Little question for my transverse project
 

I am building a transverse setup using a 12A and a toyota transverse transmision. All this must power a 1981 matra murena which is a little french sportscar with the engine in the back. Much like a fiat X1/9.

Engine and transmision are connected, but there are still plenty problems to solve. The biggest is the driveshaft which runs alongside the engine.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/engine.jpg

I have to make a bearing block for this driveshaft. It must be located very close to the oil outlets.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/prob.jpg

The plan is to make a bracket attached to the front engine mounts. This bracket runs to the side. At the end an other piece of steel is attached. This piece of steel will hold the bearingblock.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/frontt.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...rena/sidet.jpg

And here is my little question:
I want to mount the bracket to the front housing. Can make a treated hole here and here? Or will oil or water pour out?

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/dril.jpg

Well, you're in the front iron there rather than the housing. It's almost dumb luck whether or not you'll hit the water jacket. You can go into the front cover, though, without doing any real damage. I'd go to a junkyard with a breaker bar, drop a 12A out of a 1st-Gen RX-7, get the front nut off, and take off the front cover to mess with. You can even pull the flywheel off and take out the tension bolts, and go home with the front iron. I wouldn't risk it on a functional, assembled block, though.

I went and measured my front cover. At where you want to put the top mounting bolt, you have just a little over 1/2 inch before hitting the water jacket. The bottom has just a small amount more. Don't know if this is enough for what you want to do. My guess is that if you are extremely careful you have a chance to make it work.

RXDad

actually, the car frame should be the mounting point for this axle bearing, not the engine block. is there more to that axle that goes out to the wheel? when the engine torques up in the rubber mounting, that axle will move with it. not to mention what could happen once u tach it up and dump the clutch. not to put a damper on ur plans, but manufacturers don't mount drive axles to engines for a reason.

I thought about doing a transverse project myself. One of my conclusions was to maybe rotate the engine a little to keep the CV shaft away from the exhaust. Good luck.

You mean like this?

http://thesurfonics.com/pics/fiestadriveshaft.JPG

Well yeah, but that's just powering a Radio Flyer. I doubt it's indicative of how a car manufacturer would do it...

yes they do, in fact a lot of Mazda fwd cars use nearly an identical system !

Take a look at Mazda protege with an 1800DOHC engine ... you will find the passenger side driveshaft has a bearing on it already (bolted to the block)

there you go ... from the Mazda workshop manual

Thanks guys, I'll go the safest way and find me an front iron. There are not much rx-7's her to find on scrapyards, but i'll find one.
Drilling in the front iron seems to be more tricky then i thought, but it is nescessary to get a solid mount for the bearing.

I am very curious how others have done it on there FWD honda civic or 323.

Cool.

How did you adapt the transmission to the engine?

Is the thickness of the adaptor plate a significant consideration when mating the transmission input shaft to the flywheel? And also the starter motor?

Which clutch and flywheel will you use? Can you get away with just an Rx7 flywheel and pressure plate with a Toyota clutch disk? Would the Toyota starter motor work with an Rx7 flywheel?

The MR2 transmission is supposed to be the same as the Solara except the shift linkage is moved to the front of the engine. Do you think running cables to the shift linkage on the back will be difficult to set up? Or will you drill the transmission and move the linkage to the front? A few people on the MR2 forum have used the Solara trans in the MR2 with this mod but I don't know how difficult it is.

For the driveshaft bearing, one alternative to drilling holes in the engine might be to extend the transmission adaptor plate and create a framework around the engine to the front engine mount.

Good luck

(try to get more ambient light and less flash if you post more pictures)

thanx for the correction guys. considering the only front wheel drive vehicles i've delt with have been Chevrolet, that's what i was going by.

lol, that wagon has had it's share of rotary engines in it.

I actually had a "rotary wagon" emblem from an RX4 wagon that I was going to mount on it, but I ended up selling it for like $45 on eBay.

That's a Fiesta motor that was turbocharged BTW. :biggrin:

Oh, and why not just weld a bolt to the header flange for the upper mounting point?

That way you bring a lot of stress in the material.

I used a transmission of a toyota celica (=solara?) with a 3sge engine. I need the gear linkage at the back and a mr2. I connect the gearlinkage not with cables, but with the original levers of my car.

