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Which front mounted engine to use?
tegwin - 23/12/07 at 10:56 AM

My first post in the Midi forum....(The start of something expensive!)

In another thread someone mentioned that you could fit any front wheel drive engine to the middle of a kit car...

Because I am a big V-Dub fan im leaning towards the 1.8T or from the golf/TT....

But...

If you were able to choose any front wheel drive engine to stick in the middle of a kit car which would you choose and why?

My criteria are:
*As cheap as possible (The golf engine is around £300 complete)
*Plenty of tuning parts and support for that engine (Again the golf engine has lots of potential)
*Easy to mount in the middle
*Reliable
*And in the words of Sir Clarckson... it must have POWER

[Edited on 23/12/07 by tegwin]

mark chandler - 23/12/07 at 11:12 AM

By mid engine you have two choices as I see it.

Rear engine, transverse, (what you are describing)

Where you lock the stearing sraight ahead and effectively drop the front of a FWD car in the back, aka Atom.

Or mid engine, longitudal aka GT40

Where you use a 'hewland' type gearbox, Audi/VW Renault where the engine sits in line, current porche models.

Both are possible, and have been done on this forum, interesting as you like VW you have the choice of either layout.

So cheap as possible:

Rusty golf for transverse
Rusty Boro/passat for longitudal NB/ this is effectively the porche G/Box as they are all Audi based these days.

Regards Mark

[Edited on 23/12/07 by mark chandler]

tegwin - 23/12/07 at 11:23 AM

Wow...You do learn something new every day...

I thought the passat and bora were transverse front wheel drive

If I bought a V6 passat 4 motion would it be possible to remove the rear transfer box and just use the front dif?

They also do the passat with a 4L w8 engine

[Edited on 23/12/07 by tegwin]

djtom - 23/12/07 at 11:37 AM

You can get a golf 1.8T engine for £300?? Please do share where that's from - when I was looking they were going for the best part of £1k :-(

Tom

Alan B - 23/12/07 at 01:40 PM

quote:
Originally posted by mark chandler
By mid engine you have two choices as I see it.

Rear engine, transverse, (what you are describing)........... aka Atom...........


Sorry but that is NOT rear engined..it IS mid engined...the CoG of the engine is ahead of the rear axle line and therefore mid engined......to be rear engined the CoG must be behind the rear axe line....like the beetle etc.

Yes, the inline style does have a more central CoG but does not make it any more mid-engined...mid engined means "between the wheels but behind the driver"......nothing to do with how central the CoG is..

Alan

Johnmor - 23/12/07 at 03:04 PM

Got to consider this engine in a midi car.

You can buy a complete donor for the price of a VW gasket set.

V6 is alloy , tough, 230hp out of the box and sound fantastic.

There is a complete V6 Alfa 156, for spares on ebay at the moment, bet it wont get £500.

Thats gearbox, engine, ecu and all the rest .



Simon - 23/12/07 at 03:35 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Johnmor
Alfa V6

You can buy a complete donor for the price of a VW gasket set.


Or for the price of a complete gasket set for this engine you can buy a you can buy a decent donor

If you could find a "tiptronic" golf diesel, I reckon that'd be the way to go. Just soundproof the engine bay, and have a loud exhaust and it'll sound fine.

Friend of mine has just (for a laugh, and cos the bou racer exhaust was in a skip) made a stack exhaust in his Golf Caddy pickup (non-turbo diesel).

Sounds quite good, until you move away and here the mechanical racket from the engine

ATB

Simon

[Edited on 23/12/07 by Simon]

Richard Quinn - 23/12/07 at 03:44 PM

If you go for a Vauxhall with an F16, 18 or 20 box, it is quite straight forward to reverse the gear selector input. Worth considering.

RazMan - 23/12/07 at 03:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Alan B
...mid engined means "between the wheels but behind the driver"......nothing to do with how central the CoG is..



quote:
Wikipedia
A mid-engine layout describes the placement of an automobile engine between the rear and front axles. Another term for this is mid-ship, though that term is used mostly by British and Japanese manufacturers.
Traditionally, the term mid-engine has been applied to cars having the engine located between the driver and the rear drive axles. This layout is referred to here as RMR layout. Sports and racing cars typically have this mid-engine layout, as these vehicle's handling characteristics are more important than other features, such as practicality.

When the engine is in front of the driver, but fully behind the front axle line, the layout is sometimes called front-mid-engine instead of the less-specific term front-engine. That layout is referred to here as FMR layout and MF layout


There is quite a fierce debate on some forums arguing the FM (front mid) or RM (rear mid) engined layouts but it all comes down to terminology in the end.

Having said that my V6 comes into the transverse rear mid category (TRM?) and when I build my next project it will be with an in-line engine (prob the Audi V8). Exhaust plumbing can be a challenge with transverse engines - lots of pipes in a restricted space. An inline engine should be easier to turbocharge too.


[Edited on 23-12-07 by RazMan]

RazMan - 23/12/07 at 03:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Simon
If you could find a "tiptronic" golf diesel, I reckon that'd be the way to go. Just soundproof the engine bay, and have a loud exhaust and it'll sound fine.



I think that the Tiptronic box would be very difficult to set up properly as the vehicle weights would be so different and the ECU would need some radical reprogramming (if thats even possible)

The Audi 1.8 is a good choice - apparently they can be tuned to produce 400+ bhp with very little effort.

[Edited on 23-12-07 by RazMan]

Johnmor - 23/12/07 at 04:14 PM

Please!

