I think I have always had a lot of respect for the name Cosworth right from the time I got interested in cars. On my trip to SEMA this year I had a few days hanging out in L.A, so I hit up our friend Eric Hsu for a tour of their factory.
Eric is a really laid back guy and was happy to show us around even though we didn’t arrive until 5 pm on a Friday night. Eric has a long history in the US car scene, being a founder/tuner at XS Engineering. He now spends his time doing cool shit with expensive toys at Cosworth and he runs the engine program for the Sierra-Sierra Enterprises time attack EVO. If you need to fill in a few hours, check out his blog over at Moto IQ.
Cosworth’s US base was originally set up to service customer engines for the CART racing series, but recently they have turned out some cool stuff for those of us without multi-million dollar budgets. These include engine components, CNC-ported heads and full engine assemblies for some of the more popular Japanese brands including Mitsubishi’s EVO and Subaru’s WRX/STi.
Yup, we’re in the right place.
One of the products that has been a hit is Cosworth’s bespoke intake manifold for the Nissan 350Z. They get the manifold cast locally and then it is finished in-house on a CNC mill. The original design included some really trick carbon fiber molded caps but they revised the design now to include these billet CNC aluminum parts. I guess the turbo guys must have been punching a bit too much boost through them?
Here are the solid alloy billets set up in the CNC mill and the finished product.
Cosworth intercoolers are fabricated in-house
Engine building is Cosworth’s main focus and their engine room is massive and surgically clean.
We came across this Cosworth XFE CART engine sitting on a stand. These engines were the one to have back in early 2000 if you wanted to win races, making around 750 hp from their 2.65 litres. They are the real deal, able to run at wide open throttle and up to 16,000 rpm for 500 miles or more. For that you were expected to pay a cool $275,000 USD!
We spied a Nissan VR38 engine on a stand that was undergoing R&D with the intention of developing a full range of parts. Think CNC heads, cranks, pitsons and rods.
Cosworth have always had a strong rep for their forged pistons. This is a Subaru forging which is made in their UK foundry.
One of Cosworth’s CNC big port cylinder heads during assembly
One of Cosworth’s two engine dyno cells. Note the air inlet pipe coming in from the ceiling, which allows complete control of intake air temperature and pressure.
An engine dyno lets the tuner do their job in relative comfort, away from the exhaust fumes, noise and vibration of a chassis dyno. Cosworth’s would be among the best in the business. In a no-expense-spared display, the 300mm long cable attaching the keyboard to the dyno PC had $500 MIL-Spec connectors on both ends!
The other dyno cell was set up with a rig for testing the CART engines. This included a permanent turbo install and some trick inconel headers. Eric tells me that their guys could get an engine fitted up and ready to run in less than 30 minutes!
Cylinder head development is an important part of Cosworth’s business. This is one of their flow benches used for port development and evaluation.
Always looking for future business opportunities!
I want to offer a huge thanks to Eric for going out of his way to show us around. He even hooked us up with entry to a bunch of industry parties during SEMA too. The only downside was getting stuck in L.A traffic for two hours on the way back to the hotel. Even Auckland traffic has nothing on L.A!!
If you want to learn more about Cosworth’s history then check out Graham Robson’s book ‘Cosworth – The Search For Power’.
