Discussion
i would have thought any n/a lump would be infinatly tuneable and alot easier to mess about with than an efi....and a 4-pot would be the easiest of the lot.
ive always found 4-pots a piece of pish to tune up by ear though....i got my old mk1 998cc fester i had off the clock without any mods apart from tuning it.
ive always found 4-pots a piece of pish to tune up by ear though....i got my old mk1 998cc fester i had off the clock without any mods apart from tuning it.
cortinaman said:
i would have thought any n/a lump would be infinatly tuneable and alot easier to mess about with than an efi....and a 4-pot would be the easiest of the lot.
Normaly Aspirated and Electronic Fuel Injection are not mutualy exclusive, more like the norm these days.
I'd say the cheapest engine to extract more power from would be almost anything with a turbo. A addition of a bleed valve or big spring on the wastegate actuator costs pennies almost, and can yield significant power gains.
However, it depends on how far you want to go. Ultimately the more cylinders an engine has, the more valve area it can have, which is good for potential power. However, more cylinders=more cost when you have to uprate pistons/rods and start porting heads.
>> Edited by Mr2Mike on Monday 22 March 09:08
Rather than which configuration is the most tunable as a function of the properties of that particular configuration, I'd think that the potential is directly related to the aftermarket development done on a particular make of engine.
Examples - an American Chevy 350 has catalogs full of aftermarket bits - intake manifolds, camshafts of every possible flavor, aluminum heads, cast heads, you name it. This would provide this particular engine with all kinds of options. An American Ford 351 Cleveland had much less aftermarket development done on it since it was in production for much less time and was replaced by a similar model (351 Windsor).
Therefore, the Chevy is more tuneable than the Ford Cleveland, despite the same configuration and displacement (roughly 5.7 - 5.8L V-8). Not because of any property of the Chevy per se, but only because of the aftermarket development done by third parties.
Examples - an American Chevy 350 has catalogs full of aftermarket bits - intake manifolds, camshafts of every possible flavor, aluminum heads, cast heads, you name it. This would provide this particular engine with all kinds of options. An American Ford 351 Cleveland had much less aftermarket development done on it since it was in production for much less time and was replaced by a similar model (351 Windsor).
Therefore, the Chevy is more tuneable than the Ford Cleveland, despite the same configuration and displacement (roughly 5.7 - 5.8L V-8). Not because of any property of the Chevy per se, but only because of the aftermarket development done by third parties.
If you mean 'most easily tuned' as in 'which would be easier to get X% power increase from'.....
Engines with clever cams etc are by far the hardest to tune, as they normally have a good power output for the size due to the clever bits, and extracting more power is not easy.
Next comes 'basic' NA engines, with standard cams/valves etc, as the OEM components are normally easy to improve upon, providing power gains.
By far the easiest to tune are forced induction engines, where a 20% power increase can often be achieved with only small modifications. In fact, it is quite feasible to double or even triple the power of a forced induction engine with the appropriate modifications.
Edited for carp speeling
>> Edited by flooritforever on Monday 22 March 15:14
Engines with clever cams etc are by far the hardest to tune, as they normally have a good power output for the size due to the clever bits, and extracting more power is not easy.
Next comes 'basic' NA engines, with standard cams/valves etc, as the OEM components are normally easy to improve upon, providing power gains.
By far the easiest to tune are forced induction engines, where a 20% power increase can often be achieved with only small modifications. In fact, it is quite feasible to double or even triple the power of a forced induction engine with the appropriate modifications.
Edited for carp speeling
>> Edited by flooritforever on Monday 22 March 15:14
annodomini2 said:
I would have thought the V8's used for top fuel drag racing, (assuming they start out life as road legal engines?). big blocks producing around 300bhp (guessing!) to drag engine producing 4000bhp?
They're almost without exception crysler hemis (which you can still buy from some manufacturer in the states who bought up the old line when crysler stoped making them IIRC) - started out as 426 cubic inch (7 litre) V8s with 425 bhp. Not much is left from the original hemi apart from the bored out block by the time it gets to top fuel spec...
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