The engine in the project is a very cheap, “lottery / unknown” engine (bought for less than $500) which was built for a type of “trashcan” racing series we have over here. Supposedly the engine had just been redone, however it looked *really* rough on the outside, so I didn’t have that high hopes. It was cheap and I went and bought it off.
It had dual Kads and I sold them off from the engine, and I had an engine with about $200 invested in it. Pretty cheap base to start with. The goal is to make about 150+ bhp with basically as low of a budget as possible. Most likely not the best approach in the world, however it is a challenge I quite like though
I can always upgrade some parts later on...I tore the engine to take a look what it had inside. All new bearings, new followers, a welded 69mm C/W VW crank, line bored case - albeit grinded 2nd to last size - 043 stock valve heads with pretty heavy porting, new pistons and cylinders...BUT two of the cylinders had pitting as evidently water has been water in the engine at some point. The guy I bought the engine from paid for two new cylinders and a gasket kit after a bit of coughing. After all the engine was supposed to have new parts instead of rusted cylinders
I didn’t know which cam the engine had and even though I tore the engine down, I didn’t have any luck finding what the cam is as they typically grind all the markings off from the cam. So I did a bit of reading on cam selection – exchanged a few PM’s on various forums and went on bought an FK44 cam. Most likely a bit too aggressive, wrong selection by all standards and whatnot: but as they say: slap it in and see how it runs.
Cylinder heads are 043 castings with stock valves. I cc’d the chambers and they were 32cc’s – the guy I bought the engine from said that the heads were 36cc’s but on the same notion said he really wasn’t sure about is as he bought the engine from another guy.... Deck was at 1.5mm so that gives a total compression of 11.2. Quite a bit too high of a compression for a turbo engine...so I went and did a bit of reading on various forums, and decided to find a few cc’s on the heads. The worst I could do was to ruin the heads and I decided to take my chances as the starting point was cheap enough.I can always melt the heads for my home alu-casting experiments
Now the heads have 39cc’s, and there are about 0.5cc eyebrows for valve clearance in the pistons. This gives me me 9.5:1 compression with 1.5mm deck. I can’t / won’t get more cc’s from the heads as I'm pretty limited on squish area already and I don’t want to run higher deck than 1.5mm so that’s where I am at. I could of course use copper gaskets / shims under the barrels to lower compression a bit though: 0.2mm shim would give me 5cc’s → compression of 8.7:1-. However as I’ll use RE85 I "should" be OK with 9.5:1 CR. Comments welcome on this of course. Single springs with following specs: 42mm - 51kg, 40mm - 58kg, 38mm - 66kg, 36mm - 74kg, 34mm - 81kg, 32mm - 90kg, 30mm - 99kg , 28mm - 108k, 26mm - 116kg.
I have a set of CroMo pushrods that I'll cut to length and a set of cheapo 1.4:1 rockers I’ll use in this build.It will be fuel injected with a DIY ECU which goes by the name of Speeduino - an Arduino based ECU. More @ http://www.speeduino.com.
I'm not based in the US so hence some of the prices below might appear high to You
Currently I have invested as follows on the engine:
* Engine itself: $200
* Logmech aluminium pushrod tubes: $100 (Could have saved money with stock PR tubes)
* FK44 cam: $130
* Alumium cam gear: $40
* Lash caps: $10
* Used Garrett Disco Potato turbo: $ 150
* CroMo pushrods: $ 110
* 1.4:1 rockers: $ 175
* Schadek oil pump: $45
* 2nd hand Ford TB (54mm): $20
* Deep sump: $90
* 12-1 Trigger wheel: $15
* Aluminium pulley: $35
* Honeywell 1GT101DC Hall effect sensor: $45
* 440cc *Bosch Green* knock-off injectors: $45 (should be OK to about 220 crank hp @ 85% duty cycle with RE85)
* Speeduino ECU board and components: about $ 140
Plus some small various stuff so I have about $1350-1400 on the engine so far. Even though i'm trying to get it done pretty cheap, small stuff adds up pretty quickly. If I can get it to work with less than say $ 1500-1700 I am pretty happy with the results.
No pictures at this point but I will update the thread accordingly and I’ll try to update at least once a week.
Thanks for looking and comments welcome.
(edited: due to typo corrections and minor changes / additions)
