I have started the ball rolling and bought a used 1991 Honda Inspire which
i have just taken the 5cyl, 2.0litre motor and auto out of it along with all
the front and rear suspension and wiring loom. Below are some pictures of the
motor and box i decided to go with.
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| Here's the motor still in the car. It's a longitude mounted motor but
yet its still front wheel drive. |
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Only 5 bolts support the front subframe to the body of the vehicle (plus
suspension parts etc) so the whole front end of the vehicle comes out as
one unit. |
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| Heres a shot of the front subframe and suspension without the motor. Before
removing the motor from the vehicle i had full intentions of making my own
suspension parts and all sorts of ideas but now that i have the whole lot
sitting on the floor i'm very tempted to bolt the motor back into this subframe
and build the chassis around it, that way i get to use the original strong
subframe and all the original suspension and brakes. |
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This picture clearly shows what i was talking about before in regards
to the axles. The diff on this model vehicle sits right under the sump therefore
the axles are right under the mid point of the engine which as far as i'm
concerned will place a large portion of the weight right over the axles
rather than having the motor hanging past the axles like the VW and Subaru
trikes do. I pulled the side of the diff housing off to see if i could somehow
reverse the diff head so that going forward would make me go backwards and
in return allow me to mount the motor backwards but sadly it can't be done
easily. |
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| It's a all alloy engine and as you can see once all the crap like AC and
power steer is removed its not very wide and it's just over 700mm in height
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There is a couple of downsides i see so far on a "cosmetic"
point of view, even though its a small transmission hanging off the back
of it the trans will be poking out the back of the trike which may look
a bit funny but hopefully when i design the body of it i will be able to
hide it somehow. The other cosmetic issue i will mention later |