mikuni

Looks so slippery, fun in a RWD though.

Yes! But wait, we need to split this thread so that everyone else can see the pictures and information too. I'll pull your posts from this thread Eddie, and chuck up a link for you to follow shortly. edit: link here!

It appears he has started at the end and is now slowly telling us the story to how he got there. Kind of like the starwars prequels or whatever they call them.

http://www.pararubber.co.nz/product.php?id_product=393 Can also buy door seal there, but the above is just a boot seal. With a bonnet that can move around a bit it's probably going to be the best option, but there is another option but I can't find it in a quick search. It is more heat resistant, which is the only thing I'd be concerned about with the door/boot seal, though it shouldn't be getting too hot with the cool flow of air in there.

And bam. New sig. I like your style man. Not feeling the Mazda 6, but I guess there's one of those guys in every group.

Para has exactly the thing you are after. I looked into it for a door seal but it wasn't suitable. How did you join the alloy in the end, just rivets?

I don't really like the idea of spraying a hot radiator with cold water, considering the possibility that it could crack from the thermal shock created. An intercooler sits at a more moderate and stablised temperature, usually you can touch them, so the thermal shock in that case isn't as much when sprayed. How wide can you go with the radiator? I just received an SW20 one and it fits perfectly between the "chassis rails" of my car and is nice and low, meaning I should be able to draw cool intake air from above it. I actually think it's the perfect solution in my case, but obviously not if it doesn't fit.

Looks great man. Your wheels look uncannily similar to a user from this forums wheels.

I actually thought about that too, but just using a VW bug or kombi box, but yeah thats a bit of a crazy idea really. Issue is if you move the weight too far back from the axles you actually get no weight over them and have no traction - a FWD car with a 40/60 weight distribution toward the rear

^ those things sit so far back and on such a nice lean it probably makes what I'm trying to do redundant anyway, but yeah, missing the point slightly richie. I want to have the driveshafts at the front of the engine, for weight distribution purposes, but more so to reduce the CV angle so I can run it super touring slammed. This is the main reason I'm trying so hard to get the driveshafts at the front, because with the engine in normal configuration the driveshafts are on about a 30° vertical angle and can't give me much caster when coming from behind the block.

Yah, had my eye on that $1 reserve set up already. It would be awesome to get it with the shifter, cables and axles. Will no doubt go for a bit, but at least I'll have an H22A I can flick on to recoup costs. Markku, flipping the crownwheel will never work in a transverse FWD box unfortunately, as it has no 90° angle to the final drive. In an RWD diff you can flip the crown wheel from left to right which means it will drive off the other side of the drive gear - the opposite direction. In a FWD you have 2 shafts and a final drive, the first shaft goes with the engine, the second opposite and the final drive the same direction as original, no matter what you drive it from. The only way to change this is to add an idle gear, which I did consider but would be far to costly, difficult and weak. That was the very thread I was looking at a while ago regarding spinning a gearbox backwards. I had the details a bit mixed up but it almost seems like one of those things that shouldn't really work in principal, but can. The other thing is, ifs any FWD gearbox is over engingeered I'd imagine it would be a Honda one, so fingers crossed I guess. If the helical thing becomes a real issue then perhaps I could hunt down a second hand straight cut set. You can pick them up cheap for Opel boxes I've found, not so sure on Hondas but I'd imagine they would be the same if not cheaper/easier to find.

I found a build on that car after it won the SS2000 to try and get some inspiration on setup etc. It's quite nicely put together but the tomcat box doesn't seem to offer any real advantages, other than perhaps ratios. He's apparently looking to move back to a Honda gearbox. All good man, I'm a bit surprised people are reading this thread really, considering it's lack of relevance to OS. But bringing that up again got me thinking again anyway. I'm now considering trying to mate an H22A gearbox up to my Opel engine and still moving it back, but keeping the orientation the same. Obviously I won't get the benefit of having the exhaust/intake swap sides, but it could be a cheap-ish way of testing the gearbox going backwards, without committing to a K20A/F20C. If it works, then later on down the track when funds allow I could upgrade to a Honda engine (and change the gearbox at the same time). The gearboxes aren't actually too far away bell housing wise. Opel F20 gearbox Honda M2J5 gearbox I guess the images above help explain what I'm trying to do the best, with the diff on the opposite side of each gearbox. I'm going to see if I can hunt down a cheap gearbox to see how far away it is from fitting. The biggest issue aside from the bell housing pattern might be the length, as they look quite large. If it's vaguely close I'll give it a crack, if not I might still give it a crack, or perhaps revert to plan C, which I haven't come up with yet. Little bit of progress, slowly starting to cobble it back together. Thanks to Markku for the trailer guard and the idea, I'm part of the way through putting these in. First welding I've ever done, but it's not going too bad. Nothing quite like learning on the finished product! Gap Guard Weld Again

That would probably be the best bet. I'd already thrown that idea around a little further up the page, but obviously spinning a gearbox backwards would be the biggest unknown. If anyone can find any info on spinning gearboxes backwards, particularly with Hondas, I'd be interested to read up on it. Agreed. It would be the ultimate to get a k or F series Honda engine in there. Reliable high NA horsepower, in a relatively unstressed motor. Of course I'd rather have an Opel engine under the bonnet, but realistically they will never compete, being 25+ year old technology. Agree. It's cool throwing all these ideas around and seeing what input comes back. The radiators are certainly pretty impressive in terms of core size and surface area, so I wouldn't be surprised if the cooling is very efficient. But you're probably correct in the second statement - the metal pipes running the length of the car would certainly dissipate a fair amount of heat.I think I'll just run the SW20 radiator with no fans and then have the fans mounted on an external assembly that can be powered by a relay in the car or off an external battery, for times when the car is stationary.

