Dave well come on board!!!

Those are little things to worry about considering the possibilities.

The big question is if 80mm wet sleeves are possible?

Ive been trying to work out for years is if its possible at all to use a design similar to renault sierra full sleeves by machining the bores out to make it fully wet sleeve style and have offset bores to accomodate 80mm bores. If possible this would be more reliable than a big bore 79mm which can crack eventually.

The other option is to use the Mexican j17 engine supposedly only avail in the Burrito nation. However i think this is a 3 bearing crank engine and with cast iron head????

Either way if 80mm with full sleeves is achieveable then you can have 1769cc with the standard 88mm stroke of the e16 crank or weld and offset grind the rod journals for 89mm stroke and 1789cc.

Another thing is you could tilt the A series even more on its side to increase the angle of the inlets and lengthen the runners (if allowed) to make full use of the torque and increase manifold air/fuel capacity before the restrictor. I found the driveability of long manifold runners to be awesome for mid range on most engines Ive had custom manifolds made for.