[ferrous_monkey]

Hello all,

Its been a while since i last harrased everyone (mainly boxman and stefano) with newbie style questions.

My csi needs a lot of money thrown at it and i've just found that the difference in insurance between a normally aspirated 2.0L and an aero is only £100. It gets better, If I put a token oldie on as a named driver,ie. the mother, it drops £50 (what the insurance company doesn't know is she's scared of anything bigger than a 1.2L fiesta!)
As I can't afford an aero , I've looking for a fpt 2.3 from the early 90's, but manuals don't seem to be that common, or cheap.
I was told that the difference between b204L and b234L, is the crank throw, Can I 'easily' convert a 204 to a 234 by changing the crankshaft only? With the revised stroke will the 204s' pistons meet the new required compression ratio 9.25:1 (i think). or would they need replacing or dishing?
Would the ecu be fine with this or is a remap needed?
When did the 9000 start using the b204L, and would this have the gm bell housing bolt pattern. (I want to strip my cs i for all compatable parts like the gearbox and sell the rest)

If your going to stomp on my dream, be gentle...

any help would be appreciated

Mr Monkey...

 

[djtaylor]

I would hazard that to suggest that if you go changing the engine size then two immediate things will happen:-

1. If you tell your insurance company they may get weird and start asking for engineers reports etc.

2. They will bump your premium for a "non standard" car straight away as it has been modified.

I would have thought your best bet would be to either hang on and get a 2.3 FPT or Aero, neither should be that expensive, you can get an Aero for < £2500 if you look around.

Failing that, forget messing around with swapping a crank, why not just swap the whole lump form a scrappy (but see points 1 and 2 above)?

David.

 

[Superaero]

The bigger engine displacement is achieved by adding mm to the crank throws to make the engine square instead of oversquare.


I doubt the crank is a straight swap if only because the 2.3 has balance shafts in the block so the crank would have to be different to drive the chain that drives those balance shafts.

You can get lots more power out of the 2.0 liter by changing the ECU, for less money I'd say.

Finally, it might be cheaper to swap in a full 2.3 drievtrain but then your wiring harness is going to need changing as well as the ECU and so on.

They do say you should just sell the car you don't want and buy the one you do, cheaper that way. Otherwise I'd look into the ECU (and APC, if pre DI/Trionic car) upgrade followed by possibly a bigger turbo and exhaust mods as the cheaper way to go. of course, if fast is what you want try changing the suspension for a more Carlsson/Aero set up. That way you'll be using the brakes less.....

 

[djtaylor]

He's not going to get much performance zip out of a 2.0 non turbo engine as far as bang for buck goes with an ECU change.

Plenty of threads about this sort of thing, simple answer is as per the subject title, get a car already fitted with the engine/fitment you want. Insurance companies understand that too and won't unduly load you for "mods" that don't get you much.

David.

 

[benji9k]

There's no easy conversion from 2.0 to 2.3. There's too many differences. Bide your patience and find the right 2.3, even if it needs a little work. You'll be 10x better off starting with the right building block for what you want to achieve.

 

[Superaero]

Well, not to be controversial, but SAAB got 285 hp out of the 2.0 litre in fully streetable form in their 900 show car in 1984 or so, that was before they put the twin ca in the new 9000 bodyshell.


I am sure you can get plenty of grunt out of the 2.0 with appropriate ECU/APC mods readily available from the aftermarket.

 

[Grentarc]

Yhe saab 285hp prototype used off the shelf components, with a slightly tweaked APC computer, and not much else.

os for sonverting a 2.0 to 2.3, get a crank + pistons, plus con. rods from a block of the same year (if pre-'94 2.0 get pre '94 2.3 bits, if post '94 2.0 get post '94 2.3 bits) this will give you a 2.3. next you would need the fuelling system etc.. better to go and buy a 2.3 FPT or even LPT and get the ecu upgraded. an lpt with a stage 1 ecu will be better in performance than a stock aero - roughly same power, but loads more torque!