brz_dude and Kaijumotorsports on IG. You need to consult with folks that have real world experience.

Pretty sure brz_dude makes 560whp and has the highest WHP FA20 that’s made more than just a few dyno pulls. and I highly doubt it sees that power very often besides mostly going down the drag strip. Or if he dailies or drives it regularly probably turns it way down. And 560whp is still far below 700whp. (Still a lot, but more reason why OP isn’t close to 700whp reliably)

But yeah they would be an excellent source for a 450+whp build and whats required.

There is different levels of and expectations of reliable, 100 passes down a strip is only 25 miles (not counting drive back, staging, etc..) I would consider pretty reliable if it had zero issues at 2.5x stock power. Getting only 10k miles on a daily that makes a couple 60-130 pulls a day on normal commute home I wouldn’t consider that reliable.

Coulda had a LS or 2JZ swap at that price with a CD009. That price should definitely include a transmission.

What work was done to the heads?

Friends don't let friends build boxer engines! If you love the FA run stock engines till they blow up then replace and repeat. If you really love the boxer and manual best to buy a Porsche. If you want boost and you don't care about giving up the manual the new Supra is so fast with a few mild mods.

Yeah this part gets me. It's clear there is a lot of info missing in the general description. And maybe he is no expert at knowing what has been done to it, which is fine (though you really should learn all of these things prior or during the process to understand what everything means and will do for your vehicle). But out of everything, a tranny should have easily been on that list of mods and in that price. To have to add another 5-10K after for a tranny will be a crazy amount of money.

https://www.facebook.com/CounterSpac...9424390784781/

This car is daily driven and has seen hundreds of passes. The only failures on the car is the transmission, since the owner prefers to keep the stock trans in the car and replace as they fail, since stock transmissions are a dime a dozen.

Also: re brz_dude: A stock supra on ethanol making less power and weighing more runs faster times at the strip, so I'm not sure that FA20 is a good proof of concept.

Do you have a little rivalry or animosity with brz_dude?lol Proof of concept was in the topic of not blowing up immediately with elevated HP levels. Then here comes the ZF8 speed Supra for no reason.haha I agree that it would be the better cheaper all said and done route.

Just stating facts, since most cars of this power, including the mentioned brz_dude, are used for drag racing.

Drag strip trap speed and times don't lie. With that and a car weight, you can calculate actual output.

Impressive,

Stock trans probably helping keep the engine alive.

What ET and traps?

What's the legality of a shop going 20k over budget and not even getting approval for it? That's nuts... i'd get it if it was a Lambo owner and gave em a blank check.

What is dude's qtr mile time? I remember back when Full Blown Motorsports and Fiebrurz were both running gunning for 9's in 2014 and haven't followed times since.

Per the last post he made showing a a time and ET, 10.7 @ 127mph.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNs3YWUHjJG/

There is some miscommunication here from either the shop, you, or both. What did the build so far entail? Did it include any valvetrain work or anything in the heads? Did the shop state that the car should run 480hp on the valvetrain you have? or did they basically say, in so many ways, that anything can happen and you are responsible for additional costs to anything breaking?

Also, where exactly are you getting 700hp from? How can the car make 700hp when it can't even run on 480?

well all i can say is that 700 on this car is crazy insane i would say that 40k for what they have done is a little far fetch since you can get ahold of a custom block from Crawford for 6 and build from there good luck with this cant wait to see the YouTube videos and pics of this beast

I told them I wanted to make around 400 whp but wanted to build for the future in case I wanted more later on (I meant more like 500 not 700+).

They did not replace anything in the heads. They thought that the heads could take the power. The stock heads are really strong but I guess not strong enough. Anyway, the heads are being swapped for a ported and polished head with gsc valve train.

Any of you have a place I can stay at when my wife kicks me out? The car is kind of small.

For sure. I’ll update this thread if it ever materializes.

As for the Crawford block and building from there, this is the block I went with (with the bigger studs):

https://www.iagperformance.com/iag-s...ression-ratio/

Yeah - it's playing the role of a fuse, lol.

Yup, 7+ trans in less than a year, I wouldn’t consider a reliable proof of concept either lol.

I also think it's way over spent
I wouldnt spend over 15K

I think there's two issues, here.

One is, did the shop do work you didn't authorize? Because if I agreed to a $10K build and they tried to deliver it two years later with a $40K bill I'd leave their shop and drive straight to a lawyer's office. In fact, I've never had a performance shop change an agreed-on price by more than a couple percentage points in overall price (IE, extra $200 on top of a $18K invoice) for any work I've had done.

Two is, is $40K for a 400 HP, 700 HP "possible" build*, reasonable? Well, anything's reasonable if you think it's reasonable. A 700 horsepower air-cooled Porsche build would be way, WAY more than $40K. OTOH a 700HP Mustang would be quite a bit less than that. The FA20 isn't a strong platform to build big power on, so - maybe? What's the cost of other 700HP FA20 builds? Personally I wouldn't aim for another over 300wHP if I wanted to stick with a FA20 engine.


* 700 HP possible build is, in this context, worthless nonsense words. If it's running 620HP on your "street" tune and 700HP on the "track" tune, that's a 700HP build. Non-running at 480HP "built for" 700 HP is worth nothing. You're looking at paying $40K for a 480wHP dyno queen.

this popped up in my news feed the other day

https://www.reddit.com/r/ft86/commen..._am_i_getting/

it's funny to read this thread, and then read that one. different people, exact same comments.

if one were so inclined, they could make a bingo card out of the 2 threads, and have a fun little game of catchphrases.

Op still hasn't posted the invoice and parts list... :/

i'm wondering if there is even a compiled invoice/parts list.

sorta sounds like the shop keeps asking him for money, and he just brings by another wheelbarrow on his way home from work.

First thing I’d be doing is asking for a detailed list specifying EVERYTHING done or added to the car and the price at which it was supplied. .

That is a huge amount of money when a new box and rest of the drive train or brakes are not factored in.

Thinking you should have just gone for an LS build. Good chance you’d have still come out in front.

Sadly you live and learn..