914 race motor, Can you get 140 hp? Options

[stephen7]

I was reading the Excellence article about the budget 912 racer and the owner claims 140hp out of the engine. They didn't talk the about the price of getting that kind of output from 2 liters except that there was alot of head work and special pistons were used. ($$$$) Anybody have an idea of what it costs to get a reliable race motor with that kind of power? And, if you can do it, is it only a track motor or could you autocross it also? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/type.gif)

[Dave_Darling]

All it takes is time, money, blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly tears at looking at how much money you spent...

All you have to do to get power out of a motor is spin it fast enough. The real $$$ comes in making sure that it can use that RPM effectively (that's money spent on flowing the heads, etc.) and on making sure it can stay together for a little while at your target RPM.

A "race motor" can run on race gas. I believe 105 octane is available, and I know that 100 is. So the compression will go up--and up--and up! Couple that with a very lumpy cam and heads that flow very well (and more compression because the cam "bleeds it off"), and it's not hard to get to 140 HP. The EP guys used to get 140-160 HP routinely out of 1.8 liters, so getting it from 2.0 liters should be a little easier!

It will cost cubic dollars, though. And don't expect to put too many hours on it before you need to "freshen" it up.

SWAG? $10K development, $5K+ build, a couple grand for every "freshening".

--DD