Subaru engine conversion?

[Bazzalucas]

It's gotta be some kind of aero engine, surely?

[Ned Ludd]

That appears to be a Franklin O-200 or related aircraft engine:

It is effectively two-thirds of the Franklin flat-six in the rear of the Tucker Torpedo, another car with an horizontally-opposed engine at the wrong end.

There was a very strong image in the public mind during the '30s that the Car of the Future would be a large, minivan-like, rear-engined teardrop affair. The aspiration was gradually abandoned when it proved very hard to build one that was not an ill-handling beast. The Tucker was perhaps one of the better ones, if not really as radical as things like Buckminster Fuller's rear-steered, three-wheeled Dymaxions of 15 years earlier. Never did a genius more consistently miss the point than did Buckminster Fuller.

Before specializing exclusively in aircraft engines Franklin made some imaginative and well-considered American luxury cars with air-cooled engines in the conventional location.

[RobThomas]

Franklin 4A-235 (aka Franklin O-200 ) aero engine from a Practavia Sprite aircraft that never got completed. Bought it for £250 and sold it for £2500, so quite a nice little earner.

The top cover of the engine opens so you can change big ends without having to crack the case apart, unlike the Beetle motor. Smart idea!

Fits in an MGC with a little shove.

[Ned Ludd]

That'd be closer to 250-300bhp @ 4500-5000rpm if built to typical automotive tune. I've heard of Antipodean sports-racing specials powered by these sorts of engines, installed upside-down to get the ports in more convenient places.

Something I'd like to see in a Minor is a horizontal 2-stroke diesel twin; something like a horizontal iteration of a Detroit 2-53 or 2-71. It'd have the crank over on one side, so there would have to be a chain or gear drive to a clutch in the middle. It's a pity there was never a Commer TS-2: at 2174cc that might have been ideal.

Here is some useful Subaru information I've managed to scrounge:



It's a pity the head gasket drawing isn't dimensioned. It refers to the EJ25, though, so it can be scaled from the bore of 99.5mm. (That seems to indicate a bore spacing of 115mm and head studs on a 113x110 grid. It's not very accurate but does give some idea of size and shape for fitting purposes.)

These are of an aircraft-engine conversion, courtesy of NSI Aero:

[Ned Ludd]

Here's a perfect engine for a diesel Minor:

BWM M-100 opposed-piston 2-stroke diesel marine engine: 1332cc, 100bhp@4800rpm, 165lbs, 22½" x 24" x 17". One would just have to find a way to mate it to a gearbox ...

[dp]

How expensive would that marine diesel be?

[Ned Ludd]

How expensive would that marine diesel be?

No idea; or even whether or not it's in serious production. It's a Weslake design, apparently.

[johngrigg]

It's been done, no idea how.....
http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/brighton ... 1015189315

[Ned Ludd]

Thanks!

Looks like an EA to me, i.e. pushrod, judging by the carb induction. I don't know how the exhaust porting works on those.

[faversham999]

there are a couple of fiat 500 with Subaru engins

[JOWETTJAVELIN]

A very interesting conversion.

[Ned Ludd]

Some further research, yet to be confirmed, indicates that the Subaru EJ25 etc. on Toyota W58 etc. gearbox combination mentioned before will just fit ahead of the steering rack, starter and all, if the engine is shoved as far forward as it can go. It would mean moving the radiator forwards into the grille surround panel.

Using a Subaru radiator might help, as the core is only 16mm thick, as we must allow for a fan shroud. Hopefully it will be possible to get the back face of the non-motor part of the fans near the plane on which the back of the standard radiator would normally have been. The Subaru radiator is taller, though, and would have to sit lower, which might conflict with the lower curve of the grille surround panel.

Interestingly, the standard Minor radiator core is some 8% bigger in volume than the Subaru core.

If this can be achieved, the rack may be left in the standard position. The entire bellhousing would be ahead of the rack, and the critical dimension becomes the gap between the bottom of the rack and the top of the Toyota gearbox.

The engine would consequently sit rather low in the engine bay, which has a number of implications. Most saliently, the chassis "legs" would have to be lopped off, and another way found to deal with the stability of the front part of the bodywork. The lower surfaces of the cylinder heads would actually be lower than the upper faces of the "legs". The Subaru's engine mounts are in the region of the remaining stumps of the "legs", so the task of supporting the front end of the engine falls away anyway. It remains, however, to pick up the bars that form the forward chords of the front suspension lower control arms: preliminary investigations suggest a tubular member joining the bottom front corners of the flitches, plus built-up box-sections on the outboard sides of the flitches, which run over the top of the inner wings and link to the A-pillars and sills. Sizes I'm getting for these, assuming seriously powerful front brakes, are 50x50mm square hollow for the cross-tube and 60x120 at the top of the arches for the built-up sections.

I had considered pivoting these bars on the cylinder heads, thereby using the engine as a stressed member. Lack of a suitable place to bolt brackets on, concerns about the physical strength of the engine, and the fact that the remaining front body would still be left relatively floppy prompted me to think a bit further.

Furthermore, the engine would have to be dry-sumped, and that in a way that doesn't add another Gilmer belt sprocket to its length. If the AC compressor and power steering pump are jettisoned it might be possible to replace their drive pulley with a sprocket for the scavenge pump. Simply cutting down the sump, as is done by those who swop EJs into VW buses, won't do if we want to stick to a substantially standard Minor ground clearance situation, i.e. nothing protruding more than an inch or so below the bottom of the chassis "legs". Dry-sumping an EJ brings the bottom of the engine barely lower than the bottom of the flywheel, which would meet that criterion.

Likewise, some creativity will be required in the exhaust manifolds. There is about 50mm of depth to work with, but I am sure that this can be solved. At least moving the engine forward frees up some space to get the primary tubes up over the lower control arms.

If all goes well a few sketches will follow soon.

[Lizzys Owner]

Hello,

here is a Picture of a Minor i know with installed Subaro Motor. It´s a Member in the German Morris Minor Club.[frame][/frame]

[38eob]

that looks very much like a toyota 4k engine to me ?

[philthehill]

I would agree with that.
Plenty of pictures on the web to confirm that it is a Toyota 4K.
But still a neat conversion and an engine that has plenty of scope for further tuning.