rwd protege conversion?

[almighty4wd]

rwd protege with 4wd tranny = bad idea. gunna hafta use a miata trans or similar.

[mazstar]

im with him miata tranny on a 4wd pro, youl need alota fab work but at least your starting from somwhere as the rear diff, brackets/mounting points, recess in the fuel tank for the driveshaft andthe firewall isnt closed off .

[SgtRauksauff]

take one Escort (or tracer) station wagon.
buy several pounds of steel for fabricating mounts.
apply a 3.6L engine from Zuffenhausen in Stuttgart and matching transmission to the back half of the car somewhere.

have fun.

--sarge

[Krazyman]

I would love to see it happen, and even thought about it myself...

My friend has a FC he takes up to the backroads during the summer and drifts... he's good! We looked over the Protege's unibody options between the 4wd and Fwd... without major structural fabrication and body work it's not only not worth it, it jsut won't happen... the first time you tried to drift you'd cause major damage somewhere!

Somewhere in the forums is a Protege someone custom built for Rwd and was for sale on another site... Looked like MAJOR work.. that personally ( and i love drifting) wouldn't be worth it even though a Driftin Protege would be pretty sweet...

[jrally]

Can't find it right now, but there was a Neon that someone did a mid-engine conversion on. It's a MAJOR undertaking, but might be the easiest way to go if you want to make a rwd Protege to drift with. Figuring out the shifting would be fun, trying to convert a rod shift tranny to cable shift. (It's do-able, I did it 15 years ago for a project.)

-Jon R.

[jay]

woot a midengine rwd gp5 Protege, hee hee hee

have fun getting that bad boy past the scrutineers.

[Gforcefd]

Jay I was just going to say then after I read through this thread. get a 323 hatch and make it mid engine, probably just as much work as mounting a miata rearend or solid rear axle in the back and changing the drivetrain.

Logan

[jay]

All bets are off when you start relocating engines. Just cuz anything can be done (www.durocco.com for a fun read), don't necessarily mean it should. A buddy of mine had a '69 Saab 96, and we determined that we could install a alum. Buick v8 in the trunk. We had it all worked out, keep the orig. V4 for the front wheels and the other 8 cylinders driving the back... I almost wish we'd made it happen. But stuff like this has a *very* limited venue, if you wanna go out and compete with it.

[Krazyman]

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/cars/89Shogun_shell.shtml

Why does the 89 Ford Shogun come to mind when thinking about the 323 as a Mid Engine??


There is only 7 in the world, well true additions anyway!!

If built right i'm sure you could build a RR out of a Protege... well hell, with the right money, as stated before, anything is possible! LOL

One quesiton though... Would the front end then become to light to steer under hard acceleration?

[therieldeal]

Would the front end then become to light to steer under hard acceleration?

wat?

[Krazyman]

Nevermind I answered my own question I wrote my statment wrong Jon.. my bad

I was talking about the oversteer issues if someone was to attempt this type of build...

[jay]

I suspect, done even slightly wrong, that you'd end up going through the pearly gates backwards and on fire...

[jrally]

The guy with the Neon made it look easy, especially the plywood firewall... LOL

Jay,
You do know that RA changed the rules about changing drive train configurations, right..? I think they left themselves open to the possibility of some crazy builds. The reasoning was in the right direction, can't have new drivers in Open Class cars or Group 5 cars, so allow them to run N/A engines or 2wd. Oh well, not my worry, since I've been running since '04. I think building a crazy AWD car out of one that never came that way would be fun though. I keep toying with the idea of turning my EGT into a TX-3 Laser rally car.

-Jon R.

[jay]

Yeah I saw that, but don't know that they'd allow for a total engine relocation. I kinda hope that is the result, it'd sure make things more interesting. As it is, I'm thinking if I wanna run gp5 the best option is to buy or build a gp5 car and not try to redo the rally protege.
maybe.

that car sure would be fun in rwd with the same output as my streetcar.



boy oh boy talk about backwards and on fire.....

[therieldeal]

what are the rules as far as swapping motors/transmissions/etc from other manufacturers?