I'm considering branching out from the BG chassis mazda box and expanding my lightweight crapcan stable and was curious about the 1.5L Alpha cars. Where power can be made, how much, trouble spots, what the transmission can handle power wise. Differences in terms of internals and compression between the rare turbo and very common N/A.
Anyone that would like to do a compare/contrast between the motor and the Mazda dohc 1.8L BP or between Alpha powered cars and BG chassis mazdas?
the weak link in the Alpha is the chassis it's in. Weak trans. tiny brakes. No aftermarket. I'd stick with the 00-02 cars. The earlier had the oddball 4x114 bolt pattern. The good thing with the Alpha is the ability to run when no other engine will nor should. The downside is it's out of breath at 4500rpms without forcing air into it. But that SOHC head likes to suck down lots of boost.
Thanks for the quick response. I've noticed a trend that somewhat maligned motors with 12V head designs seem to be boost friendly and make mountains of torque. I'll likely stick with the Mazdas due to the ease of parts bin brake upgrades, even though an Accent is so tempting to me for some reason.
I can't quite tell if it's a turbo manifold at the end of the manifold in this listing and seeing that the seller can't count the number of cylinders I haven't bothered to ask.
http://winstonsalem.craigslist.org/cto/4681884526.html
Sounds like there'd be enough oddball parts and what not needed to re clutter another garage though, so I'll likely just continue to be curious and want from afar (unless I can tempt a local friend to campaign one)
that's a non-turbo Scoupe. The Turbo mani's are cast. The non-turbo'd are the steel tube 4-2-1 design. I thought about that when our accent's mani-cat took a dump.
Also, Scoupe/Excel (same chassis) parts are not easy to find anymore. Hell, they were drying up 10 years ago. Same with the first gen Accent parts. They're just oddball enough that nothing fits.
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