You are a friendly bunch sure enough, although I take your point about the Kiwis, a rum bunch
I don't have much experience of engine building, so you would have to take my musings with a pinch of salt.
What Mike do you refer to?
With that high CR I'm safe to assume it will be NA? To get more power you will be needing to make it breathe better and rev higher.
Are you going to bore or stroke it, or leave it stock, standard displacement?
What I can recommend is that you read from start to finish all the information available in this thread:
http://www.subaru-svx.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43222
and on the link to the engine build at NASIOC. This chap Bob known as either Bob the Fabricator or Rally Rob, he knows what he is doing. By learning from what he has achieved so far and mistakes they learned by you can save yourself a lot of trial and error and associated cost.
Graham my mate in England is building his engine up from scratch, but for a supercharger, not an NA approach. I'll check with him about components, but I'm fairly certain he is using Carillo rods.
Best of luck with it. We will follow with the greatest interest.
[BTW, if you still use the stock rad in the racer you must change it for an all aluminium one, or the plastic top will eventually blow. I would also recommend you take the rotor out of the water pump and install an all-electric high flow racing pump, or you risk head failure]
Joe
