so jon, shawn, and i were talking about different options to fix the civic, which is running crappier everyday, and i really like the idea of dropping a motorcycle engine into it. i was thinkin about it last night before i fell asleep and what problems we'd run in to. so, obviously we'd have to make custom engine mounts which shouldn't be too hard, custom shift linkage, run megasquirt, i can't figure out getting power to the wheels. would i need custom axels or would the motorcycle tranny somehow bolt-up to my stock axels? and would there be anyway to have a reverse gear?
i've a few motors on ebay for decent price, nothing on tamparacing or anyother forum i could find. theres a few of you motorcycle guys on here, you think you could keep an eye out for me? what engine would you suggest? i was thinkin somethin like an R1 or CBR 1000 type or engine.
No, there is no way to make this an easy swap. I have heard of people using boat drives to get a reverse gear, but that's pretty much it. I personally think it would be silly. Huge reason: the clutch. My personal two wheeled fun machine has huge clutches(note, clutchES) and they are still not but 5-6" in diameter, if that. Now, they will easily allow you to feather the throttle in on a 500 pound bike, but a 2500 pound car? I think you'd run into problems. I've seen them used on Seven copies, but for a real full size car, I just think the amount of work involved wouldn't reap the benefits seen in a motorcycle platform. You gotta think, a R1 maybe has what, 150-170hp? Awesome on a 500 pound machine, but really not amazing when pushing more weight. I can discuss more, but I'm in CO, on my dad's dialup(yes it still exists), so I won't go into any great detail. But that is my 2 cents, and it's some good change, I ride everyday, and eat/live/sleep motorcycles, they are waaaaay different than cars. Lets not even talk about the load on those tiny little gears from the grip provided by two HUGE patches of rubber. I hear metal things breaking, and falling into the oil, did I mention that the oil in the sump is the same for the clutch? Ok I'll stop. And before anyone says anything, I know it's been done, and sometimes it works, but it's huge bling, and it's usually in light weight cars, tons of fab work. Finding axles would be the least of your worries. Trying to find a way to get the power to the axles is more important.
If you were to do it. I think the best way would be to keep the stock tranny and build a custom bell housing, then just build motor mounts and make it run. It wouldnt be easy at all but it would be one very hard step and more slightly easier ones. You'd need to make a custom flywheel and probably get some kind of clutch to withstand 14k rpm. The custom bellhousing and flywheel have to be very precise. That would be the only problem with the whole thing. When you combine the words custom and precision together and make sentences it generally means you have an uncomfortable wallet to sit on.
yeah after some more research and you guys' input i think it would take a lot more work and money than i had originally planned. but i did find a site that offered a conversion kit for a civic type r (which is hatch but close). the only thing is that the kit costs like 5,500 pounds which is like $10,000 in US money. here's the site: http://www.zcars.org.uk/index.htm
so i guess i'm just gonna have to do somethin about my motor
ok, with the motorcycle engine out of the question and the problem with my motor found thanks to some troubleshooting with viet and jon, i need a new injector, lol. i don't want to get regular injectors so i'll probably go dsm 450s. i got a converted P06 ecu and i shoulod be getting the obdII to obdI harness this weekish. and with viets help i think i'm going to tune with crome. so the civic should be back in business soon **knock on wood**.
EMO4life
