cheap s/c's, then ebay is ur partner.
AMR300's and 500's are small, but from smiley's reports, do make a huge difference. you could only get a small boost out of them, but are always far cheaper than the toyota superchargers.
avg cost for sc14/sc12 ranges from $250 to $500. with the occasional 'bargain'.
Eaton M45 superchargers off the new BMW mini's are something worth considering too, with second hand cheapies popping up now and then. 2 sold on ebay couple months back for $150, (catch, one had bad bearings, other was involved in an engine bay fire). being a later model, spares like seal kits and bearings should be readily available one would assume.
Bigger superchargers are your M90, but that would be too hardcore for a 1600/1800.
M45's have less displacement compared to the sc series, but maybe they compensate by having abilities for higher revs (you will have to check). but they would be awesome.
if you get a small enough turbo charger, you could minimise lag heaps, and you only need a tiny one for a 1600cc. Turbo manifolds can be bought prepared and ready for offroad and street vw applications if you have the dosh. These guys sell the complete kit and will separate. (includes turbo, carb, manifold, zorst, bpv or bov.
www.vwturbokits.com
They aren't cheap. If you want a carb that you can turbo or supercharge prep, you can go through tehse guys for a holley, however over ebay there is an italian weber mob who can sell turbo prepped, reconditioned weber ida carbs (larst tiem i checked). If you search via google, there was a guy in the states who modded his solex stock carb (34 pict carb off 1600) and he has a build thread over a few forums stating step by step what he did with the solex carb, just google him up, he put the setup on his bug, rekons he got 80hp at teh wheels or sumfin i think in his stock internals 1600. That would be ur cheapst, financially conservative option option. otherwise, go to
www.cgbmotorsport.net to buy some tested 2nd hand turbo solex DIS carbs from the later renault 5 GT turbo. They used these carbs since 85 to 91 that incorporate a blow through turbo setup, allowing these little cars a great 0 to 100kph in 6.7seconds. they are turbo prepped ,ready to go. they use a 1400cc engine, and i have bought two for $85 pounds each (tested and working by the wrecking yard in the uk), think it was $165 AUD each, and plan to run duals on adapted type 3 dual manifolds with a supercharger blowing through. Tuning will be interesting, you can't buy new needles for these, its a solder and drill job i been told. But they have turbo enrichment circuits etc and sealing for the boost pressures all stock inbuilt.
These carbs aren't hack jobs, but factory ready to go items, with same ID as the type 3 dual carbies, but stud pattern is slighly wider (hence why they need to be adapted to the type 3 manifolds). thats if you want to run dual carb. makes it alot simpler if you have single.
Difficult part about supercharger is the mounting, and modding for a pulley. Difficult part about the turbo is the zorst plumbing. Just got to figure out what ur better at doing i guess.
