Bit of a long shot perhaps but i'm toying with the idea of having the engine bolted to the gearbox through a large aluminium plate fixed to the chassis to make a structural member out of it.
will allow solid mounting to/of the gearbox too
It's an Audi twin turbo V6, mid engine
very very similar to this (okay it's the amazing project that got me thinking about it)

car will be for 90% road, track days, possibly hillclimb.

thoughts?

Have you been in a car that has a solid mounted engine? As I road car not a chance I would want it

Seen this done on a few cars at the FOS, nice and neat solution.

Solid mounting a car engine is great, if you enjoy your teeth and eyeballs itching with vibration and parts of the chassis cracking.

That is the way Can Am car engines were mounted, magnesium plates mounted to front of the block using the water pump mounts and the bell housing mounts at the rear. The McLaren Formula A's used a similar system. I hope the V6 has a 60 degree V to help minimize vibration.

for a race car its a brilliant idea - but not so much for a road car....

We've tuned loads of Autograss cars, engines all solid mounted. 4,6,8 cylinder - shake your fillings out on the dyno!!
Not a good idea for road use.

the v6 is 90 degree actually, it's silly wide.
appreciate all the replies, and were as i expected really, not ideal for road sadly.
it just makes for a wonderfully simple rear end chassis design

what engine are you using?

can we offer our services? we tune all sorts.

www.facebook.com/baileyperformance

Nothing to stop you using the plates as the major rear chassis members and soft mounting to them.

audi 2.7 bi-turbo.
have an ECU for it, but that's about it. I'm hoping to find someone/somewhere that can remove the un-necessary emmissions/sensoring off it, or I'll have to go standalone. there is another VW caddy with this engine mid mounted, using an Emerald ECU. So the answer is, I'm not sure, can you?
target will be approx 400hp, or 2kg/hp. Internals are good for ~550 crank hp.

I did wonder about that, using the plates but soft mounting. think that loses the advantages of it really. best to stick to tubes. Ally and it's fatigue worries me a bit, although I'm warming to making the uprights from ally

I'll be going with CNC'd alu uprights so we'll both be in the same boat

The stiffness you could gain with plates like that is pretty vast (plus the nice mounting points) but it would take some analysis and a very expensive bit of cutting!

It doesn't need to be that expensive, I had this cut on a CNC router owned by a sign shop. I just put the chamfer on the twiddly bit at the starter by hand with a file.





[Edited on 3/9/14 by Fred W B]

That's impressive with a flimsy gantry router, but you can tell in the finish on the machined ring that it wasn't that happy doing it!

I've considered it as a possibility for mine but we'll see how the hard points turn out before making that decision.

I'm a design engineer in a moderate engineering company, could get CNC machining & turning done if i ask nicely!
Main slab would be water jet cut. cheap, no, but worthwhile

I once tried measuring up the hole pattern on the back of an engine, took measurements to and from every hole an the accuracy was shocking, gave up on it! was attempting to rotate an engine into the vertical position. ditched that, and the whole chassis

quote:

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Originally posted by 43655
I once tried measuring up the hole pattern on the back of an engine, took measurements to and from every hole an the accuracy was shocking, gave up on it!

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Was using long vernier calipers. admittedly if i really had to do it, I'd do a less half-arsed effort and do that, probably make spigots to measure from etc