Sports Sedan Forum

Hey there everybody. I've been lurking on here a little while now kinda casing the scene and spoke breifly a little while back to a moderator regarding my intentions. Myself and my friends are now in the early stages of building a car to the sports sedan regulations (specifically the '2WD Floorpan' regs for the Under 3500NA class) so I thought I should probably start up a build thread to let everyone know what's happening.



We are going to run a 1984 Ford Laser KB 3-dr with a Rover 3.5L aluminium V8 from an SD1. Being that we are not exactly made of money we are trying our best to make the most of factory parts from various vehicles of which we have either been given, had around the yard or bought for cheap. These are the parts we have together thus far:

Ford Laser KB 3-dr
Rover 3.5L aluminium V8
XF Falcon 4-spd Borg Warner single-rail
VL Commodore diff using XF LSD hemisphere
XF Falcon Watts-link
VY SS twin piston front disc brakes
XF Falcon rear disc brakes



We've completely stripped the car back to a bare shell with a view to getting some sheet metal cut away and see if we can actually squeeze these parts in the car.



We put the VL diff up on stands and put some standard Commodore rims on it for to see how it went for track width. The reason we went with the VL diff is because the track of a VL is only 50mm wider than that of the Laser. We had a couple of XF Falcon diffs out of cars but their track is too wide so we will be using the LSD centers and the Watts Link. Some XF Falcons had a pretty good setup on the rear from the factory it would seem with LSD, Watts link and large ventilated discs.

So we cut some sheet metal away from the rear end mainly in the trunk area, specifically the spare wheel well. The Laser also has a box section running through to the trunk area sitting atop another running from the front of the car. We cut away that which came from the front to give some more clearance for the diff. We can sit the diff at a rough installed height now and lower the car to about a 6" ride height without any problems. Before going any further we have to get a set of wheels so as to figure out clearance with the tires and the final ride height.



So we started on the front end. We bolted the motor on to the gearbox using a Leyland P76 bellhousing, aluminium 360deg job. Because the P76 used a Borg-Warner box (albeit of an earlier design) as well as the Rover V8 the bellhousing uses the same bellhousing pattern as our motor. However only 3 of the gearbox to bellhousing bolts line up with the 4th needing to be tapped. We sat it underneath the car and started lowering the car on to it to figure out what we needed to cut away. We set the motor back so the harmonic balancer was in line with the front axle center line. The rear of the block is miles in front of the center line of the wheelbase. Turned out we needed to cut quite a bit out haha.



The car has 2 de-facto chassis box rail sections underneath the floor pan so our hope was that we could squeeze the engine between the two of them. Turns out a Laser has been designed to accept a Rover V8 as after cutting some of the floorpan away it squeezed tightly between the rails. Now we just have to cut some more of the firewall out as well as some more of the transmission tunnel (for lack of a better term) and it should lower over it nicely.



So that's about it for now, the full range of photos is available on my photobucket HERE. Please let me know what you think of our little project and if you have any questions or comments (or most probably criticism). I know there are probably thousands of projects like this on here that people go into with good intentions and never end up finishing however this cut-up piece is now sitting on my hoist and I need to get it going so I can move it out of the way and put other cars on there so I can't really let this sit here and rust away!

Hi Accomotors,

Good luck with the build, and because it is a Sports Sedan, there are many ways to build them.

Be good to see the finished product!
Thanks

Dasnowman

This build reminds me of the soughts of builds that would have gone on in the 70's/80's.... Just use what you got without a massive budget, have thought about doing something similar to this using a hb torana and a Lexus v8, but your idea of putting a 3.5 rover v8 is a great idea because it still allows you to run in s2 and still get good power out of a little engine...

were is this car being built???... i think its a great idea, alot of work and time is needed to bring it up to sport sedan spec... i think u should go with a spaceframe truthfully, it would be interesting to see how it pans out, keep the posts coming accomotors we love them

Thanks for the support guys, hopefully it pans out well using our methods rather than having to go with a full-on spaceframe vehicle. We are located down on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Our biggest hurdle at the moment as we see it is the front suspension. We are torn with what to do regarding basic design. We had originally intended on using a complete weld-in, stand-alone double A-arm suspension but couldn't find one that was both cost effective and suitable to our needs. We are looking at using a set of VY SS front brakes we were given because we were already using a Commodore rear. Another idea we had was to use a Commodore spindle and the Laser upright and control arm. Anybody have any ideas on it?

Go buy an LX Torana cross member complete with brakes and rack and solid mount it to the Laser frame rails. You can pick them up for $100 complete. May need some bracketry fabricated but you will find you can buy HQ slotted rotors, brakes, springs and shocks all very cheap and the Torana steering column has 2 uni joints in it to clear various obstacles.

this build reminds me of the true spirit of sports sedans !
shoe horn any engine into any body shell
put 4 wheels on it & pretty much anything else goes
"cutting edge technology"
they have always been the fastest cars in the country with the exception of open wheelers!!
ps
are plywood wings & spoilers still legal nowadays ??

Top Stuff, its a modern version of Harry Lefoe's Imp.

Did some more work on the car today being a public holiday and all.

Cut more of a relief in the firewall (or what USED to be the firewall) so the motor could actually go up inside the car. Also had to cut more of the old 'transmission tunnel' to get the box in too.



We cut up to the bottom of the existing plenum area with a view to leaving the whole 'box' in place and fitting everything underneath. At first we though we'd be in trouble as we were measuring the ground clearance to the bottom of the sills. We put it up ont he hoist and realized the floors and rails were actually 2 inches lower than the sills. So that gave us 2 inches extra clearance at the motor which was all we needed. Hopefully we can fit the carbies in underneath.



We got a couple star pickets to hold the motor up in place while we fabricate up some solid mounts there. Gonna use the factory mounts up front and make up a gearbox mount up back.

Well done acco, keep the pics and story coming.... There's not much of that motor left in the engine bay hahaha...