Scirocco Register

i have just come back from san diego but while i was over there i thought i would have a look at the scrapyards to see what goodies they might have.
i came across three golfs that had a 2 litre block with an 8valve cross flow head.
then a manifold that went from the front of the head over the top to the back of the engine bay.
i dont think ive ever seen a derivative like it.

That's the ABA engine. 2 litre crossflow found in millions of mk3 Golfs and Jettas (our Vento) in the US. Asthmatic in it's emissions stifled standard form but great when chucked into a mk1 (especially the pre-96 ABA). Also tons of bolt-on turbo bits and pieces available in the US.

i was thinking it would be nice to get the head from it add some webers and bolt it to my 1.8 block

It can be done - there's a little welding needs to be done to block up a spare water channel but the rest lines up. Search "crossflow" on the CGTI forum. The last of the mk3 Golf 1.6 engines were crossflow - you may be able to use the head from one of those.

Funny - many years ago I did the opposite. I did not use the cross flow head and instead used the 2L block to get a bit more torque in my Mk2 Golf. I had a lot of miles on my 1.8L and found an almost new 2.0L ABA from a wrecked Mk3. I kept my original CIS style fuel injection, cylinder head and manifolds, but swapped the bottom end for the 2.0L. There were some differences though. This block is slightly taller that the 1.8L, so the exhaust needed a spacer. Also I seem to recall needing to find a distributor from an Audi 90 or similar as there were some differences there as well.