The whole CAD drawing stage has forced me to consider a range of issues I thought would be much further along the build process, such as suspension construction, seat sizes, rollbar design, engine/gearbox choices, and especially rear suspension design.

Rear Suspension

There's bound to be a lot more on this later but basically I had developed a design problem (and I hadn't even started!). I really wanted to have the wider chassis ( to give more room for me and engines/gearboxes etc.) but this meant that I couldn't use the standard rear axle. The only wider Ford live axle was the Cortina lump, but I Australia this is a Borg Warner part that weighs four times the Escort axle. This would have to have a significantly detrimental effect on the handling of a car this weight, especially on Australian roads. I looked at a huge number of Japanese axles (many weekends spent crawling under cars measuring rear axles at your friendly wreckers!) and found a few that would do but this then added the problem of different PCDs between front and back axles. Also, I didn't really want to use drums on the back so the only real option became a Mitsubitsi Scorpion live rear axle which was still going to be a bit tight in the wider chassis. All this time the IRS bug was chewing at my ear, so I also looked into that.

A full unequal length wishbone rear was well beyond my design skills, but at some stage I got the idea to do a DeDion rear. Again after much crawling under wrecked cars with a tape measure I finally found a donor I thought I could modify into a DD rear setup. So, with a brave heart I bought the rear end and , driving home I must say that I was thrilled to have finally made my first major decision about the car design and had something to start working on. The donor was a 1982 Nissan Skyline Hatch with an IRS using semi-trailing arms. I figured that I could chop the semi-training arms off the wheel hubs and weld on a bracket for the DD axle to attach to. After that it is simply a matter of using the four trailing arms and panhard rod design from "The Book", with a few minor adjustments. I'm yet to see if its that simple ! At this stage (October) after lots of measuring and drawing these ideas down in TurboCAD, I'm yet to visit my intended engineer for his design approval before I start cutting and welding.

Engine\ Gearbox

The next major choice was the engine and gearbox selection......
A lot of people are using the Toyota 1600 Twin Cams which is a good option. These engine are small enough, light enough and powerful enough and would be fine for my Clubman too. However, I wanted to make sure that there weren't any options I wasn't considering, so I went off looking at other engine packages.

The Nissan SR20 and CA18 engines are suitable but I personally found it quite difficult to get detailed info off the Internet regarding these engines, especially the non turbo varieties. They have the advantage of already being RWD and mated to a 5 speed gearbox, but they are larger and heavier and produce less power per cc.

The Mazda 1600 and 1800 engines are also suitable but due to their reasonably low power output (compared to the Toyota 1600) and higher cost I haven't really researched these much further. They also have the advantage of being RWD and matched to a very nice 5 speed gearbox. This setup would probably be my second choice.

So, given approval from my engineer, I intend to get myself a Toyota 1600 20V front cut to ensure that I get all the ancillaries and the option of using the steering column, pedals, master cyl, etc....

So, now I know what I want to do, it's on to the chassis construction.....