Jamie Sculerati wrote:
Mechanically, it's possible to put the exhaust manifold on the "rear," but
in most of the FWD cars I've had, you'd significantly raise the temperature
under the hood -- or push the engine even further forward to provide more
cooling space around the header. You could expand the engine compartment,
but like you said, FWD is largely about space efficiency -- if you're going
to open up all that space for the engine, you may as well optimize the drive
layout and put the driving wheels in the back!
and Todd Walke wrote:
All 8 valve Volkswagens (until the 2 liter introduced in '94) have the
intake and exhaust manifolds on the rear of the engine.
My two cents worth:
It's actually a bit more complex that Todd said. All the 16-v and VR-6 VW's
also have the exhaust running out of the back and intake on the front. Of
course, the intake manifold curves back over the valve covers and the intake
still gets heated up by the exhaust system. The only real way to avoid this
is with elaborate heat shielding or (SP & M only...) a custom fi setup.
BTW, don't Neon's have the exhaust running out the back too?
I have wondered many times about the logic behind using cross-flow heads but
running the exhaust out of the front. It seems to me that the big loop of
exhaust tubing around the engine _really_ heats things up. Not much us
amateurs can do about it though. It's just a bit expensive to create a
custom transaxle...
Kevin Hoff
CCR Webmaster http://www.ccrsolo2.org/
Cirque Networks, Inc. CIO http://www.cirque-networks.com/
81 Scirocco DSP (FSP???) 29
...back to lurking on the digest.
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