Donors in Australia
 

Other then the mx5 is there another car that could be used as a donor in Australia?

Nothing off the shelf, but E30 BMW ( and E36 Compact ) have been adapted.

TT

BMW 3 series diff is a doodle to mod at the back and so are the bearing cariers but you'll need a fabricated section that bolts to the front upright for the top ball joint to pick up on.

What about a V8 Holden?

Guys at my car club have used Subaru & Nissan SR20.(Gemini for seats and fuel tank.Cortina for the front uprights).

http://wascb.org/

What about a 4L inline 6 falcon?
cant be too different to a sierra?

I have just started dismantling a VT Calias for a donor car, I think the commodore is an overlooked donor in Australia, I am going to try and use as much of the driveline as can be adapted.

While the car has to be more rigid for the v6 in Australia, and even more so for me as I am using a supercharged v6, I believe that it will still come in under 750kg's, the main things that need to be changed are that I will be using 30x30mm shs with 2mm walls instead of 25x25mm 1.6 I am having a friend draw it up in autocad right now, but my engineer is convinced that the increase in size and wall thickness along with a few extra well placed bracing pieces will get me where I need to be.

Commodores are plentiful and cheap, I got mine as a repairable write-off at auction for $1300 including auction fees and the tow home, and will get some of that back selling extra bits I don't need. And this is not uncharted territory as the brunton super stalker uses this same configuration

A few peeps are using the Ople/Vauxhall Omega here, which I suposse is similar to the Commodore, although probaly shares no parts knowing the AUZ cars :rolleyes:


Not sure if you realy need to go to 30mm box, the standard chassis is being used with a number of high power 4pot cars and a couple fo V8's ..

TT

In Australia, there is a requirement for the stiffness of the frame, the requirement for twisting is 2000lbs of force for the average 500kg locost with a 4 cyl engine, but is minimum 6000lbs for 6 cyl and above, which is why I need the uprated tubing, to meet the engineering requirements. The commodore is based on the Opel omega but stretched somewhat, there is actually a model called the commodore omega