Z600 for rally???
Posted by Tim Taylor
Tim Taylor Mod Moderator Location: Oakland, CA Join Date: 02/02/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 622 Rally Car: Mazda 323 GTX |
This project it turning out so silly that I thought I would share. We're building a '71 Honda Z600 Coupe for the upcoming Thunderhill 24 Hours of LeMons. It seems like you could make a badass MaxAttack car the same way as long as you were willing to put the co-driver in the back seat
We started with a rotting Z600 that we pulled from the side yard of a soon to be foreclosed home...it needed a thorough cleaning as it was a spider habitat 
And this is where it all goes either stupid or really cool depending on your perspective. What's that in the passenger seat? 
We're sticking a VF1100 Honda Magna v-4 engine in the passenger seat and making the car mid-engine rear-wheel drive. That means we have 105hp, 80lb-ft, a 10,000rpm redline, and a 6-speed sequential gearbox in a 250lb package that you can buy all day long for a couple hundred bucks. 
The suspension on a Z600 is utter crap because it used the front sway bar as a trailing link. Stomp on the brakes and get a huge amount of dynamic toe out from all the flex...hmmmmm, what could solve this? How about a thrashed 1st gen RX-7 roller to chop the suspension out of
Some quick plasma cutting and it gave up it's front suspension easily 
Then I sectioned the subframe and made everything 6" narrower 
Some careful chopping on the Z gets you from this 
To this version where the bastard hybrid just slips together 
I've already made up a dummy 3rd member with slugs for my true bar 
That should make quick work of narrowing the rear axle this weekend. 
All Japanese axles are 45deg splines so it's a simple matter to chop 3" off each axle shaft and re-spline them with a cutter that I already own. |
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Grant Hughes Super Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
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At the very least you could throw a seat in the back for the ham radio guy and run it as a zero car.
 Grant Hughes |
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Tim Taylor Mod Moderator Location: Oakland, CA Join Date: 02/02/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 622 Rally Car: Mazda 323 GTX |
krisdahl Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > Agreed though that the suspension design is best > described as 'interesting'. No 'quotes' necessary...it's crap and there are no spare parts anywhere compounding the misery. > I must admit I don't totally understand how you're > going to do the rear end. That's where things get really interesting. The Magna is a shaft drive motorcycle. 
It also has the driveshaft rotating in the wrong direction for car use. Enter eBay for cheap stock car parts, cheap Russian bearings, and seals of dubious quality. Thats the Magna output pinion on the left, a set of used quick change rear end rears in the middle, and fine communist bearings on the right. 
So if we combine all of these parts in a custom housing you get something that looks like this in the first round of design. 
So now we can reverse the rotation, offset the output to the centerline of the car, buy cheap gears that adjust the final drive +/- 1.7:1, and use a standard slip jointed driveshaft. And all of you thought grafting in the front suspension was silly... > Presumably you'll be plumbing in a proper master > cylinder and brake system as well. Brake systems are free so we're going to stick in a Wilwood remote tandem master cylinder setup with a balance bar. That should make everything much better and easy to tune with out four wheel disc brakes. > If you want help selling the motor/trans out of it > let me know. Probably could find a buyer or even > have you ship it up to me. > There is a local buyer who has first shot at it but I'll bet he flakes. The engine and transmission were good and are currently crated up for shipment (previous buyer in LA flaked on us) so I'll let you know in the next week or so. |
Jay Woodward Godlike Moderator Location: Snohomish, WA Join Date: 12/21/2005 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 893 Rally Car: '90 Mazdog Frankenprotege |
Derek Bottles Elite Moderator Location: Lopez Island/ Seattle WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 853 Rally Car: Past: 323, RX2, GTI. Next up M3 ? |
Tim Taylor Mod Moderator Location: Oakland, CA Join Date: 02/02/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 622 Rally Car: Mazda 323 GTX |
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