Small CC RWD engine options

Mazda rotary? Suzuki Swift GTi engine on a Vitara g/box? With smaller RWD engines, you need to weigh up the difficulty in sourcing / fitting one against the extra £100 / year tax that you would have to pay on a larger, more commonly fitted engine...

Rysz.

Why do you want a small engine, if yu on classic insurance shouldn't make much difference there!!!!

Toyota? 2/3/4K's are pretty easy to come by with rwd boxes still attached.
I'm sure Vauxhalls can't be that hard to find though can they?
Or why not get a gasket set & freshen up your current engine?

there's a fair few shafty bike engines that could be fun, if you wanted something outlandish. zzr1400 fits the bill and would go like stink.

In very basic, simplified terms to avoid cutches and all the other complications, pretty much all the common vauxhall lumps of the last 20 years will bolt to either a manta 1800 rwd gearbox or a carlton box, or more recently the omega gearbox. If you can stretch to it on the insurance then the corsa gsi (C16XE) engine is a cracking little thing, and as above will bolt straight to various vauxhall rwd boxes (as will the 1.4 8v and 16v lumps)

On the other hand, we are about to convert a chevette to 2.0 16v turbo power, and it has a PERFECT 30,000 mile standard engine in it, I can ask the owner if he'll sell it? It really is like new!

Forgot to add, not sure whether you want to go all multi-point injected etc... but we carb converted a 1.4 8v Corsa engine using the original ECU, 'black cap' distributor and wiring for the sparks (wiring is not that complex when you work it out) and the carb and manifold from a small block 1.6 mk3 Cavalier. The earlier "red cap" distributors from earlier carb small block Astra & Cavalier engines will also fit the injected engines as well, although they stick out miles on the gearbox side, so probably not good for a RWD conversion.

The 1.25/1.4/1.7 Ford Zetec-S is NOT compatible with the old 4-pot Ford bellhousing pattern, so it won't just bolt up to a Type 9.

The Rover K series (reliable out of the box in 1.4 form) produces 105bhp with stock management, and can be fitted to a Type 9 with a bellhousing. The bellhousings are available from various sources (Frontline Spridet for k series midget conversions, Caterham for 7s, and a couple of others) but are not cheap (~£450). They'll try to sell you a custom clutch too, but I'm fairly sure that the Rover pressure plate and a Ford driven plat are all you need - make sure the diameters match though.

The small Vauxhall engines will bolt straight up to a 4-pot Carlton or V6 Omega box (don't know about 4-pot Omega, but definitely not straight-6 carlton). The 1.4 16V from the Corsa makes 95bhp out of the box, and there are no horror stories about it. A little while ago I was considering doing an engine swap into a Viva and the Corsa engine was my first choice.

The Nissan CG13DE is a very nice little engine - compact, light, and surprisingly powerful for a 1.3 (75bhp stock, 100 bhp with injectors, exhaust manifold, bigger air filter and remap). Not sure about RWD conversions though - you'd probably need to fabricate an adaptor plate at the very least.

Keeping the stock injection on any of these engines is probably worthwhile - it will just work, and won't need tuning. It should be extremely reliable too. The wiring is the difficult bit, but if you can get decent wiring diagrams that's not an insurmountable problem.

i think the corsa 1.4 engine is your best option then to fit the bill you are after or you could look at the c16xe or x16xe, slap a set of bike carbs on it with custom fanimolds and you should see a good 160bhp or there abouts if set up properly

I knew that I'd have get prop etc but was hoping that with keeping it small, I wouldn't have worry about new axel & brakes. I'll keep doing research on rebuild stuff for engine etc vs new implant. See what the future holds