I'm fairly sure I've just acquired an Ibiza ABF, not ten minutes after dropping a Golf one in my mk2! So I'm wondering, are there any differences between the two? I had an idea that the SEAT engine has lighter valvegear and better cams, but can anyone confirm? If it has, I'll be doing another ABF swap!
well they both make the same power so wouldn't imagine there are any differences... the only difference there might be is in age as im sure the later ABF's had a revised inlet manifold and few other bits...
google should help. i remember ages ago (might have been an EssThree post) where the tappets etc were compared and the seat ones were "better" (think it was lighter) and for some reason, i seem to remember the seat one had a better inlet manifold much of a muchness though id expect. all ABFs are grrrrreat
The early seat ABFs had lighter buckets - I have 32 of them in storage for a future re-build. They are about 300g lighter per set of 16 so significantly reduce the intertia of the valvegear at high RPMs. Therea are two types of ABF inlet manifold with each having a slightly different taper from the TB along the rear of the plenum but I don'know if there is any discernable difference to performance. I'm sure as Matt says that Glenn will know.
the difference with seat inlets was due to them being mounted in a seat, they were slightly different shape to provide clearance for the brake servo. I believe later MK3s had this change as well. since the seat is mk2 golf based these ones are better for mk2 conversions iirc the difference was in the rubber inlet pipe rather than the inlet itself, but I could be wrong on that one.
As has been said, the SEAT ABFs had the lightweight lifters which make the engine rev quicker. The inlet manifold was the same as the Golf (early - short taper, and late - long taper) I seem to recall SEATs had a tubular exhaust manifold? Basically, they are identical. I wouldn't go fitting the lightweight lifters to a standard Golf engine and expecting gains...but if you are going to fit high lift cams, then lightweight lifters matched with titanium retainers mean you can use new, standard valve springs up to 268s easily, rather than add the additional load of heavy duty valve springs...less parasitic losses in the engine and faster revving.
Cool, cheers for that help guys! Glen, I'll find out if there's a tubular manifold on it or not when I pick it up early next week. Looks like I'll leave it sitting in the garage and build it into something a bit fruitier as a winter project. Oh, and I bet you can't guess where it's coming from...
It may have been the LHD Ibizas that had the tubular manifold...same size as the cast version on the GTI, using the same downpipes, I think. I have a picture of a SEAT engine...and it has one, for sure. I never thought to look on the Ibiza my ex had...I wasn't deep into messing with ABFs at the time. The airbox was a better design on the Ibiza too...the cold air pick up taken from around the light, rather than the front wing...it seemed much more likely to get plenty of cold air than the inner wing, torturous path of the GTI.
Sadly the airbox isn't there - annoying given that it fits a mk2 slightly better than any other airbox seems to. The joys of buying from scrapyards, eh? I also thought the cams were more aggressive - I seem to remember hearing that they were the same as 'Automech' cams or something like that, but I've searched all over and found nothing.
RHD seat abf's have a cast manifold mating to a 2 branch tubular jobbie lower down - got my original in the garage cams are same on all abf's as far as I know < Golf/Ibiza Suspension FAQ split off to here >
All ABF cams are the same, fairly high lift, but short-ish duration, to get good emissions. ABFs don't like long duration cams on standard manifolds or ECUs. Autotech 'Sport' cams are basically ABF grinds...I was speaking to the guy who used to own SportCams in South Africa several years ago...and they grind the cams for Autotech USA - to ABF profiles.
On my mates ABF we used a MK2 diesel box or it might have been an SPI one, worked well. only issue was it had no inlet air temp sensor hole, so we stuffed it into the front of the airbox inlet, worked fine. other issue was it had no connection for the ISV on the side, to solve that we fitted one o them mini engine breather filters on the end o the ISV.
I got a Seat ABF for the spare Crank and the flywheel end Crank Oil Seal and plate were totally different to the VW ABF One.
Nah Glenn, I'm saving for some inocol 1mm oversized inlet and exhaust valves, Ti retainers, new springs and an inlet cam which his Royal Shedness can breathe on whenever I finally get around to sourcing it all. This is what I've manged to source so far: Spare ABF head, inlet, TB and exhaust mani, 32 SEAT lightweight lifters (always good to have some spare LOL), short 02A Passat box with 3.94 FD. L&B flywheel (Gawd the STD one is a big munter!) & ported TB with ground spindle that I chucked together -see below. I also have a complete spare ABF sitting but TBH I really need to get it punted as I don;t have the space to keep a full engine. [:^(] Come unstuck a bit at the mo as I'm in the land of the skint
forgot to mention also the breather/isv system differs on early/late models, on later ones the ISV pipe runs to the side of the airbox, on later models it runs to the inlet rubber boot. also on later models the inlet air temp sensor is in the airbox, on earlier models I think its in the inlet boot. Oh and sometime around 96 they got an immobilisor as std, for this you need the ecu & matching key, transponder ring from round the ign lock and the transponder control box it plugs into. Wiring is very simple, you got a live, an earth, and ign live and the wire to the ecu. The box sits on the diagnostic wire pin 43, it runs from ecu to the transponder box, then from there to the diagnostic plug. transponder box & key can be from any car, its just the ecu & key that need to be matched. You can get new keys coded by vw, need the v5 document from original car ideally but we managed ok without. diagnostics is really helpfull on ABFs too, it will also tell you if the car is failing to start due to immobilisor problems. edit: also non-imob ecu will fit imob loom & vice versa, there is a bit of plastic on the ecu plug you need to trim off to make it fit
