2 litre engines

[DanJR1]

im designing a car at the mo and i want to use a 2 litre engine with 4 cylinders and it would run normally aspirated. The car would be a track day car which is road legal. I'd like it to produce about 300hp+ so i was wondering if anybody had any ideas for any suitable engine that fits the bill.thanks

[alfasud]

Use 2 x 150bhp 1000cc bike engines !!!!!

But that's probably more than 4 cylinders.

Seriously, the sort of power you are looking for is what you will get from;
a) spending money on a Supertouring engine, or
b) spending even more money developing an engine to get the same power some other way

Hmmmm..... I know you said 4 cylinders, but does it have to be a piston engine? I'm sure that some of the rotary boys will tell you that depending on how you measure the capacity, a 12A or 13B rotary is less than 2 litre.

[alfasud]

Another option..... go to Judd and tell them you want a 4 cylinder version of this:

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/juddgv510.html

[GTV27]

300 from 2.0 is not practical unless you either have a BIG engine budget for development and maintenance or use forced induction.

Bike engines can make great racing car engines, especially if you use the transmission as well (although the lack of a reverse gear could be a limitation for road rego). I think the biggest practical bike motor is 1300cc.

A 12A or 13B is really only less than 2.0l if you measure it incorrectly - but a peripheral port 13B would certainly hit your power target easily and be nice and light.

Please provide some more details on what you plan, I'm sure several contributors would be interested to read about it.

[Mackmot]

The best 2 litre that I know of is the AER Nissan which is going to be used in the Open Fortuna championship this season. Its the lightest 2lt in the world weighing only 85kg dry. It puts ourt over 250hp which is pretty damn good. It was originally designed for ALMS and was supposed to have twin turbos putting out over 500hp, so if in the future you got bored with 250 hey. Its quite long lasting too, 7000km before rebuild. I think its about £10,000.

[KC]

I doubt you could get 300 hp from a street legal normally aspirated 2.0 liter 4 cylinder unless you had huge money to spend on ultra-high revving bits for the heads. I would imagine that 200 to 225 hp is a much more attainable goal for your application.

[Lee Janotta]

Honda got 240hp out of the 2.0L S2000 engine. I'd say 250'd be the absolute most you could squeeze out of a street-legal engine that size without forced induction.

[Speck]

Out of curiosity, what kind of bhp/tonne figure are you aiming at? I mean, 300 bhp from a 2000kg car is very little, but 300bhp from a 300kg car would make for a heck of a ride.

[Speck]

Originally posted by alfasud
Use 2 x 150bhp 1000cc bike engines !!!!!

Or, you could use 2 v-twin engines.

[alfasud]

Originally posted by Speck
Or, you could use 2 v-twin engines.

True, a Ducati is something like 120-130bhp for a 998cc V-twin road bike and 160-180bhp for a World Superbike engine.

So if you take 2 of these WSB V-twin engines at 160bhp+ each and somehow join them to make a 320bhp, 1996cc, V4. If you don't want to join them, then one at the front and one at the back for 4WD is a possibility. Whether this is any more affordable, practical, road drivable or road legal than using a 300bhp ex-Supertouring engine is another thing.

As far as road legal goes, the main issue would seem to be noise? If that's the case, what's to stop you creating an exhaust system that can be converted from road spec to race spec at the side of the track?

[DanJR1]

a few questions. How much torque would a 4 cylinder turbo engine generally produce at about 500hp? How much horsepower would a unrestricted F3 engine produce?

[Dave Brand]

Originally posted by DanJR1
a few questions. How much torque would a 4 cylinder turbo engine generally produce at about 500hp?

You must specify rpm to be able to calculate that. Then it's a simple matter of putting numbers into the basic horsepower formula:

HP = 2* pi*rpm*torque/33,000 (torque in ft lb)

[dretceterini]

If we are taking about building a reliable 2 liter N/A motor that is flexible enough to drive on the street it would be hard to have more than 225-250 hp. A totally exotic 2 liter turbo, built for racing purposes and with nitrus injection might put out 1500 hp, but that has nothing to do with practicality. A 2 liter turbo sports-racing motor such as the MG puts out around 475 hp in race trim.

[Demo King]

300hp from a street driven 2lt n/a engine is not possible. If you have tons of cash you could get close but you would need to rebuild the engine every 300/500km's. The BTCC 2lt super tourers put out about 300hp but they had factory support with engines being rebuilt after each meeting and some exotic materials. Off the shelf, the Honda S200 engine is a great package with high revs, high hp and reliability. This will also come with a high cost, even from a wreckers or second hand.

DEMO KING

[alfasud]

I'm not so sure about "not possible". The Citroen Xsara Kit Cars that won Catelonia and Corsica WRC events in 1999, had normally aspirated 2.0L engines. According to Cars and Car Conversion magazine (July 1999), Citroen claimed 295bhp, but there was some speculation that it may have even been higher than this. These 2.0L kits cars were able to rev higher than BTTC/ST engines (no 8500rpm rev limit) and by definition a WRC car is driven on touring stages, so it is "street driven".

