Having got approval for my project, from her who wears the (financial) trousers, and told that the budget is coming entirely out of my own pocket I have started to plan the build. It has occoured to me though that I could combine this with a long standing dream of mine to own a V8!!!!!! I know that the rover unit can be mounted to a Renault box and used in the mid position. Is this difficult? or expensive? or just plain mad! I have been donated a G reg Civic which I plan to cut the front and back out of and fit new space frames front and rear. My thought is that this will give me a head start as the, lighting, loom and front bulkhead will be complete from the off. The civic has power assisted steering and servo assisted brakes that I should be able to use as they are fitted, albeit with new calipers and disks, perhaps? The donor will also provide doors and stuff, but I will have to cut the roof off and make new panels as it really is not a good looking car!! Am I mad or just insane? Any feedback greatfully receved before I invest in a world of pain and extra hassle.

Mad
Your car will only be as good as the worst bit,which strikes me as being the bit in the middle.
HTH
Ian

[Edited on 21/7/03 by robinbastd]

Yes Jon- totally nuts, no valid reason to spend so much time and money on heavily modifying a poor unsuspecting Civic.

All the more reason to do then!! GO FOR IT- but leave the body as stock as possible. Ull be laughed at when the traffic lights are red- but not when they go green!

ATB

chris

First off - Congratulations! You have just made it past the most difficult part.

Now back to reality... uhhhh... What you describe sounds like an extremely difficult process. It may on the surface seem like a quick and simple way to get to the end of your project. But I am sure that after you get deep into the project you will find that the hardest part in taking your approach will be dealing with the limitations of the original car. I think you may spend more time trying to figure out how to frankenstein it all together than if you just had a clean slate.

However, your basic idea has merit. IMO if you want to use the stock suspension and steering bits to save time, energy, brain drain, whatever, what you could do is remove the suspension from the original car and duplicate the existing car-side mounting points onto a solid fixture. Then you can transfer those mounting points to brackets and build a chassis of your own design starting from that. I think it will end up lighter and stronger and your buildtime will go smoother and be cheaper in the long run.

What I found is that a cheap way to engineer a stronger frame is to build a few diferent balsa models of your frame and test them by twisting them to see where they are weakest.

Congrats again! It's a lot of fun to build your own car, and very rewarding.

Absolute Luny!

Welcome to the club!

Terry

As this is my first exploration into the world of welding and other car building pursuits I am trying to keep it as simple as possible. The thought of trying to design a complete chassis from scratch, including doors etc, fills me with great dread. That is the reason for adapting a chassis with all that done for me. I believe that I could manage the front and rear spaceframe and engine mounts etc but more than that on my first attempt? The idea of fitting a V8 may well surcome to the financial realities of life, but it remains the aspiration. Has anyone done it? and could advise on difficulty?

As this is my first exploration into the world of welding and other car building pursuits I am trying to keep it as simple as possible. The thought of trying to design a complete chassis from scratch, including doors etc, fills me with great dread. That is the reason for adapting a chassis with all that done for me. I believe that I could manage the front and rear spaceframe and engine mounts etc but more than that on my first attempt? The idea of fitting a V8 may well surcome to the financial realities of life, but it remains the aspiration. Has anyone done it? and could advise on difficulty?

If you are going to use a unibody of an existing car I would suggest you don't start cutting the roof off etc. The structural integrity goes to hell if you start cutting into the chassis. Better to to find a body you like and make a midy out of it. Obviously you can change fenders/bumpers/hood if you want. The other option is to find a car with a ladder type chassis you like and take the body of that. Being non stressed you can hack away to you hearts content and put it on a custom frame.