Hi All, bit of a newb here (here's a bit of an intro) but have a reasonable amount of experience with cars - done a few engine conversions, done a spot or two of welding, spent the last few years running, tuning, and megasquirting my '91 Celica GT4 DIY style (who needs a rolling road to map from scratch?!) to ~300hp/280lbft from 200/200ish. But I find myself repairing the old tin-rot on a large scale currently. both sills have 700x100mm patches cut out of them, a rear arch requires welding up, filling and respraying, an inner wing on the back quarter is rotting through. I've halted these processes but I'm considering whether I'm just chasing my tail. I love the body/shape, it was my childhood favourite "achievable" car so I was chuffed to have one and I'm still 50:50 on a no-expense-spared rebuild of it. But tempting me is the fact that it's heavy (1350kg in current form), while the engine (3S-GTE, CT20'b' turbo), box (E154F) and transfer only weigh 130kg, and the back half of the 4wd weighs in at about 60kg; It seems that it's the ideal candidate for me to stretch my engineering design legs into chassis and suspension design and try to half the weight for a real performance increase at relatively little cost.
Thoughts:
4WD kit car is my ideal, I like traction to put the power down, I'm not keen on RWD but would consider it if I had to (its a damn sight simpler!). I realise this complicates the front end and means I have essentially to keep the engine mounted over the front axle (it leans back a bit so the CofG is about axle point), a negative.
The only 4WD kit I'm aware of is the rush quadra. It looks fun. But I'm not neccessarily going down the seven-alike route, I like the exo-skeleton look and would be happy with minimal panels, but might have to improve the cosmetic appearance of my welds lol. It's a transverse engine currently shoehorned into the existing shell. It could be turned RWD with a supra gearbox (I believe the W55 box fits with some minor tweaks) but that sacrifices the 4WD fun I'd hoped for.
There's a bewildering array of suspension setups out there on various kits, I was planning to take the double unequal A's with pushrods route to keep the height down, and utilise the GT4 running gear to keep its rather wide stance, but also let me use its hub carriers, brakes and driveshafts with minimal/zero mods. The current maccy strut setup weighs a ton (each lower arm is huge and weighs about 3kg) but feels nice and I love the ride, predictability and seemingly endless grip of the car (though I'd like to tempt it more into oversteer slightly).
Those of you who are more in-depth with your cars, what suspension travel do you consider road-worthy, and what's your sensible ride height. The stock car sits at ~6" at its lowest points and occasionally catches speed humps, I'd go lower but don't want to sacrifice the ability to go home or struggle to get anywhere in a road-use situation.
Any thoughts on the above would be great! I'd originally planned to make a GRP replica of the body but the cost is massive even done DIY. I've some experience with GRP (I've made kiteboards hand-layup style) but I think that would be outside my abilities and space available.
14 Jul 2010, 10:12am