Rallyx chevette. Failure is always an option.

Peabody said:

That would seem like a no brainer. Why would you use  an ancient V6 when a Modern aluminum 4 making the same power is available and cheap? 
 

Less obvious would be a 2.8/2.9 and 5 speed from a Colorado. 

Even better!  Available with a 5 speed manual RWD.  Get one of those crashed and it would have everything needed.

In reply to XenaFordPrincess :

We talked about the atlas four cylinder from a Colorado, it should be easy to find a cheap donor vehicle because the first gen colorado/canyon are susceptible to fatal frame rust around here.

I'm also open to an ecotec, what does it take to make one work for a rwd drive car? 

I'm open to most ideas, but I want something that is fairly painless and cost effective as far as engine swaps go. I'm also considering staying automatic, the footwell is pretty small and adding a clutch and linkage looks like a real pain.

This weekend we worked on the car and got it running decent. We decided the current plan is to get it ready for stock class as is for this coming year, while we plan and stockpile parts for a future build. That plan is still mostly shapeless, so feel free to throw ideas at me. I feel a bit scatterbrained about it at the moment. 

We do have something for the future build.

Behold, UK Vauxhall Chevette Legitness.  I'd bet those "fast road" dampers are about right for rallycross.

I'm not sure where this thread is headed but regardless, I like it!

+1 for 4 banger Chevy Atlas! 

I dailied a car with a footbox small enough that if I turned my foot sideways, I could drag my shoe on both sides of the footwell at the same time. It was no big deal. The pedal itself is more trouble. I bet the board can get you a pedal set or two to play with.

Not saying don't do an automatic, left foot braking is much easier with an auto, just saying the other issues are not that big.

B13Birk said:

+1 for 4 banger Chevy Atlas! 

I think the main issue with fitting the Atlas will be it's a tall engine. Lots of height for it in a pickup or SUV, but not a Chevette.

I've got a Colorado with one. My first thought was the tallness. I remember a buddy's dad swapped a 4.3 V6 in a Chevette back in the '90s. Never got to see it run though because his folks stopped getting along when he had a kid at 17.

In reply to gearheadmb :

I know Quicktime makes a bellhousing to mate the Ecotec to a standard 4-speed.  Loosecannon has one in his MGB race car, the "Pink Panther."

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

B13Birk said:

+1 for 4 banger Chevy Atlas! 

I think the main issue with fitting the Atlas will be it's a tall engine. Lots of height for it in a pickup or SUV, but not a Chevette.

I fail to see how that won't make it more awesome - a hulking near 3L 4cyl sticking out of the hood.

And they also came with auto trans, which would make the swap that much more convenient

I have two Chevettes. I manual swapped one of them, its actually very simple. The pedal assembly is exactly the same, you just dissasemble it and slide the clutch pedal on. I bought a whole one off of car-part.com and just used the pedal. There is already a hole in the firewall for the clutch cable, you just need to source a bushing/adjuster for it. I modified an aftermarket aluminum one for a fox body Mustang bc the OE ones aren't available, and got an NOS cable on ebay. Works great. You will also need a crossmember from a T-5 Chevette. If you join the Chevette Owners group on FB, there are a lot of people that have spare parts. 

The other Chevette already had a T-5 and a Turbo in it. Its making north of 200hp on the stock rear end, but the spider gears have been cryo-treated. Anything in that power range will grenade the stock 6.5in in short order. The car is actually a blast to rallyx, but the open diff really hampers it, especially at those power levels. My plan has been to swap in an S-10 7.5in diff and add an F-body style locker to it, but it hasn't happened yet. The width on a 2WD diff is the same, but you have to make a torque arm to locate it, swap the spring perches, and figure out if you want to use the S-10 brakes and bolt pattern or modify it to use the Chevette brakes and 4x100 bolt pattern. 

When does the '24 RX season start? I can't wait to hear how it goes. I'm going to have to get around to getting a Chevette one of these days. 

gearheadmb said:

I'm also open to an ecotec, what does it take to make one work for a rwd drive car? 

The Saturn Sky and it's bulbous cousin the Pontiac Soltace were RWD Ecotecs. So the parts exist.

In reply to christauph :

Pictures please.

I've been a little slow to update because I haven't seen the car in a while. My racing partner is the automotive teacher at the local tech school, and he took the car there over Christmas break and has been having his kids get some of the repairs up to date. Now that school is out he brought it to me for rust repairs and hopefully getting it ready to race.

The front shock towers were both really rusty so that is what I worked on this weekend. I didn't think to take a before picture, but you guys have seen rust holes before, you know what they look like.

While making some driveway hot laps I decided that the carb sucks really bad. It falls on its face, bogs under load and dies on decel. It probably just needs a clean out and rebuild. I am not interested in doing that for this carb. It's a tiny smog era carb with a couple wire harnesses going to it. berkeley all that. I have a motorcraft 2100 on the shelf. I like those. I'll clean and rebuild that guy. It's way too big, but hey, that's race car stuff.

I rebuilt the carb last night. Nothing special to report about that. The rubber parts were very hard and a couple passages were plugged so I'm glad i didn't try to run it as is. My plans for this weekend are to get the skunky old gas drained and get the carb installed. 

One thing that's bothering me is that this car was parked for probably close to 30 years and I dont know what condition the inside of the fuel tank is in. A fuel cell would fix that, and was planned for when I eventually do an engine swap, but I dont want to do it now because that would put  the car in modified class. I think what I may do is add an inline fuel filter before carb mounted filter to catch big chunks.

You could set up several filters in a row, and just replace the dirty one as it fills up.  Of course there are several different tank recondition kits out there.

  If you can easily remove the fuel feed from the tank, you can replace the in tank filter, that might help, or run it without the in tank filter.  With that removed, check the condition of the fuel feed pipe, any tiny holes will cause feed issues.  Of course should also inspect or replace the fuel line from the tank to the engine.  To often it's the small things that can ruin a fun event.

  Looks like good cheap fun!

My friend briefly had a 5spd diesel Chevette. This one needs a TDI swap!

The carb is bolted and got it to fire last night. The throttle cable isn't connected so I couldn't drive, but revving it definitely felt a lot snappier. 

Time for an update. I haven't checked in because it has mostly been long periods of stagnation followed by bursts of bring details. But today was different.  Today had hot laps. Hot, sweaty, filthy laps. If you were reading earlier and thought that a 390 cfm carb was way too big for a 1600 cc engine, well then you were right. It doesn't idle and is pig rich. Tip in throttle is nothing but bogging and falling on its face. But let me tell you something, when this stupid little turd of a car gets a long enough period of WOT and clears out the flood of fuel this bitch wakes up and goes like crazy. It will get away from you. I ran it into the neighbors corn field. Don't get me wrong, it's still terrible, but I think it might be pretty good. 

Had some real good luck with the Progressive Weber 32/36 DFEV. Ran one on the VW, 914, Mustang, and Vega. Pretty flawless carb for a four cylinder. Easy rebuilt is necessary and available used on every forum out there. Weirdly, the new ones sometimes have dead insects in the float bowls.

Just a thought . . . 

In reply to gearheadmb :

berkeley the neighbor's corn field! GET SOME!

I scored some new seats off marketplace today. Fairly light, good support. They need a good scrubbing but they should be a big improvement over the flimsy stock seats with no bolsters.

In reply to MuSTANK :

I think we are just gonna get the motorcraft as good as we can, and use it until it's time for a driveline swap. This engine is definitely temporary.