If I had any time, which I don't...
If I had any money, which I don't...
If I had any space, which I dont...
...I'd take a shoebox Sentra, or its Corolla equivalent, in four door form.
Then I'd cut out the floor in the rear seat and trunk, and frame it with tubing.
Then I'd do the 4wd mod on a 440-T4 or 4T60 transaxle, and bolt my spare 4.1 Buick turbo motor to it, and fabricate a little subframe to hold them and the rear differential, and stick the loaded subframe up in the hole in the body.
A little tunnel work for the forward driveshaft, some mounts for the front diff, swap the rear struts out for some with driveshaft provision, build a cover for the engine and transmission, and the rest would be detail work.
Mid engine, 4wd, and a big helping of turbo Buick power.
It'd be, oh, less than a quarter of the work Sean put into the Suprang.
Then I could do all the neat 4wd tricks Jay can do in his Audi, except I could do them on dry pavement...
My previous idea of using a shoebox Camry with a 215 V8 didn't pass the tape measure test. There's not a lot of room up front on the Camry, and the only way to get 4wd would be to raise the engine high enough to slide the halfshafts underneath. Doable, since I'd have to scratchbuild the induction and accessory brackets anyway, and the aluminum V8 is about as light as it gets, but it would be one of those ugly design compromises. Whereas with the 4T60 in midships configuration, it would be simple, at which point I could drop down to a smaller bodyshell since I wouldn't have to cram the engine up front.
> > I've never heard of the 440-T4 or 4T60 trannies. I'm assuming they have > > another output shaft than the two for the normally front axles. If this is > > true, then the third shaft output would be aft. > > > > This would mean it is pointing in the wrong direction, or aft. So, if you > > move the transaxle to the back and don't turn it around, then the shaft is > > pointing aft? > > > > So. I'm missing something. What?The 4T440 is your generic front wheel drive GM transaxle. There were many variations under different numbers, some hydraulic control, some electronic.
The 4T has a bellhousing and torque convertor, then a chain drive to the transmission guts, which lay alongside the motor. It's a big, sprawling transmission shaped like a big "L".
One unique feature is that the differential is at the far end, near the front of the motor, but the shaft to the offside wheel runs *through* the transmission; it's hollow and the shafts are concentric. It's a fairly complex way to do things.
The differential isn't your normal ring and pinion. Most front drives use spur gears or a ring and pinion; GM, for some demented reason, used a *planetary* gear reduction with the differential inside it.
For a 4wd setup, you would turn the transaxle 90 degrees, so the shafts point forward and back. Then you'd run the shafts to regular differentials. Unfortunately, with most transaxles you have the ring and pinion giving something like 3:1 reduction, and then the differentials are another 3:1. 9:1 would give you a formidable holeshot, but you wouldn't go very fast.
...but since the 4T transaxle uses a planetary, all you need to do is run a few beads of weld and there's no gear reduction any more; the output would be 1:1, which is what you want for a 4WD setup. Your final drive ratio is whatever is in the differentials at the ends of the car.
If I'd known this a few years ago, I wouldn't have dumped the Kelmark. I had an Eldorado transaxle I was going to use, with a handmade replacement differential housing and a pair of big bevel gears. I still have the gears, that I purchased from a gear supply place. I finally decided it was way more work than I wanted to do, and I had doubts about the strength of the gears in that application.
> > That is a ton of work, and you will be forced to accept a 50/50 torque split > > with no center limited slip, which isn't the best for a rear weight biased > > car.Both Torsen and friction-disc limited slips are available. Or just use an overrunning clutch to the front for sharp turns.
> > You want more like 25/75 otherwise it will drive like a front wheel > > drive car.All of the 4wd vehicles I've driven have been FWD conversions, with more like 75/25, or even 90/10, bias to the front. Yes, they understeered heavily in the usual FWD fashion, but they were still able to do 4wd tricks. 50/50 sounds pretty good to me.
> > Good enough is the enemy of perfect, just install the turbo Buick with > > transaxle in the rear and settle for rear drive, a la Renault Sport or the > > Shogun, or for that matter a Crown Corvair.Then I'd have a tail-heavy turkey that wouldn't handle as good as a high-polar-moment Mk1 Capri, just as an example.
Besides, the point is to get 4wd; otherwise any layout would do. Once you've hammered a 4wd at the track, everything else is second rate.
I made it out to the U-pull place this morning and measured a T440 transaxle and an '89 Sentra. Looks like plenty of room for all the naughty bits. The Voices are getting louder...
There's the Skyline, which IIRC has typically been an RWD sedan, and the Skyline GT-R, which is a 4WD coupe. The current Skyline is the Infiniti G35 in the US. The R32 GT-R, at least, shared front suspension with the last-gen 300ZX and the Cima/Q45 and probably some other models as well, minus all the FWD hardware. The Q45/300ZX spindles have the bore for the front-drive stub axles.