11 Popular Chassis’s for Motor Swaps

Nowadays there are all kinds of performance parts and accessories for a wide range of cars, but anyone can simply bolt on performance parts to a stock motor. What do you have to do to really set yourself apart in the tuner’s scene…? An engine swap; not just any engine swap, but the one engine swap that is going to make the most power. What you want to do is pick the highest horsepower engine from the heaviest car and put it in the lightest chassis possible. This goes for domestics as well as imports when doing a motor swap. Now to make it easy on yourself you need to stick to a motor swap that has been done before and offers aftermarket parts for the adaptation of the new motor and transmission combo. This article will outline a few cars and engines that are a popular motor swap in the tuner performance scene and why.

1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd generation Mazda RX-7 motor swaps are becoming increasingly popular. There are many motor swap options available; available bolt in kits are small block Chevy, Ford 302 and 351 V8’s, Ford 2.3 turbo motor, Chevy 4.3 V6, Nissan VG30DE V6, and Mopar 340/ 360 V8’s. In addition to these high horsepower domestic engines you can also swap in a 3 rotor twin turbo Mazda Cosmos motor with little effort. All of these above mentioned engine swap kits can be found at grannysspeedshop.com. The Mazda RX-7 can easily be the king of the street with the right high horsepower motor swap given its fairly lightweight chassis; especially the earlier generations.

Honda Civics and CRX’s are possibly one of the most swapped tuner car out there. One can swap in a motor from a heavier vehicle or one that was in Japanese only vehicles. A popular motor swap for one of these lightweight vehicles can range from a B16, B18, B20, and even to the all mighty K-series. Of course if you are going to set yourself apart from the crowd you are probably going to want to swap in the K20A from maybe an Acura RSX Type-S. There is so much aftermarket support for a Honda motor swap that these engines can be easily built with forged internals and turbocharged, supercharged, or nitrous injected for even more power.

Datsun 240, 260, and 280Z’s are becoming a little harder to find but are beginning to gain more popularity these days. A tried and proven motor swap for this tiny sports car is a Chevy V8. The typical Chevy carb’d V8 is a proven motor swap utilizing either a Turbo 350 or 400 automatic to back it up. In some cases a car tuner will get a hold of one of those race Muncie four speeds and throw that in there. However as we move forward into the time and era of electronic fuel injection one can’t help but to suggest the usage of Chevy LS1’s with their very stout T56 six speed manual gear box. That is the motor swap that will set you apart from the crowd.Nissan Sentra, Nissan 200sx, Infiniti G20 have a great amount of motor swap potential and have an abundance of aftermarket support. Based off of a SR20 2.0 four cylinder there are many motor swap options out there for the B13, B14, B15, P10, and P11 chassis. You have sr20dets from BlueBirds and Aveniers. You can swap a Pulsar GTI-R motor in which comes with the most power; a t28 turbo, quad throttle bodies, and big injectors can really make your day with the assistance of a boost controller. There is even a motor swap from the Japanese Nissan X-trail called the sr20vet. SR20VE’s from Japan are an ever popularly growing motor swap in the Nissan and Infiniti world because of their simplicity, out of the box all motor power, and cost. Aftermarket turbo’s, manifolds, fuel systems, and computers make this lightweight chassis an ideal one for a motor swap of this kind.