Engine Swap

I know this isnt thought to highly of but, Im going to ask it anyways. Here is the deal my girlfriends brother owns a shop and builds race cars and races them up in NY and NH. Now I have a Hyundai Tiburon and I love the way it looks, but it is really slow, so I would like to engine swap it, but Im not sure what engine would be good in there. My girlfriends brother told me he would do all the work for me for FREE, the only thing I have to do it get the parts and bring them to his shop. So what would be a good more powerful engine that will fit in? Now please refran from the flaming, because I know most people don't like this, but if I can get it done for free, by a professional, why not look into it

oh and welcome to the forums, hope you find all the info you can, a couple of suggestions: don't revive old threads (like a couple of months old, if nothing new has happened to the thread, it's a dead thread), use the search button before you start a thread (so you don't start up a thread that has already been discussed like turbo vs supercharger), and be nice, curtious, and don't flame. the exception to the last one is if the guy's being a total dick lol.

is the hyundai a rear-wheel-drive car ? i guess it is because you guys are talking about the torque affecting the chassis/frame, but in front wheel drive you dont get that.

The Tiburon is FWD

time for a change in plan then, try turbo/super charging an all the necessary fuelling/cooling mods, 300bhp should let it remain driveable, have good performance, good fuel economy an most importantly give it some pull when you floor it. but it really depends how much power you want from it. dont forget the torque steer you'll get from over 300-350bhp though, floor it an expect some steering-wheel judder (right word ?)

for an engine swap it would be hard to get one in there without MAJOR modifications to make it rear wheel drive so you should modify your current engine. turbo, all supporting stuff, you could go with a ton of boost and do water or alcohol injection but that might be a little beond your technical skill, there's alot of tuning that goes into one of those setups. with an alcohol injected setup you can get above 2bar.

just get an Alpine supercharger and have him install that, way more feasible than any sort of swap attempt.

Beef Burito Iv removed a couple of your posts from public view as they serve no purpose what so ever in this thread and contained a large amount of misleading information.

sup2jzgte the Tiburon is still a fairly new car, and not a lot of people know much about them.

Can you elude to more information on the car? Does it use a Hyundai engine or a licensed Mitusbishi one?

And you could try a thread in the Hyundi forum, where there are some very knowledgable members lurking about.

it uses a Hyundai engine that it shares with the Sonata and Santa Fe.

Ok the Tiburon is based off of the Elantra and Santa Fe. The V6 is more based on the Santa Fe and the I4 is the Elantra. It has nothing to do with Mit at all. I have the i4 so the most I will get out of the beta2 engine is MAYBE 250hp and Im looking for right around 300 or so. I know the Beta2 can with stand a fair amount, but Im pretty but enteraining the idea of an engine swap because to my knowledge it hasnt been done yet and I have access to a person who has been doing this stuff for 25 years and knows what he is doing. I would like to put a Supra engine in there, but I know there is no way in hell of fitting it in there. The Tiburon is FWD, not RWD.

Well engine swaps with the model range are hard enough, swaping between manufactors can be a real nightmare, especialy when dealing with a FWD car.

Early Hyundais used Mitisubishi engines made under license, hopefully they used these as a basis to design thier own engines from.
If so it might mean that an mid 90s ish, Mitsi engine will fit easily in your engine bay and things like mounts locations and axles will line up reasonably well.
In that case you could swap in one of the many 4g63 engines, most of which are good for an easy 300hp with little more than a boost increase. Or basic turbo mods.


Your biggest concersn however are:

1- Will the engine and gearbox physicaly fit in the car

2- Will the cars existing fuel and electrical system be compatiable with a new engine from a differnt manufactor.

3- Will the axles line up with the new gearbox.
Its important that out puts in the same location so that axle geometery stays the same. You will of course have to do some custom work to the axles to make them fit a differnt gearbox.

Once you have found an engine that fits these requirments you can start resuarching what will be needed to make it work in your car.


Cross manufactor swaps have been done in the past, but they require a lot of engineering know how and a lot of creativity.
Think very carefully about how badly you want to do it, expect the car to be off the raod for at least 6 months, and it to cost $10,000