Porsche 928 transaxles are popular conversions with an adapter plate. I have seen them used on everything from SBC to flathead Fords.
The problem with a 928 transaxle is that it is REALLY long. It comes in both auto and manual though and your right, it will stand up to a large amount of power. A good used automatic can be had for about $1000.
Can't find the site anymore, but remember seeing V8 powered hillclimb dune buggys with a chain final drive to each wheel hidden in the custom made extra long swing arms! The drive shafts from the transaxle entered the swing arms about half way back and then the chain drives (fully inclosed inside the arms for safety) took over to power the wheels at the very end. Loads of ground clearance was the goal but the things were awesome to watch in video. Everyone else had a job getting up the slick muddy hill, those guys went up the hill about 40 Mph, went up the near vertical rockface (30ish feet!) that marked the end of the "hill" and on into the woods beyond the wall. Chain drive can work. WELL.
My original chain drive idea was for a speedster. I want a 1.5 seater that's fairly slammed. I don't want a driveline going through the cockpit. I saw some old british speedsters that has chain drive and, eureka, the birth of a sick idea. A chain running the length of the car on the outside. Screw all you chopper guys with open belt primaries, I got open chain drive on my speedster.
Well . . . back down to earth for a minute. I sold my latest car to a guy in New york and he had an enclosed hauler pick it up. What was in the hauler was unreal. A $200,000 shelby gt 350 complete with carroll's signature on the visor. The guy even had ME drive the car off the hauler, unreal. But, that car was chump change. There was a 2 million dollar Maserati 450s sitting there under my car. One of only eleven ever made. What an inspirational automobile. Anyway, the Maserati has a transaxle in rear with what's called a De Dion axle. Invented by Count De Dion in the 1900's. It uses a tube running parallell to the differential and the tube carries the hubs for the rear end. You hook up 2 trailing arms and a panhard bar, etc. just like any rear. No need for a arms. The maserati used this with a tranverse leaf and friction shocks. And, it won Le Mans with it. So, I use a diff. that's independent and I hook the motor, trans and diff. in line and use the De Dion setup. The fact that it's so long would be cool because I could let the diff, with the De Dion setup hang out the back of the bed exposed like the modifieds do.
Probably corvette? Don't forget about 4wd trucks with independent front suspension, they have little diffs up front that should be able to handle some ok power. You can probably get them in a lot of different ratios too. 4WD S-10's are all over the place. Can't believe I missed this thread the first time around. I love mid-engined cars, i'm pretty much obsessed with them. I was going to build a chevy truck with a Eldo 500/TH425, and BMW 535i rear trailing arms and crossmember. Very simple layout, light weight too. Stout arms, the hubs were 58" apart, and they had strong CV joints. Was going to have axles cut to fit, about $200 a pair if I remember right. Never had the money to make it happen. In reply to previous post... if you go eldo/toro, those use buick olds pontiac bellhousing patterns. You'll have to have an adapter for chevy. I remember seeing a 88? Ford Fiesta in Hot Rod magazine with a 425 transaxle in the rear, vette suspension, cut axles. He had a trans-adapter made that moved the SBC motor forward 4". Worked out really well as far as spacing goes. If it was me, i'd grab a rotted later corvair. Use the rear suspension and transaxle... rotate the trans around, flip the ring gear (Crown made a kit), and take it easy on it. Those transaxles were GM stuff, the early autos were powerglides, the 4-speeds were muncie. The weak spot was the diff. Just don't hammer down all the time, it would be fine.
BMW, Datsun 510 and Z cars, Subaru, Audi Quattro's , Mercedes, VW 4Motion's, AWD Volvo's, Jaguar, Mitsubishi Evo, Mazda RX7, Late model Lincoln Mark whatever, Late model Ford Thunderbird, Mustang Explorer, Expedition with irs rears, Lexus, Infinity, and on and on and on. The late Ford irs diffs are based on the popular 8.8 solid axles so parts plentifull and relatively cheap.
