Motorhead question

I've long wondered about reversing a 4WD Subaru engine and drive-train to make a mid-engined 4WD. The centre of gravity is very low, and there is a plethora of boost options.

Not very easy to show off a mid engine, but ok.

CH

Any particular brand or lack of electronics to deal with?

Not many that are really good looking. The old iron duke 2.5 had some really hot parts available that could get you 250-300 hp out of them as Pontiac super duty engines.

As far as making the body, why not look at some of the body kits out there for the kit cars. Or go take a few courses from someone like

I could buy a body but I want to make my own. I may indeed take some classes and appreciate your link. Several years ago I visited a guy in Washington State who was building a land speed record attempting car. I don't know if he ever took it out to the salt flats but I do know that the car was quite impressive. He not only built the engines but also the complete car. It was long and narrow, a typical shape for speed records. The wheels were so close to each other that they almost appeared to be single wheels, also typical. He had done all the body panels himself and had all the sheet metal tools to do the work. He demonstrated a shrinker, which I thought was a really cool device. He showed us how shrinking an edge started the shape of a fender. He showed us other stuff too so the visit to his garage was great fun and really inspiring. Eric

Drive train out of an MR-2?

Jon

Maybe the Suzuki Hayabusa engine. See if it suits your needs:

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. <g> As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as they used to be.

Turbo lag is not something that most sports car enthusiasts take lightly. It's fine for other types of driving.

I loved the Lancia Stratos, BTW, although it was a bit fierce for me. I got to drive one years ago but it would have taken some time to get used to it. It's too bad that FIAT won't sell Lancias outside of Italy anymore, but they racked up a pretty bad reputation over here during the short time they were sold in N.A.

While I know that Lancia pulled out to the UK years ago largely due to the Beta rust fiasco I don't think they ever pulled out of Europe as a whole as when I've been on the continent I've seen plenty of much newer Lancias driving about. Lancia were still selling the Deltas in the UK but that may have been the last model they sold here apart from the odd Gamma and Thema. I read recently that the Alfasud was made with Russian steel so maybe the same stuff that Lancia used, Alfa Romeo still sell here but I guess better made than in the old days.

Here's the story on Lancia as of today:

They've made another push with Alfa Romeo in the US over the past year. When I was in the advertising business they were my client for a short while, just before they pulled out again. They come, they go.

I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard to get and expensive. Eric

Have a look at the modern Morgan 3 wheeler, that apparently uses a US sourced V twin engine similar to the Harley Davidson mated to a Mazda gearbox

Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine was OHC see

No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings <g>). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneered the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress

Not entirely true. Taxes went up EXTREMELY high for older vehicles, which is what put the JDM engines on the american market. You COULD continue driving a 20 year old car with 60000 miles on it, but IT COST BIG TIME!!!!

The engine from a Pontiac Solstice might be a good fit - - - (or Saturn Sky?) A friend is putting an ecotec in a Morris Minor - - - that has proven to be challenging being it was a FWD engine - wishes now he had waited for the Solstice to hit the market before he started the project - - -

Saw lots of them in Greece last week - - -

A Toyota 3tg would be nice - or a twin-cam ford Escort or Zetec from a ZX2. The 3TG is hard to find over here but was a HOT engine in the Celoca RT series rallye cars - - -1600cc of DYNAMITE