The 12A (manual gear) flywheel is pretty big. To big to fit in the original bellhousing of my car. The toyota gearbox has a big bellhousing.
I didn't want to do it with a counterweight of a automatic 12A and fit an other flywheel. These counterweights are rare in europe and i cannot do the machining of the flywheel myself. I don't want to spent any money at this project as long i'm not sure it will succeed.

I have used 12mm steel as a adapter plate. It sounds a bit heavy, but it is not that bad. I prefer steel over aluminium because i have moer faith in treathed holes in steel instead of alu.
The input shaft of the transmission doesn't have a center axle. So that's a worry less. The inputshaft is cut a little shorter (just a few mm) but it might be not nescesarry. I shortend it because i first planned to do a 8mm adapterplate. With a 12mm adapterplate cutting might be not nescesarry.

The best thing about the toyota tranny is the starter motor. Most other transverse engine's have the startermotor alongside the engine. But the toyota
has the starter on top of the tranny. The sprocket of the toyota seems to match the 12A flywheel. The position of the starter needs to move a few mm outward and away from the engine.

I use the 12A pressureplate with a toyota clutch disk.

Some more pics:

Other attemps to make the bearing block
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...rena/ovaal.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...rena/front.jpg

I didn't like these solutions. Bad feeling.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/blibla.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...godslaster.jpg

And it should go it this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...a/DSCF0013.jpg

That is a cool car!

On to your question: if you get into the water jacket when you drill, it's not the end of the world. On this side of the pond, the 4.0 Jeep 6 cylinder needs sealant on one head bolt because it goes into the water jacket, and the older 302 (5.0 l) Ford V8's needed the same thing on some the exhaust manifold bolts. There are other examples as well, those are just two of the most common ones.

If you drill and tap a hole in the iron and hit water, I suggest using a stud rather than a bolt, with something like Loctite on the threads to seal it.

Someone mentioned using the exhaust studs. I'd want to avoid this, as the exhaust studs go into aluminum and torquing them tight enough to keep the plate from moving could conceiveably pull the threads out of the housing, as that's not the job they were intended for.

You mention the Toyota transaxle has no 'center bearing', what I take to mean no 'pilot bearing' to center the input shaft in the flywheel. Out of curiosity: how are you centering the transmission to the eccentric shaft?

I like that idea. But i prefer to drill not through the water jacket. If i drill through, i end up with splinters. But is good to know that it is not the end of the world.

Yes, i mean the pilotbearing.
The transmission is dismanteld. I had a shaft made as a center tool. The shaft comes in place of the input shaft. It has a pilot pin (is that the right word?)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96.../uitlijnas.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...na/priseas.jpg

No, I mentioned welding a bolt to the exhaust FLANGE, which is steel.

I just get my hands on a brand new front iron. It's a pity but it will be sacrified for sience. The metal outside is beefy enough to make treathed holes in.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/boor.jpg

Shortly i start making the final drawings for bearingmount, adapter plate, engine mounts, and other bits. these will be made on a waterjet cutter. I also making (a few) new header flanges. I noticed on the old headerflange that the surface is deepend around the gasket. Can i use a flat surface flange instead? And does these flanges have to be that beefy?

I just came across this and even though it would be heavier, I think it would be a better solution.

http://www.rotaryaviation.com/engine_mounts.htm
http://www.rotaryaviation.com/RV8Project.htm

The header flange has to be really thick, since there is such a long distance between the header mounting studs. Any thinner, and it would be prone to warpage (rotary exhaust is REALLY hot!).

That aviation mount is nicely designed, but I think it would be overkill for this project.

What are these?

The mount for the drive shaft bearing is sorted. Making threated holes in the front iron is no problem.

The header flange which was on the 12A was 14 mm (0,55 inch) thick. I wonder if a 12 mm (0,47 inch) is too thin. I get the adapterplate and several brackets / mounts from a 12 mm steel sheet cut by waterjet. I can add the header flanges with no extra costs.

Any new info on this project?

Same question here. How's it coming?

Not much happened the last months. I have the final adapter plate and engine mounts ready. I am still not sure how make the drive shaft bearing. I will find out when i am trail fit the engine. But to trail fit the engine means i have to take the old engine out. And i want to do that not yet. I need the car to go on holiday in september and in august it must be MOT tested (with old engine). But lots of other things to do before trail fitting is nescessary.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...rena/ijzer.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/adap.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/ooha.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/flange.jpg

When the drive shaft is in place, the only way to mount the header is to slide it on the bottem bolts.

