Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayhovah
I think you are on the right track here... With a scratch-build like a midlana you are going to have a billion tiny things that are going be a lot of work, especially since you won't be able to leverage all of Kurt's work with his K24... I think cutting the corner on motor/trans at the sacrifice of a few dozen horsepower is the right move. Hell, even Kurt's car isn't finished yet, granted it's been 99% for a long time now and he's mostly just been d!cking around with his turbo setup.
You could possibly get through 70% before even really needing to know your engine and trans choice. At the very least a rolling chassis... maybe the right move is to start building now and see later how much time and patience you have for motor work or if you just want to drop in something simple and easy.
Thanks! It's definitely built to be a street car in the "Grand Touring" mold.
Good luck! Come back and ping me when you get your build up and going! I'm definitely interested to follow along.
One thing that might turn your world upside down with this project - over on locostusa there is a guy who built an AWD middy using a Sylva Riot kit. He used the eclipse/talon setup from the 90's by turning the transfer case 180 degrees and mounting the rear diff upside down in the front. Genius!
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This is Kurt's first time with a high powered turbo car (looking at HP/cylinder, which seems to scale with complexity in my experience), so he's experiencing the "little things" that no one can tell you ahead of time. You just have to feel that pain yourself. I still really like turbos, but they are a lot of extra work and make other things exponentially more complicated at times.
I don't think the VQ will really be an issue for fitting in the engine bay. From rough measurements I might need to move 1 tube at the rear of the engine bay, but otherwise it's pretty compact compared to a 4 banger with manifolds sticking out of it. But you definitely need to get your drivetrain on hand before you go very far at all in the chassis build. Should probably have it before you cut even 1 tube, because everything has to fit around it.
AWD on a Locost/Middy just seems weird to me. The whole appeal of the car is the really lightweight nature of it, then adding AWD with a driveshaft and two differentials.... ugh. Too much complexity, too much weight. I'd personally rather use that effort to build up some aero downforce and still have a <1700 lb car.
I've already thought out the steps I'd need to use the RWD VQ blocks, so I don't think it's insurmountable, but it's definitely some extra work. That said, I want the front exhaust to pass over the transmission, and the FWD VQ blocks might make that very difficult with the engine mount placement. They're moved to the transmission side of the engine to allow the front headers to go below the oil pan, which I'd like to skip if at all possible. So using the FWD block might make one part of the build easier, then another harder (header fab).
And I'm sure there's a dozen other "gotchas" that are known unknowns sitting out there waiting to bite me...
