The only concern I have about large T5 engines producing serious HP is the case through bolts, which the T4 has. Granted I doubt it is an issue for anything under 200HP, but once you build up huge cranks and stuff things start to break or reach max load tolerances.
Someone had mentioned to me at one point that there is someone running around with an oxyboxer modified to accept thru-bolts. Has anyone seen or heard this too?
Just as a teaser one of the fellows listed here is doing a T5 and using Nickies 94Bs. I will be curious to see what happens there.
Who :-) ? Do I know this person?
Personally for the first build I will stay with the cheap Mahle P&Cs until I see how this T5 works out. Again a relative unknown in some ways so I do not want to spend lots of money for a potential door stop.
A very reasonable concern.
My huge concern is oil cooling for anything in a sedan platform. For a bus I have solutions, but for a sedan I have not done the research yet. But I like the non-doghouse shroud and no oil cooler in there plan and just use massive external coolers (two RX-7 coolers could probably keep a 911 cool).
Conversion aside, I was having similar concerns with the 2615cc type 4 (102 Nickies equipped) that will be going into my automatic type 3. My biggest worry is that since my gearing is not ideal, i'll be running fairly high rpms which might lead to hotter than expected oil temps, granted i'll be using synthetic oil which should be able to take the head. I myself was considering an RX-7 cooler, but I got my hands on an almost new setrab monster that has a little more surface area than an RX-7 cooler for only $50- I couldn't resist that kind of deal. I'm going to be placing it, along with a two or three smaller fans (7" or 8") at the front of my squareback, positioned close to where the a/c condenser was intended to be fitted. One slight change though- i'm removing the spare tire well insert and blocking it off to allow more cross-ventilation. I'm just moving the spare tire onto the top of the gas tank.
Once the iron 94Bs blow up I will strongly consider the Nickies T1 94Bs as a replacement once I find out how this works out.
Another idea popped into my head- maybe its been done, maybe not, but has anyone, when using the larger stud pattern offered by the T5, fit a type 4 cylinder, say a 96mm? My point being, what kind of head/case registers could we be looking at to maximize the size of possible bores while still retaining fairly thick cylinder walls? (Since we'll make the cylinder from scratch anyways, what's the big deal if we change registers?)
Take care,
Charles Navarro
LN Engineering
http://www.LNengineering.com
Aircooled Precision Performance