The offroad stage led to turbo VWs using a draw through Dellorto carb in mid engine J&J buggies. Then in 2000 I ordered a Suspensions Unlimited 4 seat Long Travel Buggy Chassis. It was state of the art. A-Arm front and 5 link in the rear, FOX coil over shocks with 16" of wheel travel, etc. The first engine I built for it was a Honda H23 Prelude engine. This is a non Vtec engine. Do you know early Honda 4 cylinders? Well, they spin counterclockwise. I removed the balance shafts from the engine, cut the cams off near the end and made them drive from the opposite side, flipped the cams over in the head, etc. This thing ran a stock block with iron sleeves, Cunningham billet rods, Venolia forged pistons, a ported head, cams ground by Web Cams, RD Spring valve springs, four 1600cc injectors, a Weldon 2025A fuel pump and Weldon Regulator, Autronic SMC fuel injection with an MSD DIS-4 to drive the individual "dumb" coils out of a Isuzu Rodeo, and a Garrett ball bearing turbo. It was waste gated by a Tial 46mm gate. Some pretty high end stuff at the time. I spun this engine 9000 rpm, clockwise, with 15+ lbs of boost and did it on straight methanol.
This motor put the power to the wheels through a highly modified VW Vanagon 3spd auto trans. It had a 300m input shaft, oil pump drive, reverse maual valve body, TCS 3000 stall convertor, etc. I shifted it with a modified B&M Quiksilver.
This setup was fun but I had problems with the sleeves in the block and after several expensive rebuilds, I decided to go another direction.
The Honda S2000 was a pretty new car and the engine spins the normal direction. Yay!
I built the S2000 with Darton sleeves, copper wire o-rings in the sleeves (no groove in head), and everything else stock. Stock head, valves, springs, cams, connecting rods, and pistons. This thing is an animal!
28 lbs of boost, and methanol. It has also been super reliable. I have cracked piston pins in it two separate times (gee, wonder how that could happen
), and now have CP tool steel pins in it. Now that the engine was running like a top, I started scattering the trans regularly. Low gear planetary just wasn't happy with all that power and rpm. It then got transformed to a manual trans by way of a Mendeola MD4S-2D transaxle. I then drove it many years with no issues, all the while running big boost on methanol. There is a small picture of this "car" on the chassis dyno in Ben Strader's book, "How to Build and Tune EFI Systems".
In 2008 I sold that car after repowering it with a "friendlier" twin turbo Honda 3.5 V6 on pump gas. Still have the S2K engine and now you know where my screen name comes from.
Turbo S2000
Turbo J35 V6
