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A feeler thread for a potential mod(ification)

How much is a set of custom LS pistons? Are there forged flat top or dishes pistons without valve reliefs?
From my experience when ordering custom pistons, it doesn’t matter if you buy 4 or 8, there’s not much of a price break on the per part price.

From my quick 10min look, it seems that the only true flat tops available are cast replacement pistons, which are cheap @$200/8. This could be an ok solution for a high performance NA setup, or a turbo setup with a lot of chamber work to lower the CR down.
 
culberro said:
How much is a set of custom LS pistons? Are there forged flat top or dishes pistons without valve reliefs?
From my experience when ordering custom pistons, it doesn’t matter if you buy 4 or 8, there’s not much of a price break on the per part price.

From my quick 10min look, it seems that the only true flat tops available are cast replacement pistons, which are cheap @$200/8. This could be an ok solution for a high performance NA setup, or a turbo setup with a lot of chamber work to lower the CR down.
Click to expand...

There's also a cast dished version with an 8cc dish. That's just the stock 96mm bore pistons, though. Forged pistons with notches exist, as well as those for larger bores.

To be honest, when I first found this solution for pistons, I was trying to find a near-stock solution for that lack of flat-top pistons to raise CR and increase squish without shaving the head. Everything else was a bonus.
 
Stock b230 block is really only limited to 97mm bore before they split at high power levels.
 
I like this idea, but it doesn't seem like you save much money and I wouldn't run a piston with valve reliefs for some other unrelated valve configuration. Or do an overbore for non-cleaning it up reasons.

Seems you'd be better off tracking down some B230E/B230A pistons for almost zero dish.

The weight saving is interesting, though.
 
redblockpowered said:
I like this idea, but it doesn't seem like you save much money.
Click to expand...

At least, not in small order quantities through the conventional. I imagine it'd be worth it with larger batches, thus larger savings.

Putting a plug in the idea, as it stands, for now. Might find another way to give it a try.
 
I'd like to see how this turns out, and how LS piston skirts work vs the standard B230 pistons which have the tendency to get sloppy. I worked at a shop that built high performance Vanagon 2.1 motors. Wasserboxers have a 24mm wrist pin while a type 1 has a 22mm. Some aftermarket big bore pistons had terrible deck and compression height issues, so we took brand new Scat type 1 rods, bored out the wrist pin bore, and installed a brass bush with an offset bore, to lengthen the connecting rod to achieve the right deck. Many of these motors in customer cars have over 100k miles of pushing Vanagon westys around for the last 10-15 years.
 
That is quite the accomplishment making the wasser boxer engine last more than 60k miles.

I forget the user name now. A long time poster many years ago used the Buick Turbo pistons in his red block build. Don't know what happened to that one but it was a good idea,
 
I'm currently exhausted from traveling and it's a pain to pull out my laptop at the moment, so I'm beginning with a quick rundown, with a full set of images and descriptions to follow at some point in the next few days.

I built it.

It works.

800 miles on it so far, with an oil change after the first 500. Runs smooth and quiet. Had a bit of an idle stumble until I got the cam gear right, since the Chinese adjustable gear doesn't have the mark in the right place. 26mpg mixed driving.

Issues I'm having: plenty, but none related to the engine. Sitting for a year waiting for the engine to be reinstalled resulted in weird wiring issues. Blinker issues, brake light issues, alternator issues (popped up right at the end before I had to travel). There's also an issue with hot starts which I attribute to the small starter motor causing a slow crank, especially with how tight those pistons are with the abradable coating.

With a custom 530 head with deshrouded combustion chamber opened to 58cc, the math works out to 10.4:1 compression with a 0.030 MLS head gasket and no head shaving. I need to do a compression check and dyno pulls, but the former i didn't do because I just wanted to drive the car; and the later would require doing a road trip to linuxman. I'm going to sort out the wiring when I get home in 2 weeks, and after the wiring is sorted so the car becomes a daily driver again I'm going to begin my next project: the B230KE.

Addendum: I'm not going to call it a resounding success just yet. Maybe after 10-15k miles.
 
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I'm in a mood to write out the details about the engine build and how everything went, but the first part detailing the machining work and decision making, as well as how I got to the point of actually rebuilding, is much longer than intended. Part 2 will come out eventually, but this one is more important since it provides technical details about the parts and modifications I did.

The short description is that it went pretty much as planned. Only the modifications I mentioned in the original post were what was actually needed.

