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Opel Vectra Track Car


mikuni

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What would be supreme would be a K20A with the engine on the drivers side mounted to an H22A box which would give 5 forward gears and have the driveshafts at the front.. (yes the gearbox would be "driven" backwards). The engine would have the sweet lean on and have the intake at the front. But man you would need to have the engine sitting a looonnngg way back...

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.

k20 engines are fucking sweet too.

Yanks are pushing the 2Ls up around 300whp NA and the 2.4+s over 400whp

Such sweet motors

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.
Loving some outside the square thinking going on here, and some of the trial/error research etc going on.
Agree. It's cool throwing all these ideas around and seeing what input comes back.
In terms of SW20 radiator cooling capacity... I ran an SW20 with no radiator fans running, both on the track and driving around on the road, temperature never climbed above half way.

Although I'm not sure if that's more testament to the thermal mass of the large amount of coolant, or the cooling capacity of the radiator.

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.

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Must have missed the mention of the k20/h22a discussion, sorry for the echo.. :o

What about an evo gearbox? Dont some of those run the engine on passenger side and the motor runs clockwise. So the difference must be in the gearbox.

May have been covered on the previous page, but the evo 1-3's have a 4 shaft layout in the box and the 4-9's have a 3 shaft layout. Neither will Werk to the intended plan unless you want to go real fast backwards.

you could copy that dude in ss2000 running the civic - F20C + tricked up 220 tomcat transmission. sure it's not reverse mounted but it's a pretty special package none the less..

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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.

Must have missed the mention of the k20/h22a discussion, sorry for the echo.. :o

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

f20gearbox.jpg

Honda M2J5 gearbox

m2j5gearbox.jpg

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! :D

Gap

DSC02040.jpg

Guard

DSC02042.jpg

Weld

DSC02046.jpg

Again

DSC02049.jpg

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:P looks familiar! Make sure to do a lap join when you panel it in.

Thinking about spinning a gearbox backwards - would it try to force the gears apart since the helix is reversed? Helical gears (like a RWD diff) drive "over" each other and get tighter with more load. If you were spinning backwards it might mean tightening up the back lash.

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I guess most fwd boxes will used the crown wheel to do the majority of the splash lubrication, if you were worried i reckon a simple trans cooler pump could be used to circulate the oil..

Thrust loads- if the main shaft is located at each end with a roller bearing, then it probably only has some form of circlip /retaining ring preventing thrust loads, weather you load up one side or the other side of the retaining method should not be a huge consequence..

Availability- There should be H22 powered pooloodes at pick a part from time to time.. hey even complete engine and boxes can be had at reasonable prices on the 'tard

such as this dollar reserve deal - which looks good as it comes with shifter gear.. and some CV's etc..

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/car-par ... 388260.htm

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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.

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What would be supreme would be a K20A with the engine on the drivers side mounted to an H22A box which would give 5 forward gears and have the driveshafts at the front.. (yes the gearbox would be "driven" backwards). The engine would have the sweet lean on and have the intake at the front. But man you would need to have the engine sitting a looonnngg way back...

K20A's are already on the drivers side, spin the right way, have an intake on the front and have a great 6 speed gearbox with them...

htup_0808_02_z+acura_rsx_dc5+engine_View.jpg

Or am I missing something?

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^ 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.

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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 :lol:

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Are there any rules for ss2000 saying the forward most sparkplug has to be level with or infront of the axle line? Or is that maybe another class

EDIT: Can't remember if you are building it for ss2000 or not?

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  • 3 weeks later...

had an idea but hangover is making processing it in your situation hard.

MR-S have forward facing inatke 1zz.

would one of thse boxes work? will still result in flipping the box around, 5 reverse gears though amiright?

2984_3lo.jpg

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Yup...its the same setup as a 1zz/2zz ib a fwd engine bay...so you'd end up as you say with 5 reverse gears unless the toyota c series box is made aby differently to the opel and can spin the wheel as per brads original intention/still running gears the opposite direction to normal

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