Hi everyone,

This is my first post, and i have a couple of questions...

I am planning to build a Mid engined roadster, using a Honda 1.6 VTEC, engine. I have most of the details sorted out (in my head at least). However, i cant for the life of me work out a good way to connect the gear stick up; as the shift pin, will be sticking out towards the back of the car. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

Secondly, I live in Bristol, does anyone know a good place to get the material i need for my chassis?

Cheers,
Scott.

you could use cables to get round the back

a bellcrank and rod type arrangement? don't know the design you have inmind or the layout of the engine/gearbox & restraints etc.

are you thinking of having the gearlever on the left a la road car or right a la single seater/prototype racer?

Ned.

Yes, cables make it easy...check out mine and Steve Graber's site (linked from my links page)...both based on MR2 also check KB's Kimini which is Honda based.....then look at a few FWD cable gear linkages at a breakers...

Should get some ideas from all that...

my site

I'm building the mid-engine Mini using a Honda Prelude drivetrain.

I used cables end to end, using a heavily modified Honda shift mechanism to get the "up/down/left/right" correct. I recently saw a kit car that uses a combination of cables and rods. They used a unmodified shifter with rods back to just ahead of the engine where they connected to cables. Here, they used a bellcrank to mechanically correct it's travel direction, then the cables continue on to the tranny. It's an interesting approach... you can use a stock shifter without sinking tons of time into it like I did. The downside is increased play that the additional pivots introduce. THAT would drive me nuts over time, knowing the free play *could* have been eliminated had I taken the time to avoid bellcranks... so I did avoid them. Of course to be fair, it never occured to me to use rods in the first place...

The cable/bellcrank solution is used on the "Attack" kit car.

[Edited on 27/2/04 by kb58]

Try looking at Sylvas website - some pictures there of how they do it on the Mojo.

Cheers folks,

I can tell this is going to be one of those things that will keep me thinking for ages, and as soon as i settle on an idea, i will come accross a new way of doing things!

Scott.