Opinions: Supercharged or Turbo?

[kapowww]

Guys with economic cars want more power. Guys with power want more economy.

Just buy a motorbike to satisfy your need for speed or a cheap turbo jap car. It'll be cheaper and more fun.

It seems your heart is set on supercharging but chucking a turbo in would be the lesser of two evils.

[JustCruisn]

Be like Stan and do the 1.8T swap

http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/forums/f55/stans-epic-golf-build-1-6se-becomes-1-8t-63249.html

[kendog]

Haha, I did look at Stan's build, so awesome. If only mine wasn't a daily, and I had a few more skills/experience in VW's.

Anyone got any ideas about the CAI and ECU upgrade vs the gearbox?

PS - That Golf GTI for $5000, gone. A guy bought it as we were both looking at it this afternoon. It was on carsales only just over 24hrs.

[Sirocco20348]

Its just not worth doing anything to the 1.6L.... its a gutless single overheard cam...yet reliable and frugal ride... terrible base for modifications.

I have one and I would never contemplate modding it.

The colour of your car is indeed awesome.... what you want is a complete 1.8ltr conversion.

[Stan]

saw i got a nice mention, so thought i'd chime in.

I looked at the options as well - no one seemed to make a supercharger kit for the 1.6 - including in the USA
Similar deal with a turbo - the main issues being manifolds and engine management, engine and gearbox strength.

For all the mucking about and costs involved here were my options in most realistic order:

Buy a GTI....lol

or do the engine/gearbox/subframe swap i did. You also need to change the exhaust (different size and manifold flange), gear mechanism (rods vs cable), drive shafts (bigger axle shafts), compuer/ecu/ some wiring/ dont forget the intecooler, bigger brakes and other bits and bobs.

In the end i swapped the entire front subframe, exhaust, ecu, went big brakes, and other stuff. It wasnt too mechanically hard, but wiring and engine management were certainly the big two.

I also had excellent support from guys on the forum.

check the link in my sig for an idea of what was required.

If you got cracking and worked late - to do it the way I did, you might knock it over in a weekend if you had experience. The mechanicals took me about a week- I was learning and taking pics as I went - the pics slow it a fair bit.

it took 3 weeks to chase the ecu wiring , pinouts and fault find... most of that was chasing what the issues were, it took about 5 mintues to sort it once I found out what it was.

As for chipping and aftermarket tuning- it's pretty much a waste of time unless you have forced induction of some kind.

Another option would be do a 2 litre swap and get an aftermarket kit from the USA and supercharge it - get ready to spend about $3K +

the other thing about going 1.8t is that the aftermarket options are more plentiful by a long way


Happy to help in any way I can, good luck!

[kai_h]

That's a pretty fair assessment. Unfortunately the 1.6 (and the 2.0 for that matter) are not a solid foundation to build on, there's too much that will need replacing that it's cheaper, quicker and easier to do something else altogether and end up with a better result.

If you truly love the body you've got (and it's a fantastic colour, no doubt) then the power plant swap would be the way to go.

If you want something that's even less hassles than this, then it's really a case of trading up to a 1.8T or something like that. If you find a clean, unmolested 1.8T, then it's quite cheap to get decent power gains as you're working with a factory turbo, so the plumbing and integration is all sorted out. You're also dealing with a platform with a stronger gearbox, bigger brakes and other go-fast bits factory fitted.

A quick remap and you're going to get another 10-20kW at least from a 1.8T and then if you want to bolt on bits, the sky's the limit.

