Im currently trying to scrape every ounce of power out of my 1.6 felicia

Considering my clutch will need changing soon probably around june time i was wondering weather whilst everything is out if i can lightening my flywheel for a bit more zoommmmmmm,

now i don'tknow anything about flywheels and there workings but i know on my MR2 the flywheel weighs 15kg and the lightweight findanza performance replacement weighs like 7kg

can the standard flywheel for my 1.6 be lightened???

Edited 5 April, 201115 yr by Sonner

Besides having flywheel balanced you could have crankshaft balanced also.

You could have a competition clutch assembly ??

In my hay day, also had rebore for over-sized high-compression pistons, maximum skimmed head.

Polished ports, valves reground, heavy duty valve springs, high-lift camshaft.

Twin Stromberg carburettors, straight through exhaust.

Puts a smile on my face to just think how much of an idiot I used to drive like. LOL

Well my car already has a aftermarket manifold, 100cel cat and 50mm diesel centre and rear exhuast sections and a sealed induction kit

and it's due to get a ported head and some higher lift cams fitted soon too.

i think finding over-sized high-compression pistons might be quite hard and expensive.

but the carburettors are making me think a bike carb conversion might be in order.

a competition clutch is surely just a heavy duty clutch, it can't provide extra power or save weight surely.

i wonder what the cost of crankshaft balancing is then? and if mapping/chipping the car after doing all this work is necessary

Edited 5 April, 201115 yr by Sonner

Neither balancing nor lightening reciprocating components actually makes more power on a water-wheel dyno. They may (at least appear to) make more power on a modern eddy current unit, becuase it reacts much faster to changes in load.

Balancing doesn't even make the engine rev up and down faster; it just makes it run more smoothly.

Lightening makes the engine rev up and down faster, because you're spinning less weight, and the effective weight that you're trying to accelerate rises as the 4th power of engine speed.

Carbs are the past, it'd be a step backwards, if you're going to do something like that, throttle bodies are the way forward.

I don't know if the 1.6 engines are balanced as a unit (i.e. crank, pulley and flywheel) or separately; certainly on the 1.3 8v skoda engine when I've had them balanced the balancing guy has said the stock crank is perfectly balanced already, but that means nothing for the VW 1.6 engine! Cost isn't much - £50 or so?

I don't think you'd need to do mapping because of lightening or balancing - the engine will accelerate quicker as a result in low gears, but in higher ones the effect is less marked. But all the other stuff would probably do - you'll not be getting the most out of it on a standard map/ecu for sure.

hello again sonner, my thoughts have always been forget the 1600 engine and put a 1.4 16v in there in it's place but i can see you are dead set on using the original 1600 engine..

if you want to do lightening and balancing on the engine internals then obviously it's an engine/gearbox out job and a complete stripdown and rebuild would be needed and it would be prohibitively expensive, as ken has said you wont gain any power but lightening the engine but it will make it accelerate faster because the reciprocating inertia is lower so less energy is wasted inside the engine, having a lightened or blueprinted engine can be a bit of a nightmare for day-to-day driving though becuase the engine braking effect is reduced, it takes a little while to get used to it all...

lightening the flywheel is a good idea, jap cars have massive heavy flywheels due to differing emmissions regs in the jap marketplace so the heavy flywheel allows it to idle smoothly at low rpm's... i forget the exact weights now, but a polo 1.6 (aee) fywheel is about 7kg to start with and can be taken down to about 5kg safely, any further then they become unreliable and liable to flexing or cracking and it makes the idle speed very lumpy especially with silly cams fitted. the felicia flywheel is heavier than a polo one to start with though because it is a different design because of the skoda gearbox being used on a felicia, maybe jimbo might know how heavy they are?

In my hay day, also had rebore for over-sized high-compression pistons, maximum skimmed head.

Polished ports, valves reground, heavy duty valve springs, high-lift camshaft.

Twin Stromberg carburettors, straight through exhaust.

i'm not trying to pick on you here but there are some wildly mis-understood theories doing the rounds quite a lot

as darren says, carbs are a thing of the past, some of the ch@vs on clubpolo run motorcycle carbs on them nowadays though, but i suspect this is mainly due to most folks not understanding how a properly setup efi engine works. i must admit they do sound nice though at full bore but they are still down on power against my single bodied plenum fed fuel injected engine.

polishing ports is a complete waste of money, the surface finish of the ports plays virtually no part in the ports ability to flow well, it's mainly down to the shape and taking out the restrictions and hard edges and corners etc...

