This may not make you guys happy
 

I'm looking into makeing an fun realitively fuel eficant (realitive to my subaru: ~22mpg) car. Because of my love of Rx-7's of course I'm trying to think of an engine swap that would acomplish this. The car already has the key engridants I want: it's light and rear wheel drive. So the engines I've been thinking about the most are the sr20det (nissan) and the 4age (toyota). Please give any input into this you have as well as your questions of why. Thanks.

That's funny, I've always thought of the ~20mpg of my stock 12A as fun and fuel efficient :P (But I judge everything in MilesPerDollar now anyway....)

I suppose you're thinking of something with more horsepower though :)

So why this thread and another thread talking about a 13B NA swap? Two different cars?

Ford Zetec or Duratec!

Mazda FE3! (easily found in Kia Sportage)

Ford CVH! well, maybe not.

Saturn LL0! (if you can fabricate your own bellhousing)

who cares about MPG in the USA? I mean, you guys get fuel for less then half of what we pay for it!!!

yeah but we're used to $1.40-1.60/gallon. this $2.40/gallon is killer :(

I wouldn't go for the 4AGE. I know a friend that's pushing an 85 Corolla with one in it...

The SR20DET, if I'm thinking correctly, is faster than the 4AGE and would still get good gas mileage.

I don't think I've ever seen an SR20DET swap into a first generation RX-7 though...should be interesting.

i am still partial to the rotary. i couldn't do it. but, a 4 wheel drive 7 would be interesting...

here's a miata with an SR20DET http://www.tamparacing.com/forums/sh...hreadid=154116

I just saw an ad for brand-new 2.0L Zetec crate motors for (I think) $1,395 with free shipping!

edit: Found it!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...79799005&rd=1&

But those are Focus engines. :(

The best US-market Zetecs were in the ZX2s. They had stronger blocks and cranks, and of course the variable exhaust cam timing.

I'm getting just over 20mpg in my SE, and I like to drive it :D.. I mean drive it hard now and then to show people what it can do. I'm sure I could probably stretch 25mpg out of it if I drove like a granny but thats not me :)
20mpg and performance = good.

What about a Bseries honda motor. They have great mileage and perform pretty well.

Just fine if you don't mind 5 speeds backwards and one forwards.

Honda engines (up until the K series) rotate backwards. Which is fitting for an ass-backwards car.

The Kia Sportage has a Mazda engine, but it's not the FE3 that you'd want. The one you'd want is the jspec one, and that would have to be imported. It's a common topic for swapping into 1st gen MX-6/Probes because that's what car it came in in japan.

I get 22-24 mpg in my 1st gen (with 226,000 miles!) so getting 18-20 with more power would be quite good.

geo...... you could have one more cylinder :D

How about a 7M-GE? Those are fuel efficient, if you keep your foot out of it, and have lots of torque so you can keep your foot out of it.

Hmmm, now that you mention it, I regularly beat Ford Focuses (Foci?) at the auto-x with my Fiesta. I'm bidding on a set of 11:1 pistons for my "Kent of death" project presently. Still, $1,395 seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Focuses also had heavy flywheels and absurdly tall gearing. ZX2s had the lowest gearing available in either an Escort or behind a Zetec, in the US anyway. (Focus, being a European car, had the MTX75 transaxle. The Escort and ZX2, being mainly Japanese cars, had the Mazda... crap, can't remember the tranny code. Same as used in the 323/626/MX-3/MX-6/Probe/Protege/etc.

Still trying to find out if the clutch-type diff from the Mazdaspeed Protege will work in a ZX2 tranny. ZX2s eat diffs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

you guys think that you have high fuel. we have to buy it from the states the the bloody goverment adds more bloody tax. $1.04 litre here at the moment. was $0.89 for a long time. Costs me over $50 to fill the bloody thing. Grr.

I don't know what it is, but why not an s2000 engine?

That's a K-series.

Why bother with an S2000 engine, the Fod Duratec (2.3l, as found in Ranger pickups) can easily make *more* power than a stock S2000, without touching the camshafts or cylinder head...

sr20det... in a rx-7....... i'm interested. Could be cool.

Simpsons did it. :D

No, seriously, search the FD section - someone did an SR20 swap into one of those.

Myself I'd prefer the Duratec swap - all aluminum engine.
Or the Saturn swap, for the same reason (the block weighs less than the CRANK!) but that would be a tad more tricky.

why not just put a geo metro motor on it? it will definitely get you the gas mileage! j/k

honestly, have you looked into a TDI motor?

Nah. Festiva engine. 1.3l B-series, will bolt up to a Miata/B1600 transmission, which is the same mechanically as the RX-7 transmission and you can mix and match housings to have B-series bolt pattern at the front and RX-7 shifter position/tranny mount in the back.

And then you realize that you could throw 323GTX bottom end stuff at the engine and run scadly amounts of boost into it. I still wonder if the head from a 1.6 SOHC or even 1.6 DOHC would allow the valves to clear the 1.3's tiny bore.

Then again, you'd probably get better mileage with an LT1 swap. :)