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This man is holding a positive-displacement supercharger:
Specifically, an AMR 500.
500, meaning 500cc. Which is about volume of a 12 week old red squirrel.
(Turns out that you can look up damn near anything on the interwebs.)
It is such an adorably dainty little thing.
I've come across a few different aftermarket shops which use this device in their kits. One such example is The Dub Shop, which is basically the equivalent of Flyin' Miata for the air-cooled VW crowd.
They charge six thousand dollars for the kit, which is actually a pretty reasonable price given that it includes new intake manifolds, throttle body, a Megasquirt, a full wiring harness, injectors, fuel pump, ignition coils, sensors (including wideband O2), all the plumbing and fiddly bits, etc. Basically all the things you need to add fuel injection and distributorless ignition to a vehicle designed back when the US flag had 48 stars, and then supercharge it.
The owner of the shop notes that on his personal car, with the pulleys matched to produce 13 psi on a 1.6 liter engine (the standard kit does 5 psi) he's achieving 95 HP at the wheels.
The owner of the shop notes that on his personal car, with the pulleys matched to produce 13 psi on a 1.6 liter engine (the standard kit does 5 psi) he's achieving 95 HP at the wheels.
Ninety-five horsepower.
I don't miss air-cooled VWs.
6k kit for 95HP Swap a K series for half that and enjoy reliability, power, and a whole lot more rpms.
6k kit for 95HP Swap a K series for half that and enjoy reliability, power, and a whole lot more rpms.
I can assure you with absolute confidence that a completed Kswap of any quality at is is much, much more than $3K.
E/ speaking of swapping it into a Miata chassis. Are there kits for K ---> Bug? Seems like vertical clearance would be... non-existent. And also doubtful of $3K.
E/ speaking of swapping it into a Miata chassis. Are there kits for K ---> Bug? Seems like vertical clearance would be... non-existent. And also doubtful of $3K.
But you can swap very nice Subaru EJ engines into any old Beetle or Bus/Vanagon - our Vanagon 1984 Westfalia Wolfsburg drives very nicely with an EJ25..
6k kit for 95HP Swap a K series for half that and enjoy reliability, power, and a whole lot more rpms.
I suspect that a hell of a lot of ghetto-fab (and also probably some outright theft) would be required to get a K series engine running in an MX5 for $3k.
But point taken.
If you look around at the professional engine builders offering turn-key street engines for air-cooled VWs (and there are a surprisingly large number of them), the prices are just staggering.
Take this complete engine, which is built to 2.2L and ready to run:
$14,435.
And that's with carburetors and a mechanical distributor.
04-04-2023, 04:59 PM
2
Swap a K series for half that and enjoy reliability, power, and a whole lot more rpms.
