Forgive my ignorance but what kind of closed deck inserts are in there? Looks like molten metal. I've never seen anything like it before. (only pinned blocks or aluminium flat inserts)
Hope you can have it up and racing again soon.
It is Devcon. Synthetic cement.
Quoting six star motorsport for info:
"WTF WED! "Same concept" edition!
TL;DR Closed decking is awesome, fake closed decking is awful. Do your research.
Reliable big power. It's all we all REALLY want. It can be tough to find in a Subaru platform. Anyone who tells you its not is either lying, or hasn't been around long enough to have seen a thing or two. One of the biggest things that helped the community get to this goal was modern closed decking by pressing in machined inserts into the cooling passages to support the top of the cylinder walls aka the weakest point of the case half.
This wasn't always the go to process though. Phase 1 engines had some factory closed deck options but Phase 2 didn't and since the majority of the Subaru community as we know it got into it AFTER the 02 WRX was released in North America, most have never even seen a Phase 1 engine. After the 2.5l was put into our STI we quickly realized that our cylinder walls were a weak spot and were cracking at HP levels as low as 400.
The community, still in its infancy here in the North America, had nobody to turn to for inspiration. The rest of the world was still getting the 2.0 in their cars and the cyl walls are MUCH thicker and didn't have the same issues until higher HP levels. We turned to other platforms to see what they were doing and the majority of those looking for bigger power tried iron sleeve inserts. For years this was the go to method but had many downsides. The biggest one was our blocks move around to much to support the sleeve well and in almost all cases the sleeve would "drop" and cause head gasket failures.
One fine day, back in 2012, a fairly obscure company in the greater Subaru street car world, but very well known in the high power sand rail community, Outfront Motorsports decided to prove a point. They had a know engine abuser test one of their blocks. This block was special because it used their in-house closed deck process to close the deck of an open/semi closed deck block using their proprietary machining process and inserts. Something they had been doing for years in their sand rail builds but was considered crazy talk for the Subaru car community. To say the least, the community was skeptical. We all thought it would fail honestly. We were ALL WRONG. Not only did it hold up then but we've never seen a cylinder wall failure on their blocks...ever.
Fast forward to today and everyone is running closed deck engines in their big power cars. It's 100% the norm. Multiple companies followed suit after Outfront and using a sleeve is almost unheard of. Not only has it helped with cylinder wall strength but also the added benefit of more surface area for headgasket sealing. Add this and the larger headstuds and you have a recipe for holding big boost.
With all this epic hype about this game changing process, you know there was going to be imitators or people trying to take shortcuts. That's where this weeks pictures come in. This block was sold as a "closed deck" engine. By definition it's not a lie. "Cementing a block" is something they used to do back in the day (and sometime still do I guess) with drag engines to support the cylinder walls using a cement like substance in the cooling jackets. These cars were only ran for short periods of time and usually torn down and rebuilt often. This shop has been selling these blocks to street driven cars or in some cases, time attack cars. When the car has an untimely failure the owner is usually surprised when they find out not only were they miss-lead to about their "closed deck" block really was, but also get to pay someone to chase all sorts of fun stuff out of their cooling system since this "cement" degrades.
Know who you are buying things from. Check their history. Ask some people in the know first. If you are new to this game, Subaru peeps are easy to find. Don't get taken for a ride. A lot have already and it's REALLY unfortunate."
Now few points I wanted to make based on my experience with 3-4 of them:
Devcon actually supports the bore to some extent however with numerous heat cycles it delaminates and detaches from sleeve and will provide little support. Plus adding debris to your water jackets which itself goes to radiator and water pump.
Also these blocks are essentially half filled blocks drag racers talk about. They ran 8 to 20 degrees hotter than other closed deck blocks (deck insert design).
Limits based on our understanding and experience are 30 pounds and 550whp.
Our ones always pushed coolant gently before settling down.
Last block did not fail and did not over heat also, it was pushing more coolant so was torn down. If measurements are true, it will get cleaned up, deck insert and will be our second motor which we will use next season till we repair the P2P motor.
Now in regards to that shops "podiums". I think, meh. Big deal when there are 4 competitors, one is a green car testing and the other two are 5 sec faster.
Also as I have always said, caliber of a shop shows through their customers cars achievements and reliability not a shop car.
How many reliable and fast cars have you seen from that shop? zero
P2P, GIR, IAG: MANY
