Wouldn't it be a good thing to keep the smog equipment on if you were to swap
to a more modern engine (especially if you have to by law anyway)? I know it
might sap a couple horsepower, but I think the advantage would outweight a few
horses, especially if you swapping in something that's already going to have
significantly more power than stock. If you were swapping in say an 80's
engine, it would already have all the 80's smog equipment on it, so you
wouldn't
need to go out and source all the smog equipment, you could just keep it on.
>From what I understand, old cars (i.e. pre-smog, '74 and earlier) make up only
>5%
of all the cars on the road, but account for approximately half---50%---of
all automobile pollution. Catalytic converters and EFI make a huge difference,
not to mention the various other emission controls on modern engines. I think
the reduced emissions would be one of the high points of an engine swap--maybe
even one of the driving points in doing one, no? Has anyone out there done an
engine swap and kept the emissions equipment on?
-Sean
In a message dated 1/30/2004 8:55:55 AM Pacific Standard Time,
tr6nut@sbcglobal.net writes:
.......What I was wondering about is whether there are
any successful engine transplants in the TR6 bay? I'm
not talking about extreme conversions, like Mike's 454
big block. I asking about something more balanced,
more in keeping with the overall performance
characteristics of the car......
Jim,
Let me try to answer your question. There is a school of thought on engine
transplants that says that a swap should only be performed if there is a
large advantage to be gained with a swap (power, reliability, weight,
etc)because why spend all the time, money, and engineering for no real gain.
If you want to keep the car within the same performance charateristics, then
(the school of thought says) you should just leave the original engine in
place.
Also, I don't know where you live, but in the Peoples Republic of California
(where I live), if you put a later engine (say an engine from an 80's car)
in your TR, you have to also install the emission controls from that later
engine (smog rules follow engine year). Granted, most folks don't follow
the rule, but its another consideration. For now, in the PRC,cars 1974 and
older don't have smog inspections, but who to say that the rules won't
change someday.
Hope this helps,
Hugh Barber
Hollister, CA
'73 TR6
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