Ye reckon right there sir, aye hail from the cidar drinkin' town o' Brissle in the South West. I'll be honest, didn't think you used 'reckon' Stateside - thought it was a typical limey word like 'bloke' and 'geezer', and anything that ends in -re, and "wh-wh-wh-whoopsie daisy darling" as Hugh Grant would have everyone believe. Guess ya learn somthing new everyday - do you guys ever go out for a 'pint' instead of a 'beer'? I know you use pints, but I've never heard it said.
I've thrown around the idea of using a Honda five speed manual transmission adapted to a motorcycle engine in a reverse trike, it wasn't my idea though, I found it on a site where a fellow used basically the same setup in a sandrail. He started out with a belt drive but converted to a chain setup because of the torque of his Hayabusa engine. The concept is pretty sound, think about having the bikes transmission, then having essentially another set of five "ranges" to play with, along with reverse...
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thought of it - encouraging that others have gone down that route. I'd be looking at a shaft drive bike hooked up inline with a gearbox (any gearbox that can take the torque of the engine in lowest gear - Ford Type 9 4 speed might do it at only 22kg weight). I love the idea of having five speeds for shifting and a lowest-low-high-highest range and the reverse gear, like town and country ratios. I may look at pulling out two forward speeds to lighten the box and reduce friction. I could keep the engine miles down the front and the carbox towards the rear for better weight distribution and a very slender transmission tunnel so my fat *** can squeeze in better. I've also had a look at that Suzuki engine - incredible little motor, you can tell Suzuki build bikes from it. Both the 1.0l and 1.3l motors have been used as a basis for aircraft engines and weigh in between 55kg-80kg depending on spec. They can also be mated directly to a Samurai gearbox to give a RWD five speed. It's quite a popular mod for MGs and Spridgets etc. - amazed I'd never heard of it before. They (1.3l) get 40mpg in 4x4 Samurais and the 1.0l do well in swifts/metros, so quite economical. Although this is a simpler more traditional approach to getting power to the back, I'm very limited by rear end ratios (2.75 for a 'wing box), so the twin-gearbox approach does kind of offset that, although there would be additional power losses (anyone got a figure for that?).
I take it you looked at the thread, "Let's Talk Cyclecars"? Lots of interesting speculation there. Try also, "Ultralight cars...how low can you go?...", and there are others. In the former I'd mentioned the idea of a 2CV engine on a suitable lightish 5-speed (Toyota T50? Nissan?) driving a shaft-drive motorbike final drive. That opens up an interesting line of enquiry. A tall rearend ratio might not be a bad thing if you've got enough power and the weight is extremely low, especially if fuel economy is at least an ostensible consideration. The 'Wing ratio doesn't sound very far off. Nevertheless, a 'box with only top, third, and reverse in it does make sense, and the advantage is that you'll only need a 4-speed to begin with. It'll give you the equivalent of about a 3.7:1 final drive ratio in 3rd. The disadvantage would be that reverse would be a real crawler ratio unless you remember to shift the bike 'box into one of the upper ratios at the same time. I wouldn't worry about power losses while the second gearbox is in direct drive. It's basically a bearing carrier then, incidentally spinning an unloaded layshaft. Then, of course, there is chain drive, and all the possibilities of using front-wheel-drive transverse gearboxes, like this (from my blog).
Hi guys, Awsome info again as usual. I know the cyclecars thread very well but have never seen the ultra-light thread before. I'll get reading that in a minute - a brief glance seems to suggest that a T 'could' be built under 1000lbs with a rover/buick 215. They weigh in at about 320lbs so that's encouraging . . . but has it been done. The only issue with the 'wing bevel box is if I was going along with a suzuki car engine/trans. They are fairly low torque and I'm a little concerned that in-town mileage and acceleration would suffer. With a seperate overdrive (underdrive?) box as in the bike engine variant there'd be no problem at all. I've seen the VW three wheeler - didn't it get cancelled and then taken up by some other company (prong?). It's not quite what I'm looking to go for though, I'm after somthing a bit cleaner (imagine an all aluminium 32-grilled T being rear ended by a Morgan three wheeler). It would be fully cowled/belly panned and I'll do a fair bit of playing with it to get the aerodynamics tweaked into shape (maybe some removeable wheel spats at the front?). I have access to a few toys to improve the aerodynamics a bit. Really turned on by the bike engine/box + cut down car trans + rear wheel set up, all those gears should give a bunch of flexibility with driving.
. . . . further reading suggests that 1300lbs is the limit though. Gahh, I need under 990lbs to hit the DVLA rules though.
Keep in mind an Austin 7 "Chummy" weighed 800lbs when it appeared in 1922 - and it was a "proper" car, with four wheels and a gearbox and a cooling system and everything.
If I were in England I may look fior a 3 wheeled Morgan (sp?) it would already be registered as a motor cycle and you could pop a later more potent engine in there.