About the drive shaft bearing: I had several options made. The third picture shows the easyest. But i also had other mounts made. So at trail fitting i decide which one i take. It all depents on if the engine will fit where i want it to be. If it fits where i want it to be, then i need the mount which needs drilling in the front-iron. If the engine needs to be moved, i need one of the other mounts.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...rena/divla.jpg

Very nice work. Again from curiosity: what about the axle support makes it necessary to drill into the front iron? It seems to me that the load on the bearing would be in an up/down direction as viewed from the front of the engine, not in/out, meaning the support in the third picture would work without resorting to drilling into the iron and adding rear bracing. Or am I missing something completely?

That bracket looks plenty strong; only thing I would recommend is welding the bearing carrier to the main support rather than bolting to prevent shifting and misalignment.

Again, very nice work and best of luck to you.

This size of the driveshaft (wheel-CVjoint-axle-CVjoint-bearing) determs the position of the bearing. If i have to move the engine a bit to the right, the bearing has to move a bit left to stay in the same postion regarding to the wheel.
The front iron drilling is needed when i place the engine in like i plan to do. But my tapemeasure tells me that it wiil be a very very tight fit. I probably have to move the engine a bit.
The driveshaft wil be a joined toyota/matra shaft. The connection is between the bearing and the dif.

Hmmm. I'm not looking at it first hand, but my gut feeling is to shorten the right hand driveshaft or shift the engine slightly to the left rather than drill into the iron or move the bearing. Since it's mid engine, torque steer from different shaft lengths won't be a problem.

I did the hybrid driveshaft thing recently on the Abomination (rotary Spitfire). It can be done pretty easily, in my case the second version (first uninformed version did not go very well) was to drill a pilot hole in each driveshaft half, use a corresponding diameter rod for alignment, taper the end of the halves and then weld them together, filling the taper as I went. I then used some 4140 steel tubing split lengthwise (so I could put it over the shaft, the splines are bigger than the driveshaft) and drilled through for 'plug welding' which was then clamped to the hybrid shaft over the welded area, plug welded, the splits were then welded, then circle welded at the ends of the tubing.

After that, I heated the shafts for a few hours until they were just starting to glow dull red, and then buried them in oil dry (fullers' earth) so that they would cool slowly. The shafts made all kinds of popping and clicking noises during that part, as the internal stresses were relieved! So far, so good. Repeated hard autocross launches with sticky race tires haven't caused a problem.

Keep the updates comin, this is pretty cool

Very close to completion now!

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/maztra.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...urena/mobo.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...na/rivella.jpg

Completed so far:
12A mounted to a toyota tranny with an adapter plate, enginemounts, driveshafts, driveshaft-bearing on block, header, cooling tubes, gearshift levers, hydraulic clutch, wiring loom, and so on..

Also done:
rats nest removal and OMP mod.

Still to do:
small fidely stuff...

WOW, congratulations! You have come a long way and gone further than most people would. You're hardcore man!!!

More pics here
Click

Very spiffy swap.

How did you eventually solve the driveshaft bearing problem?

Driveshaft bearing is made as discussed before.
It is mounted to a piece of metal which is bolted to the front enginemount and with one bolt in the front iron. Yes, i've drilled one hole in the front iron.\

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/steula.jpg

that is a amazing project you have there. Once you get it going you have to post videos on youtube or streetfire for us. I always wanted to put a rotary into a 1st gen mr2.

Some more pics
Righthand side driveshaft. And some stainless coolingpipes above driveshaft.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...ena/asonde.jpg

Header.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...na/sprtstk.jpg

To get the header mounted i had to remove the two upper struts. I have cut out the lower holes so i can slide the header on the struts. The header is fixed by two normal bolts at the top. At the bottom there is just enough space to turn the nuts (driveshaft is very near by)

Thast's hardcore. I like it!

Jongen je bet knettergek om dat te proberen !!, maar wel gaaf eenmaal als je het klaar hebt moet je een turbo proberen ,dat lijkt me super
Ziet er wel goed uit hoor , ik zou ook nooi denken dat het jouw zou lukken ,maar zo tezien gaat het je lukken ...en goed ook

Beautiful job! Keep us posted!

And here is the evidence!
You CAN fit an exhaust when having transverse drive shafts!
Actualy, this header is very easy to fit. I don't have to take extra parts on/off to fit it!

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96.../uitlaat-2.jpg

The car is driveable now :bigthumb:

Question,
On the distributor, Which is Leading and which is Trailing?

