Decided I'm going to try and turn my 340 1.4 into a fun sort of track car. The idea is to try and make it as fast, and 'good' as possibly, (ie, still handle fairly sensibly for the power!) for around a grand. So far I've spend £200 on the car, Gonna buy some pimping bits ie spoiler, alloys, and stuff to fix where some B*****D broke in and destroyed the steering lock....Which leaves me with about £600 left to spend on modifications to the engine, and brakes.
The most obvious ideas are engine swaps, either F7R, F7P or from a 480 turbo. I've got a feeling I'll be able to get hold of a cheap 480 engine more easily, but it'll be more difficult to fit, requiring modification to the exhaust etc. I suspect that I'd need an exhaust that would allow more air flow to get the potential out of a bigger engine anyway though....

A question - if i swap for a more modern engine, what's the legal status of driving without a CAT? Are emissions regulations car or engine based?

I'm quite keen to use megasquirt for engine management, as it just appeals to me. I'm fairly competent with electronics, and this would probably be the area I understand most! My dad will be helping with the more 'mechanical' side of things. I guess a megasquirt kit would cost about £300, but less if I assemble myself.

Other than my engine options, I'd like to make sure that the car stops well enough. I'd guess that rear discs would be a good idea. What's the likely cost of that going to be, and what donor vehicles should I look out for?

All suggestions/advice welcome please! My goal is to produce a fully documented tutorial of what I've done, to help those who, (like myself) are less mechanically minded, but looking to increase performance and learn along the way!

How do. You can quite easily get a 16v in there for that price and if you are building on a budget i would recommend using the doner cras standard engine management. All 16v renaults and suitable volvo doner cars have the engine loom seperate which makes things easier.
As for rear brakes when i get round to making kits available its a nice bolt on upgrade.
Adam

Good man, whichever engine you go for you'll need to alter exhausts, so don't let that sway your choice. Though the williams downpipe is an easy alteration. I wanted a 440 turbo engine for mine, but couldn't get a decent donor car at the right price, all the cheap ones had snapped cambelts.

Just had another thought.. Do all the engines from the 4 series bolt in? Wikipedia reckons that initially they used the same 1.7 as in the 340, so I'm guessing that the engine mounts between the 1.7 and 340 are the same...

The other idea would be to get a 2.0 from a 4 series, if that's the case.

the 400 series shares the same "block" design as the renault engines, which shares the same mounting points for the 340 1.7 bellhousing and engine mounts. making them all simple to fit with 1.7 parts.

So regardless you will need some 1.7 engine parts, donar engine, and some sort of loom splice via adam, and fueling.

I guess the thing to do is just to keep an eye out for whatever comes along cheaply first!

Could a performance increase be realised by 'upgrading' to mega squirt on an f7r/f7p engine, or are their management systems pretty good already? Could a turbo be added to the Renaults or volvo 2l engines later? Has anyone thought about tuning a 440 2l engine with megasquirt?

Cheers,

Tom

Std. ECU is allready quite good. Megasquirt with std. manifold wouldn't be that much of an upgrade. But it sure is on itb's!

tommysb wrote:Just had another thought.. Do all the engines from the 4 series bolt in? Wikipedia reckons that initially they used the same 1.7 as in the 340, so I'm guessing that the engine mounts between the 1.7 and 340 are the same...

The other idea would be to get a 2.0 from a 4 series, if that's the case.

Done it. Very easy conversion - all bolt in no messing around. The hardest part is blanking off the injector holes in he head. Tap it to 1/2 UNC and use grub screws

Im doing the laguna F3R which is (i think) the same as the volvo 440 2.0, the plan was to go mega squirt on it and later add a turbo..but everything has slowed down due to weather etc and ive had too much time to think about sensible.. im now really worried about clearence on the inlet manifold

Have a look at "frits'' his posts. He recently put the engine of a R5 GTE in his 340 (the ex GTT), Thats a F3R too, I think...

He had to do some welding to the inlet manifold, but he has LHD, not RHD.

have another look at this thread

http://www.volvo300mania.com/forum-uk/v ... t=manifold

And to this day i havent found the inlet (for the right price) nor did i kill the engine , my mum did (very angry about that) im a bit ill atm but when its a bit brighter il get it all together and make it fit! ( i think it just clears, had a measure its all very close though.

Right,

I'm thinking that to help clarify what is needed for a 16v swap, a wiki would be a good idea. That way, hopefully all the info for doing an F7p (r) conversion can all be in one place. SO I've started a wiki. Please feel free to contribute or correct it.

Here's the link

http://volvo340.wikispaces.com/

tommysb wrote:Decided I'm going to try and turn my 340 1.4 into a fun sort of track car. The idea is to try and make it as fast, and 'good' as possibly, (ie, still handle fairly sensibly for the power!) for around a grand. So far I've spend £200 on the car, Gonna buy some pimping bits ie spoiler, alloys, and stuff to fix where some B*****D broke in and destroyed the steering lock....Which leaves me with about £600 left to spend on modifications to the engine, and brakes.
The most obvious ideas are engine swaps, either F7R, F7P or from a 480 turbo. I've got a feeling I'll be able to get hold of a cheap 480 engine more easily, but it'll be more difficult to fit, requiring modification to the exhaust etc. I suspect that I'd need an exhaust that would allow more air flow to get the potential out of a bigger engine anyway though....

A question - if i swap for a more modern engine, what's the legal status of driving without a CAT? Are emissions regulations car or engine based?

I'm quite keen to use megasquirt for engine management, as it just appeals to me. I'm fairly competent with electronics, and this would probably be the area I understand most! My dad will be helping with the more 'mechanical' side of things. I guess a megasquirt kit would cost about £300, but less if I assemble myself.

Other than my engine options, I'd like to make sure that the car stops well enough. I'd guess that rear discs would be a good idea. What's the likely cost of that going to be, and what donor vehicles should I look out for?

All suggestions/advice welcome please! My goal is to produce a fully documented tutorial of what I've done, to help those who, (like myself) are less mechanically minded, but looking to increase performance and learn along the way!

tommy, im open to sensible offers on my F7P.
listed in for sale.

Right, sourced a good 16v engine + clio parts now