North/south mid-engine transaxles...

[mongrel]

saab run a north-south front wheel drive transaxle

[ViPeR_NiPPleX]

take a look a renault fuegos

[kingmick]

Again type car would help and engine etc!

[mr2gze]

Have you seen this mullet?
spaceframe, uz, glass body
http://www.supercars.net.au/supercars/home.php
Check out the gallery might give you some ideas.

I know they used a subaru transaxle behind the uz. And have tried some others I believe.

cheers.

[kingmick]

VGC hewland would be perfect! lol

[mullett]

Or a 944...didn't they have front engine/rear transaxle? And maybe the 928...
*note* This is to be mid-engined, the engine will be bolted pretty much straight to the box...

RM.

[4agte]

take a look a renault fuegos

yeah i believe they used renalt gearboxes in the lotus europas and the esprits but parts were an issue with the age and what not also i dont think they can handle much more than 400hp edit i gues youd probably need a custom bellhousing no matter what

[kingmick]

^^^but they wont handle the torque of a v8, they would break like a twig.

[mullett]

Yup, I've heard that as well (my dad's got a europa twincam), but I was really looking for something a little more up-to-date. The scooby boxes are sounding like a winner

RM.

[Starfire]

TODA racing make a 6 speed transaxle that might do what you want. I don't know what they are worth and they only list them on their japanese site.

The older Alfa GTVs have a front engine with a rear mounted transaxle with inboard breaks and IRS. I believe that they are quite tough and reasonably priced units. They can have problems with the complex linkage setup used for them though.

You could always mount a regular RWD gearbox behind the engine and have a very short tailshaft going to a regular diff. You could hard mount the diff and the engine to the same mounts and then have independant rear suspension making alignment easy.

The scooby boxes have plenty of options available for them but are a little on the fragile side. I dont know how much torque they can handle. That would depend a lot on the weight of the chassis and how much grip you can get from the rear tyres (width and tyre compound).

The transaxle that was used in the giocotollo was one of the single most expensive units of the car. They cost something like $30,000 each back in the eighties! They were lifted from some European supercar, modified to fit the alfa shell and fitted with 2 sets of formula 3 shock absorber units. Perhaps thats the reason that they only sold 7 of them or so.

I'm sure that there are plenty of other options available. It might pay to check out what is used by kit car builders. They have quite a large community in the UK where it appears that you can register anything provided that its not full of rust.

[kingmick]

Toda wouldnt be worth it and wouldnt handle a V8!
kit cars like the GT40 use porsche transaxle.
depends on the torque not the HP and if its big torque from low down and wether grippy tyre setup.
Same with the surby box if your going to use a V8 you will munch it

[takai]

A Scooby box will munch behind a NA 2.5L, let alone a V8.

[mullett]

mmm, not sure on the scooby box. The STi ones have to deal with 300+hp, and 4wd grip, in a 1400kg car...plus, there's also heaps of heavy duty gearsets availible for them because they get abused so much. Would scooby box+good gearset make for something which would shift nicely and handle, say, 400hp and 800kg?

RM.

[takai]

Yeah, but the STi box doesnt run nicely FWD only, the FWD transaxles are from the older FWD liberties.

[kingmick]

its the torque from a V8 that will kill it not the HP.