Anyone looked into doing these? Just came across it..


http://www.zcars.org.uk/kits2.php

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Bluey-1973 Clubby - 1330, high lift, big cam, 7 port madness in progress..

Gumby-1978 Minivan, British Racing Green - 1310, high lift, mild cam, enlarged porting and chamber shape with big valve head, supercharged build in ever slow progress!

Way to pricey to buy their kit, $5300 + shipping + buying the engine, wiring, ECU, then you need to build it .
It'd be easily 10k just to get the project started.
But if you copy the idea and build from scratch then I guess it'd be about the same as any-other engine conversion. It would also be better balanced car and more traction.

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Respect mine and I'll respect yours.

Ive got their build DVD. Trawling through the UK forums suggest handling is a bit iffy as you approach the limits. Performance looks outstanding but have a read through some of the build threads to get a idea of some of the challenges you will face.

I would suggest that any car with rear wheel drive, a rear weight bias and plenty of power is tricky on the limit. Add a short wheelbase and you'd need fantastic reflexes to keep it at the limit. Don't these also have just trailing arm rear suspension? Eek!

M

no idea to be honest...not looking at doing one myself...I have my starlet conversion toy for this just that a mate at work was looking into it after seeing the starlet in my mini and wanted to go down that path with the z cars... never had come across it until now..

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Bluey-1973 Clubby - 1330, high lift, big cam, 7 port madness in progress..

Gumby-1978 Minivan, British Racing Green - 1310, high lift, mild cam, enlarged porting and chamber shape with big valve head, supercharged build in ever slow progress!

If I was going to do a mid mount engine RWD I'd either mount the front subframe in the rear or create a new rear cradle with new wishbone suspension setup.

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Respect mine and I'll respect yours.

Never come across z cars? That's amazing!

Highly unlikely that any engineer would pass something like that here, you need to cut half the car out to make it work and needs a 6 point cage to be structurally safe, two things that make life difficult straight away

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Potato

Really you'd known about this all along had you now haha..

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Bluey-1973 Clubby - 1330, high lift, big cam, 7 port madness in progress..

Gumby-1978 Minivan, British Racing Green - 1310, high lift, mild cam, enlarged porting and chamber shape with big valve head, supercharged build in ever slow progress!

This one looks interesting. But still expensive.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Busa-Min ... 0277605823
Might be possible to get registered over here depending on a few details.
At least its Fwd. A Rwd mini is just wrong in my book.

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Tim
Dusk Blue
1964 850

Wow, that one is 'interesting'. Very few elements in the sub frame. No connection between top and bottom. About as rigid as warm custard.

It has the same crap suspension as so many others. Why make custom top and bottom arms and drive shafts then have such an enormous scrub radius (distance between centre of tyre contact patch and where a line through the ball joints would touch the road)???? Surely you'd make the arms, driveshafts and rack ends longer and use wheels with better offset.

This thing, like so many other big-flare minis would kick back, torque steer and tram-line like a bastard.

Design flaws like this appear to be the norm in most of these pre-made subframes.

M

I could be wrong, but it seems that there are little, to no engineering qualifications for doing engine conversions in the UK.
Looking thru some of the build threads on the Uk forums it seems to go something like " I have some steel, a welder and an engine. Its now fitted in the engine bay and the wheels turn. JOB DONE!! "

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Tim
Dusk Blue
1964 850

Mate z cars are the original bike engine guys, all the cars in the uk mini magazines feature z cars frames, their space frame race car is nuts!

Don't like the suspension geometry on that busamini frame..

I was going to build a bike engined hill climb mini but after driving a couple of cars with bike engines I'm not as interested, they don't have enough torque for a car (from personal experience) f20 2l Honda motor would feel nicer

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Potato

Lockie,,, You must have been living under a rock for the last 15 years or so , i can`t believe you hadn`t known about Z cars... weired,,, i thought everyoine knew about them... have you never even read a mini magazine or checked around the mini forums on the net ???
seriously??? or are you just mucking around???

& Meeni,,, we have our Dept of Tpt Engineer up here who has already approved us to do a rear/mid engined mini conversion,,, & a bike engined conversion,,, so yes, it`s all "do-able"

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No offence intended here but--> anyone writing a book about minis 30 years ago may not have experienced such worn or stuffed-with components as we are finding these days.

You should put your heart & soul into everything you do.

the busa conversion looks interesting, but at nearly 8,000 pounds without an engine :O what kinda drugs are they on

the cost of the conversion is in the drivebox with reverse. it is easy to hook up a chain to a diff but there are costs involved with making a drive box that will work and not having a chain in it to snap at any time and make nose.

i dont like the lay out they have i think it will be a pain in the arse to drive.

as for rego nothing is a problem if it's within the rules about 1 month ago the engineer i'm working with regod a full legal bike engined lotus 7 replica. that included passing the im240 testing noise etc etc. no corner cutting all within in the laws as he says to all his clients the problem has been that with the old system engineers could do what ever they wanted under the new system there are a full set of rules that are clear and dont seem to change so it is possible to rego bike engine cars no problems. worst case for a z cars it it has to be done as an icv and that isn't that much harder if you want to go down that path. he is hoping to get some more sweet rides on the road over the next few month just seems every on is to broke to finished them at the moment.