Engine Swap with 1987 vw cabriolet

[Sluggo]

I have a question I am currently unsatisfied with the stock engine that is in it at the moment. It seems that the engine is being held together by grease and years of build-up. I was wondering if I should do a engine swap or just get the engine rebuilt with new parts. If I do an engine swap I would like something like a v-tec or a more powerful engine then stock.

Will anyone give me some suggestions plz?

[jettadude]

welcome to the boards. and well there are modifacations you can do to your engine to make it very peppy. there is a superchager kit from www.bbm.com that will add some pep. if it is the 1.8L im guessing. but honda has the v-tech engine vw however does not have anything like it. a very popular swap is to a 16V motor, or a vr6 motor. a vr6 is a 87 cabby will give you enough power. some free mods you can do is cut the bottom of you air box to allow more airflow. you can go to a cheap muffeler shop and have them put on new pipe a good size for those motors is 2 1/4" going to a free flowing muffeler.

[Mr_Diesel]

I have a question I am currently unsatisfied with the stock engine that is in it at the moment. It seems that the engine is being held together by grease and years of build-up. I was wondering if I should do a engine swap or just get the engine rebuilt with new parts. If I do an engine swap I would like something like a v-tec or a more powerful engine then stock.

Will anyone give me some suggestions plz?

You won't find any of that stupid "V-TEC" crap in VW. But an engine that would be good for a swap in a cabby would be the 1.8L or the 2.0L 16V engine. 2 things to consider when choosing which one to use... the 1.8L winds up more quickly (personally, my favorite engine). The 2.0L has more torque and a longer stroke, but suffers in the top end a little bit. It will be easier to find a 1.8L 16V anyway... they can be found in most older jetta GLI's (pre 1989?) and in most GTI's of the same year. There was also a 16V scirrocco.

The 2.0L 16V engines can be found in most 1990-1992 Jetta GLI's and Golf GTI's. The 2.0L was also installed in early (b3?) passats. The two engine options in early passats was the 12V VR6 that jettadude speaks of, and the 2.0L 16V.

Only thing with this engine swap is it requires extensive knowledge on cars to wire it up. All the 16V engines used CIS (mechanical) fuel injection. If you have CIS in your cabby it will be easier to swap, but some (or most?) older vw's had digifant electronic fuel injection.... In which case you'll need a bahn brenner 16V EFI fuel rail, and lots and lots of patience to convert the 16V to EFI... here is a basic post that details the swap that I did... But like I say, this is a very limited post that will give you the basic idea of what you'll need to do to swap in a 16V:

http://www.dubnetworks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1056&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

If you don't want to do that much work, you can refresh the engine you have by doing a rebuild or you can build up the engine you have. Eurospec engineered an 8V head that is amazing. The combined with individual carbs and high compression has been known to produce 200whp naturally aspirated. That eurospec head is in the neighborhood of 1000 dollars, and the carbs are probably pretty close to that too. High comp pistions probably another 5 or 600 bucks. Megasquirt and other tuning probably another 1,000 bucks.

You could make one MEAN 8V, or you could do the 16V. If you are not worried about power, you could swap in a diesel... I have a post to document that too. Diesels are really fun, get 45mpg, and are very easy to swap into a gas car... but they are very under powered... (52hp). 52hp sounds really bad, but it's not really... they are very torquey and they get up and go when you really need it.

Here are the posts about GAS to DIESEL swaps:

http://www.dubnetworks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=492&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

http://www.dubnetworks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=233&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Good luck in your decision... I know a lot about these type of swaps and have performed many successful conversions... lol. Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification.