Many (most ?) of M&W's previous 904 customers (I don't know the exact number but I think less than 20 have been built in the past 15 years) have opted for 3 litre engines (probably due to relative ease of availablility & cost) but, to my mind, these would give totally the wrong driving characteristics - the car
needs a smaller/more highly-tuned engine.
The relatively few 6-cylinder 904's that the Factory built were equipped with the Type 901/20 engine - 2.0 litre twin-plug on 46 IDA Webers producing 210 bhp @ 8000rpm so I wanted something that had similar specs ...
... now it just so happened that I had a twin-plug engine sitting at the back of my garage ! :)
This engine was removed from my 911R-inspired car before I sold it (I already had this project in mind at that stage) & has the following spec:
7R crankcases which have been shuffle-pinned & time-serted
Custom-made JE 90mm pistons (c/r 10.5:1)
Rebuilt/modified 40IDA Webers (36 mm venturis) on 'tall' manifolds
Ported cylinder heads with stainless steel valves and hi-performance springs
High-lift custom hand-ground cams
Lightened/balanced 2.2 crank with cross-drilled & grooved centre bearing
3.0 SC oil pump
etc
In it's original configuration with crank-fire ignition this 2.5 litre engine produced 220 bhp @ 7800rpm but I have since swapped in a period-looking Marelli-style twin-plug distributor operating through twin MSD boxes (which will be hidden from view) - 2 (dummy) Bosch CDI boxes & twin Bosch black coils will be visible within the engine compartment - so I am hoping for a little more ...
As I mentioned previously, I don't want everything to look 'too new' so I avoided any polishing/replating etc on the engine - opting instead for just a 'clean' look:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6032/...4c423320_z.jpg