Fit a honda K24 and gearbox.
I have a freshly built 2 litre Xu10 with 1.9 Mi16 head available. Piper Ultimate Road cams with solid lifters, cost a few dollars to do the head. Bottom end stock but with Total Seal rings. Includes Jenvey throttle bodies. I'm sticking with the 1.9 with GTi6 manifold for the 309, so the Xu10 is surplus to my requirements. It runs very well, just done running in km. Will need aftermarket ECU, I have been running it on Megasquirt 3. Will sell at less than half my cost.
I also have a BE3 gearbox with 205 GTi ratios and a 5.1 FD with Quaife but would want full replacement cost for this as I have a use for it in the Xsara VTS or the 309. Cost for this would have been $4000 or so.
Graham, is the xu10 bottom end from a gti6 or something else? Been so long since I did mine, but was it just the gti6 that had the baffled sump??
Probably not cheap. Speaking of vicroads, how will you get it registered with a cage? That wouldn’t happen in NSW without a rally permit.
Pretty sure the K20/24 thing has been done. There may be some info on the UK forums. Recall cutting subframes etc to fit it in though.
If it’s just a road car, not for competition, I’d just go the one that is easiest to slot in and sounds the best. If I did another conversion I’d go GTi6 again, although you can have almost as much fun in a well sorted 8V on the road.