The manufacturer's name is lost, but there is an adapter to put an SBC to a Subaru transaxle. The trans is factory mounted with the engine in front of the trans. manual or auto versions are available. The units for 6 cylinders should be up to the job. I saw the article that mentioned the adapter kit in a kit car magazine around 90-94. It may have been an old issue then. It would even work for the front engine/chain drive idea. The front sprockets could be driven off of the axle shafts, going through the frame forward of the cowl. Then some looooong ass chains could slop grease all over the side the frame and body giving a pre-war british look to the car. Just an idea.
Don't forget the late Couger. same chassis as the Thunderbird, but usually cheaper. The Viper is IRS too.
I have a good tranny that just came out of a '73 caddy that had a 500" motor in front of it. It all worked. I bought the car for the motor. I would be willing to part with the tranny if you're interested. The car was a front wheel drive but the motor was still mounted in the car just like a rear wheel drive.
The problem with most 4x4 IFS units would be that they are offset to the left side. 80's Nissan I believe WERE center mounted. Would the crown gear be rotating correctly if turned around as a rear axle? Would the gear be driving on the coast side, thus having less durability? (It's already a little marginal for strength due to its front usage where it normally only sees 50% of the torque due to the rear being the primary drive and the front being the additional drive unit. Thats how the OEM's get away with the small aluminium carriers.) Corvairs were reverse rotation engines IIRC, so flipping the crown gear wouldn't be necessary once you turn the transaxle around for V8 use. (Not sure if its even possible on a Vair anyway.) 4 pinion diffs were available to strengthen that problem area...not sure if they're still made. Kelmarks V8 kit had a special shaft and bellhousing that bolted to the back of the transaxle without turning it around! Weird but it worked!!!! Look it up if you don't believe! As for the Vair automatic...the V8 would be rotating the wrong way to allow the trans pump to pressurize, so I think thats out too...
Id love to see a well done mid engine 36 PU. Oh yeah,try looking up Tractor Pullers. They usually use direct links or a really short drive shaft to a tranny and you basically straddle the tranny when youy sit on it. We used to pull Small Tractors but have gotten out of it.
BOP (Buick Olds Pontiac) transmissions do not bolt up to SBC, except for some 80's 200r4's?? had a dual bolt pattern. Why do you need to run a SBC? Why not do an Olds Toronado complete drivetrain? Also the 79 era Cadillac 425's where pretty good motors. More and more speed parts available for these engines. How are you planning to engineer the rear suspension and drivline? Good luck with the project, love to see people thinking outside the box...er engine bay! Also, It justed dawned on me that a Chevy Corvair, which is RWD, has a SBC boltpattern?? Check with someone like Clark's Corvair parts for a conversion kit for SBC into Corvair. These 4 speeds can be ungraded to handle a fair amount of power. Hell, just put a complete Corvair engine and trans in your project, this way you will not have to woory about a radiator. Dare to be different. JT
DUH! Didn't realize this thread had so many pages! Terrific group of idea's though. Is there any Hot-Rod project HAMB'rs can't build? JT
The later Dodge/Chrysler cab-forward front-wheel-drive cars had a transaxle the mounted the engine north=south ahead of the wheels. I think they used the same transmission moved to the rear to build the Prowler, but that would give you an automatic with a good layout for a midengine car. I'm not too sure how reliable they are, though. For a more compact arrangement, there are adapters that allow a V8 to be mounted east=west to a GM transaxle, or you could even pull a Caddy Northstar powertrain. It's a compact package and could be made into a mid or rear engine configuration.
G-50 Porche transaxle from 87-98 two-wheel-drive 911s. you can use that for a mid engine application and they do have adapters to fit SBCs. if you want a 6th gear and an even beefier transaxle go with the G96 transaxle from a GT3 Porche.
there is a guy localy with a Chevette running a 455 Olds motor and Toronado transaxle in the rear. they windened the quarters to fit over the giant rear tires and wide ass transaxle. it's kinda neat in a hokey sorta way.