EDIT: found the answer, facing the front is the leading, facing the alternator is trailing.

So if it's drivable, why don't you tell us about it? How 'bout some videos? Any funky handling?

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...na/rivella.jpg

So what's in the bottle? Dutch nitrous, or celebration? :D

The bottle contains 2-stroke oil for the omp. It is an ordinairy softdrink bottle.

Driving it bringsback memories of the good old FB. I am so happy the sound of the rotary is back! The rotary engine is a bit heavier than the engine it replaced. About 10 kg. But the rotary engine is mounted a bit lower so the center of gravity is much lower. The body rolls quite a bit less. But the car is in need of new suspension. It should corner much better than it does now.

The gearchange is not very smooth. The toyota gearbox i used was an old worn item i got for free. I replaced all the synchromise rings. Maybe new rings has to wear in before i got smooth gearchange? Also i don't know what to do with the oil level in the gearbox. the box is a tiny bit tilted backwards. At the front of the gearbox is the filler hole. When the box is in the right position, the oil level should be 1mm below the filler hole. Which is equal to 2.6 litre.
I have put in 2.6 litre oil and because the box is tilted the level is appr. 10mm below the fillerhole. Should i put more oil in so the level is 1mm below fillerhole? I don't know. Has to find out.

There is also a lack of power when the secondairies opens. I think i blame the airfilter. i want to put in a new bigger one which sucks air from a coller place. I think it is also a good idea to clean the carb. Or maybe i did something wrong with the ratsnest removal. I thoke off all the solenoids and closed all the pipes on the manifold. I connected the ignition advancer with 2 tubes directly to the corresponding pipes on the manifold.
I am also not sure what to do with the richer-solenoid. I connected it to permanent 12volt.

So a few things to sort out. The next project will be megasquirt injection. It is already present in the car. The previous engine did run on it.

Glad you got it running! :D Congratulations on a well thought out and professional looking swap.

My thought on the trans oil level: if you fill it to the 1mm point you are mentioning, will that cause it to be too deep at the input shaft? I mention this because I overfilled a Triumph transmission and it promptly started leaking from the input shaft seal. Bringing the oil to the correct level fixed that. I think you are on the right track by using the specified amount.

Poor shift quality: is it 'crunching' or just sloppy? Crunch = worn synchronizer assembly, sloppy = external shift linkage play. On my 914 Porsche, I found that .004-.005 inch slop at the transmission end of the linkage became about 1/2 inch (12.5 mm) at the shift knob.

The vacuum advance should be connected to 'ported' vacuum, there should be no vacuum at idle. As soon as you open the throttle, there should be vacuum. If there is vacuum all the time at the advance unit, it means you don't get enough total advance, thus making it sluggish. On my 12A I use a Dellorto which has no ported vacuum provision, so I bumped the ignition advance at idle approx 2 degrees with no vacuum. It's a little 'flat' off of idle this way, which helps keep the tires from spinning, and at approx 2500-3000 RPM you can feel the power pick up as the mechanical advance comes in.

I think the 'richer solenoid' you are referring to is the 'idle cut' solenoid right where the fuel tubes enter the carb, if so that should be connected to an ignition switched 12V source.

I have to use some "force" to get it in gear. It is not crunchy but a bit sloppy. The slopyness i can live with, but the amount of force i have to use to get it in gear is not right. I have put more oil in upto the fillerhole (1/2 litre extra) but that doesn't make a difference. I will drain some oil so the amount is halfway between the specified amount and the fillerhole level. I think i gonna blame the brandnew synchronise rings. They have to wear in because the surface was very rough??? I'm just guessing.

My carb doesn't have a solenoid on the fuel lines side. The solenoid i mention is in the books as a richer solenoid and is located at the opposed side to the fuellines. According to one source it is blokking a fuel passage when the car is coasting. To prevent backfire or so. This source says that there is always 12v on the solenoid except during surtain conditions while coasting.
An other source is telling that the solenoid is blocking the fuel passage when there is 12v on the solenoid. And now i'm confused.

Excessive force to get the transmission in gear but no crunch sounds to me like a leverage problem. Are the shifter 'throws' (knob travel) very short? If so, that should be easy to correct: shorten the lever from the center of the shift pivot to the cable or rod mount point. This gives you an easier movement but a longer 'throw'.

I'm not looking at a carb right now so I can't visualize the solenoid.

How's this project coming?