Morgan three wheelers tend to go for big money over here - a replica would be much more economical, Triking, Pembleton, ACE cars, BRA, JZR etc are all of that sort of car. I'm after somthing a little bit different though - keen to avoid a Morgan replica. Hey Ned, didn't really think about an Austin 7 - they're body on frame too which often makes things a little heavier. Love the sketches in your gallery btw - reminds me of another idea I have in the back of my mind (Reliant Scimitar ch***is, art deco wooden roadster body, closed in wheels, no running boards, exhausts exiting from the rear of the front wings, 70s Cadillac 'fin' lights on the rear wings, pop-up headlights in the front wings, kind of a duesey-delahaye sled). 990lbs is the weight limit, need some more info on engine weights I reckon. I'm getting more and more keen on the pan euro, it's a clean package to try and mount up. I thought about CX500 V twins too for similar packaging, but they're no more economical than the Pan and power is limited to about 45hp-50hp. Dirt cheap though.
Imperial Gallon (UK) is 160 oz compared to US Gallon at 128 oz hense why a 26 oz bottle of wiskey is called a fifth (all comparisons should equate to their values as related to booze). Soooo 40 mpg UK is 32 mpg US! To do conversions UK to US x 0.8 US to UK x1.25. Should we do the a**hole metric now?
Sod metric. The numbers are easier to work with, the maths is easier, physics always comes out in round numbers etc. But still, sod it! It's only remotely acceptable because half a litre of beer is bigger than a pint!
Thanks 60 Plymouth. Body on ch***is construction isn't necessarily heavier. In the 7's case the body is just a fairing for the p***engers and may be as light as possible. OEMs had other reasons for adopting unitary construction than engineering "progress": it was all about nurturing critical production volumes for reasons that get very complicated to explain. In the case of a three-wheeler you've already got tripod stability so you don't need ch***is stiffness to deal with differential-loading variations in warp. You do need to maintain zero camber in the rear wheel, but that's a lesser order of magnitude, force-wise.
On the contrary, Imperial math is easier. You always know immediately if you've made a decimal error, unlike not being quite sure if you're dealing with centiNewtons or teraNewtons ... Best of all is to know both. I've got my 25.4-times table off by heart
My mistake on the mpg. I talk to someone in the UK almost daily, but I always just figured since gas was sold in Liters, that they wouldn't use mpg, seems a little screwy to me. Least I learnt something. Geez, you guys drive on the wrong side of the road, sell gas by liters, yet use mpg, and your gallon off too.
Ha, I get the 25.4 times table thing. All the work I do is in metric but when I want to 'visualise' somthing I instinctively convert it to imperial first. "20,000 litres? Oh, about 4,000 gallons, same size as a locomotive's tender". Never thought about avoiding the decimal error thing before though - yeah, I've messed that up a fair few times. Back on topic - the only torsional rigidity I'm concerned for is the moment imparted by the rear wheel contact and vertical centre of gravity. Since the vehicle won't lean (much) there'll be a bit of torsion on the swingarm/frame during turns. There's a picture floating about on the net showing the rear wheel leaning out of the turn in relation to the body because of this. I do believe there are weight/strength advantages to a monocoque/spaceframe type construction (and no, I'm not just saying that because I own a '60 Plymouth!) over body on frame construction, but I think how the machine is 'loaded' plays a bigger role than a bunch of people give credit for. A bridge essentially has a lot of spread out weight on its surface so skeletal/girder construction makes sense. A car has point loads at the axles, engine, seats etc, not exactly uniform. By the time the structure has been shaped to spread the loads out to the rest of the spaceframe I don't think the weight advantages are as great. Having said that, Locost frames do pretty good. For three wheelers a central spine might not be a bad bet - Morgans had central beams, and Lotus Elans and even Pinzgaur trucks have a 'spine' structures that work well. The spaceframe's probably more suited to four wheelers, but appeals because it offers a bit of p***enger protection. If the roll cage structure is going to be there for safety it might as well support the loads and forces.
I got introduced to pints while on a job in West Africa. The British Army major we were working for had us drinking them at 9 AM, with lunch and after work. Took a bit for this Southern boy to get used to, but we were eager students!
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense selling in litres. I think Brussels would like us to use Metric everything but some habits die hard. We still have speed limits in mph but have to measure apples by the kg. You can buy a pint of beer or a litre of milk, and a 40 foot container has a tonnage limit. Go figure!
We were staying in Nashville/Memphis and Atlanta about 8 years ago, and my dad and me went to Lynchburg to see where the good stuff was made. Our guide pulled up on an old Panhead and got talking. He found out we were British and proceeded to tell us that when he was in the US Navy, they could drink damn near everyone under the table - except the Royal Marines. Maybe all the alcohol's why our teeth are so bad
They stopped selling it by the gallon when it reach some stupidly high price years ago - makes it look more palatable when sold in smaller units and it´s difficult to figure out how much your car uses!
So it is - looks like metric has nothing going for me then James . Half a litre be bigger than a US pint though.
The Jalopy Journal
