Well folks, I have a decent s/h engine out of a felicia that was crashed. I bought the car for spares for the daily and decided to turn the rest into a trailer. What I have left over is an engine and box.

What I plan to do is tune up and rebuild the engine with out going mental, Just a nice little power increase and to have it done, ready and do it at a leisurely pace. The current engine is fine

Intended jobs to be done are: New Timing Chain, Skim head, New head gasket, New piston rings, new shell and crank bearings, Polish ports, grind valves, Make a straight thru exhaust, Performance air filter.

What I want to know, is there any handy ways to increase power on the cheap? Any things I can do while the engine is assunder? Even Info on adding a small turbo? Any suggestions are welcome, although, I'd rather not be told to but in a bigger engine or anything as this is just something I wanna do for the sake of it.

What about bike carbs? Should give good gains for not too much money

Take a look here

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/190085-90-100-hp-from-mpi-13-what-does-it-take/

One post suggests 88bhp is possible with just a cam and ecu (chip?) but the kit costs £500.

Was thinkin bike carbs, out of a gsxr or somethin. May look into it, cam and remap, but the car barely cost me that inclusive of spare car and other parts! Is there a way you can remap yourself? Kinda piggy back chips into it or anything?

engine transplant is the most cost effective solution.

I know, i've been offered engines, but I wanna do this for the sneer.

good on you, there are lots of things you can do with a bit of know-how, but it does get expensive very quickly.. it all boils down to how much power you are looking for, how much money you can throw at a car that is worth less than my shoes, and how reliable you want it to be..

i still stand by what i said, transplant is way forward, an early 1.4 16v polo engine is a corker of an engine, and they are really cheap, you can get a good one for £250, and that would give you 100bhp out of the box, to get that from a skoda pushrod engine would require a considerable wedge of money, and it would be really anti-social too

Well, I'll see what I can do with the spare lump. Them polo engines, do they fit to the gearbox thats in the felly?

yes, if you use the cast iron bellhousing adaptor plate that comes with the 1.6 felicia, it's a sort of sandwich plate that goes between the engine and gearbox, you also need a few other bits from the 1.6 model to make it work, but it can be done easily in a weekend, there is a thread in the technical guides section on this subject for further reading

Tom's right, tuning the 1.3 does get very expensive and engine conversion is probably the way to go. .. I'm tuning a 1.3mpi engine just now with cam, head - work, big valves, gsxr 750 throttle bodies, megasquirt ecu, and that's not even touching the bottom end at all. All the electrics, ecu, sensors, coils, wideband lambda. etc for converting to EFI came in at around £500 then there's the TB's, valves and cam prob £300. Cost of labour for custom intake manifold, and head - work around £300. And that's just the start... Getting it setup properly at a rolling is not going to be cheap, need custom exhaust, bigger brakes for the increase in power, etc etc. The list is endless... Sometimes I've regretted even starting this project but once it's done I'm sure I won't

Anyway I have a manifold and cbr1000 bike carbs which I had fitted to the car previously before I decided to do the EFI conversion. The carbs will need stripped and rebuilt though as they've been sitting for quite a while and we're pretty rough when the car ran on them before. The jets have been changed on them though. Along with a Piper high lift can and ported/skimmed head it produced 96bhp. Let me know if you're interested. I also have the Piper bp285 reground cam for sale but it doesn't fit the mpi engine...

Edited 27 April, 201313 yr by Wright Bro's

Feck it, I'm gonna swap it out for the 1.4 16v. But until then I'll see how I get on with a Bike throttle body. I've got them sourced from my old job at €40, but I'll just check with the landlord as he breaks sportbikes too. That and a port polish should hold it til the right VW unit comes along.

dont bother with porting, it's an expensive waste of time and effort, the afh cylinder head was one of the best production heads vw ever made. it's right up there on a par with the cosworth stuff, you wont be able to make any worthwhile changes to it unless you are an absolute expert of porting, polishing ports is pointless too...

if it was me i'd shove the engine in there in bog standard form along with it's efi gear, motorcycle carbs are ok but it will be tres noisy. it is possible to use a vacuum advance dizzy and the igniton module form a 1300cc mk2 polo on the afh engines so you can run the ignition system without using an ecu.

@Teflon Tom, That's usable info there now, I don't like electro nonsense with ECU's and stuff. I'll be doing just that if it screws up. Cheers!

This may be a daft question, but how easy is it to get the emissions through an MOT if you use carbs?

If it's supposed to have a cat, you have zero chance in the real world of it passing the cat test.

There is (of course) a loophole. If you had put the engine from a pre-CAT test 136 (which of course is the same physical engine as the felicia's 136) and had a letter to show the origin of said engine, then the MOT emissions test will be for the engine, not the car, and then you will be able to pass, suitably set up.

Edited 3 May, 201313 yr by djaychela

electronic nonsense ecu?? anybody that says that is either really old school (1960's clockwork technology) or doesnt know what they are doing.. electronic igniton systems are far more reliable

ah yes mot loopholes, in this example of fitting an afh engine to a felicia, because it was never available with that engine from the factory it can be tested as a non-cat in terms of the emissions limits, but new mot rules means that car will have to have a cat fitted because it was original fitment

I'm fairly old school, spent more time on vintage machinery than anything else. I just like things as simple and straight forward, that I can see "ah, that yoke is worn/cracked, etc. I'll change/adjust it" I will admit, electronics are definitely my weakest point, but I can do absolutely anything mechanical or cosmetic. I'm not sure about the loophole with the NCT, but I think its fairly easy on emissions over here. Civics are hugely popular as a mod car here and lads do all the far out crazy engine work with decats, throttle bodies, etc. and they pass the test most the time. Lets not forget how common they are for burning oil.