Difficult choice - What engine

[pablo]

When we decided to enter the Time Attack we had an arrangement with a sponsor / tuner who had offered to build us a new engine however for various reasons this deal fell through . As a result of this we had the car redesigned so that his name only appears small on the car.

The situation is this I have spec'd out and done a lot of research into building our own engine. Our design and our build an engine that we know and would still be able to do 90% of the work.
Or
The sponsor now desparatley wants to put his engine in the car. Which is not as easy for us to work on.

Power wise our build will be limited to around 300 - 350 bhp
His engine would be run at around 400 - 450 bhp

Myself and Alan are at odds over the way to go. We have done the pro's and con's of each.
:?

[James Breadvan]

Would "his" engine need much working on when it's in? If not go for it

[duncan]

Tell Alan not to break it - job done 450 bhp

[Ben]

Yeh .. 450 - everyone's happy ...

[Stuart]

Essentially Pabs, it depends how true to his word your sponsor is. If he really will stand behind his work and will service the car then the difficulty associated in working on the car is his and not yours anyway. If he supplies the engine and you then pay for the ongoing work, I think you need to weigh up the costs and then the decision is purely a monetary one.

I understand your concerns about losing the ownership of the engine design mate but your skills are numerous, so maybe you could focus on chassis and handling instead of the powertrain? With all of the new power, you'll have plenty to contend with anyway.

Assuming your 'sponsor' is Fitz, his rep is such that he should be good for the deal. Just try and ensure that all of the eventualities are agreed before you put the engine in.

450bhp would be so nice in the 4b. Just make sure you 450bhp worth of brakes, suspension and driver

Best of luck. I'm delighted that you're taking this forwards.

[pablo]

Cheers for the replies guys.

The sponsors engine will produce that power he runs a version in his own blue 3 door sierra with a proven dyno graphed output of 521bhp. We have got to have a meeting with when Alan gets back off holiday and will be covering the points raised above. Another factor would be timescale as we would need time to test it on track.

The way we run the car now is that if we break it we fix and never place blame. The car has be strong enough for the purpose it was built and the way it would be driven. Alan drives the car without mechanical symphony but is not reckless to it. This will not change nor do I want it to but it is something that the sponsor will have to understand and get on board with.

It's a fantastic opportunity for us but I will be going into this with my eyes open.

[duncan]

When's it going in then ?

[pablo]

There was a discussion on here about single or twin turbos, I have tried to search for it but not been able to find it. Just doing a bit of research

[pablo]

Had the meeting yesterday morning, we went prepared with a list of questions, the outcome

He will

supply and build (with Alan helping) the engine.
Remove the current engine and install the new one
Maintain and service the engine. All labour free.
Build a second engine as a spare


We pay for

Fabrication work that he can't do
Ecu with data logging
(Information from data logging will help with future development and gives recorded evidence of what the engine can do and cope with).
New turbo's 2x T28's or 1x T04

There are still a couple of things which need to be sorted out, timescale being the main one as the cost to us is more than we had planned for if we did our own build, but the long term benefits outway the costs.
You might think that between the 2 of us we should be able to afford this, however the car has allways been a joint venture and jointly owned. All expenditure has to be based on the disposable income of the lowest earner, and not reach a point where we become concerned about bending it.

[Stuart]

From everything that I have read and learned, a decent single turbo is far better for your purpose. Two turbos create more heat and in turn create more potential for failures. The cooler the engine the better it should run too

A T04 or GT30 will produce loads of power and will certainly give you guys the punch you crave.

Best of luck :thumb:

Sounds like a great deal by the way. Good negotiating there mate