by HoTWire
24. March 2009 04:22
Our belated Transplant week start is here. When thinking of entries for this week the obvious thoughts turn to engine transplants, but people have been transplanting parts from one car to another for years, better brakes, gearboxes, interior parts, even some wheel swaps can be considered a transplant. Really though our main thoughts will be turned to the power plant, nowhere is it more obvious that you've taken a fundamental part from one car and stuck it in your project.
Considering how large a change sticking a different engine in a car are there is still some 'rules' around it, depending on how far you want to bend or break those 'rules' will depend on what you end up with. Essentially these things break down into three different transplants, Keeping It In The Family, Anything To Make It Faster and Out Of Leftfield.
Keeping It In The Family
There is a school of thought that if you are swapping out large sections of your drive train, or interior then you should attempt to keep it in the family of cars that your car originates in, VW in VW, Ford in Ford, Opel in Opel etc. etc. This school of thought can lead to some amazing machinery, like Ben Leach's Mk1 Golf with full Syncro transmission and 1.8Turbo engine. It gets even more interesting when people start exploring the "family" that cars belong to, VW become VAG, so Audi and Skoda parts become fair game. Or there are the numerous cars built on the GM platforms around that world that allow for a "family" swap of the Isuzu Piazza Turbo engine into an Opel Kadett. In many ways it really is the true end point for any OEM+ builds.
Anything To Make It Faster
This is where you end game is more power, or you have a spare engine in the garage and want to stick it in something. Often these transplants are dictated by what engines the builder knows best, or what is most prevalent in the local scene. If you look to Scandinavia you find a lot of non-Volvos with fire breathing Volvo engines, or if you head to Australia it would seem to be Japanese 4-cylinder and Rotary engines getting swapped into all sorts of cars. One of my favourite Anything Goes builds is this Volvo Amazon receiving a BMW engine, or this Cortina getting a Lotus engine, but not the one you'd immediately think of.
Out Of Leftfield
Remember those Electric engined drag cars? Well those would be leftfield. For my money though Filterteknik's Cummins diesel powered drag racing Cadillac is pretty much the epitome of leftfield. Maybe you are trying to prove a concept, like the electric and diesel powered drag machines, or maybe you just happen to have a spare motorbike engine or something in the garage and a car to put it in. Really leftfield transplants are all about the freedom to do whatever, sometimes it almost doesn't matter if its massively faster, just as long as its pretty interesting; your Polo is powered by a pulse jet you say? Now that is interesting...
So where do you draw the line?
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