Beams Vs BT 20v Vs BP 16v

[PRIMRK]

Hey All,

I have been thinking recently (a very dangerous past time) about what direction to go with my daily JDM trueno.

The car is fairly mint, no rust and slowly restoring the interior with better condition parts. The car has 220,000km on the clock and im am in a few mind sets as to what i want to do.

1. leave the car as is and keep it nice and tidy as a bit of a collectors item.

2. the engine is already quite modified and it has a fair few k's on it so its not the best example of a collectible item. so i may as well mod it and go with a beams or bt 20v. then later on i can save up some money and hope to get a limited black edition (in some number of years time)

Now the car will be engineered as it is my daily if i decide to mod it further.

Any points for either argument would be handy at the moment.

As for me i am leaning towards beams, but don't know how well it will line up with shifter posi to keep the interior looking neat. Also if you have to mod the cross member to mount it or if you mod the brackets on the engine and use standard cross member mounting points for the 4age.

[Sam-Q]

this should help you with all your Beams engine questions

- Universal 3sge (inc Beams) into AE/KE thread: all conversion questions go here (http://www.ae86drivingclub.com.au/forums/showthread.php/19394-Universal-3sge-(inc-Beams)-into-AE-KE-thread)

[PRIMRK]

thanks, i had a look through there the other day and there was no mention of mounts and if you can keep the 86 cross member stock and mod the engine brackets.

in one of the build threads you can see they have moded the mounting points on the cross member, but i understand that you cant mod the cross member if you intend to engineer the car. correct?!?

did spot the shifter posi but no pics with trim around it to see how it all fits together.

[chrisjjanfd3s]

There are plenty of ways of doing this, i decided to go the 6 speed option (ie retain the standard beams gearbox) the down side is that you have to mod your trans tunnel. Unless you play with the sump there's only really one way the engine will want to sit in the bay. However with the way that it sits in the bay the shifter comes way back. Engine brackets are very easy to make if you have the right tools, the way i did it was to use the standard rubber cross member mounts and make a metal bracket to mate them to the beams. This allows you to keep the standard crossmember, only took me about 2 days to line up the every thing and make up the brackets.

The beams conversion is a pretty serious swap that will require allot of work, that will result in major changes to the general chassis of the car (ie cutting of the firewall, trans tunnel and some interior bracing).

Defiantly not for the feint hearted, let me know if you want any specific info i can also provide photos to show mounting, fire wall mods and the shifter location.

[PRIMRK]

any way of keeping the standard shifter posi?

[Andy San]

My Beams fits with an unmodified firewall and trans tunnel, keeps the shifter where it should be, and my crossmember is still in the same spot, but i have cut off the original engine mount brackets welded to it, and used the factory beams mounts, which bolt through the bottom.

that said you need a dry sump to get it that low, and that cost me twice what the motor cost... but it does fit well!

I should also add that I reckon I can fit a 6 speed in without modifying the tunnel/firewall further.

[Matt]

If your 16v is quite modified already, I don't think a 20v would float your boat to be honest..

Whilst not a bigport, i jumped into a smallport with extensive head work, big cams, haltech ecu and high comp (12.x:1) pistons and it would smash my stock blacktop. Though the build cost the owner about 6k all up.

Turbo'ing your current bigport could also be a worthy option to investigate.

[chrisjjanfd3s]

Sorry just to clarify all the info i provided relates to fitting a beams with a 6 speed trans, which is the only beams setup i have first hand experience fitting.