I have been motivated by the following car pictured to build my own over-sized go-cart for autocrossing and fair weather driving.



This car was homebuilt from the ground up by this one man, a friend of my uncle's, and has a 327 corvette motor, 4 speed manual trans, and suspension stolen from some other car. Other than that, the car is completely built and designed by him. That is me in the passenger seat freaking out because I am so happy(that thing was fast as hell and sooo low).

My plan is to eventually get a welding maching(im currently taking a class on welding), engineering my own tube-chassis, steal parts i cant make from various Honda's such as axels, motor/trans, brakes, steering parts, etc... I have decided to make my car rear engine, rear wheel drive probably with a Honda D17A motor with a manual trans. I don't really want to mess with power steering and I know some older CRX's i believe have non-power systems but I'm not sure. Brakes/hubs will come from a later model Accord(bigger disks), front and rear disks, that is If the axles from the engine I find will fit with them. The plan is for it to seat two side by side, and I kind of want to make it right-hand drive just for ***** and giggles if at all possible.

I do think I will have trouble with the electronic crap from the engine I find. From all the people I have talked to about this, it sounds like I will need an entire wiring harness for whatever model I steal the engine from, thus making the electircal work the hardest part of this project in my mind.

I would really appreciate any help or suggestions on what parts to search for and what drive train parts are easily used together (such as the axle/hub assembly). I am also quite lost on the electrical side of things. Should I try to narrow my search to OBD1 or would an OBD2 motor not be any harder? Is a complete wiring harness for the car available somewhere, or is it really not that hard to just rip it out of the car I get everything else from?

I know I have a lot of questions, some of them are probably dumb, but I am very motivated to build this and it has been something I've considered doing for a long time. Thank you for any help you can give, and Im sure that there will be more questions as this progresses. As things get going I'll post up some pictures.

John Williams

 

Oh Yeah that's an ambitious project. If your wantin' to do something like this with Honda parts or any other car for that matter get the whole car. Personally I would try to find a 92 to 95 prelude its got the most displacement and that era of Honda engine has an un-believable amount of aftermarket support. BTW pick yourself up a Grassroots Motorsports Magazine they cover these cars in depth and you just might want to think about skipping the chassis part and ordering a kit car. If I was'nt a#@holes and elbows into Honda's and Suzuki Samurai's I'd be building one of these too!. The only problem I see w/ a Honda is you'll have to go rear engine(as you said), unless you can find a smashed S2000 because there isn't a whole lot of options for rear wheel drive transmissions on a Honda except for the F22. BTW the wiring is easy if you have the whole car. Goodluck!!!! when your done you'll be the envy of evryone at your local autocross no matter what drivetrain you use.

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I've looked into kit cars and thats just not for me right now. Im an engineering student at Texas A&M so part of this is just trying to put to use some of the crap they are making me learn, and im out to prove to myself that I can do this. Thanks for the info on that magazine I'll pick one up.

As for the car Im looking for, I think Prelude's are going to be more than i want to spend. As far as motor goes, I just want 100 hp give or take some that I can come by cheap, but It needs to run well. Wouldn't picking up a D that someone swapped out, or find an old junked car be the cheapest thing? Thats what i seem to find looking around here.

I have been reading quite a bit from this site in the past couple days and there is a lot of great info already on here. I apologize if I am asking annoying newb questions, and If all of this has been covered extensively before then mods, just delete this whole deal. I will eventually run into the info I need, just figured I might try to get pointed in the right direction.

Thanks again to anybody with any info/suggestions for me.

 

 

^^^ those look like ariel atoms

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tony413 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">^^^ those look like ariel atoms </TD></TR></TABLE>
probably because they are