Does it look a bit like this or maybe its a bit heavier.




nick205 - 23/12/07 at 04:22 PM

the VW Bora is transverse FWD, not longitudinal.

kb58 - 23/12/07 at 04:34 PM

quote:
Originally posted by RazMan


quote:
Wikipedia
A mid-engine layout describes the placement of an automobile engine between the rear and front axles. Another term for this is mid-ship, though that term is used mostly by British and Japanese manufacturers.
Traditionally, the term mid-engine has been applied to cars having the engine located between the driver and the rear drive axles. This layout is referred to here as RMR layout. Sports and racing cars typically have this mid-engine layout, as these vehicle's handling characteristics are more important than other features, such as practicality.

When the engine is in front of the driver, but fully behind the front axle line, the layout is sometimes called front-mid-engine instead of the less-specific term front-engine. That layout is referred to here as FMR layout and MF layout

[Edited on 23-12-07 by RazMan]


I'm almost positive that the purity of the original definition was tampered with by car manufacturers, trying to claim that their front engine (but behind the axle)cars are almost as good as "mid-engine" layouts. Hogwash.

This is very much like Lee Iacoca's (sp?) of how Chysler has "cab-forward" design, much like mid-engine cars do. Yet all they did was push the base of the windshield forward and claim it's the same thing. Marketting BS is all it is.

[Edited on 12/23/07 by kb58]

Ringius - 23/12/07 at 10:54 PM

Hi!

According to the guys on the GT40s forum, it is a bad idea to use the transaxle from a 4WD, due to the fact that the front pair of wheels never get the whole torque when used in the originial setup. Since 2WD transaxles are plentiful, I don't really see the reason for using a 4WD transaxle. They are also, if I remember correctly (IIRC?), a fair bit longer than the 2WD counterpart as well. Audi (not TT/A3) or Passat 1.8T engine with 2WD transaxle and a new turbo can land you at about 300 hp, about what the transaxle can safely handle (according to swedish Audi tuning firm...). The transverserly mounted engines are, according to net wisdom, more difficult to use - can't recall why though.

Merry christmas to you all!

Cheers, Ringius

[Edited on 23/12/07 by Ringius]

cymtriks - 24/12/07 at 10:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by kb58
I'm almost positive that the purity of the original definition was tampered with by car manufacturers, trying to claim that their front engine (but behind the axle)cars are almost as good as "mid-engine" layouts. Hogwash.


The claim is probably true for a road car.

Remember that in most road going MRM designs the transaxle is "input shaft above" which forces a higher CoG. The CoG for a MFM can be lower.

The packaging advantages of not having a drive shaft going past the seats are also partly negated by the fact that most road going designs have a two seat layout with some thing close to being a tunnel down the middle anyway.

One of the advantages of a MRM layout in racing is that you don't need to work out how to get the drive shaft round the driver. Many older racing cars had a high seat with the shaft going under it or had gear trains to move the drive shaft to one side of the cockpit.

Another advantage in racing is that you can play more tunes on where you mount the radiators and on the front aerodynamics. However, again, the road car is probably going to be full width bodywork anyway so the advantages are lessened, though still there.

There are still plenty of sportscars and supercars with front engines around so they can't be that bad.

Back in the eighties Lotus used to say that the Excel wasn't much slower around the Hethel track than the naturally aspirated Esprit despite being a taller and heavier four seater.

So I suppose I'm agreeing, I suspect a lot of the advantages of any layout are hogwash for a road car.

tegwin - 24/12/07 at 11:24 AM

The alfa engine looks quite interesting, but dont alfas have reliability issues? Atleast the VW lump would keep on going until the end of the earth!

Does anyone know....can you mount the v6 passat engine (from the 4 motion version) on the gearbox from the 1.8t passat?

Alan B - 24/12/07 at 04:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by kb58
...........I'm almost positive that the purity of the original definition was tampered with by car manufacturers, trying to claim that their front engine (but behind the axle)cars are almost as good as "mid-engine" layouts....... ..............Marketting BS is all it is.


Pretty much my understanding too KB.....nothing much wrong with the original definition in my opinion..

Alan

mark chandler - 24/12/07 at 11:00 PM

4motion v6 I believe uses the Audi Quattro box, so the engine sits in front of the gearbox.

It is also possible to do away with the rear output on these boxes to make a 'hewland type box, but why bother, just look for an old audi 80 and its sorted as FWD only.

The passets have both types of gearboxes, it all depends upon the model, although I do not know if the bell housing on the 1800 is the same as the v6/v8.

Regards Mark

NB I thought the atom engine sat on top of the gearbox, okay maybe leaning slightly forward but the main engine weight is still very close to the centre line of the axle.

turbospud - 26/12/07 at 06:38 PM

what about the whole of a focus duratec,lightweight alloy block,tunable,plenty about,dont know what the gearboxes are like though

akrallysport - 21/1/08 at 05:48 AM

Rear mid-engine donors that I've considered:

Transverse
1 - most 4-cyl and VR6 VW; I'm also a VW junkie and been that way since the age of 5...
2 - Honda; aftermarket support (in North America) and most engines are tilted forward pushing CofG forward.

About the only thing going against a VW donor, for me, is the fact that most of their 4-cyl are tilted to the back. In some respects, the VR6 donor is perfect (forward and more power) This is not to say that there aren't any other options... Toyota -> Lotus uses it, some of the newer Ford/Mazda options are ok, etc. etc. etc. Cable shifting gearbox will help tremendously.

Longitudinal
1 - Subaru w/FWD 'box (early Imprezas, 93-95 or 96) Nice short/low package, not sure of durability with big power numbers through the FWD 'box.
2 - Late Passat/A4, 1.8T or 2.8 V6 w/FWD
3 - Early Audis (80, 90, 100, 4000, 5000, etc)

[Edited on 21/1/08 by akrallysport]