Road driving in traffic etc, might not have been much fun, but there is no doubt that it was "possible". The average WRC rally, while not the endurance events they used to be, covers many hundreds of km's over several days and you wouldn't build an engine that you expect to be going off song, after the first couple of long stages.

It's still not a long life engine, but neither is it one track day and it's gone either. Don't even ask about the price!!!!

[binky]

For a normally aspirated 2 litre engine, the Ford Duratec is the engine of the moment. However, people are only just dicovering it, so not too many choices for tuning parts just yet, though look at www.ministerpower.co.uk. The Vauxhall XED does have plenty of tuners about, and it is possible to get 300bhp out of one at a push, though 270bhp is more realistic.

If you can consider using a power adder (turbo, supercharger or Nitrous) then the turbo version of the Vauxhall XED (out of Calibra turbo), the Sierra Cosworth engine or the 2.3 Turbo Pinto out of the Ford Mustang/Thunderbird/Mercury Murkur XR4ti of the 80s can all easily make more than 300bhp, reliably.
I run an XED in my Sylva Fury, it is standard apart from cams, induction (Webers), exhaust, management and Nitrous. It makes about 200bhp without Nitrous. It returns over 25mpg whilst on the road, is totally reliable, yet hit the throttle open fully to activate the system and you have 250bhp. This keeps the engine and drivetrain safe as the N2O only comes in with full fuelling and with the car moving. So if you built a normally asp version with around 225bhp (easy and cheap) and slapped on a 75bhp kit on it you would reach your goal. Take care though to build the engine with the capability of taking 300bhp strength wise, even if it only makes 225 or whatever before nitrous. That way, when the N2O is added you don't snap things....It cost me a grand to install, the kit is just under 600 quid if you fit it yourself.

[Dino IV]

The right link is: http://www.minister-power.com.

[imull]

Emissions laws if you are in the UK. Anything over about fast road/rally has serious trouble scraping through. In which case you want a 1972 or earlier car... remember though that the police(?) have the power to make you take an emissions test at any time.

SBD are the Vauxhall specialists for the 2ltr Red Top engines. These can give 270bhp supposedly fairly reliable (clubman rallying budget) but rapidly become a pain after that.

[imull]

It would be advisable to read the racing engine thread. normal norman has a valid point.

[nsxr]

try a honda b-series motor and some jdm parts on it between spoon, mugen, toda,skunk and the rest you might be able to do it

[LandOfSnow]

Not sure about the way the emissions are measured in the UK(?) but a laptop programmable ecu can get you through here in Finland. The emissions are measured at a certain revs with no load, so you just program that exact rpm/load spot on the ecu map lean enough, had a '70s BMW M10 turbo that undercut the '97-'98 EU new car regulations. (the new cars have a more complex measurement but for the measurements required for the BMW it was within the newer regulations). As soon as the test is over you just load up the "real" map.

[avsfan733]

i think your best bet would be to go with either a Honda or Nissan motor and build it up. They aren't that hard to get better numbers out of, they have a lot of parts available, are builtproof and cheap. Also look at a full aftermarket ECu like
www.electromotive.com

[TuscanR]

If your willing to change your mind and add a turbo then the eninge out of either a mitsubishi lancer evo or subaru imprezza are pretty reliable tuned to about 400 bhp and could be pushed further still. I know that there is more than one Evo in the UK running with over 600 bhp on the road !

[gttouring]

it should be failry easy now to mod a Nissan sr20de motor to 300 horses natuarlly but the thing is expensive and trick.
getting the parts like aluminium flywheel, individual throttle bodies cams, and the like would end up good but illegal, really on a road car 300 is plenty and 250 will keep you smiling-go for the feel versus a status, I have spun my car with 200 horsepowerso gp figure, it is more fun to make a slow car go fast then make a powerful car go slow and fast slow and stop, You here things snap, especially when it revs high like these little 2.0s
of course you could buy a festiva, put a hayabusa motor in it and get new cams and what not, i am sure butif you bore and stroke it, the 1.3 to 1.8 or 2.0 you can get 300hp
it already has 185 doesn't it

[Dani Filth]

Originally posted by alfasud
Use 2 x 150bhp 1000cc bike engines !!!!!

But that's probably more than 4 cylinders.

Seriously, the sort of power you are looking for is what you will get from;
a) spending money on a Supertouring engine, or
b) spending even more money developing an engine to get the same power some other way

Hmmmm..... I know you said 4 cylinders, but does it have to be a piston engine? I'm sure that some of the rotary boys will tell you that depending on how you measure the capacity, a 12A or 13B rotary is less than 2 litre.

two V-twins .. maybe Ducati ... rotary is a good ideea ..