I used KLracing rods, 29.75mm wide at the big end, 158mm. I already mentioned why I had to go with crank steering 3 years ago; due to the variability between manufacturers in the piston width at the wrist pin, piston steering would be unreliable unless you decide to put in spacers. However, the discerning browser of the klracing web site (at least, when I bought the rods 3 years ago) will notice there were 2 options for B230 crank steering; one at 29.75 and the other 29.5mm.

There are 2 reasons that come to mind as to why might have I chosen the slightly wider one. I don't remember the reason I had in mind at the time, though.
1. Considering the uncertainty regarding whether this would work, having the tighter clearance would provide more assurance that it wouldn't move around, and be stable support for the piston and reduce risk of catastrophic failure. This is the reason I think most accurate.
2. I wasn't sure whether the 25mm width of the small end on the other rod would fit in the piston.

Either way, in order to make sure that there was sufficient oil control on the connecting rod with the tight clearance, I had a machine shop cut 2mm wide notches/grooves pointing upwards, so that whilst leaving the oil can provide a secondary function of cooling the pistons. Emphasized by the extreme compression ratios I was considering at the time (11.3 was easily in the cards without combustion chamber shaping), piston cooling was an important concern to prevent detonation, and the notches helped address that. I got the idea from a VW air cooled forum, apparently they can be applied with a hand file and are done on Porsche engines as well. Look up "notching the rods". That said, being since it was machined 3 years ago and installed 1 years ago, I don't actually remember if there were 1 or 2 notches per side in my rods. I'm guessing one, since I have the stock early small b230 oil pump, and probably didn't want the oil draining too fast, which would cause the rods to dig into the thrust surfaces on the journals.

Moving on, the main reason I was in the machine shop in the first place; the wrist pins.

This posed a bigger problem than I imagined; there was *not* enough meat on the small end to put in a full sized bushing, and the 21mm wrist pin bushing was way too small. For this reason alone, if I had to start from scratch again I'd probably go with the other set of rods so that all I'd need to do is bore them out. Either way, there would not be enough steel left over if I put in a 26mm OD wrist pin bushing for the 24mm wrist pin to safely hold the piston to the rod. In the end I had to play silly buggers. I bought a set of 0.927in (23.55mm) ID 0.972in (24.69mm) OD wrist pin bushings intended for a SBC. With about a week's worth of searching, I was able to find a farm/agricultural machine shop about an hour's drive from where I was living at the time, who quoted 500 dollars for the totality of the work. They questioned my choice of wrist pin bushings due to how thin they'd end up being (ideally you want ID at least 1mm smaller than OD), but on pick up a week later the machinist told me that when he started working he immediately understood why I couldn't go with a thicker bushing to start with. The thin wrist pin is another reason I had the notches put in, for extra lubrication and cooling on the wrist pin/bushing to prevent it from causing issues being so thin.

With that, that's technically all you need in order to run LS pistons in the B230 block.

But the story isn't over.

See, I wanted to go flat top pistons, hypereutectic to make sure it's the cheapest, lowest common denominator piston, just like I originally promised with my first post in this thread. And for hypereutectic flat tops, which I wanted to maximize compression, efficiency, and squish, at least, there are 3 options; Sealed Power, UEM Silv-O-Lites, and Enginetech. And because when I started planning this out, all I knew is that I did not trust myself enough to press fit the wrist pins into the pistons through the rods, especially with how thin the bushings were going to be no matter the route I took, I chose the Enginetech pistons since they used a wrist pin retaining clip instead.

Which was my next mistake.

The next thing you need to know is that the original 4.8L and 5.3L LS burn oil beginning shortly after the end of the warranty mileage. This isn't due to a fault with the lining, or the rings, or the design of the engine; it's because in order to save costs, GM decided to spec out the pistons to not have oil drainback holes in the oil scraper ring pack groove, a problem that was shared by the 90's Saturn engines, and resolved in the mid 00's. UEM and Sealed Power either changed their replacement pistons to reflect this, or were smart enough to include the oil drain holes it in the first place. Enginetech, however, did not follow the lead of either GM or UEM or Sealed Power, so if I installed them, I would likely be burning oil after 50k-70k miles, as the oil built up in the groove, heated up and coked off, making the rings stick, and I wanted this as a daily driver. I lacked coordination and access to a drill press suitable to drilling these drainback holes, since by this point I'd graduated college. As well, because I didn't trust myself to pull the engine with my experience at the time, the engine was never built and the parts sat, almost done, from late June 2021 to February 2023, and I installed the 531 cylinder head. The story of my mistakes with the 531 is a tale unto its own, and won't go here.

