don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to discourage you from building up your existing engine, in fact I'll have some parts that you can probably use. I just want to make sure that you understand that you CanNOT turn your existing 2.5i into a wrx, or even anything equivilant... I'd do some serious reading on Subaru Legacy International Forum and i-Club.com check out the swap and DIY sections, these will give you some pointers.

If there is any piece of advice I suggest you take.... just do a swap, sell your existing motor if you can, ebay or whatnot, and use the money you get from that to do a wrx or sti swap. GRUPPE-S has a jdm Forrester XT motor for $3,000USD and makes more power stock than your engine with a turbo kit and the required supplemental parts, and is something like 2/3 the price of builing your existing motor....

look at it like this, the AVO turbo kit is $3500 USDollars, plus atleast 1000 labor, plus exhaust(250-1,000)
so at BEST you're at 4750 for the built engine, at worst figure it to be about double that (blew your motor due to bad tune)

A brand new engine(~1000Km) is about 3,000 plus turbo (100-1,000), exhaust (250-1,000), and labor ~2000.

so about 7,000 dollars at worst case you've got a 280+chp motor that is brand new and built for exactly what its being used for, which is nice for the reliability factor. oh, and the new motor comes with turbo, intake and exhaust manifolds, and intercooler.... engine is ready to be dropped in

one other thing, you'll need a turbo engine crossmember, because our crossmember is too big and won't allow for factory placement turbo fitting, which means custom turbo install $$$$$

I really urge you to either trade in your car for a wrx and begin to tinker with that, or trade in your car for an old Impreza L with a shot motor, drop in the new motor and save yourself $10K


again, the ONLY reason I am doing an engine swap is because my car is worth NOTHING for trade in value (~$1500), and my current engine is going to be murdered by nitrous within the next 6 months, so.... really think about this.


Oh, and I cannot stress how much of a PITA it is to find out that after all that engine work your transmission still sucks a big one and will cost you as much as the engine swap did to get a quality transmission swapped in that will handle the power reliably. Then you get to work on your suspension, because your suspension probably sucks even compared to mine (which sucks compared to everyone elses on this forum). suspension gets expensive almost as fast as transmission.

If you want a good breakdown of the process i've gone through, check out my engine swap thread in the tech section of www.forums.FloridaSubarus.com
this engine swap will net you 280 at the crank stock as opposed to 265 at the crank maxed out with a very aggressive tune on the turbo kit

You're limited by your engine's internals with the turbo kit, so really the only point of building your existing motor is if you have so much money you can't find enough things to spend on..


again read the other forums and they will inform you of first-hand experience with each different type of Engine Management, turbo kit, exhaust, etc.