Re: [DMCForum] V8? Should I dare?

[Louie Golden <louie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I plan on eventually doing a V8 engine and tranny swap. The DeLorean tranny can't handle more than 250-300 hp... they chew up the input shafts above that. Even if you install a beefed up input shaft, something else will break in the tranny... it would just move the problem further "downstream." There was a guy at the Memphis DeLorean Car Show who had a Chevy 350 V8 with the stock tranny. I believe he went through 4 input shafts in 1 year. There was also a guy at the Cleveland DeLorean Car Show who had a Ford V8 engine in his. Don't know much about it, but assume the car also had a stock tranny. 

The good thing about going with a Chevy engine is that there are adapter plates available for Chevy engines to mate with Porsche transaxles. As you know the DeLorean is a rear engined car, not a mid engined car, so that limits your choice of transmission swaps to pretty much Porsche products. Our own Jim Strickland uses a '95 Porsche transaxle on his turbo rotary conversion. There's also a guy around here named Duke that uses an older Porsche 914 tranny for his Chevy 4.3 V6 swap. He's got a webpage documenting his entire swap, but the URL eludes me. If anyone has it please pass it on. 

The guy who bought my old wrecked DeLorean is using the car as a guinea pig for a C4 Corvette engine swap which he'd like to perform on his other DeLorean. He lives only a half hour away, so I'll keep the list informed as to his progress. He plans on using the stock transmission, and with the '84 engine he's using, he may be able to pull it off. One of the ways I've come across with in regards to mating the DeLorean transaxle to a Chevy engine is to cut both the bellhousing from the DeLorean and Chevy transmissions in half, and fuse the forward part of the Chevy bellhousing to the DeLorean transmission. Bill Robertson was in contact with a guy who did this... I once had pictures of the completed car, but lost them when my computer had to be rebuilt. Bill?

The pro's are more power, and it CAN be done relatively unexpensively (under $10k certainly... the guy with a Chevy v6 and stock tranny spent under $3k from what I remember). The con's is it is very time consuming and can be difficult to boot. You WILL have to fabricate some pieces (engine mounts, shift linkages, etc.). Those who try and sell their engine swapped cars can't seem to sell them, and they will most certainly not ever get their money back if the car was done as an investment. It also detracts from the collectibility of the car. My car already has about 80k miles on it anyways, so I'm not too worried about the collectibility issue. I also don't ever plan on selling the car either. So just weigh the options and make the decision that would make you enjoy the car the most. That's what owning a classic car is really all about anyways isn't it? -Louie

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