In October 2022, I gained employment, which I would retain until the following September. This search of employment was inspired by the need to pay for what would end up being a 2000 dollar repair on a rust hole in the driver's side footwell created by a leaking windshield seal put in by people who were paid too little to care about the quality of what they were doing in the 90's.

For this tale, the most important thing to note is one of my coworkers, known as Rich. I don't remember his last name, nor do I remember if I ever knew it. He's a man who lived in a home with no kids, no wife, no internet, had no cell phone, main source of heating was a wood fired stove, and he worked on vintage pre-war Buicks as a pass time. I bonded with this late-middle aged man over old cars stuff, since my knowledge of cars isn't limited to the 240 and I knew what kind of questions/details to ask about. I explained my ideas with installing LS pistons into the Volvo engine to maximize compression ratio while not compromising the combustion chamber, and also told him about the detail with the pistons. Well, he offered to drill them out, since as it so happens he had a drill press. In either late February or early March 2023 I dug out the pistons, marked where I wanted the oil drain holes to be placed, and gave them to him, all 8 in case he accidentally nicked the top ring land since that would cause oil burning as well. A few weeks later, he had the time, and I got back 4 pistons with nicely drilled holes, 3 above each side of the piston skirt to allow easy oil flow back into the engine.

During the time that my pistons were in the hands of this professional, for one reason or another my water pump head seal blew. It was already weeping before this, but one day I tried to accelerate up to speed, and during this pull the mushroom blew out and starting puking water, unable to retain any. I limped it down the highway about 5 miles to a home depot, tried replacing the water pump seals in the parking lot, but a stud and bolt broke off and nothing more could be done and it had to be towed home.
 
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Alright, I'm on a train for the next 2 hours, on my way to the Bovington Tank Museum, so with nothing better to do I continue the technical details/storytelling.

Before that though; I should clarify that the crank-steered 158mm rods on the klracing website had one more difference besides the width. I alluded to it with one sentence that was in bold, but the other difference between the rods is that the wrist pin bushing is sized for 23mm wrist pins, meaning the OD was 25mm and were meaty enough to have been bored out for 24mm LS wrist pins; though with that in mind the bushings would still be thinner than recommended, it'd just be easier to deal with.
With that said, if anyone wants to repeat this misadventure, I did buy a bulk order of 40 rods from that company on alibaba, 29.75mm wide at the crank, 24mm wide at the piston, with the wrist pin bushing sized at 23mm ID and 26 OD for a potential wide range of applications with a simple rebore. Critical dimensions seen below.

rod stuffs.png


Anyway. On to the build. I could show the engine being pulled out, or show the engine out of the car, or the pistons pulled out of the engine and the bare block. But you've all seen that. The only thing interesting from all of that is that I had a flat flywheel, which I didn't know I had. All that's relevant to what happened next is that the engine had sat open, exposed to the elements (though under a close hood) from October 2021 to April 2022. Transmission fluid was the only thing that was applied to prevent rusting of the cylinder wall. When the head was put back on, the pistons were not removed, the engine was not honed, so now, with now being April 2023, when it was torn down for the LS piston install, I discovered that every single cylinder had a mirror polish. So I had to hone it. That said, there was no piston slap, they were tight in there.

Me, being an idiot, decided to not pull the crank, because I didn't want to see the condition of the crank bearings after seeing that the conrod bearings were lightly scuffed following the engine going down to 2 quarts during operation from a slow persistent leak I didn't monitor. So when I went in with honing stones, every few times I would go up and down the honing stones would hit a crank counter weight, stop, and then it would have to spin up again. And again. And again.

Needless to say, the quality of the honing was awful. I can only find pictures of 3 of the cylinders, but I did manage to figure something out, eventually, by cylinder 4.

