About to show my ignorance, many questions
 

my car currently has a very strong 2.7 liter air cooled rs motor(magnesium case if that matters). Has TWM fuel injection and stand alone computer. Puts out 240 hp and 200 lbs of torque. Case is shuffle pinned and sturdy as can be


Now I have read many times about twin plugged RSR motors and needless to say I have visions of converting it to a RSR motor.


What I would love to have is a motor that puts out 350hp. If at all possible 400hp.

Keeping the car naturally aspriated what would I have to do?
Can a 2.7 be made into a 3.0 or 3.2 etc? 3.5 even?

With good spark plugs(like iridium?) what kind of compression can I get? 11-1 possible?


I would like to go with a megasquirt ecu since the haltek in there is very outdated. I was also looking at the AEM pencil coils. Figure that would give better performance then the current ecu. But more importantly I would like to be able to learn more about the engine management myself.

I figure the ecu and electronics are gonna run around 2k. What about the engine work? I really don't know for sure but figured 4k for that so don't laugh to hard :D

Thanks
Nathan

The simple answer: You cannot open up a 2.7 bore spacing to a large-enough motor to make 350+ hp 'down low', nor can you spin a 6-bolt flywheel fast enough to make 350 hp 'up high'. Start with a 3.0 or 3.2 case and give Henry Schmidt or Steve Weiner a call, and you'll be set...

Actually, you could, but it would be expensive. An early turbo case with oversized Nickies could get you there, no guarantees. BIG dollars, too. Easiest way would be to buy one of Henry's 9 bolt 66mm cranks, drop it in a 3.6 and design it to rev big. A well designed short stroke 3.3 would easily hit 350HP. It won't happen for $4K, but could be done for $14K if you did a lot of the work yourself.

These cars ain't cheap. A turbo would certainly be cheaper; those power numbers are easily reachable and power comes on LOW.

Thats a bit disappointing. But good to know. I assume making it into a 2.8 rsr is still possible.

Possible, but still over $4K and not advisable.

really why wouldn't you advise doing that?

It is simply a matter of cost. It would be much cheaper (and more reliable) to build a later 3 liter into RSR specs. The myriad of complications in building a 2.8RSR motor is covered in numerous threads on this site. Let's just say that getting P/Cs to work with 2.7 heads is punitively costly; either you buy Nickies and JEs ($3K in parts) or used Mahle 2.8RSR (if you are lucky) and spend $2K on top of what you spent on the P/Cs to get the heads opened up so you aren't running 12:1 CR. Either way, you are going to be into a 2.8RSR for about $4K in parts, before the labor starts, from a 2.7.

A 3 liter, you just buy a nice runner, swap the pistons out for JE ($900), get some hot cams ($700) and you can do the labor yourself (free). And case is aluminum (no need for shuffle pinning).

I am just scratching the surface here, too.

Damn Kenik, you even got me convinced of that being way to go, and I am not going to be doing any engine work. I like my 3.2 just fine as it is. Good luck!! Tony.

You are going to see so little gain going to a 2.8 over a 2.7 that you might as well stay with the 2.7, up the compression and twin plug it

Sell the 2.7 and buy a 3 litre to make your race engine out of.

-Andy

With a 3.2 base, you can make a 3.4 engine, and then maybe if you pump up the compression and run race gas all the time, you might be able to get to that 100 hp / liter number on normal aspiration. 400 HP is near impossible, in my opinion.

-Wayne

I just remember reading about the 2.8 liter rsr making 315hp. With modern engine management and new technologies I figured they could put out even more. Where those numbers fudged?

Thanks for you input guys!