William Hartwell Woodruff scribed:
Subject: engine swaps
> I still wonder why engine swaps take a back seat to incredibly expensive
> mods which give marginal performance increases.
Other than "originality" and other astetics, nobody has listed some of the
prevailing *pratical* reasons:
-Some of this comes from racing rules, where the original engine must be
used, with certain types of mods allowed this results in a lot of people
with good knowledge of what (and what not) to do.
-Racing and factory development often results in documented, known results.
The potential builder doesn't have to do nearly as much development and
experimentation to get good results. You can let somebody else take any
risks and make the mistakes.
-Pre-developed upgrades often result in "off the shelf" upgrade kits,
which makes the work a lot easier and faster.
-Engine mods can be made incrementally, as time & $$ allow.
In the case where someone knows that they want a killer upgrade from the
start, and are willing to make the large investment in time & money, and
risk making big mistakes, a swap is do-able. There can be many unforseen
pitfalls, such as body & chassis mods, cooling problems, custom transmission
adapters, custom suspension, etc. that using the standard engine as a base
might not encounter.
________
/___ _ \ Roger Garnett (sggy@crux1.cit.cornell.edu)
/| || \ \ Agricultural Economics | South Lansing Centre For
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