Very odd 914 sighting yesterday...., ...with a VERY odd-sounding motor! Options

[horizontally-opposed]

I was having lunch with an old 914 buddy in Novato -- the guy who built the silver 914-6 3.8 that keeps popping up for sale -- when a gray/silver (looked like that old-school silver that isn't so bright) 914 went by. Too quickly to collect all the details.

Fairly stock looking (I think it was still on four-lug wheels), but it sounded like it might have had an inline four, like a Honda S2000 or Toyota motor, but I am sure that's not it. Could it be?

If that was a Type IV, I want to know what was done to it!

This was on Wednesday March 9 on Bel Marin Keys Blvd @ 1:00 pm or so....

Anyone here know this car?

pete

[lapuwali]

QUOTE (RandyLok @ Mar 10 2005, 04:46 PM)

A buddy of mine had an RX7 with a 13B. Minimal mods included a tear-port (a bit of grinding and polishing on the ports), a different intake manifold with a Holley 4-barrel, and a custom exhaust. It put out 200HP and was running stronger than ever at 100k miles (right before it finally scattered). The motors are tiny. There's nothin' like 2-stroke power... Not very torquey, but tons of power when you wind 'em out. OT, but here's a super clean install in a 510.

Two strokes are very nice, but a Wankel isn't a two-stroke. One can argue that it's a no-stroke, or perhaps a three stroke (all three cavities around the rotor are "operating" at once). One could even say it's one continuous "stroke", since it never reverses direction.

Actual piston two-strokes do indeed hit the same (or better) power to weight of a rotary, but have pretty much the same problems with emissions, noise, and mileage. The most fully developed two-strokes were bike engines, which are themselves disappearing. The last of the 500cc four-cylinders made something north of 200hp, or 400hp/liter, which is substantially better than even 19,000rpm F1 engines are reaching these days (something near 900hp from 3000cc), and the engine only weighed something like 100lbs including the gearbox. The emissions problems had been largely solved by a group of Australians with some innovative fuel injection technology, but they failed to get enough interest from the major manufacturers to take up the technology seriously.