Guy I bought it off said its a Felicia engine in it, I'm not sure of the differences or how to tell, anyone give me any easy pointers?

heh, I'm guessing the engine has been changed a couple of times in it as it has a nifty mod where the rear light clusters are connected to the main car electronics with a tow bar plug ... I'm guessing this has been done to make removing the rear panel to whip engines in and out quicker...

If that is the car in your avitar, the engine is out of a felicia. I have known the car for a few years, and the last two owners

cool, it is indeed...

had it about a week now and I'm very impressed with it... the work that matters on it has all definatly been done very well, I'm especially impressed with the suspension ...

in the process of removing the window tints at the moment, and I've taken off the sun strip that was on it... planning on running it as it is for a year or so, maybe after that when I've saved up a bit I'll think about maybe another engine transplant (I'm a big fan of the turbo'd nissan 4 pots, thinking a CA18DET would be quite a nice upgrade )... only thing I'd be thinking of upgrading in the short term though is the brakes, is there an easy route for a quick upgrade?, been wondering best way of getting it disks all round and prob. some meatier disks/calipers on the front

Any chance of some better pics please?

As to the brake upgrade, maybe fast road pads and/or grooved discs. You already (presumes standard setup) have 4-pot front calipers. The standard brakes were adequate for 120bhp engines which were revving out at about 120mph in top gear.

There is a rear disc conversion available but you will need a second morgage

Guy I bought it off said its a Felicia engine in it, I'm not sure of the differences or how to tell, anyone give me any easy pointers?

The most obvious clue is the location of the dipsick. A RWD engine has it located near to the water pump, a FWD engine has it located further along closer to the gearbox.

heh, definatly FWD engine then... thats a releif, I wasn't fancying changing the liners and I know the RWD engine's are a bitch for liners going and killing headgaskets... me and a mate used to autotest an Estelle and we were forever changing HG's in it...

Any chance of some better pics please?

As to the brake upgrade, maybe fast road pads and/or grooved discs. You already (presumes standard setup) have 4-pot front calipers. The standard brakes were adequate for 120bhp engines which were revving out at about 120mph in top gear.

think some better pads may be in order then, I'm not a fan of grovved/drilled disks, in my experience they don't make the braking better they just eat pads quicker. Wonder if my cunning mod of making an extra bracket behind the brake servo to make it more rigid is practicle on a Skoda...

The idea of an extra servo/master cylinder bracket is always a good one in principle, if there's somewhere sensible to brace each end of it against. I'll leave the implimentation to someone with access to an actual Rapid though.

I'm not a fan of cross-drilling either, but that's because I think it causes stress raisers, and risks cracking, unless done before the disc is heat-treated. Grooving has been proven to reduce pad gas build up in long, hard use.

well I aint planning on ever giving it long and hard enough abuse for pad gas build up to be a problem, I just want to improve the braking performance in everyday driving with maybe the odd little spirited drive down a country lane... think I'll just improve the lines/fluid and make an extra bracing bracket for it... should make it adaquet for me then...

New, preferably braided steel lines, DOT 4.0, extra bracket, then maybe fast road pads should be it sorted then.

aye, thats what I'm planning...

and whilst you're at it, remove the ugly bonnet decal

hell no, bonnet decal is cool and stays...

heh, definatly FWD engine then... thats a releif, I wasn't fancying changing the liners and I know the RWD engine's are a bitch for liners going and killing headgaskets... me and a mate used to autotest an Estelle and we were forever changing HG's in it...

felicia engine is basicaly a rapid 136 engine

Just about to say its basically the same 136 engine from the RWd days.

Also you state that you were foreve changing headgaskets? Thats very rare. Once a headgasket has been properly replaced and a Temac one used in its replacemnt it very rare for them to blow?

This was in an Estelle... and we certainly didn't use a Temac one.... I beleive the prob. was caused by the liners wearing and once they were worn it made HG's fail more often, as the car was a nail that was been used for autotesting it was easier to just bang new headgaskets on it to keep it running than fix it properly.

did OK in it as well, it won the Morcambe car clubs RWD autotesting title one year... we had an attempt at taking the FWD title the year after in a Yugo 45 but sadly failed...

think some better pads may be in order then, I'm not a fan of grovved/drilled disks, in my experience they don't make the braking better they just eat pads quicker. Wonder if my cunning mod of making an extra bracket behind the brake servo to make it more rigid is practicle on a Skoda...

I replaced my brake servo pipe with a copper pipe.

Rgs

Chris