Hi,

I'm considering building a Locost car with a MG XPower competiton engine, now from the book i understand that the engine needs to be front mounted with rear wheel drive.

Now from how i understand it from reading on these forums I have on option and that is to mid mount the engine.
Is it also an option to mount the engine in the front and have it as front wheel drive?

Any help you guys could give would be much appricated or any link too would also be helpful.

I thank you all in advance.

hi mate.

most people prefer RWD for sports cars, but im sure if you really wanted you could make a FWD locost. It would be a lot of effort though and you'd have to completely change the front end of the car. In fact, it wouldnt end up looking like a 7 replica. Ive seen pictures of a mid engined 7 with the proportions changed a bit.

Best bet for a standard 7 though is front engined rear drive. If your MG engine is from a FWD car, you would have to get a RWD gearbox to fit it.

I guess it is possilbe that your MG engine may fit an LT77 (the one they fitted to the SD1 rovers) gearbox.


That does tend to be the problem nowadays: almost all modern cars are FWD, which is a pain cos the gearboxes are totally useless for a 7. BMW gearboxes (mostly made by Getrag) are the business, but BMW engines, whilst being one ofthe best out there for tintops, are mostly a little on the heavy side for a 7, and they are designed to be canted over towards the exhaust side by about 15 degrees or so, which means that the front of the cylinder head gets very close to the offside upper chassis rail.

see if a rover Gbox fits it...

HTH.

ED.

The XPower will be a K Series engine - as fitted in Caterhams and the like...so bellhousing for Ford gearboxes are available, or you can just order a hugely expensive Quaife gearbox...depends on your wallet size

Plus, the 6 cylinder M power engines (whilst they come with throttle bodies as standard and make a fabulous howl all the way to the redline) are bl**dy heavy.

230 - 250 kgs, mainly due to the absolutely bulletproof bottom end. The crankshafts make the pinto crank look rather silly in its construction.

Ed.

Hi Everyone thanks for all the help. The company I run is looking at building and selling these cars to racers and the general public so we're looking at a number of options for the prototype. We're going to be looking for people to act as consultants so if you intrested drop me an email at james@team-st-george.co.uk