Mid-Engine EJ20 Idea

[libila]

After seeing Hugo's thread and wanting to do a Subaru swap in to my '71 for quite some time I got an idea last week; mid-engine EJ20 with a Subaru transaxle.

I ran the idea by Rorty Design and it definantly seems do-able, but much brain storming needs to be done. That is the reason I started this thread.

The first delema was addresed last week, "How will it mount?" Since the EJ series motors sit in front of the transmission this was easy, use a FWD Subaru tranny and axles. This way there would be no real transaxle issues like flipping the diff to get correct rotation. I thought I was real clevar until I realized how much room there was between the back side of the motor to the axles, which is a smidge over five inches on the older Imprezas like my '00 2.5RS (the older Imprezas are the only Imprezas available in FWD). This could really become a problem since the EJ series motors are all flat fours which means they are wide, which may be a problem with the Rorty chassis design due to the rear suspension placement. Here the chassis design straight from Rorty Design's site-



This is just the first of many issues that need to be addressed. Once this is figured out there is still the intercooler and radiator mounting problem as well as what to do exactly with the steering and suspension. If I can make this all work on paper and decide to go through and do it, I want it to be race worthy not only in design and quality but in functionality too.

The intention of this thread was stated above, to brain storm. If you have any helpful suggestions by all means post away.