The Cal-look Lounge

I had a hot discussion with my club mates lately, but the shortage of practical experience made it a little dull.
That’s why to clear things up I decided to put the question here.

OK, Question is quite theoretical.
The background was:
Short budget,
Full 1600 engine rebuild is in the plans for near future
Owner plans for possible upgrade is only in the cylinder bore area.

From that area discussion drifted a little to final argument (quarrel almost :) ) that is:

1776, stock VW rods, heads, mild cam vs  same things in a 1914 – Which one would be better?

One statement is that 1776 would be more efficient in that setup and possibly quicker though, the other is that 1914 would be better due to its size, and torque.

What do you guys say?
 

Whats it going in?  bug then 1914,bus 1776  cheers richie,uk

90,5's have thicker walls than 94's so they can withstand more heat without warping. All else being equal, more displacement is always more displacement Therefore the 1915 would be more powerful. It can be assumed that the 1776 would ultimately last longer.

Just have your club guys build one of both and let's see ;)

There ain't no replacement for displacement.  Also if I'm guessing, 94's walls are almost as thick as 90.5's.  Not positive though.

Better for what? Mostly it depends who builds it, with what experience and for what purpose. Nothing beats cubic inches. Personally I would go with the 1914 after having only positive experiences with that combination. I would keep the flywheel standard wheight but balanced with the crank and preassureplate.Most VW cranks are very well balanced but balancing and controling the wheight of every part is what makes the difference between a running motor and a superb running motor.The biggest difference is caused by what labor goes into the heads. With a standard crank you want the power down low,valve size around 39/32 is enough. Personally I would go with Engle 120 but I´m sure a 110 would also work fine. Dual springs or some cheater springs (standard with wasserboxer inner springs). Keep the exhaust system in the smaller range,1 3/8" or 1 1/2".  There are more than one way of skinning a cat.

Thanx guys,

The question was teoretical, cause it is not connected with any real situation.
Kind of a think-task for us. I just wanted know opinion of The Lounge :) It didn't mean, we're building or even planing such engines.
It was about hypotetical comparison of two completely stock engines differing only with cylider bore
or retaing a kind of 'basic' state of tune, but at the level of let's say very mild 1600.
The comparison should be as perfect as possible - same cars, same gear ratios, same driver, same conditions... Same stock valved heads, stock or w100 cam and stuff...

I personally thought, that a 1914 it that 'close to stock' setup would not be efficient, low rpm range, truck-like characteristics...
Meaning - if you're short on budget and planing bigger displacement, it's better to choose 90.5s... but I ain't no specialist...

Bad boy Rebel, bad boy. Looking for support on other forums, huh? :)
Rebel, let's not exaggerate. First you were saying about mild set up, now your trying to push it to "very mild for 1600". It doesn't make sense and if you'll get a reply taking into account this assumption, you will not be able to use it on the discussion on our forum - that's not what we were talking about :)
The point is that Rebel is saying (on our forum) that a mild 1776 will be more powerful than the same engine, but in 1914 size. Which in my opinion is against logic :)
Second point was is that he is saying that buying a set of 90,5 is more economically rational. Which i don't understand either - the price of p&c's is the same, the price of machining is the same - for the same money you get more displacement and more power.

I'm personally building such an engine, which a configuration not really optimal - the project took so long and so many other thing changed that I have to assemble quickly parts I already have in the garage into something that would just run.
What I have is a mild Eurorace cam, set of 94 p&c's, stock crank (8 doweled), cheap non-merged exhaust and a pair of 36 DRLA's. I want to keep the cam mild in order to be able to stay with single springs.
I don't have the heads yet. I don't thing changing p&c's for a 90.5 would make my engine more powerful ;)

Well, I had them both in my beetle.  The first was a 1776cc with all berg components insite a 110 eagle cam and very strong heads from GEKO tuning Belgium.  I sold this motor to a friend years ago and couldn't miss it.  That's why I build a 1915cc with an 120 eagle now and allthough I'm still running in.  The 1915cc has better torque, but the 1776cc was very agressive.  They both drove nice and I'm sure the 1776cc was a little bit quicker (may change after running in period as the 1915cc gets better every time a drive it).  In a beetle I would go again for the 1915cc, but in a bus, I surely would choose the 1776cc because of the cyl. walls.

Well, I really like to argue with ya, Qbek... but I did not mean in the simpliest way, that smaller engine would be better than the bigger one.
My point (maybe you did not get that) was that smaller engine with  X components such as heads/exhaust/cam/carbs would be more efficient than bigger engine with the same X componnents.
For example: stock crank,rods,valves + engle W110 &40IDFs/DRLAs would work better on a 1776 than on a 1914cc, giving the latter one more truck-a-like characteristic.


I did not want to offend YOUR engine, but let us check it out somewhere at the traffic lights :D