Cylinder 3.pngCylinder 2.pngcylinder 4.png


Since cylinder 4 had the best hone, I started there. I put the piston on the rod (no pictures I can find of that, or at least i can't be arsed to look harder), took the piston ring compression, and pushed it in. Followed closely by cylinder 2. Don't worry, I used the rubber bottom of the hammer, not the steel part.

ls piston in cylinder 4.pngls piston in cylinder 2.png

A picture of the deck height of the piston crown; slightly above, and according to the math it's about 3 thousandths below stock. 1718100275898.png

At this point I was on a roll, 2 pistons in less than an hour. Piston 3 goes in with a bit of trouble and takes an hour, but it goes in. You'll notice the arrow facing backwards; I did the piston flipping trick to get that extra 1% performance. I did it on every piston, but the pistons had oil on them and it was hard to see.
ls piston in cylinder 3.png

It was at this point at I tried to install the last piston, into cylinder 1, and the piston ring compressor just stopped working. It was very stiff, it sliced my finger, and it broken a ring during compression, so I gave up for the day and asked a friend to come over with their cone compressor that weekend to install the last piston and help me flip the engine over so I could torque down the rods. Pictures of this don't exist, but we did spend about 2 hours trying to scrape oil pan gasket from the engine. The final procedure we discovered was to hit the old gasket material with a plastic mallet, and then use a paint scraper and it'll come right off. One eventful thing that happened was that while pushing the stand around, it separated. One of us was on either side, but suddenly I found myself holding about 300 lbs on my own that I had to put down before we could figure out the next steps.
oops.png

Picture of the water pump, coated in RTV to prevent leaking. It weeps anyway from the mushroom, but nothing too fast. The wiring harness is the old chrysler ignition one. I'm keeping it intact in case I want to try to use it as a test.
1718101415900.png

This post is ending here because I'm limited to 10 pictures and the train is arriving at the destination in a bit. Expect the next one later today when I'm on the train again.
 
So hello everyone, I'm back, with the final post about the LS piston'd redblock project, which going forward I'm just going to call the B230FLS.

The first pre-script I have is that amidst the above work, around June 2022, I got an 89 LH2.4 harness. The following August, 2 months later, I took apart that harness, and started hacking away at it to work with my car. The first thing I did was, predictably, remove the sheathing all the way to the power stage, because I had to do a few mods for my own purposes, namely;

1. Delete the factory '89 ignition coil power plug, since my '86 gets coil power from the chassis harness and has no alternative 12V ignition power supply.
2. Put in in-harness wiring for wasted spark (12V also supplied by the 12V ignition power).
3. Replace the 9 pin plug with the 4 pin from a junkyard '88 240.
4. Add in wiring (via a 4 pin audio jack) for VSS, CEL, and 2 pins for EZK ignition advance control. Still unconnected pending the end of other wiring issues.

#2 was the priority, obviously. I integrated the wiring into unused plugs at the EZK, which there's about 7 of. I chose 2 that were right next to each other and went at it using wiring I was scavenging from an old computer power supply and plugs I got off ebay. No idea if the wiring for the integrated wasted spark works or not, but the LH2.4 EZK distributor ignition system being left intact has been nice to have when I started trying to troubleshoot the operation of the car later. The EZK timing advance pins were connected to the EZK plug at the same time.

The second pre-script I have is that my visit from the UK is over, and I have returned with B230E parts for the B230KE project I plan on starting once I resolve the Volvol's wiring issues. I'm torn between trying to maximize performance safely with some light polishing of the manifold and intake port and valve work, vs sticking to my idea of 'The Engine Volvo Almost Built' and only getting the K-jet holes drilled out and leaving everything else as is to see how much horsepower this engine would've actually had if Volvo'd followed through with their likely plans to use it. Input on these plans would be appreciated; I hope that the end of this project (as an engineering challenge) has proven that I'm not just all talk and input would be valuable.

Anyway, interlude over.

The head used was a limited run RBP head, one of 3, each one different. A fourth may be created eventually. The timing gear is one that I bought on Aliexpress for 50 bucks for a pack of two. It's off by half a tooth, and doesn't articulate all the way, which makes timing it annoying. I reused the old timing belt which already has 15k miles on it, because I didn't want to deal with pulling the lower timing cover with the engine out of the car, since I had no way to hold the crank in place. I'm keeping the upper cover off until the next change to monitor its condition.
head on.jpg
head on with gear.jpg
engine in.jpg


The camshaft used is a V cam off my previous 531, meant to be shimmed to around 0.016" but RBP's reference cam that he used when shimming had a larger base circle, so it ended up at 0.020 as mentioned before. I also purposely haven't cleaned the engine bay or engine because I want an authentic grime look, as if it's been maintained but never rebuilt. There are also no plugs in the engine, and wouldn't be until 1.5 months ago.