I scanned through all of the posts and it doesn't look like anyone said anything about using a Hewland LG box. There are a few different versions of hewland transaxles and they actually can be had for a reasonable (2-3K) price. They are built to go behind a small/big chevy or ford. The new version runs 6-8K I think, but its been a while since I looked. The 915 porsche box (as mentioned) really won't handle the torque and they are spendy (1500 for a core) for what you get. There really aren't any cheap transaxles out there that will handle the power of a V-8.
CanAm Racecar builder Bob mc Kee built his own Transaxle using an early Ford Diff, Quickchange gears, and a T10 Tranny.
I saw pictures of the McKee transaxle, it appeared to be well sorted. He sandwiched a Super T10 between the diff and the cogs of a quick change (Ford, Halibrand, Winters, ???). It had a jack shaft from the quick change cogs back to the pinnion. He had rolled the trans over to where the shift arms were just to the right of center on the top to make room for the pinion jack shaft underneath the trans. It had a cable (Morse or similar) to each shift arm so there was less slop than a normal cable shifter. It must have been tough, he built it for a 426 Chrysler Hemi powered CanAM car. As for the cheapest V8 transaxle combo it has to be the TH425. You can get the engine, trans and suspension out of the Eldorado or the Toronado and I'm surprised no one mentioned these were used in the FWD motorhome GM used to build. Those had a 454 I believe. I have seen Eldo and Toro hulks go for $200 complete (well one had been wrapped around a tree and the other was rust bucket) I even saw a burned out motorhome go for $25 at a local salvage auction(the miniumum bid for the day). I saw a Corvair with a Blown (671?) 350 in the middle with a hommade torque tube / shaft to a TH425 at the Spokane Goodguys in '06. I believe the sunvisor said Porche Killer. Regardless the TH425 is bomb proof, if ugly and heavy. I would use it all (eng, trans, suspension), but I would probably put it in a '48 ish COE truck (a buddy has one he is trying to sell). Go like hell and not bake you out of the cab on a hot day. Probably take a radiator out of a city bus to cool it under the bed like that though. That's my $.02
928's had transaxles and can be had for cheap. They were v8's. Someone actually gave me one once just to get it off his property, I got it running and did burnouts for a week before it broke a timing belt and I parted it. I got 200$ for the tranny. Should be easy to adapt.
Not sure if it's the same set-up others have talked about (never built a Porsche), but what about pulling a 914 apart. There are 914s out there everywhere running sbc, so I would imagine that they have proven themselves capable of handling the power, plus you can buy a running 914 CHEAP. Once again, sorry if I'm being repetative...
Chuck's speed mentioned earlier about the Chrysler LH transaxle possibility of being used. The 3.5L motors in these cars generated 214-221hp, and around 250ftlb of torque, and they even slightly resemble a Hemi. In the future - probably the far future - I've been contemplating using one of these motors and transaxles, complete with the K-frame to add to the back of a RPU type truck, and house the motor and trans in the bed. These cars have what feels like a massive amount of power, and when you shave off roughly 2500 pounds of 4 door car and drop down into a lightweight pickup body like the RPU, it should be sick as hell to drive. Anyhow, that's how my warped mind works. Not to mention, in the big assed car the thing got 22-28 MPG! Think what it'll do in a car that weighs next to nothing!
The ZF trans axle assembly out of a Pantera is probably the best unit out there for what you are thinking of doing, but are incredibly expensive $$$$$$. You can beef up a VW trans axle to handle about 400HP. Look in some of the Dunebuggy mags for sources. A Porsche trans axle also works, stronger than the VW, but also stronger. I have done three of these setups, one with a corvair trans with Crown conversion kit, basically unsatisfactory. The next with the ZF 5-Speed, worked out very well. The third was with a beefed up VW trans axle and it also worked well. Shift linkage will be a challenge to work out to make it smooth and positive. Good Luck!
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