Weird Situation?

[madman]

Take a 1947 dodge pickup truck. Build tube chassis for it. Stuff the engine (mega big block muscle motors from detroit dynoed 854 horsepower engine) into it. Now heres the rub i say put the engine into the pickup bed mid engine style rear engine style mounting. But how do you transfer the horsepower to the rear wheels in a pragmatic efficient manner, This things so small i have trouble fitting into the drivers compartment. Im only 250 pounds and 6 foot 4 inches tall. (last diet thinned me out big thank my wife audrey for that) Anyhow what do i do to transfer power to the rear end succesfully HELP PLEASE Madman aka Mike

[Evan]

Use a transaxle.

[S_J_H]

Sounds like you are trying to build a wheel stander
Steve

[Doc Nickel]

Well, if you're going to have the engine entirely in the bed, you grab an old '70 to '77 Olds Toronado or '70 to '78 Caddy ElDorado, and use the FWD transaxle.

They came attached to engines rated at upwards of 400HP and 500+ ft/lb of torque right out of the box, and they've been run in 800+HP exhibition drag cars with almost no modification. They're essentially THM 400s that were turned around, and most hop-up tricks and some parts will work.

You'll need an adapter to fit it to the Mopar engine, and probably a custom flexplate, but it's very likely doable.

If you want a more mid-mounted midengine (the Toro transaxle more or less centers the engine over the drive wheels) you'll have to find a real transaxle, like a ZF out of a Pantera (which is rumored to be barely good for 600HP, and even then only with work) or some of the horrifically expensive Porsche units.

It's a problem the kit car guys have been dealing with for a while- use off the shelf systems that aren't quite what you want for a true midengine (Toro) or use a small system that can't handle much power (Cavalier/Fiero, VW bug, etc.) or be forced to spend metric bucketfuls of cash to get a decent transaxle ($6,000 and up for some of the race or aftermarket kit-car systems.

Doc.

[wierdscience]

Get one of these out of an articulated wheeled loader,three pedals on the floor,FWD/NEUTRAL/REV.No stinking torque converter and infinate VS over the whole torque range.

http://www.deere.com/en_US/rg/produc...ies/index.html

[HTRN]

The easiest solution, like evan said, is use a Transaxle - I know the Porsche G50's are supposedly good to a thousand HP, but I don't konw if they will hold up in a heavy vehicle, high torque situation. I do know they do nicely in the Ultima's, with a 700HP one recently taking away the 0-100-0 title from the Veyron.

A friends father was building something similar, the last time I saw him. In his case, it was a Tunnel Rammed 600HP 396 in a mid engine location in a 1970 C-10 pickup. I think he did it using a short length auto and a high misalignment driveshaft using CV joints. But the last time I saw him was around 2001, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy.

Honestly, I thought something similar would be a nifty project, a S-10 pickup with a 383 stroker motor and a G50 transaxle. the cool part would be the hard cover on the bed, using the old drive tunnel to duct air to the motor from the grill. Add on a a fiberglass hood to reduce the front weight even further. Should be able to wheel stand nicely.


HTRN

[topct]

Use a V-drive. Engine faces the rear, output from trans to V-drive and then back to the differential. There used to be commercially avaliable V-drives and I have seen them made out of CV chains or toothed belts.

[madman]

Dont want to build a wheelstander just a neat old pickup drag racer. Will have wheelie bars on it anyhow. Motors currently in a old Duster and has run 9.50 s at the track. Its mty neighbours car and i help him out with stupid ideas (my specialty)and machining projects. The tornado transaxle with adaptor may be feasable i guess they could be strengthened here and there to handle more horsepower. Thinking of acompucar three stage nos system or even on alcohol and blower then over 1000 hp available if you wanted to go faster. Thanx for ideas guys Mike

[kendall]

Not sure how much room you hhave between axle and front of bed, but if there's enough room, you can use an 8.8 independant axle from one of the newer explorers, I think shoveaway makes a similar one too ,and a short tranny, being independant rear you'd only need a 4-5 inch drive shaft at the most. Advantage thee is that you could mount the engine etc down low between the fraame rails and keep plenty of suspension travel, the other types would impose a limit.

With the V-drive, you'd need to ensure that the drive shaft turned the correct direction, so it would likely be a gear type, or include a reverser.

Off the wall, but you could use a Transfer case and drive an axle mounted backwards at the rear. If you get one of the divorced T-case styles, you'd have more choices of arranging the driveline. Get the type with a pretty good drop at the front and you can fine tune your shaft angles.

If you go that route, I'd find an axle that was also used as a front axle in 4X4 apps so you could get a reverse rotation gearset for it, I've not run into it, but have read that there's a fair loss in strength when running a gearset 'backwards'

ken.

[jmm360]

If you go with a T-case @ 854hp i suspect you'll want a few spares on hand .