Tech, Repairs, Upgrades > Engine & Drivetrain Swaps

rwd capri using miata parts?

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supercowmoo3:
thats actually not a bad idea lol i would love a mid engined car but im thinking v8 POWERRRRR! but a light turbocharged v6 would be perfect as well. A vw vr6 would be nice as they're compact and relatively powerful

Rocketman:
I have most of the pre-requisite bits laying around to do a mid-engine RWD V6 capri, but time and money are two big issues for me right now.

Mid-engine is THE way to go with this chassis. No tunnel needed. You can recycle a lot of pre-existing FWD parts and save a lot of fab work that way

supercowmoo3:
The problem I see with a mid engined drivetran in this car is that it's a convertible. If you put the engine in the back seat the top has no room to go down. You put it in the trunk and you've made a rear engined car not mid engined. plus you'd have to do just as much fab work, or even more, making a rear subframe and reinforcing back there to hold an engine as you would to hold a rear differential. To me cutting a tunnel, moving the gas tank, and making up a simpler rear subframe for a differential, is a lot simpler than trying to rework the storage for the convertible top or remove it all together. I'd like to keep the integrity of a roadster with a capri and turn it into the rwd platform it should have been. If anyone has done a mid engined swap into this platform I'd really like to see it.

Rocketman:
Noone's done much of anything with this platform. I have done an AWD conversion, and I believe I am the only person to do any significant drivetrain conversion, period. And AWD has its issues. There were some funny car RWD dragster capris way back in the day, but they were tube frame. Plenty of other chassis have had major conversions (there are a few good mid-rear Honda conversions)

Yeah, you're gonna have to come up with something different for the soft top. I was going to run a solid rear section with a vertical window (MR2 / Del Sol / Fiero style) with a removable targa top. Or do a custom soft top frame. A major conversion is not without compromise or issues. (there is no "moving" the gas tank with RWD - fuel cell and lose the trunk space, or low fuel capacity, or complicated custom saddle tank)

Yes, you're going to have to do a lot of fab work to get an engine to fit back there. But it's significantly less disruptive to the whole chassis to stuff an engine back there, than it is to have to cut out the whole ass of the car PLUS have to cut out + add tunnel. These things flex like crazy to begin with, before even cutting into them. Try putting a hard top on when the car's parked on anything other than level ground!

"Integrity" lol. A roadster is a 2-seater, RWD 'sportscar' by definition. The Capri meets none of these criteria. It never 'should' have been RWD, it was meant to compete with the Miata but on a totally different level - it was intended to be a sporty car for young women, and that's how it was marketed and sold. It's an economy convertible built on a economy chassis, and the target demographic did not care which wheels were spinning.

Again: talk, talking, talk.

supercowmoo3:
I'd love to do a mid engined conversion on this car but itd still require alot of modifcation and moving of stuff. The top would need some sort of frame rework and the whole was of the car would have to be cut up and a custom subframe and reinforcing everything would have to be done. I'd love to do that but I don't know if i really could only having built tubular frames for dune buggy type deals. My grandfather could help me but we don't have the shop space right now.

I'd rather do a front engined rwd set up as I can put the fuel tank in the space that someone decided to call a bench seat. No one can fit there anyways and the trunk space stays and so does the space for the top to fold down into. A tunnel can be cut in relatively easily after temporarily reinforcing the frame. Then a v8 or a v6 could fit in the front and the transmission shifter could poke up through the tunnel. I might go as far as to steal the tunnel from the car I'm taking the engine/trans from for the swap. Also I'd probably move the firewall back so I could fit more engine in.

This project would mostly be just so I can build my own car the way I want it to be. I want a roadster not really a mid engined convertible. Something you could drift and take to a track and have fun with. Something with a light engine that's powerful and revs high like a rotary but a piston engine would be much more reliable. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do yet it's just nice to throw ideas around and get feed back

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