Have just been reading through some of the posts here, and was talking to a friend about tuning my 1.6

Its going in a mkII with bike carbs, so it should have some torque to it. I was considering minor head skim, but also lightning various parts (fly wheel, con-rods, crank shaft) to allow for increased revs. However, i understand this may not be a good use of my available funds.

Porting is to be doine as well, so is a 4-2-1 stainless mainfold, and exhaust system. Is there likely to be any benefit to lightning the other components, since i dont want them snapping and coming through the block But then again i should get better throttle response

Has anyone changed the valve springs on these engines to stiffer ones either? Any benefits? I know they only really benefit at higher revs, so without that, its pointless right?

Ideas? Not looking for massive amounts of power, over 100bhp is the target really, or is that unrealistic?

AEE with bike carbs, good exhaust system and rolling roaded should hit 100bhp easy. Like the peeps on here have hammered into my head the AEE isn't designed for high rpm's just low end grunt. Great for town and country road use.

Only thing I would consider lightening is the flywheel, but if you use a Mk3 Polo one, you wont gain much anyway... maybe 1kg and my local machine shop wanted £100 to do mine... so I left it!

Best investment would be head work, I'm not 100% sure whats possible with the AEE/ABU heads, ie big valves etc but a good gasflowing and port matching would work wonders I'd imagine.

Camshafts seem pretty limited frm what I've read on here...

I'd be intrested in bumping the C/R on mine with head skim etc.... if anyone has any info on this....?

What info do you want on the skimming? A machinist will most likely do your calculation for you if he's worth anything.

The idea with the lightning was to decrease the chances of engine damage at the high revs. since i'm unlikely to be running it at high revs, and with vhte increased torque from the bike carbs, i think i'll leave it.

Over 100bhp with those mods? Really? It only has 75 as standard, but must have plenty of potential since its a relatively large volume.

Anyone any other ideas?

I got 111 bhp out of my aee. Big Piper cam, 4-2-1 manifold. I was running digifant injection not bike carbs. I wish we'd have had some head work done, would of reached my 120 goal.

I dont own it anymore, sold it coz i was too fat to fit in it. (I was pregnant not eaten too many biscuits lol)

Its still about but dont know who's got it.

Hope that helped a little.

Emma xxx

What sort of head work? Gas flowing?

I'm not too sure how the injection rates against the carbs, anyone with experience?

What was the cam for, specific to the 1.6?

thanks again

As a rule you get more bhp and torque from carbs... than multi point injection..... excluding ITB's of course...

As a rule you get more bhp and torque from carbs... than multi point injection..... excluding ITB's of course...

I wouldnt agree with that. Theres a whole variety of factors its just not that simple.

Plus bike carbs generally use short runner manifolds = which move the power band higher than longer runner manifolds so youd get less low down. Again this is not set in stone but more often than not.

As for headwork, do your research and know exactly what will give you an increase. You can loose power if you dont know what your doing

Edited 8 October, 200916 yr by shaun_89

As a rule you get more bhp and torque from carbs... than multi point injection..... excluding ITB's of course...

I wouldnt agree with that. Theres a whole variety of factors its just not that simple.

Plus bike carbs generally use short runner manifolds = which move the power band higher than longer runner manifolds so youd get less low down. Again this is not set in stone but more often than not.

As for headwork, do your research and know exactly what will give you an increase. You can loose power if you dont know what your doing

The head work would be gas flowing and slight skimming. I know a workshop that will do it, so they can do the hard parts

As for the torque etc. and manifold runners, as i'll be making my own, i guess i'm only restricted by the position of the bulkhead when it come to length. But its an interesting point.

Does anyone have any experience of varying manifold lenghts, and the differences it made, if anything noticeable?

As a rule you get more bhp and torque from carbs... than multi point injection..... excluding ITB's of course...

I wouldnt agree with that. Theres a whole variety of factors its just not that simple.

Plus bike carbs generally use short runner manifolds = which move the power band higher than longer runner manifolds so youd get less low down. Again this is not set in stone but more often than not.

As for headwork, do your research and know exactly what will give you an increase. You can loose power if you dont know what your doing

The head work would be gas flowing and slight skimming. I know a workshop that will do it, so they can do the hard parts

As for the torque etc. and manifold runners, as i'll be making my own, i guess i'm only restricted by the position of the bulkhead when it come to length. But its an interesting point.

Does anyone have any experience of varying manifold lenghts, and the differences it made, if anything noticeable?

i got 94bhp & 120 lb/ft or torque out of a 1.6 AEE with just a K&N filter, Jetex exhaust and a very small amount of porting on the head! (its was rolling roaded by the guy i sold it to!)

You dont wanna skim much off,the compression is nearly 11:1 as it is,plus the bike carbs get more air in to squash - you'll need high octane fuel anyway and the rods are quite weak.

