I'm living in the netherlands and i want to built a left hand drive MK with a bike engine. But bike engines are not straight in the car so when i sit on the left and the engine is hanging on to the left the weight on the left of the car is larger. Would that be a problem with a roadgoing car ? Does anyone have experience with this ?
Why not mount the engine on the right side, and use a transfer chain and prop bearing?
No, that's not what i want.
It makes the car heavier because of the extra parts. The standard enginemounts from martin Keenan wont't fit to. I would have to weld a complete
new enginemount.
I can't see another way of doing it. The extra weight of the chain and bearing couldn't be more than a couple of kilos, tops.
As for making new engine mounts, if you can weld a chassis together, or even modify a bought one to left hand drive, you should be able to make the
new mounts with a bag over your head.
They'll take no longer than 30 minutes to make.
If you find an alternative method of moving the engine across, post it on this forum, I'm sure some of the Yanks would be interested.
Marco,
Some other people have spoken about this on other threads, but have you considered a bike with shaft drive?
As the engine sits in the bike, the shaft is on the left. Therefore in the car, put the shaft in the centre, and the engine then sits to the
right.
There are all the BMW engines, Yamaha FJR1300, Yamaha VMax, or even a Diversion if you don't mind a little less power!?
Just a thought, what do you think?
Adam.
how 'bout an extra universal joint at the point where the tranny tunnel starts getting wider? you could possibly make up a Z-shaped propshaft.
This would also mean making new and more mounts (eng. and prop)
also not sure about U-joint life expectancy...
could you not tilt the engine up more and put a bulge in the bonnet to try and centre the engine a bit more? guess this'd only be possible on an
injectino engine as carbs would want to be level.
otherwise the afforementioned modified prop sounds good to me.
Ned.
Another option is;
Make it right hand drive.
Gets my vote as well.
We had it right in the U.K. all along, even all those years ago we could foresee problems building cars with the steering wheel on the wrong
side.
.
yours, Pete.
[Edited on 2/9/03 by Peteff]
You could always try one of the "V" configuration engines (eg Pan Euro or SP1) as they wont hang quite so much on the left as the straight
fours do.
Cheers
Jim
adampage:
quote:The BMWs have right-side drive shafts, and are very wide being a boxer design.
There are all the BMW engines...
I didn't know the shaft was on the right. Cool, could use them here then! Would look great with one exhaust each side!
I was thinking of the flat 4 engines (K-series, I think) which aren't so wide and are used in cars like the ADR1000, and so on. Also
they're more powerful than the boxers.
Adam.
The K1100/1200 apeal to me. There's a firm that specialize in tuning them and fitting turbos; 275hp for street and 312 hp for racing.
Oké, thanks for all your help. I think i go for a right hand drive.
They are all boxer engines. It just means the flat configuration with opposed pistons. I had an Alfasud with the same setup, beautiful engine.
yours, Pete.
Peteff:
quote:The K Series are an in-line 4 laid down. They're not a horizontally opposed boxer engine.
They are all boxer engines.
quote:
Originally posted by Rorty
Peteff:
quote:The K Series are an in-line 4 laid down. They're not a horizontally opposed boxer engine.
They are all boxer engines.
Marco,
Maybe you should check out Hasselier motoren, the importer of MK in the Netherlands. They seem to have a LHD blackbird engined MK in their showroom
according to their site.
http://www.haselier.nl/
I live in Belgium and am seriously considering a BEC MK as well
I won't pay them a visit until my garage is finished, the temptation to buy one if I would, could be too high 
Hello Rorty,
Could you please post a link for that firm tuning BMW K engines?
Thank you
Ted
They are not BMW engines at all, they are Peugeot engines and are a car engine laid on its side. Should be right for a car 'cos that's where
it came from.
yours, Pete.
Ted, I have the URL in my favourites, but as I can't remember the name of the engineering firm building the cars, I can't find
it.
Thet're a British company from memory. Anyone else here remember their name?