FWD Hubs
 

can you use front wheel drive hubs on the front of a roadster? there are plentey of cheeper moor available cars with front wheel drive and a lot of them look good for using. ford ka and vauxhall corsa and mk3 golf but....

Ford Fiesta mk3 type front upright is easy enough just cut the CV joint surround off the drive flange, how ever you might run into problems with the bottom ball joint mounts as there is considerably less material to take a maxi ball joint as some are split with a pinch bolt not castle nut locked on. It'll take a lot of searching with mix and match parts. You might also have to adjust the lengths of the wishbones to get the correct camber and caster so the car turns in to corners and self centres.

It can be difficult, some front wheel drive hubs have poor geometry simply because they're for a fwd car. These uprights are designed for things like torque steer and are usually not tall enough for our purposes.

The only way to get the ideal upright is to design and build your own.

Uprights other than Ford will not have the 4/108 PCD either which means that you'll have to redrill the hubs or use different wheels front to back.

Having said that Tiger used to use the Mk2 Golf upright.

Cheers

Chris :)

as regard the pcd i was looking for 4x100 as aposed 4x108 to match the bmw parts at the back. so mk2 golf wood work.
off to look at tiger.

So why not use the BMW front uprights?

i dont need them yet so am still thinking.
the bmw ones need a strut fabricating for them. there are drawring about for them but no sizes that i have seen.

I would second what Chris has said the geometry in a front hub such as King-pin inclination axis and steering axis offset are often set completly differently in a front wheel drive car due to a diferent set of requirements. Net result geometry that can be difficult to modify to acheive good cornering and feel when driving the car. Usually not imposible but none the less more work

Would anybody have drawings of how Tiger have utilised the golf front uprights? (a link would do fine too)

Another small point to bear in mind is the mixing of parts from different manufacturers.

Imagine needing a wheel bearing from a Golf, brake pads from a Corsa and disc from a Sierra. Ordering parts would be a nightmare.

Life will be so much easier if all the rear end was from a <insert model> and all the front end was from a <insert other model>

I don't have a donor, my rear end is 4x4 cosworth and my front end is a real hodge podge (Sierra uprights, Hi-Spec 4 pot calipers, Focus ST170 discs) but all of it is ford, or ford replacements.

To be fair, Sierra hubs are not expensive, but if you are looking for a diffeent PCD, why not just re-drill sierra hubs to suit?

re driled seirra hubs seems to be the easeyest of solutions for the front.