Bigpower

As my hands on experience with building engines is limited to Rv8's and other rover units I'm hoping to get some good suggestions for which engine to use:

requirements are:
<2l N/A or once the 1.4x factor if turbo'd
good torque curve
as higher reving as possible
lightweight
compact
4, 6 or 8 cly
low centre of gravity (I'll probably dry sump it)
potential to tune
Not too expensive!

The engine will be mid mounted so I'll need to look at gearboxes too. Also not bothered whether it is 2 or 4 stroke, or from a car, bike, boat, plane etc or if it is water or air cooled, flat, inline or v

any suggestions are very welcome!

Got to be a Subaru 2L flat 4 boxer lump.

If you can get a newage ECU and loom sorted just to run the lump itself then jobby done!!. Big Potential even with a std newage WRX lump and std internals. With the right exhaust/induction and std intercooler 320-330bhp no probs and reliable all day long. If you lighten the flywheel/clutch it should rev to 7,500rpm. The WRX revs to 7100 as std and and STi lump 7600 as std.

Recommendation is running forged and lightened internals, flywheel, clutch etc... it will rev to 8500rpm. With the right turbo you'll make good power to the redline and lots more bhp, all through the std ECU by way of a remap. Potential for running MAFLESS as well.

Very low centre of gravity. Easily run as 2WD with the std 5spd box which will again take 330-350ft/lb torque all day, or a 6spd box and 600ft/lb no probs.

Edited to add.... It will sound fantastic!!

It did cross my mind at first (along with the porsche flat 6) but the sub 2l limit is due to my race licence newbieness and obviously the lighter and more compact the engine and gearbox the better. so if the engine starts life at 2l and is turbo'd, that makes it 2.8 or 3.4 L depending on the class regulations. But, it would be handy to know about larger engines so I can leave some space in the bay for upgrades at a later date

I have been thinking along the lines of a turbo'd smart car engine, bike engine (but which one?) or a 2l V4 2-stroke from a boat outboard

The car is a scratch built hillclimb/sprint car I'm designing, it should weigh between 300 and 450kg so I'm not too bothered with huge torque just enough so it doesn't bog down on the start line or coming out of a slow corner but i want it as high reving as I can so I can limit the gearchanges or in the future add bigger cams if I feel the need.

As I said above, I'm only really familiar with rover engines so i just don't know what else is about whether it's from a car, bike or whatever so I'm after some suggested engines (and gearboxes) to research.

First two that come to mind are
Turbo : A series (metro) 1275 * 1.4 = 1785, rearwheel drive gearbox from a midget or sprite. Tonnes of info about, cheap bits.

Or N/A : SR20DE from a Nissan Sunny with a 200sx gearbox 1998cc 140bhp, but you get into daft money trying to up the power output.

Mid mounted logitudinal, short prop, might still make the engine sit too far forward.

With either you could use a fwd gearbox, but id have tyhought that would have but the weight too far rearwards.

Have a look at this for ideas:

Saab turbo transverse
http://www.sxoc.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=364036
http://jesus-ninja.dyndns.org/Wasaabi/?f=summary

1.8 or 2.0 vtec? could be a giggle

the 1.3 turbo huyabusa engine seems to propel things along nicely

ah, all good ideas The shelsley uses the standard rover pg1 fwd gearbox and with people and fuel gives about 58% rear distribution so I would not be adverse to using that style of gearbox as it does away with a seperate diff and driveshafts, of weight distribution is a problem I can always tilt the engine forward along the crankshaft axis and modify the oil pan/pickup (it would also lower the CoG)

Tk wrote:the 1.3 turbo huyabusa engine seems to propel things along nicely

Dou you have any pictures of the bike engined setup?

What about a 1.9 Honda VTEC engine & gearbopx with Hondata ECU. Lightweight, N/A, and good for c.220+. Works well in an Atom and revs to 9000rpm. Real screamer

i'm sure when Aerial fitted the CTR engine in the atom they also used a supercharger and Honda engines are notoriously expensive to tune

how much does your car weigh as the Hayabusa engine way doesn't really have much torque, and the gearbox will probably be a pig to do

scooby engine would make sense and you can get massive HP and torque by just mapping and changing the turbo at relatively small expense