start of 64 midget restomod project

[seanb]

so i have been lurking here a while and i believe its time to share my new project with you guys. I had the car shipped to me from 1200 miles away.

It came shipped on the rotisserie, which made booking a shipping company difficult. Luckily a guy with a big enclosed trailer was heading to Daytona and had room for my new little project. That is the "rough side also". Heres the real reason i had the car shipped all this way

The front suspension is completely custom. The previous owner works for a big name suspension company and this was going to be a street/autocross car for him. He didn't want to give up the project but his work was going to be paying him to design and fabricate suspension on his own Nova project. You cant pass up getting paid to work on your own project car so he put this midget up for sale. The suspension stats are-
-New Wilwood's tall spindles
-New Heidt's Superide II narrowed tubular upper and lower control arms.
-New Afco double adjustable coil over shocks with 4" stroke
-New 10.5" vented rotors with Wilwoods four piston calipers
-New Schroeder torsion bar
-New modified Triumph Spitfire quick steer rack 2.5 turns lock to lock.
-The complete suspension hub to hub is only 1.5" wider than the stock front end was.

I have been working on swaping a duratec engine into a spridget for a while. I had a junky sprite i was using to mock up everything and see if it would fit. When i saw this car for sale i new it was the perfect car for my engine. I should have the handling and braking to keep up with the engine. Also im no engineer and i think i would have had to give a real engineer a suitcase full of cash to have what is on this car duplicated. Heres the engine thats going in the car.

Basically its a 2.0 ford focus engine. all aluminum, very light. Caterham currently uses them in their new cars. I am using a custom bellhousing to fit a ford type 9 transmission to the engine. Other that the throttle bodies i plan to keep it pretty stock until i get used to the car. then i would like to rebuild it with uprated parts. high flow head, better cams, higher compression pistons, ect. 250 hp is not unheard of from these engines.
The car is not ready to just drop the engine in and go. I have a good bit of panel replacing to do.

I think my first step is to build a sort of internal frame structure to keep the door gaps ect from moved around. the car is on a rotisserie and when i start cutting big chunks of metal out i don't want things moving around that shouldn't. Has anyone else done floor, rocker, ect replacements with a spridget on a rotisserie?
I know this is going to be a huge undertaking. but this really is a dream of mine come true. I will gladly accept any pointers and comments anyone has. I know many people here have started with a rusty shell and now drive beautifully restored spridgets. I hope i can accomplish the same but obviously with a bit of a twist. thanks in advance

 

[seanb]

This is the rear end the car came with. Its a narrowed ford 9 inch with posi and disk brakes. its also Huge! It weighs about 225 pounds. I have an rx7 rear end i was intending to have narrowed and it weighs 150 pounds and also has disk brakes. The ford is all ready narrowed but i think im gonna send the rx7 rear off to have narrowed. The ford unit is just to big for my applications i believe. Maybe i can sell it off to an MGB V8 guy or hotrodder or something.
Check out the horn it came with!

Its about 2 and a half feet long. I cant imagine where it would even fit in a midget. It does work and its loud! I think it probably came off of an old truck from the 50s or 60s

 

[58Custom]

The 9 inch is rediculous overkill. Narrowed, it may be attractive to someone building a tubbed street freak or a gas NA dragster.

This is gonna be a real corner carver. Where does the set back of the Duratec put the engine with respect the the front axle line?

 

[George Zeck]

First, the car suspension looks incredible. Buit I'm really jealous of that HUGE garage !

 

[aeronca65t]

I like it! (and I'm not normally a fan of swaps).

Sprite + Duratec = WIN :thumbsup:

 

[seanb]

thanks guys, all that garage space and i have to be obsessed with tiny British cars lol. The Chevy Bel air is a friends car. As far as the duratec engine goes, i had it sitting just far enough back to let the hood close without having a hood bulge. this also means i have to use a low profile oil pan and i will have to cut out the main frame rails and replace them with 1x2 box steel to get a bit of additional clearance. the duratec engine is huge compared to the 1275. but it is all aluminum so they are probably close in weight.

 

[seanb]

So Im gonna try and get this thread caught up with the tiny bit of progress i have made and some ideas/ parts i have.

First of all i got a passenger side door off ebay.