The manifold length,yeah you wont have much adjustment anyway. I ran both 90/95 - 110/115mm and didn't notice any difference,but given the torque bias of the engine you want them as short as you can have them whilst still being able to remove the spark plugs - which is probably 85-90 (the outer two will be 5mm longer than the middle two,this isnt an issue).

You dont wanna skim much off,the compression is nearly 11:1 as it is,plus the bike carbs get more air in to squash - you'll need high octane fuel anyway and the rods are quite weak.

The manifold length,yeah you wont have much adjustment anyway. I ran both 90/95 - 110/115mm and didn't notice any difference,but given the torque bias of the engine you want them as short as you can have them whilst still being able to remove the spark plugs - which is probably 85-90 (the outer two will be 5mm longer than the middle two,this isnt an issue).

Do you run yours on high octane fuel then mikey?

And your saying theres a lot of torque anyway, so i wouldnt really want to increase it? What is a good modification to do to this engine then, since it must have lots of potential, but only pshes out 75bhp as standard?

Ypu say the end two carbs have longer manifolds, is there any way to 'bend' them so they're all the same distance form the head? then again, 5mm wont make much of a difference will it?

Again mikey, you are a well of knowledge

Well it never showed a problem for me,you could space the carbs out to match the ports but its not simple to do,and then there's master cylinder clearance.

I still use 99ron fuel but I've lowered my 16v's compression a little,i figure its 10.2:1 now.

I never did much to the 8v engine itself,just ported it and polished the combustion chamber face.

Mikey what you mean by the outter 2 are 5mm longer than the middle 2??? Why is this???

Mikey what you mean by the outter 2 are 5mm longer than the middle 2??? Why is this???

The ports on the head are spaced wider apart than the bike carbs,so whilst the middle two only have to spread apart slightly,the end ones have to spread apart further - hence they must be slightly longer to do so.

This just about shows it (here in flexi pipe but metal would be about the same even if perfectly straight).

Are the AEE ports the same distance apart as the MH(1.3)???? My carbs are wider apart then the 1.3 ports. The 2 end carbs are 5mm wider, 2 centres are bwt 3mm.

i made 141bhp on emerald k3 management with an aee lump in a skoda felicia...

the port spacing on the 1.6 is 82mm centres

i spent a lot of time and effort porting the head on the my 1.6

by far the best place to make any gain on the aee head is the area directly underneath the valves (pocket) smoothing out the inner radius into the port, and if you are feeling really brave grind out the valve guide bosses with the carbides... dont bother polishing to a mirror finish, it\\\'s a waste of time and effort

Edited 10 October, 200916 yr by SkodaBoy

Jesus, that's almost doubled in power!

Would getting rid of that valve thing and the pipe that goes to the exhaust heat shield improve performance? I had the airbox and induction system apart yesterday to clean it out and clean the filter, and noticed that weird valve thing that sucks up warm air when it's closed, and when fully open sucks up cold air?

Not really. Thats the hot air feed for cold starts. It helps to get the engine up to temp, and off the 'choke'. People say it helps as it allows coller (and hence denser) air in. But its not noticeable enough. An induction kit may help you some though

with the standard air intake system i would urge you to leave the warm air collector in place, but on mine i hacked it off the manifold and wapped the headers in that heat-shield wrap stuff to keep the temperature under the bonnet down

Would I benefit from a standard type K&N filter? Or should I scrap the whole system and start with a new induction system, like BMC or similar?

Very impressive SkodaBoy

oh i forgot to say, i had a twin injector setup with the second set staged in at 75%+ throttle.. erm, i lightened the crank and flywheel on one of the lathes at work but i had to send them away to be balanced to a firm in oxford somewhere. i got a set of yamaha r1 motorbike flat top pistons (77mm bore) and machined down the skirts to make them into a semi-slipper type then used some yamaha r1 forged rods that i got from a breakers yard for £20 and re-ground the crank big ends offset to a smaller size to suit the rods.... had a custom camshaft grind done by catcams.

although the standard crank itself is actually very strong, it was the machining the big ends offset which lead to it's faliure, the heat treatment only penetrates a certain depth before it starts getting too stressed. it was spectacular when it blew up, one of the conrod made a dent in the bulkhead...

put in it's simplest raw terms... unless you have bags of money or can do a large part of the work yourself dont bother tuning a 1.6, it's too costly and the parts are too hard or expensive to find in the uk.... bolt on bits like 4-2-1 headers are ok but to be fair they aint going to gain you much, and as for K$N (the dollar sign was intended ) or BMC or whatever. you'd be better off stretching a pair of socks over your throttle body as they would gain you roughly the same horsepower... none.

Edited 12 October, 200916 yr by SkodaBoy