As a clutch plate I found 2 9" plates that work with the T5, both had to be sourced on Ebay to be bought individually as not part of a kit. Let me tell you about a little secret; Yoshifab's 8.5" clutch disks are from the Foxbody Ford Mustang 2.3L turbo. Following that lead, I remembered that the T5, as used in Fords, was intended as a direct swap in for the T-4 with the same input shaft, so I started looking into Ford engines which had a 9 inch diameter clutch. The answer was found behind the 300ci i6, specifically the one in the Ford Fairmont. The combination works. I've driven it 800 miles as stated before, it's pretty nice. I have a spare.

The above was the last productive picture I ended up taking in 2023. All I did the remaining summer was to hookup the wiring harness, and the rest was me trying to install the transmission without separating the shifter from the transmission, or without separating the transmission from the bellhousing. It ended up being impossible, and I just wasted 9 months. I forgot to take the picture of the installation of the new (relatively) dogdish flywheel for LH2.4. I had the option to install an STS LH2.4 flywheel, but decided against it, and I'm saving it for the next build which is going to have an *incredibly* heavy rotating mass. I also discovered that apparently my factory original thicc boy starter motor seized during the engine's time on the stand, and could no longer be used. A guide on rebuilding it would be appreciated, since it would be objectively better than the skinny one on there now.

Anyway, there's really not much remaining to talk about. In May, this May, 2024, a friend from the west coast was visiting another friend on the east coast, and I figured it'd be cool to drive the Volvo to him. So I did a mad dash to try to get the car working in 3 days.

First I installed the intake stuff. The manifold is another limited run product from RBP, he's made posts on its design. On a 530 cylinder head, these things flow damn near equal to a B21F manifold, and are much better than stock in runner-to-runner variance due to grinding down the stud bosses for the throttle body. Injectors were 26lb Accel (holley), though I was running them with a 2.5 bar FPR to go easy on what was likely the factory original fuel pump. They're actually dead quiet. The stock injectors you can hear the clatter on, these were almost impossible to hear in comparison.
manifold on.jpg

Really, before installing the intake manifold, I installed the spark plugs and hooked up a new Starter to Battery cable, since the old one's insulation was broken in so many ways, and spliced it into the body harness wire. but whatever.

Then the transmission finally went in, after removing the shifter.
transmission in.jpg

Bolted it in, installed crossmember, exhaust manifold (also limited run RBP, 1 of 1 modified stock downpipe), all the things. As I've mentioned in other posts, I run a Mustang transmission crossmember for the T5, and have not had vibration. However during this install, I put in spacers to put the transmission higher, trying to get an angle closer to what everyone else seems to have. On a test drive later I would regret this; instantly I get massive driveline vibrations I can feel in the car, so I pulled them out, and it's much much better. But the test drive doesn't happen quite yet.

The last things I end up installing is the Radiator. After the mushroom blew the previous year, I figured that the best justification for what would cause so much back pressure was that the radiator was clogged, so I got a new one, the cheapest on rockauto because it was on wholesaler clearance. Small problem;radiator.jpg

The nipples for the overflow are missing. Technically there is a place for them, it's threaded, but they're not supplied with the radiator. What's up with that? Luckily I had bought a spare radiator during my roadtrip in 2022 from a scrap yard for 80 bucks (pick-n-pull official places are absurdly overpriced, seriously what the hell), and I ran with that. I used the 93°C thermostat, and drilled a small hole at the top to let it bleed out air. The engine runs on the hotter end of the spectrum on the temp gauge, which is to be expected with that thermostat.

I installed the radiator, and in bolting down the brackets I discovered that the radiator bracket threads in the support member were really really rusted. One I can't tighten all the way, and for the other the threaded inserts actually broke off and is now untightenable, which I'll resolve when I eventually go back in to get the AC working. So the coolant goes in, the belts go on, the pulleys, the fan, everything. It looks perfect, everything's holding water, no issues.

So we crank.

And it doesn't fire.

We spent 2 hours diagnosing it, then I gave up and just took my Chevrolet Cruze to visit my friend visiting my other friend. The return journey was a disaster which I'll only go over if asked.