The one the car came with was pretty dented/rusty. also had a pretty bad swear word keyed into it! wonder what the story behind that was lol. Got the door off ebay for $75, not to bad and the doors in pretty good shape.

next up is the way im hoping to locate my rx7 axle in the car. I got these ford escort 4 link boxes from England. I have seen them modified to fit into a midget on a UK message board and it seemed to work really well so i thought i would go the same route. basicly i will cut the boxes up to fit the contours of the midget and have the links shortened. I will also have to make my own panhard bar. Seems like a lot of work but i would rather modify something that exists than have to start from scratch.

This car will have to have some pretty good meat on it. im thinking 205/15s at least. So that means it will have to have some kind of flares. when i was fooling around with the crusty sprite i had before i played around with some vw rabbit patch panels. i believe they are the rear fenders from a rabbit. I think these will work pretty good on the midget with a bit of reworking.

Maybe those flares will give me enough room to fit 225s but i will find that out later. right now im going to focus on getting the midget shell as rust free as possible. i have some panels lying around but i know im going to have to buy some more. im thinking this car is going to need inner and outer sills, b pillars inner and outer, floors, outer pedel box sheet metal, and probably tons more. i will be working on the body a while before i get to the fun engine stuff. I have had a cold over this weekend, kinda why im posting this stuff, gives me a way to have fun with the car without being in the garage. but as soon as i feel better im going to work on welding up a bit of a frame work on the inside of the shell to hold everything in place while i cut big chunks of metal out.

 

[seanb]

another thing about the position of the duratec. you can see in the white car that its sitting really far back in the engine bay, which would have put it way behind the front axle line. This would be great but because of the length of the type 9 transmission i would be shifting with my elbow! the final position of the engine will be forward just enough to keep the cam cover from making contact with the inside of the hood. I have also cut the shifter remote off the type 9 and shortened it and will have it welded back. this moves it a bit forward and i think i will still have to put a bit of a bend in the shifter to move it that much more forward. every little bit helps.

Stock location with section cut out

Pushed forward ready to be welded back

Of course the shifter rod will have to be shortened the exact length taken out also. good thing i measured twice lol

 

[JPSmit]

That looks awesome! I can't say I'm feeling the flares - my choice would always be a sleeper, that said, you will have a screamer when done!

We have at least one other Zetec conversion with a T9 on the board Rick Bondy. I haven't noticed Rick around in a bit but he could be an excellent resource. I also know there are various people runnng RX7 rear ends - Phil up here in Canada is one. Please keep us posted! (and of course pics)

 

[jlaird]

Neat, another project. Welcome, looking forward to it.

 

[seanb]

So earlier today i started doing a bit of bracing on the inside of the shell. i am anticipation having to replace a good bit of sheet metal. im thinking possibly inner sills, def outer sills, panel at outside of foot-well, floors, etc. So i wanted to brace as much as i can so things don't move around when i start cutting out rusty metal. first thing i did was weld a piece of 1x1 steel tubing across the cross member. it was cut previously to fit a bigger engine. i just want to brace it for now.

next i cut and bent some flat steel to give me something to weld some 1x1 steel tubing across the dash area.

then i just welded a bar to tie the 2 pieces together

i welded a plate outside of where the door is

and im planing on going from that plate to the steel tubing by the A post with another 1x1 steel tube.

Hopefully this will keep the door gaps and still allow me access to replace the outside of the pedal box. Maybe im over doing the bracing, i just want the car to stay pretty straight when i pull the rockers off. the 1x1 steel tubing was just laying around so its pretty ugly, but its not permanent so i don't think it will matter. i am also still working on learning to weld better. this was good practice.

prettiest weld of the day with 2 ugly welds next to it!

thats about all i got done today, hopefully tomorrow i can finish up the bracing and start tackling actually working on the sheet metal of the car!

I did get in something from the guys in brown earlier this week.

Its a cobra classic seat, really lite and i think it will suit the car nicely. i only bought the one because i just need it for mocking up purposes and i can only afford one for now.

here it is just sitting in the car

thats all for now

 

[DWeeB]

Nice, hold on to your wallet! You may want a seat with a head rest, this could be a neck snapper. I went with the Miata seats to ensure my melon stays with the car.

 

[Branson]

very cool! will certainly be interested in how your project develops!