Crazy idea for the Type IV engine shroud..., ..but I think it would look crazy good! Options

[horizontally-opposed]

So I've seen a lot of people do interesting things with the stock Type IV shroud to make it look more interesting. Body color, silver, red, orange, you name it. But none of these has really appealed to me. I've thought about ideas like CF (too modern for the car for my tastes) and wrinkle black (the way I would probably go). But then I saw the shroud in this thread:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=81971

I like this color, as it reminds me of the old Bosch distributor caps. But then THAT got me to thinking about another material I associate with this color, and that's the ultra-trick and way cool naked fiberglass Porsche used to use on 906/911R motors as well as throughout the 908s and 917s. Morspeed has duplicated it, albeit at far higher levels of quality and MUCH higher gloss, for its restorations.

Question is, could it be done for reasonable money? Could the stock shroud be used to make a mold? I frankly can't think of a cooler looking, period-correct hotrod 914-4 engine bay than this setup with a pair of carbs so long as the finish can be nailed. I think I'd like it even better than the Fat Perf. setup and the DTM, though I know it wouldn't outperform the latter.

pete

[Jake Raby]

Yes. The engine hardly has to work and the high CR is made totally safe with the twin plugs. CR= efficiency when met with an optimum cam and head arrangement.

This is a daily driveable engine and even with the IDAs it has great manners. With FI it would drive like a stock V8.

Over the weekend I got 33.3 MPG from the engine in the Bug. of course it is near impossible to drive the car hard without ending up in Jail, or blowing the tranny to bits. with the IDAs and their transition coupled to the gearing I was unable to run less than 75 MPH and most of the time I had to run just over 80 for the carbs to be happy..

With development i am sure this super efficient combo could easily attain 40 MPG and make even more power, because the engine doesn't even realize it is pushing the car.