Big BrotherCosworth makes good parts, I can vouch for that. When I lived in Sicily, my roomate and I each had a Ford Sierra Cosworth (16v turbo). We beat the living sh!t out of those cars, no mercy whatsoever. Mahle made the pistons in those YB motors, so you know it was some good stuff. Never blew anything up, and they were a lot of fun while we had them. Mine was a green top, his was red. Wish now that I'd had a blue top AWD Escort, that's straight road rally domination right there.
As an aside, I dyno'd my VW Beetle recently in Indy. It's putting 150 TQ an 120 HP to the wheels, which isn't bad at all for an air cooled non-intercooled 1.9L engine. I figure I should be into the 200 range once I get the meth spray installed and turn up the pressure... That's deep into the 12's in the quarter for a car that weighs 1800 lbs. Wish me luck, Union Grove Raceway is open!!!
Better get that thing back together Matt, you should already have your tax return back.
Ha... Our tax return was gone back in February. Stupid bills.
But yea, the Escort RS and Merkur XR4TI (though not the same engine as the Sierra Cosworth, but still impressive) are still my favorite cars of all time. Simply bad ass.
If the pinch come down to it, I might try picking up a flat top Sentra SR piston and see if it's the same (if I can find a 65J cast flat), otherwise I found an awesome deal on SR20DET cast pistons.
I could get the engine back together for like $300, but it would just be 8.5:1 cast pistons.
Though if I could find a 65J 10:1 piston, I could pick up a chromolly ring set (to help avoid this problem in the future, though wall damage increases), hone everything and probably have everything up for around $200.
At any rate, it's going to be awhile.
And I *may* have to find another transmission, this one is starting to scare me.
I'll put up some pics why it scares me later.