What to do with the Bradley?? Discuss. (Page 1 of 2)

Harley v-twin.

A while back someone found a Pinto Bean trans adapter to mate a Ford 2300 to a VW transaxle.  How about getting one of those and put a Pinto engine in it?  They are fairly reliable and are a dime a dozen.  Heck, there's a guy in Akron, OH with a complete, running 2.3 with 4 speed trans free to good home.

FWIW I have a Toyota 3TC adapter left over from the Wartburg project (yes we toyed with many different motor options) 

If you can find one they make around 100hp stock and are the slant 6 of the Japanese car world...almost unkillable.

I could be persuaded to part with it on Lemony terms.

If you can get a subie adpater cheap enough I highly recommend it.  It made the Wartburg flat out fly with a stock 2.2.  Wartburg weighs in at 2200lbs so that Bradley would just scream.  Early 90s 2.2s are easy to find cheap.

That was awesome!  As was your other video.  Very cool.

"Dave! What are you, a MORAN?!"

I love our Pinto engine...

Maybe ypu could go Turbo 2.3

That would fly!

CBR1000 motor.

Is there room to turn the transaxle around and go mid engined?  Then you can do VW fox, Audi 5000, or Subaru.  It might please the court if you found the last remaining earthly head gasket and used it in a Fuego Turbo motor.  Those french/german mashups seem to get some attention.

Not without cutting through the torsion bars and recreating a new rear framework.  At that point you're into a custom frame with a fiberglass body and have left all semblance of a production vehicle as required by the rules.  I had this very talk with Nick and Jay about a similar car I was going to build.  They pretty much said that as long as the VW chassis remains in tact its a production based car, but when you start cutting that up (I wanted to go mid engine too) then its not eligible.

The issue I see with any of those options Dave is you are going to need an engine adapter which unless you score one hell of a deal used (we did and it can be done) will cost you more than the whole car.  And with the V8 you'll need to fab up some kind of motor mounts too, the frame horns aren't strong enough to support all that weight cantilevered out back like that.

Also, above 175-200hp you will start doing bad things to the CV joints/axles/transmission.

The EA (1.8) subie adapters are pretty cheap these days if you can find one.  The rotary adapters show up cheap from time to time as well.  The toyota ones are cheap because the motors are getting hard to find.

Aside from the issue I pointed out above the VW transaxles can run reverse rotation no problem.  Its done commonly.  You just need to swap the ring gear from one side to the other.

**edit** should have said you can swap the ring gear with the swingaxle trans, not the IRS.  You could also find a bus transmission that was used with reduction boxes since they are already reverse rotation and a bit stronger too.

Official Lemons Legend post for your team!

Thanks Phil, I don't know if I should laugh or cry.