That home made sports car

Well, doors do dictate that you must have a little more than a hard top. Needs to be a full cage of some kind in order to maintain rigidity. On the car shows they always bitch and whine about how the convertible version of a high end sports car or super car has to much flex and is sloppy and harder to control, blah blah blah...

I thought it might be fun to use a modern Jeep engine and drive train for a sports car build. Obviously gearing would need to change, but horsepower is more than adequate. With the right suspension you could spend an afternoon just passing people on the inside lane on a roundabout for fun.

Don't know where you are, but you will want to check into what is involved in getting a VIN number and insurance. Here in Ontario getting a VIN isn't TOO onerous, but geting insurance is pretty close to impossible for a "home-built" car. A "kit car" is a lot easier on both counts. Starting with a "donor car" and "modifying " it is a lot easier. I'd consider "modifying" an MX5 Miata. It's got a sweet powerplant and decent suspension. It's designed with doors and you can run open or with a roof. Parts to convert to coil-over suspension are readily available. Performance parts are readily available. Replace everything except the engine, running gear, and cowl and you still have an MX5 with a VIN. Take off the sheet metal, build a tube frame to give it strength with less weight and skin it in aluminum or carbon fiber (or whatever), install cycle fenders, even narrow the cowl if you want. The insurance company will ask if it has been "modified for speed" and you will likely have to answer to the affirmative, which WILL in all likelihood raise your rates a bit. Keep enough Mazda parts that you can still (somewhat) legitimately call it a Miata - - - -

Drive train of a Jeep has WAY too much mass for a good handling sports car - - - -

My brother started to build a sports car years ago - He was going to call it an XR12 ( as in Ex R12 - or used to be an R12)- using the front of an R12 Renault bolted to the back of a tub with the front a arm suspension from a vauxhall? - can't remember for sure, on the front. It was going to weigh in just over 1100 lbs - and with a "gordini-ized" Renault 12 1300 cc engine ( about 53HP stock, but easy to get over 85 HPout of it) or a real Gordini 1500 (111 HP stock and well over 150 easily released) it would have been QUICK!!!! Our 2100 lb R12 Rallye car with the stock 53 HP engine managed to place as high as second in the regional navigation rallye series when it was about 8 years old - The unsprung weight on the 12 was VERY low and it had an incredible suspension travel.

Another friend built a very lightweight rebodied Fiero with a 3.8 liter supercharged Bonneville engine in it.

Or look into the DF Goblin kit car -- - - Uses a Chevy Cobalt as a donor - and being a Kit Car you get a VIN. A street Goblin can be pretty quick. The stage 1 and stage 2 kits run about $6000 combined and get you a running chassis with no body panels, interior lights, etc - which you can fabricate to your liking or buy the stage 3 kit in several formats.

Isn't that basically what Lotus did with the early Europa? Except it was an R16 engine, before they built a suitable engine themselves.

CH

Basically yes.

I have long wondered whether it would be possible to turn around a Subaru engine like that, to make a mid-engined all-wheel drive race car. The boxer has such a low CoG.

Does anyone know if this could be done with a Subaru diff?

CH

easier to get a reverse rotation camshaft

Id agree with this (kit+) approach, I had two Lotus back in the day, (11 and Elite) and I also built up a Kit car (Ginetta G15) in a week-end! I would not build from scratch, you may never finish to enjoy it! The 11 had a very thin Al body all butt gas welded and hand rolled, I would never do enough to make a job that perfect even though welding Al with modern welders is a lot easier, mastering the English wheel is quite something else! C+

The gear teeth would be driven in the opposite direction too. Does that matter?

I've seen a Subaru boxer engine fitted into a motorcycle.

Last time I checked it is not that difficult to get a VIN in Washington State on a home built car. There are specialty insurance companies that offer insurance for quite reasonable rates on home built cars. The State Patrol requires reciepts of EVERYTHING bought to make the car, whether scratch built, modified, or kit. This is to help prevent thefts. Even a trailer has to meet these conditions. I do plan to start with a donor car as this is easier in many ways. Eric

I'm pretty good at raising metal but all I've really worked with is aluminum, copper, German silver, and silver. A body is big and will take lots more work, building bucks and the like, but I have a feel for metal and am good at working it. I may not go the English Wheel route. I may just stick to hammer forming and stretchers and shrinkers. Eric

A mate has a Caterham 7 and the metal working and forming is kept pretty simple if you go with that design, most of the panels are flat or simple curves. At least one episode of IIRC 'Wheeler Dealers' has a bit on the Caterham and how they form some details such as the rolled edge around the rear and that is done in situ around the frame. May be available on Youtube , I haven't looked. His has the larger wings which generate lift at higher speeds, the Jaguar SS100 sports car suffered the same and had similar wings, he hasn't swapped to the more tyre hugging cycle wings yet but he has mentioned he may but he generally doesn't drive it that far or fast.

Likely some effect, but you aren't likely going to attempt to drive it

Get the "locost" builder's manual. It qualifies as a "kit built" even if you modify the heck out of it. But only if you own an original of the book - the "license" to build, if you want. Registers as a "locost"

"Italian" coachwork, not "British" in other words. A wooden stick and a leather bag full of sand, a shelf full of hammers and dollies, and a big "swear jar". There will always be enough money in the jar to buy the next part you need !!!!!

If the doors are incorporated into the frame, as part of the frame, it would help a lot. I have been thinking a lot about how this can be done. An ideal space frame should only be loaded in tension or compression and this means that every joint could be loose, just a pin through a hole, and the frame would work. A way to envision this would be to imagine a rectangle made from rods, each of which has a eye at each end for a pin. Connecting the 4 rods with a pin at each corner would result in a frame that could easily be deformed by pushing at any corner. But then add a diagonal connected with the same pins through the same eyes and the frame becomes stiff. Welds and gussets add strength but the real strength comes from triangulating the frame. So maybe there is a practical way for a door to latch with some sort of tapered pin to give a no slop fit. I'm still thinking about it. Eric