[Bug_racer]

Im going to go down a different path compared to most people , Ive built up a 1.6 mk4 engine before so I'll give some insight into it .
The 1.6 has a bore of 81mm and stroke of 77.4mm . Id say you could get away with running a 1.8 crank and boring it out to 82.5 mm . The engine I did was bored out to 82mm to save on cost (82.5 pistons were a bit more expensive) . Also the compression ratio is about 10.3 : 1 , with the right pistons you could increase this to about 11.3 :1 . So youd end up with about a 1.9l engine , and with the extra capacity it will help gain you more power .
Next you could work on the head , the valve size could be increased , a 260 cam could be used , exhaust manifold can be ported and mid muffler removed . The intake is tricky but the standard airbox is fine , just needs a bit better piping to the airbox .
If you could remove the air con it will help with power , as well as power steering . Pulleys dont help much with power , but you can use them as a last resort . Lightening the flywheel will also help with acceleration .
The gearbox Id sell (you'll get good money for it) and replace it with a cable shift out of a later A3 1.6 or beetle 1.6 .
So you'll probably end up with about 90-100kw once you do that , probably a fraction less than a gti , but its n/a .

Oh , please never disregard an 8V , with a hairdryer on them they make just as much power as the 20V . The biggest issue with the gti is your not going to be able to go more than gt28rs size turbo without going stand alone

[kendog]

Firstly, Stan, absolutely awesome job!

So, how much would it cost to hire your services for a job such as this?!?! PM is fine

I can't believe it seems like it's down to all or nothing! So.. If I'm not going to do an engine swap, then I shouldn't touch a thing, at all? What about a new set of rings and a CAI? Or am I just supposed to put in a good drop-in filter and forget about it?

---------- Post added at 09:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 PM ----------

Awesome response Bug_racer !
This is the exact sort of old school thinking that I'd wondered what had happened to. A re-bore, new piston & rings, etc., gold.

This could be a method for me! Know anywhere to give me a quote on that? Or even just a quote on the parts to get me started? (I have a mechanic).

Good honest feeback and different ideas.. Big thanks people, good stuff.. And thanks in advance to any new posters..

[Stan]

thanks for the kind words kenbot - i did the work, but had plenty of help. bugracer above was one of them

dont think it's all or nothing, I just found the most economical and practical solution that was right for me at the time

I'm sure you can tune up or modify a 1.6 - I just dont know how to do it well and aftermarket support is pretty thin.

Bugs option above is a good one if you want to keep and mod the 1.6 - but itcosts money, you need someone with engineering skills and time off the road. However you would end up with essentially a new engine and a pretty worked one at that.

My way was close to plug and play, but I got and engine with about 90K kms on it (still way better than the one i replaced). 1.8t agu has good aftermarket support.

It comes down to practicality, and which solution gives you what you are after - do you want power, tunability, add on bits, economy etc...

Easiest solution, is still to simply upgrade to a GTI - already done right, no bugs to iron out (I still have a speedo issue with mine...lol)

I did it the way I did as it spread cost over time instead of trying to find $$$ to upgrade to a better car all in one hit.

[debo]

+1 turbo. big turbo that brings on boost at 3000rpm and just drive under 2500rpm power and economy all in one

[kendog]

My current conclusion is that an engine swap is way too much money for me, if I already had the engine, or one that cost me nothing, I'd consider it more seriously.

It seems like the engine re-build idea proposed might be a bit expensive too, but I haven't had any quotes on that, or even know where to get a decent one..

So it's a no go for me on the engine swap, too much money. I'd have to go down the path of selling mine and buying a GTI if I want to do this cheap-ish. However, I'd lose my beautiful colour, and have to choose between black and white on the GTI's...

[kai_h]

It'll probably be cheapest all up if you were to sell your car as it's in really good condition and get a GTI that needs some bodywork, or has crap paint on it and get it resprayed in your colour. Best of both worlds - factory turbo, plenty of extra power available from a chip, stronger mechanicals and the colour you want!

[kendog]

Haha, I was just talking to Stan about the exact same thing. Find a cheap GTI with ****ty paint (like the $5000 one I missed out on), pref black, maybe paint it matte black/graphite..

[kai_h]

And, it a paint job is out of the question, get a vinyl wrap done. Matte colours, no problem. Carbon fibre texture, no problem. Don't like it, peel it off again, no problem

[Clarkee_vw]

I know my idea's are a bit out there but what about finding a 3.2Lt v6 for a the golf.. Would that work since bora and r32 is 4motion??

As far as I'm aware there isn't a v6 golf conversion been done yet.. But could be wrong