Mid Week Match-Up: Find An Engine Swap For A Masochist
It is the Wednesday, so that means it’s time for another edition of Daily
Turismo’s weekly game of don’t get eaten by the vegetarian zombies, also
known as Mid Week Match-Up! This week we take a break from our typical matching of cars for DT’s regular readers and instead do something fun. Find the best engine swap for a masochist.
You know what goes really well with a 4X4 off-road vehicle — an unreliable engine that produces negative torques and burns fuel like a Boeing 777. Drop some giant chrome wheels on it and you’ve got a car that makes about as much sense as wearing a helmet to groin surgery. Why do I still want this 1988 Suzuki Samurai with 12A rotary power offered for $6,000 in Lawrence, MA via craigslist?
Find the best engine swapped weirdos and drop them in the comments below.
Front engine, rear drive Alfa Busso V-6 with a transmission mounted onto the back of the engine, in … anything. It only came in one car that way, and we didn't get it in the USA.
Unless you have the skills of the guy at Xworks, who made a bellhousing by welding together strips of steel sheet, good luck.
Aren't most engine swaps for masochists by definition, anyway?
Hunting down apex seals when not hunting down apexes.
I always thought it funny that Cuban Yank Tanks, in absence of suitable replacement parts thanks to an embargo, were fitted with "whatever's available". In the country where you hammer your sheetmetal from the inside to remove a dent, apparently the answer was to stick anemic, undersized, unreliable soviet lumps such as found in the Lada (Vaz-21xx series) with the grueling task of pushing American steel. Beyond the hilarity that a 25-mph top speed invokes, I would imagine that outside such restrictive environments something like this would qualify as a masochistic swap. Of course, it is simply par for the course in Cuba. Seems this may change in the near future, I am sure most Cubans would happily ditch their '57 Chevy for a 2014 Hyundai complete with 100k mile warranty. Likewise, I'm sure that no matter how knackered, shadetree mechanic rendered, or unoriginal (by desperation) the American cars are, somewhere there's a buyer for them as well. Think of it as a running barn find, complete with mystery parts and kludge fixes from beyond the iron curtain. Having driven both classic American cars as well as decrepit Ladas in their natural (USSR) environment, I can vouch that they are a study in contrasts. The marriage is all too comical.
Ooo!!! Ooo!!!! Mr. Kotter pick MEEEE!!!!
Another fine example would be a feature from two months ago. I am a self-proclaimed nut for all that is Toyota from the past 50+ years, excepting the modern ones. I am also somewhat of a closet rotor-head. Even still, you can't deny that the longevity simply isn't there. How about taking a tried and true, reliable as nails, rebuildable on the side of the road with a rusty screwdriver and some channel locks air cooled flat four (VW flavor), and replacing it with a Renesis? Surely this guy wanted an excuse to avoid the missus by spending entirely too much time in the garage over-analyzing the rotor tip seal dilemma.
Rather have a 4.3 V-6 or the larger plug in play Suzuki motor from the car line.
Here is a weird swap that I am sure wasn't any picnic. It looks like someone sold a kit at some point to put a ford V6 into a VW camper. The radiator is cleverly placed where the spare tire is usually located:
omaha.craigslist.org/cto/5206193440.html