47 replies to this topic

[steah]

Hmmm, thanks phantom, maybe the a series idea was a bit far fetched... but depending on how much a busa engine is will dictate this then, that'd be much better for reliability, and performance, so im liking this idea :) thanks

[Artful Dodger]

Busa engines are notorious for exploding when put in other vehicles at different rotations / angles and out of the air like they are used to. We have seen one in a caterham and they got through 3 before they jacked it in.

Car engine! I'm pulling a boxster engine out of a race at at work at the mo, the gearboxes may be a good start, it's a decent small transaxle. In fact what about just a boxster engine? In te load bay of a pickup truck? Real low centre of gravity so it would handle really well and it would sound mega!

[steah]

Hmmmm, more good ideas, well after putting more thought into it, we more or less want to build our own version of the ariel atom haha, just in a formula shell... any other cheap powerful small bike engines? Thinking thats the best idea really

[bossfab]

You really could do better than the a-series. I bought an LM4 v8 (small bore, iron block corvette engine) for 900 quid for my truck and out of the box it has 300bhp and about the same in torque.

If you did really want to do it and you already have one laying around the best way to go is find the highest geared CWP, fit the hardy spicer output, weld the diff and only run the offside shaft to the rear diff, viola rear wheel drive.

No doubt this will prompt plenty of people saying welding a diff is lunacy but I have built a 4x4 4ws buggy using a transverse engine this way whith absolutely no problems(yet) and the boys from Finland are doing the same but all diffs welded and running highly tuned t5 engines.

There are plenty of write ups regarding 90° gear lever transfer about


That is if you really had your heart set on it/don't have bottomless pockets but the same principal applies to any fwd engine and box. The only issue is the final drive gear as you have an initial reduction in the gearbox diff but you will also have a second reduction in your rear diff.



Edit:

Welded transverse engine diff in action

Edited by bossfab, 05 August 2014 - 06:22 AM.

[steah]

Right, after careful consideration, me and my mates have decided that, instead of jumping in at the deep end, and as to not waste huge amounts of money, we are going to do a 'test build' featuring a 125cc motorcycle engine as we have one laying around (its a whole bike really, so everything we need :)) and essentially build a frame so we are building essentially what is a go kart, but only to get an idea of the engineering rather than blowing thousands on something that will never materialise... if all goes well with the 'go kart' we will maybe move on to this, but for now this will be the progress thread on the kart :) thanks for all the suggestions everyone, we'll be actually building something soon :)

[bossfab]

That's cool. I'm currently hoarding bits for a similar thing for my daughter.

Will be watching with interest.

[steah]

I just have a question before we butcher our bike, we had a thought before ripping it apart, would it not make sense to buy something like a reliant kitten? On a ladder frame and pretty much nothing is mounted to the shell? Its just a case of pull it off and have a running rolling chassis? If so? Does anyone have one? Or similar?

[bossfab]

The thing with using the chassis from another car is that chassis was designed for that car. I spent years trying to make a discovery frame fit my needs and eventually gave in and made my own.

It is far easeyer to make a race car chassis to fit around your parts than your parts to fit around your chassis.......and then make it into a race car. I assume you would want it as low as possible with some big wheels, well that would mean you would have to raise your lower wishbone past the chassis centre line which you probably couldn't do on the reliant chassis without building above it, doing that would keep your wishbones flat/parallel to each other which makes it far easeyer to determine stress points and there is more versatility in adjusting the suspension and steering

If you want to run a rear axle and not indi I would imagine you would have to rake the chassis quite a bit aswell. I have a 4-link calculator I could send you if that's what you wanted to do, it determines bump steer, anti squat, roll over centre radius and aload of other stuff I can't remember that makes your car handle well

Edited by bossfab, 07 August 2014 - 04:21 PM.

[steah]

It wasjust the fact we saw a youtube vid of an r1 powered one and thought 'ooh ill have me some of that!' Haha, search 'naked r1 reliant kitten'...

but otherwise we thought even with no modification, the chassis and engine as is, it would be more or less an oversized, geared go kart, for atm 2 reasons, teaching my brother how to drive without him ruining my beloved mini, and just a nit of fun as it weighs nothing and we have a feild, so I saw that as roughly 200quid for something that is more than worth that in learning, fun and the fact we've given up with the road legal idea

[bossfab]

Road legal loosely translated means less fun.

Go for it

[dprac1ng]

Been doing a bit of thinking. You could make it like one of the older F1 cars, that had so much downforce they became illegal. Basically the whole car is a wing. High  downforce, low drag. Any engine will power that.

[steah]

Well we might throw a body on it, but atm we just want to be able to drive something that we dont mind knocking a few times haha

[bossfab]

Build a spider (the thing in the video) there is about 200quid in the chassis and the plans are online, there as expensive as you want them to be. Old transverse auto engine and some landrover axles your probibly looking at 700. Then you get fancy with flash wheels and tyres.

[steah]

Your video or the one Itold you to search? Sorry haha, do you have a link to some plans?

[bossfab]

The one I posted. I have boult one with a friend to this spec

http://www.yellowspider.se

The fag packet diagrams and cutting lists are on there somewhere, It's all Swedish.

All in Dave's one owes him about 4k and that is a competitive truck, like I say you could probably do it for less than that if it wasn't up to a competition spec. Possibly 1k for the finished article if you played your cards right on eblag and used evereything from the donor car(must be auto)