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Had to do a couple of site visits for work this Thursday so a nice day out in the Phantom (not Rolls obviously!) Aprox 230 miles round trip Wrexham-Nefyn, Nefyn-Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth-Wrexham.
This route includes some of the best drivers roads in N.Wales and some "private track work"
On the private track stretches where I would normally be doing 80-90-maybe100 mph the Phantom was easily managing 120-130 mph and could have gone faster still if I could have clenched my buttocks a bit harder! yet was equally happy dawdling through the narrow roads and tight bends in the little vilages at 20-30 mph.
As a GT car this deserves much wider recognition and publicity - can't understand why there aren't more on the road.
Hi Ken,
Glad everything is going well! Did you get on a rolling road to confirm your engine power in the end? Chris seems to think 300bhp is about the limit of the chassis but, like you, if I do an engine swap I will be going for considerably more..
Current pondering is maybe the VW R32 V6 with turbo/procharger, should be about 450bhp in a mild tune. I've come to the conclusion that converting to a transaxle and Audi V8 might be pushing it all a bit too far with new rear suspension required...
Final mapping session is still a way off yet. Apart from sorting out the cooling system I havn't done anything to the car over the summer so I need to an idle control valve and sort out a noisy throtle position sensor before it goes back. Even so the engine response is good and with boost peaking at 10 psi I reckon it's pushing out about 350 hp which is quite enough for my lack of talent.
R32 engine sounds like a good transplant but what gearbox would you use, I thought the R32 was 4-wheel drive?
As for ultimate power, with stiffer rear springs and dampers you could probably get away with 450hp in a straight line in the dry and I don't think it would need a lot of work to stiffen the chassis up at the back.
There are ways of locking the AWD to FWD with that trans, or use another VW trans. A friend has bought one to stick in his Libra with the DSG but I'm not holding my breath!