Question for Oz members..1.8 Nissan Turbo

[DemonTSi at aol.com]

In a message dated 98-11-13 09:34:21 EST, ECMnut at aol.com writes:

<< My Asian engine man said they are definitely different, when I suggeted 
 the the turbo 1.8 came in a Turbo FWD, he said "no way, it's a RWD engine".. 
 The heads and placement of motor mounts are usually different between FWD &
 RWD.  Sometimes  the head is the same.  Manuifolds are always different..  >>

But a lot of the nissan motors came in both FWD and RWD configuration. Some
are pretty similar, but the main differences are usually the intake manifold
(throttle body intake facing wrong way), and the distributor (it hangs out the
back of the head, and would hit the firewall if the FWD engine is used in a
RWD application). So that's one advantage to the CA18DE having DIS...there's
no distributor to worry about. And manifolds can always be custom fabricated
(which would be the case if I were to stuff the engine in my roadster anyway
:)   Motor mounts aren't that big a deal since you'd have to fabricate
something for the swap...so the main concern is the tranny bolt pattern. I
used to think that the block was the one piece that would remain constant
whether the engine be FWD or RWD...but my friend has both a FWD and RWD SR20DE
and informed me that they are in fact different...so it might not be possible
to use a FWD CA18DE in a RWD car with the RWD tranny...or it might. I was
hoping someone would have a definitive answer...!

Van