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AWD conversion (just for conversation's sake)


AkumaNoZeta

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OH!!! I see now. That makes a ton more sense, love the drawings too. I didn't know what you were talking about earlier with only the rears driving most of the time but now I do. I'm really confident about that design. Just one more thing, if you do put another R180 in the front wouldn't it have to be mounted upside down so the you don't have the front wheels trying to go backwards while the rear wheels try to go forward?

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lets see... in 5 hours, we've wondered, mused, guessed, and thought our way through the theory of a FWD into AWD swap :D

 

Take one front drive donor, rape it of the engine, transaxle and front hubs, and find another rear diff and side shafts from another donor RWD car.

take one rear drive victim and apply front hubs from fwd donor and drop engine in rotated 90 degrees. rip the diff apart in the transaxle and fit a modified drive shaft and 1:1 gears, and make a little housing for a hacksawed VLSD.

 

weld, pry bolt glue and otherwise fasten all bits together. Finally, ensure your life insurance is up to date and take a test drive...

 

 

:D

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Afterthought. You can't just have a gear coming off the output shaft to spline with a gear on the driveshaft, you need to have another gear between them to get the driveshaft to rotate the same way as the output shaft...but that would really depend if you flipped the engine assembly to be biased more to the right or the left though.

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lol, I like that life insurance part. That's funny. The worst that can happen is the whole drivetrain falls apart going about 80 down the highway and the the gas tank and oil pan scrape across the road, punching holes in it and then sparks from the steel going against the pavement ignite the leaking gas and oil and the whole car blows-up.

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lol, I like that life insurance part. That's funny. The worst that can happen is the whole drivetrain falls apart going about 80 down the highway and the the gas tank and oil pan scrape across the road, punching holes in it and then sparks from the steel going against the pavement ignite the leaking gas and oil and the whole car blows-up.

 

that sounds like hollywood... Nah, never happen outside of a set stage... ;)

 

 

Afterthought. You can't just have a gear coming off the output shaft to spline with a gear on the driveshaft, you need to have another gear between them to get the driveshaft to rotate the same way as the output shaft...but that would really depend if you flipped the engine assembly to be biased more to the right or the left though.

 

Chain drive one way, gear drive the other... so left or right bias still has the right driveshaft spin direction :D good idea :D

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if you want more power... this started as a SR20DE/T swap from a FWD, what about a Buick supercharged 3800 V6 FWD instead?

 

anyhoo, I got to dissapear for a half hour to go check the animals and grab a beer, then it'll be bedtime once I've finished the homebrew (what else would a shadetree theory mechanic drink?) it's past midnight now.

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I stayed up until 7am dicussing that, lol. I'm still pretty tired. The way I see it this should work with almost any engine setup if it's small enough, from the 3 cylinder of a Geo Metro all the way up to a Cadillac FWD V8 like that was in my brother's old car (I think it was a LeSabre or something)

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Geez guys, one page last night and 3 this morning... :)

 

You guys need to just get messenger or something...

 

well when it started it was just a bit of bouncing ideas around, by the time it started to make sense, it was easier to keep it on here where others could follow the train of thought :D

 

Maybe one of them has a workshop and more money than we do :D

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Bringing back my dead thread (wow, that rhymed) I was looking for aftermarket gear ratios a while back for R200s just too see what my options were and I came across a sight that I think was selling 1:1 ratio gears, I didn't look at it long enough to actually see the pics or anything but the next day the thought of combining that with this AWD idea came up so I went looking for the site again but never found it. Just to bring that up, there MAY be 1:1 gear sets for R200s making this conversion easier to deal with

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Manual subie trannies have a VLSD in the tail housing. Autos' have computer controlled clutch packs to engage the rear drive shaft. STI's are something else. At least this is what I researched for the 95-05 years when I was buying mine.

 

What about the bmw stuff?

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The only BMW stuff I am working with, not even looking into, is the trailing arm IRS from a 750. I'm cutting and grinding the hubs for a double A-arm type suspension, was a multi-link idea but slowing shifted to double A-arm. I don't have the money for materials to make the extensions for the heim joints so I'm just gonna have the bare hubs for a while...was thinking about making it for the Mustang, but now I don't know. Thats the problem with being young, you never know what you want.

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I have a 2002 325xi and it has a transfer case, the spread I think is 62 rear and 38 front. It also has this neat little differential up front, the half shafts seem to go straight through the oil pan. I was thinking for a long time of trying something like that on the z...but then again its just a dream. Then again the BMW does handle amazingly for an awd car, especially with the traction control off, ive managed to do a few 360s with it when the TC is off.

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Take the drivetrain out of a Lexus GS?

 

Aren't GS front wheel drive?

 

 

That pic looks similar to the skyline awd layout.

 

I don't think doing a AWD setup is all that difficult, just MORE work, as far as the front is concerned. The rear, you need to have the same gearing so that the front and rear gear ratios are the same. So... The easier solution is to also swap the rear.

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