a high lift camshaft doesn't get you any gain at all, the thing that most people don't understand about valves is that the gas doesn't flow through the valve, it goes around it, i've seen it proven on flowbench tests that opening the valve more than 25% of it's diameter doesn't increase the flow at all, so all you are doing by opening it further than this is accelerating valve guide and follower wear.. however the actual duration of the valve opening period and the LCA (lobe centre angle) can have a huge effect, but it's all swings and roundabouts, what you gain at the top end you also loose from the bottom end torque.

skimming or milling the head to raise the compression is fairly sound in thoery so long as you don't go too far with it, personally i wouldn't bother because the effects are minimal and also it leaves you no margin for re-working the head if you pop the head gasket at a later date

Hi again Tom

so after we fit the cylinder head and those cams, i shall leave the engine alone......

however mapping the car afterwards sounds like it might be an idea.

i know it makes sense to do the 1.4 16v conversion but the insurance implications of an engine swap are prohibitive and it requires a lump of money say £250 to get an engine in the first place. i tend to spend a few quid here and there but don't manage to accumulate £££'s often enough to do the swap.

ultimately Tom i was hoping to do a more ambitious engine swap next year once i am a bit better funded and have gained more experience in working on cars.

The ambitious engine swap is kinda subject to a certain persons help though ;-)

i was thinking a non-VAG engine, but still something torquey rather than revvy and with a very short ratio box like is standard in the Felicia anyway. something that drives much like the 1.6 in there currently but on a bigger scale, i was thinking............................... wait for it.... the 2.5L lump out of the porsche 944, there's loads of them about, they are dead reliable and with 163bhp should shift a 1000kg car well enough, maybe if i can get hold of the boxster lump 2.7l 217bhp that would be ridiculously fast. the 944 lumps are big simple four pot torquey motors

i think necessary chassis strengthening would be in order though

Edited 5 April, 201115 yr by Sonner

perhaps keeing the rear axle and drivshafts from the boxster and all connecting bits too and mid-mounting it into the felicia would be a good idea

we can start drawing up plans when i come down in may

perhaps keeing the rear axle and drivshafts from the boxster and all connecting bits too and mid-mounting it into the felicia would be a good idea

i'll have whatever you've been drinking but make mine a double...

i would forget the porsche engine idea if i was you, there will be something a lot more suitable out there, i don't want to sound pessimistic but it's a very long road going from turning spanners to change a wheel to putting a fully fledged rear engine conversion in a car. it doesn't just fall into the hole behind the rear seats and turn the key and drive off.. by far the best thing to do is fit an in-line 4 cylinder transverse engine in the front. something simple like a chavalier redtop xe engine which would be easy to wire up and get working

well i understand why a mid-mounted flat six engine might not be that easy

but surely putting the 2.5L 944 lump into the front couldn't be too hard...... my 3.0L 231bhp porsche lump does 30+mpg in a 1200kg chassis

so i can't imagine the 2.5L in a 1000kg chassis returning less than 35mpg.

i'm a bit fussy about my engines really, i did the whole redtop/corsa swap when i was a youngster(17yr) and yes is was seriously fast but the car itself had poor handling and ride comfort and wasn't anywhere near as refined as the Felicia.

i don't like vauxhall engines, they have always let me down, whereas the 3 porsches i've had have taken such abuse and remain sweet and smooth, much like my mercedes 190E 2.5-16 which was also faultless.

i'm just thinking of big cheap torquey engines that are simple and reliable, a 2.0L XE redtop just isn't that. there becoming harder to find too.

Tom lets think of some engines that might fit, would be nice if they where 150bhp+

as darren says, carbs are a thing of the past, some of the ch@vs on clubpolo run motorcycle carbs on them nowadays though, but i suspect this is mainly due to most folks not understanding how a properly setup efi engine works. i must admit they do sound nice though at full bore but they are still down on power against my single bodied plenum fed fuel injected engine.

1 choke/cylinder plus Kettering arc can make as much peak power as a full EMS with port injection (and more than a single injector plenum system), but will make the same or less power everywhere else.

yes ken that's true, if carbs are properly set up there's no reason why it can't make exactly the same power outputs as efi, but i'm still preferring the day-to-day driveability and smoothness and allround reliability you get from efi.

im looking for places that will remap my skoda in my local area for after we do the work but i can only find one place and they what nearly £300 for the job,

Tom do you have anyone down ur way that gives better rates that is reputable.

the only place i ever use for any kind of work on my cars is jkm motor services, to be honest i just don't trust anybody else.. but i don't think they do they kind of stuff you are after...

£300 is a good price for a remap that's been customised tbh