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Interchangable engines for the ES 1800

My take on the "want more power" issue is this... and it is this because I've made many silly mistakes over the years.

1) Do you know that your present motor is performing as it was designed to do? Worn and/or mistuned motors may appear to run well; they just don't make much power. Fixing what's wrong is far cheaper, simpler, and less prone to nasty side effects than doing performance "upgrades," and may well be all you need. You can get quite a bit more performance from blueprinting, balancing, and very minor head work -- this gives you a better-than-factory motor at a budget cost.

2) If you do need more power than item #1 provides, you can get vast performance increases from a B20 if the modifications are done in a well-engineered way. Performance comes from the entire system, including intake, exhaust, the motor's internal parts, and really the car as a whole all working in harmony to produce the desired characteristics. You cannot get anything significant from just bolting on a header, or changing out the cam, doing a big bore, or anything of that sort. It takes real engineering, but it is there to be had.

3) Vintage Performance Developments offers a supercharger kit that will boost performance of a stock B20 significantly. It is the exception to what I said in item #2. The current version of the kit replaces your fuel injection. Kits are under development that will work with your existing fuel injection, but I wouldn't expect that to be available this year. There may be a long wait for the basic kit, as this is a very limited production item and each is basically hand made.

4) Engine swaps are certainly possible, but not at all simple. The devil is in the details. As George said, B21/23 motors in stock form are really quite similar to your B20 and don't offer much performance increase. Turbo is a possibility, but what I said in item #3 is simpler, more effective, and likely cheaper in the end.

--Phil S.






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