Okay, the crank angle sensor is in and the car is running. I was reading up on timing and I noticed there is a difference between the 90 to 95 engines and the 96 onwards. I cooked an engine once and had another one put in. It was an import and they said that it was a later model engine to the one they took out because some of the electrical stuff was a little different. So anyway, how do I tell the difference. Is it in the engine number? Cheers.
The difference in 96 only applies to US engines as vvt was removed that year to meet emissions standards. All other parts of the world retained vvt throught the production run so should have their timing set the same (15deg. btdc) As for the engines, I don't believe there really is a way to tell what specific year it was from on its own. Bits like series 3 and later injectors, cas, tps, heads, plenums etc. all changed, but most parts are interchangable so could have previously been changed already over the past 20 years.
Biggest difference is the heads. Changed on the S3 engines. Have a search here and you can find the cast numbers for the heads. As above, a lot of elec bits are different. But you can't conclusively tell what year a engine is, just narrow it down to a band of years.
