I have spent the better part of the last 3 days scouring your forums and I get more and more confused as I go. I have an Audi 80 with a 2.0 8V ABT block. It would seem the GTI folks are the only ones interested in building these motors because I cannot find an Audi forum out there where they actually like them. Most of the build posts are by authors that haven't been online in years and I am looking to chat with someone because I would like to put a little my HP into my car.
I have used a Audi 80 motor for one conversion ,the motor was a 3A 2.0L "bubble block" but have not heard of the ABT,regardless of that I fitted 8v rebuilt dijifant head to get the larger valves and of course the donor motor was K/jet head so had to change the head anyway . The head was match ported and given a tidy up near the valves, resurface and 3 angle valve job with US made Techtonics cam which was as far as I could go without having a bad lumpy idle and screwing up the AFM with air gate flutter. I changed the oil pump from the Audi block and fitted a east/west pump from the same motor I got the head off ,remembering the Audi drive train layout is different,not sure if that matters but the pump suctions are different. Later went TT cam chip which was a small hp gain but smoothed out the motor in the main power range and better idle. Fitted GTI exhaust manifold and did a bit more on the exhaust after that,this car really performed also for the reason it had some low rent GX ? k-jet engine making 85bhp !!!! "Wolfsburg Edition" 3 door that was a JDM car and imported here. My point is you can great power from an 8V without breaking the bank so begin with a sound motor to start with and use good judgement on extra performace mods,surprising how they go. Cheers.
ABT is specific to audi, 90bhp lump. Pistons differ to ABK (which is basically MK3 Golf GTI engine) but crank and rods are same so I guess its just got low compression pistons in? But anyway most 1.6-2.0 8v performance modifications still apply really, they're all basically the same engine. To get the block up to 'proper' 2.0 8v spec you would want a complete bottom end swap, pistons alone would work but really the costs would probably end up the same as just buying a complete MK3 GTI engine. Then change head/cam to suit your purposes, tune ecu etc. or bin the lot and do a full swap. at the very least, bung a gti cam in andf that'll get you decent pep up same as it would in a mk2 carby
As Jonny suggests, i would do a little more research, if the ABT is different pistons, you might be able to raise the CR by skimming the block, or / and skimming the head. having said that the cost might be the same as buying a 2E or the more common AGG. it depends how fair you want to go and how deep your pockets are? do you want a big cam rev happy engine or lazy lower revving torquey engine? i have had a few different varieties of 8v over the years happy to pass on my experiences
