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I want to engine swap my 1.6 engine for the 2.0 G4GC

3.2K views 10 replies 6 participants last post by  chase206  
#1 ·
Hello everyone, I recently bought a 2002 1.6 Hyundai Tiburon. I love everything about it except for its performance. ( I recently got dog walked by my friend's stock 2018 1.2l Renault Clio on economy mode)
I am fairly new to the car scene but I want to fully max out the capabilities of this car. If I turbocharge the 1.6 I believe it would be a waste of money. There is not much headroom for tuning and I realistically think the engine would struggle with any more than 180hp. Also, the car has 150k kilometers and I don't think it will last long with a turbo. So the only solution is to engine swap. You might ask why I did not buy the 2.0 in the first place. That is because I live in Greece and we only have the 1.6 and the very unreliable 1.6 turbo version. I don't want to swap to the 2.7l due to high taxation on high displacement engines. My plan is the following, I will first install the 2.0 or v6 cat-back exhaust then I will engine swap to the G4GC with CVVT, and in the future when I got the cash I will turbocharge it.
So now that I have explained my thought process I want to ask the following questions:

1)Will the engine fit into the current gearbox?
2)Can I use my current ecu If not what should I buy as a replacement?
3)I know that the evo8 headers fit the engine but which other evo parts should I have in mind when I want to turbo it.
4) Which other parts will need replacement?

That is all, thank you for your time. Any replies would be appreciated.
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#2 ·
Looks fantastic! Is that a factory no-wing hatch? I've seen them in the manual but never even seen a picture of a factory shipped no-wing hatch.

I also didn't know they made a 1.6 Turbo, I knew of the 1.6 but never knew there was a turbocharged variant. Personally, I would turbocharge it. you'll get far more out of it by turbocharging than .4L of displacement will. and IMO millage doesn't matter for putting power adder mods on. I put a supercharger on my 2.7L at 165K and it's been fantastic so far. Given, I only put on about 9K miles so far, so take that with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, I don't know much about the 1.6L other than that it exists, they weren't an option in the USA so I have very little knowledge of it. I can offer some generic advice though:
1: The ECU will likely not work with the 2.0. I could be wrong, but I doubt it would have the same harness or pinout. You might be able to use the 2.0 if you get the entire engine harness with the ECU, but you'll need to make sure you have the wiring diagram for both harnesses.
2: Anti-theft chip security might be a problem if your car is equipped with it. I'm not sure if the BCM will throw a fuss if you replace the ECU with a standalone, but if you do get a factory ECU you may have issues getting it to communicate with the BCM for anti-theft.
3: Do you have a manual or automatic? you may run into problems running the transmission if it's automatic. The 2.0 uses a PCM (Power-train control module) which is a module that controls both the engine and transmission, which makes it a bit of a pain to deal with.
4: Engine swaps are not drop in these days, you're going to need to either fabricate or source all the parts the 2.0 needs, such as engine mounts, exhaust headers, CV axles, intermediate axle shafts, etc. Changing an engine is a big commitment.
5: If you were to go for the 2.7L (I know you said you didn't want to due to displacement tax) I would skip the 2.7L and go to the 3.8L that can supposedly drop in and bolt streight up to the 2.7L transmission with minimal effort (as far as engine swaps go).
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the tips. The car is manual with a 5-speed transmission. There is no automatic version of the 1.6 Tiburon. That makes me hope they got lazy and used the 2.0 transmission. I believe it is a factory no-wing hatch. There are many Tiburon listings online with the wing missing so it must have been optional back in the day.
 
#4 ·
As mentioned turbocharging the 1.6 would be the easiest option.

It produced 143 hp (same as 2.0) while having 300 less pounds of curb weight.

If worried about milage you could swap a less miles version of same engine. Or do an engine rebuild.

As the turbo is already fitted for the 1.6L and you would be swapping the same engine it would be much less work.

And of course the hp will go up with more proper modding.
 
#7 ·
The 2.0 is no high performer either. The United States never saw the 1.6L Tiburon just the 2.0 and 2.7 for the second gen cars. For the RD cars those came in a 1.8L and the Beta1 2.0L.
The second generation cars (02-08) the 1.6L engines had only a single exhaust outlet.

And yes, the 1.6L did have a turbo option. Although it wasn't exactly factory and performed rather poorly and was unreliable. Was primarily sold in Greece and is referred to as the S145 model.

@The_Evenger mine was factory wingless.
 
#8 ·

Apparently the 2.0 could be a performer.

Anyways some guys fit the 2.0 obx headers on the 1.6L. So that opens a lot of avenues such as the turbo options the 2.0 has which required slight modification so idk how that would translate to the 1.6L.

Idk how trustworthy this info is as I did a bit of searching and only one guy mentioned this others used custom headers made by companies at the time. Idk how much modification this would require either. Someone more knowledgeable should step in.

Which those custom headers, as the s145 kit are long gone.

Anyways N/A wouldn't even be an option for me in your shoes. Unless you just wanna be as fast as a beta 2 according to a lot of the dynos from back then when these custom better parts were easier to find.

F/I guys with some extra goodies were pushing over 200 whp allegedly.
 
#9 ·
1: The ECU will likely not work with the 2.0. I could be wrong, but I doubt it would have the same harness or pinout. You might be able to use the 2.0 if you get the entire engine harness with the ECU, but you'll need to make sure you have the wiring diagram for both harnesses.
2: Anti-theft chip security might be a problem if your car is equipped with it. I'm not sure if the BCM will throw a fuss if you replace the ECU with a standalone, but if you do get a factory ECU you may have issues getting it to communicate with the BCM for anti-theft.
3: Do you have a manual or automatic? you may run into problems running the transmission if it's automatic. The 2.0 uses a PCM (Power-train control module) which is a module that controls both the engine and transmission, which makes it a bit of a pain to deal with.
4: Engine swaps are not drop in these days, you're going to need to either fabricate or source all the parts the 2.0 needs, such as engine mounts, exhaust headers, CV axles, intermediate axle shafts, etc. Changing an engine is a big commitment.
5: If you were to go for the 2.7L (I know you said you didn't want to due to displacement tax) I would skip the 2.7L and go to the 3.8L that can supposedly drop in and bolt streight up to the 2.7L transmission with minimal effort (as far as engine swaps go).
The_Evenger hit all of these points on the head. For a proper 2.0 swap you will want everything from the dashboard forward you can find on the donor car. No fussing over wiring or adapter harnesses or an incompatibility with the gauge cluster and ECU signals etc etc.

You can sort of cheat by re-using the Alpha 1.6L ECU and harness then connectorize the existing harness for the 2.0 sensors. From memory there are two major components that differ between the Alpha 1.6L and Beta 2.0. I believe that is the crank sensor, CVVT components and the MAF/MAP sensor so keep that in mind and transfer these sensors over from the 1.6 to the 2.0 if you choose to use the 1.6 ECU. The 1.6 ECU will work but you will be leaving some power on the table unless you do the full ECU and harness swap. The lack of power is the primary reason this method is not used.

Your other option is to build an adapter harness to go from the Alpha 1.6L harness to the Beta 2.0 ECU so you can keep the 1.6 harness and use the 2.0 ECU. There are some male and female 81 & 121 pin connectors on AliExpress for dirt cheap that would work for this. 81pin is for manuals, 121pin is for automatics. Any auxillary components that the 1.6 harness doesn't have you'll have to add yourself. Such as the CVVT components.


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