Engine Swaps - Improvement or Blasphemy

[Egg Nog]

Nice. I find that very honourable of you to say that. Most members on these boards would try to make up some stupid fictitious BS to try to prove their point. What you posted is awesome in my books.

To tell you the truth, I'm not fully confident anymore now that you've brought it up I do know that the 302 Windsor is a more compact design, but the weights may be pretty similar though. It does weigh less than and is more compact than many/most DOHC engines of similar displacement.

[kennyknoxville]

hey megotmea7, where can i find more info on this rx7?

[megotmea7]

Well what i thought was that since the 350 is a v8 it would have more pistons and conrods=more weight while a 13B engine is only made up of only two rotor nuts rotoray housings and an eccentric shaft thats less then cams,valves,pistons,cylinders,crankshaft etc but i can see it being lighter if its made of titanium or some other light weight metal

you also take into account the turbos, piping, intercooler, cast-iron manifold with all the sequintial tid-bits, intake manifold, snakes nest of vaccum lines on top, etc.

hey megotmea7, where can i find more info on this rx7?

i posted a link in my forum (rx-7 forum on www.importforum.com) to it. for those of you to lazy to go look ill find it for you...

WARNING the thread its one is was 50 pages+ LAST time i looked at it and that was 6-8 monthes ago it is LARGE...

[megotmea7]

they also had a guy swaping a SR20DET and tranny into a FD there too ill post the link also

[megotmea7]

Hmm only 46 pages...
LINK to "V8 monstrosity"

LINK to stoopid SR20 swap...

[Nildo]

NB this story is lifted from ZOOM! magazine....
The ultimate argument in engine conversions.

A fellow who lived in Australia was lucky enough to own a TWR Group A Commodore. One day it was stolen and the car was susequently stripped of all it's goodies and dumped. The owner was very upset, more so when he discovered the expense involved in restoring the vehicle. Just the twin throttle bodies were quoted at $4000 to replace!

What was this luckless guy to do? Instead of replacing the 5 litre hand built motor, he instead fitted a 2JZ-GTE from the twin turbo supra. It fit very well, and with a new exhaust, intercooler and a bit of porting, tuning work and boost bleed valves fitted he scored about 250 rear wheel kilowatts, compared to the 250 engine kilowatts the car previously had.

Now some people I tell this to are disgusted, some applaud it. I sit in the middle, if that is possible. I think it was a profitable solution, and that overall the car is better for the swap. However I also think the cars original integrity was ruined. I don't think every car has this value. A standard Holden, Toyota, Nissan or whatever usually benefits from engine swaps. But in the case of something like the group A, with the legend surrounding it, I would balk at the conversion. The intangible value of owning say, a Ferrari 250 GTO is far greater than producing a better car by shoehorning a modern 360 modena V8 into it.

That's what I think anyway.

[Nildo]

Having said all that, I am currently in negotiations (with my wife! ) to buy an old clapped out KE corolla. I intend to strip it out, rebuild the body and a minimal interior, and fit a supercharged 4A-GZE engine into it, to use as a club car.

[Falcon500]

Id rather see the group A with its origonal motorin it although the supra motor is a fine motor indeed its just not the same....Im a true purist when it comes to genuine racing cars while group A signifies the most unpopular time in Austrlian touring car championship (ATCC) history the cars still hadmany hours of work put into them and while the cars might not have won much they still have history behind them
Another story this time from boost is about and orange 80smodel celica with a twin turbo quad cam lexus v8in it which cuts low 9s on the 1/4 and only set the owner back $15,000 and hes still making gainsby doing minor tweaks in it hes aiming for low 8s by the end of next year.

[fpv_gtho]

well what about the MX-5's AEC are selling with a 4.0l lexus motor fitted with a sprintex supercharger

[-datsun 1600-]

to many mx5s are getting v8ed getting a bit un-orginal but good power.

But wouldnt the weight disturbution be shocking

[Falcon500]

Much like putting a v8 in an early 60s cortina or a big block in a capri. Or like putting a 350 in a lj torana it all fits (some better then others) but no good for any real balance.

[megotmea7]

if you look at the pics of how far back the LT1 sat in the FD you wouldnt question its weight balance and besides perfect weight balance isnt required for a good handling car let alone a pure street car as the "V8 mostrosity" is i never saw what the actual ratio was but it b willing to put money on it being VERY close to 50/50