A Mitsubishi box would allow me to turn the engine around, but driveshafts will still be at the rear on the engine bay Plus even Phil admits that Mitsi boxes are a little bit clunky and smelly. This. Will just jam it all together and go racing while I coin another stupid idea to attempt!

I did heaps of research on it a while back - so hard to find anything on as the key words are generic and no one does stupid things like this. I managed to find 2 examples where people had tried it and it worked, an obscure British car and some old Audi from memory. One was in a kit car or something and the other was just a 5 speed to replace the feeble 3 or 4 speed factory box. Ofcourse, this means nothing to confirm that a Honda gearbox will also work the same way, but the basic principle worked. The splash oiling worked and also the reversed thrust loading, which are the two main concerns. Reversed helical cut gears didn't matter, nor syncromesh, but if it did a straight cut box could be an (expensive) option. Only problem is, to know for sure whether it will work the only real way to test it is to try it, and that would be an extremely costly excercise - probably not worth it for the risk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any citroen or pug transverse engines have gearboxes that output at the front of the engine bay? (they're all at the rear of the block still?)

Theres several advantages to doing it but like you say Markku, it's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen. It was just something I've been wanting to do for a few years now and I jumped at the opportunity, if it was going to be straight forward. As it's not, I'll now revert to the original plan. The biggest thing really was the driveshaft/CV angles, as these are very ugly with the engine sitting in the original location. Another idea that just popped into my head is running a K20A engine with an H22A gearbox spinning backwards. I won't turn the engine around, so the intake will still be at the front but the gearbox will be turned 180°, putting the output at the front of the engine also. It should actually drive the right direction too, being that the gearbox is being driven backwards. All makes sense in my head, but obviously it will be expensive to set up and might cause issues with rotating the gearbox in a reverse direction.

Open to suggestions definitely. I could run an H22A or B series gearbox backwards, but to make the driveshafts come out the front I need to leave the engine in it's original orientation. Meaning the intake on the rear, exhaust out the front, which I want to avoid. Honda K20A and F20C series now run clockwise, so no advantage over the factory Opel box. I had thought about Rover K series also, but I think that spins the conventional way? Either way, I think spinning a gearbox backwards may introdue a new raft of issues, so might put this idea on the back burner for a little while at this stage

An entire SW20 carries 13.6l of coolant, but that includes the engine and all the piping to the back/front of the car. The radiator itself holds less than 2l of coolant. The radiator is 5.6kg, so 7.5ish kg's spread wide and low in the front of the engine bay is a small price to pay to have an efficient cooling system. I'll consider upgrading to an alloy one down the track if it really bothers me. In more important/sad news. I've been made aware that conventional FWD gearboxes function differently to what I had assumed. Unfortunately this means that my idea of simply flipping the crown wheel in the differential housing won't work as it would in a RWD. I had a feeling it was too easy to be true! So this just means I'll have to revert back to a conventional drive layout to get the car on the road sooner while I coin a new solution to the issue/save up heaps of coins for a lush gearbox.

I don't claim to be anything other than shit at photoshopping, but I think it doesn't suit two tone. Just looks like an RVR/Forester or something All white please.

You don't want a front hub, they're to complex with steering etc. If you want to do it that way, you want a rear hub from a FWD car. Something from a Golf or early Vectra would work? Actually, re-reading what you wrote I see you are meaning the front pivot point of the trailing arm? That might be difficult. If you want to do that type of thing I'd say you'd be better to just grab a cheap IRS subframe from a FWD car and bolt that in. Do it so that it runs true at normal driving height and then it can let the camber and toe go all up the cack when it gets dropped to the floor - it doesn't really matter. Something like what I call "flappy trailing arm" but I think the correct term is semi-trailing arm is what I'd recommend. That way all the pivot points and engineering has already been taken care of - it's just bolt it in with the bags, add some shocks and you are away laughing.

Problem with bagged leaf is you really still need a beam between the two sides.

Awesome news on the cert, congrats. It's come a long way, that's for sure.

Go to Coby on 21 Euclid Ave in Te Rapa and get a price. The GC dude from the Te Rapa Muffler shop has gone there. He does nice work and usually charges base fee for what you get done. An hour or an hour and a half is actually quite a lot of work on an exhaust though, so perhaps those prices around $100 aren't too bad? I'd just go with Coby though, they are GC's and do nice work. You could say the dude with Opels sent you, but he probably won't remember me

I did consider it, but quite a lot more work for minimal, if any gain. I think with the weight of the pipes and the additional coolant required I'd probably be taking a step backwards. I'm getting an SW20 radiator, which is low and wide and I'll probably tilt it back to get the weight lower again. It's a good compromise I think and being that it's designed to cool a 3S-GTE it should be more than enough for an NA 2 litre, even when working pretty hard. Keen to draw up a concept of what I want to do with this car once you've finished the Fraser?

Certain cars can still be under stupidly high preload with the lower arm at maximum droop, so you should always be prepared for this. Low springs is definitely the cheapest and easiest way forward for this, but coilovers would surely be do-able if you just ran a top hat that distributed the load to the upper spring seat rather than the top shock mount.