So I get back home, and ask another TB member who's good with electronics to come over and help diagnose my no-start. Clearly the mechanic stuff all worked, everything had compression, it was cranking, it had to be electrical. And it was. After an hour of probing, it turns out the 25A fuse holder for the ECU was slightly corroded and needed wiggling. As soon as that was done, instantly on crank the engine started trying to fire. Another 20 minutes later, we discovered that the graphite rod in the distributor cap had broken off or gotten jammed somehow, so I put on a spare. Next crank it instantly started, though the cam timing was a bit off. We set it back a tooth, and the following video is the result.

There's a video of the first start, where I get out and yell with glee proclaiming it runs, but my friend didn't share that with me. I know he'll read this, and if you want to share it you can if you want.

After that I've just been sorting out the many many issues this car has developed has been sitting. The wiring for the lights, cluster issues, alternator, and the power steering rack which used to be fine but now just pisses fluid. Stay tuned for the B230KE project, which I'm currently taking recommendations on. The next post will be dyno and compression test results.
 
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I've been mostly silent surrounding my things because I said my next post would be about the dyno and compression, but due to many issues the car suddenly developed that took a back seat which I'll list first.

It pisses oil. It used to be worse, until I added lithium grease to the valve cover gasket. The entire right side of the engine, alternator included, is covered with oil. Now it only drips at an abnormal rate from the drain plug.

The fuel pump failed. Turns out the in-tank hose broke just after the in-tank pump (which was dead too, both in its own right and broken wiring), so both the pump and hose were replaced, and wiring was run through the breather hose and sealed with RTV.

Brake lights were dead. We have no idea what actually caused the failure. All 3 of them weren't working. A bunch of probing was done, the pins on the tail light connector were bent back into place on one side, and suddenly everything is fine again.

Alternator issues which can all be traced back to only running 1 belt instead of 2, and it slipping massively while also not producing any squealing.

E-codes were installed. The turn signal lights had their wiring completely buggered, so it seemed like a good time as any to install. The lights are OEM, pretty early ones from what we could tell. The side markers were both dead in different ways, but I had a set I bought from the UK 4 years ago which we used instead that I brought just in case the kit didn't include them.

Power steering rack was replaced with an SCP rack, because my rack was leaking like a sieve despite being otherwise not sloppy at all. It feels like a standard ZF rack, and the hard lines on the rack are stainless steel. It's pretty neat.

When driving, the loudest thing is the transmission due to input shaft rattle on the T5, only fourth gear sounds reasonable. Between that and the need to put new bearings on the rear axle shaft, I'm tempted to replace the rear axle with a 3.73 and install the unmolested T5 I have. Would also optimise my 0-60 time, since second would go all the way to 62mph, and it simply doesn't lose any torque/power all the way to redline.
It produces a lot of power down low for how much it makes up high, very flat power curve. Weird thing is that it actually makes more power when it's cold vs when it's warmed up. There's no clear reason why, so the only reasonable thing to do is to have a custom tune for this engine design for the at least 1 other person who wants to copy it.

It's had about 3k miles put on it since assembly. As 1Matthias said, with 0.020 clearance and no hushers, it manages to sound like a standard redblock with the hood up, only sound being the fan and the valve clatter. From the back it also sounds like a standard, if quiet, redblock. A standard IPD stainless steel sport exhaust is used, with a 2.25" catalytic converter and a resonator where the first muffler should be.

I do have 1 concrete thing though; 179-185-185-182 psi compression, from 1 to 4, in that order.
 
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As of today I have driven the smorgesmobile and holy shit it just doesn't stop pulling. You just let into it and it keeps pulling torque out of it's ass until you're banging off the rev limiter and you get the sensation of "I really really really should not be sitting this high in the rev range with this much pedal authority". Like, I don't know how much more magic the merlin living inside that engine has up it's ass but it's ridiculous. Complete and utter opposite of the traditional anemic stock redblock top end.

The T5 trans sounds very sad tho.
 
Failz said:
As of today I have driven the smorgesmobile and holy shit it just doesn't stop pulling. You just let into it and it keeps pulling torque out of it's ass until you're banging off the rev limiter and you get the sensation of "I really really really should not be sitting this high in the rev range with this much pedal authority". Like, I don't know how much more magic the merlin living inside that engine has up it's ass but it's ridiculous. Complete and utter opposite of the traditional anemic stock redblock top end.

The T5 trans sounds very sad tho.
Click to expand...
It is absolutely ridiculous, genuinely feels happier at high RPMs then some of the 16 valve cars I have driven: it just keeps pulling right up into the stratosphere with no end in sight.
 
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