Looking for the lightest weight full frame RWD chassis I can find, cheap. The old c3/c4 corvettes seem to be some of the lightest Ive found so far. Looking to make something similar to the vette cart style hot rod build. Would be nice to find something a little cheaper than a vette chassis. But the small truck or gbody frames seem like the only other options and are quite heavy. Any ideas?
I think you could build a similar chassis. Of course if the IRS is important or the sorted out vette chassis is important then my idea may not be what you want.
Thanks for the tips and offer! Looking to start out with a KS titled road car of some sort so I can keep it registered and drive it on the street.
Buddy also pointed out the newish Toyota MR2 is a mid engine full framed chassis. These suckers weigh in around 2200lbs in full trim. With 390lbs of removable weight before touching body panels... I'm guessing around 1500lbs or less in "kart form". With rev happy mid mount engines that can make 200ish crank HP fairly easily. It's a tempting option.
Vette still looks promising and may still be the way to go. Most likely easier to find and already having the V8 and chevy aftermarket makes a big difference.
Fiero's aren't' very light weight compared to the other chassis mentioned. But assuming I tied it all together with a cage... is the unibody even an issue? I was thinking I had to go full frame, but with the cage tieing it all together maybe it doesn't?
The new MR2's are light years ahead of the old. Same frame as the lotus and some of the best handling cars out there. Stomps a miata on lateral-G testing. But the performance aftermarket just isn't there and factory transmissions/rear ends only hold up to so much abuse.
How much power are the C4 vette IRS rears capable of handling? I wouldn't put a sticky tire on it or drag race it, but if it's a weak point It would be good to know.
Not interested in using motor/trans that come in the vette. It would get a bone stock LS 4.8/5.3 with a small turbo using the factory fuel injection and megasquirt ECU thru a glide. This is the platform I work on and race so it's super easy/cheap for me.
My 3200lb Rx7 with a turbo 5.3 is trapping 160 quarter miles on a 100% stock long block with a small cam. If I can get a dumbed down similar setup in a sub 2000lb car it will be alot of fun!
How about a cast off circle track chassis? Change a few bars to add a passenger seat, lots of cheap used parts out there, easy to convert to road race or autocross. I often thought about putting my last late model on the street after out local track eliminated the Outlaw class, 1800lbs with the rotary engine, 1820lbs with an iron block 406 sbc...
I built this car from scratch back in '95, bare chassis weighed 295lbs...
Front suspension parts fairly cheap and simple...
Pretty easy to add whatever body panels you want...
One of my friends had a circle track 2nd gen RX-7 mini stock that was rotary powered. It pretty much dominated the class until they outlawed his rotary engine. He got discouraged and converted the car to sbc/5spd power and took it road racing, autocrossing, even to the drag strip. It had a vin number so it wouldn't have been too harder to take it a step farther and have an all purpose flyweight racecar that you could drive down the freeway.
If you open up to other Ideas I would look into a Crown Vic as my donor. Engine cradle and front suspension unbolts and i would need to build a back half for it. that would give me all the piecees I would need other than some tubing for the back half and cage. Crown Vics are cheap and readily available around here.
T-bucket could be fun as a road racer, one of the greatest road racing cars in the early days of sportscar racing was Duffy's Tihsepa. It was a SBC Tbucket with a tube frame and an early 57 T-10.
you can buy ARCA and even NASCAR chassis cheap; people have made them road legal before.
Bryan Fishel had a gorgeous one that ended up in Hot Rod Mag. There's a black 37(?) chevy Ive seen floating around thats gorgeous too.
Getting the car registered and street legal is a huge pain here with out a title. 2 fold if the car is custom built. Took me two years of jumping through hoops to get my Rx-7 registered and street legal. It's only back halved and had a valid out of state title. So need to have a valid title of some sort for sure local KS title preferred so I don't need the out of state inspection.
Problem with the T-bukets is folksare to proud of the things! Hard to find one under 7-8k and that's grossly overpriced for most. Not wanting to do alot of work just gut the sucker adn drop my engine/trans in.
Using the Ford Crown vic as a donor might help with the title and registration as you can just do the title transfer and buy a plate. Does not cover an inspection but then the car is yours and do what you want. Here I can do that dunno about where you live.
Sam
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Hot Rod Forum
2.2M posts
175.7K members
Since 2001
A forum community dedicated to hot rod owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about restoration, builds, performance, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!