My quest to design and build a mid-engined sports racer from scratch. It will comprise of many newly fabricated components along with repurposed parts from other vehicles such as the 2.5 Turbo engine from a Volvo 850 the running gear from Mazda Mx5 and the driveshafts from a sierra xr4x4. The body work is the only thing I have purchased and even that will be extensively modified and a complete front section made from a mould. Wish me luck.

Thursday 14 April 2011

Not posted for a while but that doesn't mean I haven't done anything.  As mentioned before I decided finally on a suitable track width which allowed me to mock up the wheelbase at an approximate ratio of 1.6:1.  The car is quite wide so at 1.6:1 I’m looking at a wheelbase of 2.9m.  I’m going to look at some other wheelbases of cars I’ve driven to see how this compares.

I visited Ian (a Volvo breaker) to try and find some of the OEM engine mounts used on the Volvo T5 engine.  After a rummage around in his shed I left with a bunch of engines mounts and the gear stick assembly and control cables for the M56 gearbox.  The control cables are too short for my application so I will need to either modify the mounting brackets for the cables and try and fudge a solution or, preferably, buy new longer control cables and use the assembly as intended.  It turned out the front engine mount I bought from Ian was the wrong type so I will have to try and source the correct one.  It would appear they used a few different types on the 5 cylinder white block engine.
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