Cylinder head swap issue addressed. 1.9 to 2.0

So I have spent a few hours for some "money matters" thing. I searched for spare parts, refurbished and new parts. Had at hand labour hours costs, various unforeseen costs, et cetera.

I have always been a fan of laborious DIY but to a limit. My conclusion was that the economical investment outweighs the benefit and all the praising you could receive by swapping heads.

A used head price range is between 100-300 UK pounds. Luck and charisma is involved.
A refurbished head price range is between 400-500 UK pounds. Old head is required for exchange. So this brings the price up for a cylinder head to 600-700.
A new one is from 800 UK pounds upwards (price is with VAT). Then you must add the injectors price which could sky rocket the investment.

A shop will usually charge between 500-2000 pounds for a head swap, custom brackets etc. Friendship status lowers the amount.

A rough estimation will reveal the fact that a swap will cost more than the whole engine. And I am sure all the users here know this all ready.

A used but in good working state engine with 2.0l capacity is between 700 pounds to 1200 pounds. Fully fitted, ancillaries included. Turbo must be added separately.

Even for a conversion to 2.0 it might be a better option just to buy the bigger engine. The 2.0 is only a re bored version of the 1.9 by factory. I will search in the following days for the files.

I know that pride will suffer, but money matters.

The problem you will encounter with the engine swap is electrical. The crank position sensor on 16v engines uses different method than in the 8v engines and to my knowledge is not that easy to overcome if you still plan on using edc15. If you swap whole electrics then there are going to be problems with can bus stuff and gauges, ESP etc.

EDC16 is present on some Golf 4s. BEW model. So no electrical swap is involved.

They all had CAN bus. The version up to 2004 had CAN connection between ECU, Cluster, ABS and Gearbox unit.
The newer versions have all devices connect through CAN.

You can interchange pieces that use CAN, so a mix of old and new is possible to a limit. The interface is unchanged. Only devices were added.

Time to re-write history.

I just bought a complete head without the cylinders for 102 pounds out of ebay.

Engine code BRD 170Hp.