Progress is slow, but it's happening. The guy in the back ground was creeping me out. He always has his hand in his pockets. That means he wasn't messing with my junk, but I'm not sure about - well I just got rid of him. Now I have a wooden dummy which I can pose, but it looks like a lot of work to do that.
I made up a simple model of the Wilwood MII front spindle. Just the axle stub and mountings for ball joints / rod ends. I put a rear wheel on front, they are 9" wide, 4 inch backspacing steel oval track jobs. The scrub radius looks much to large, but I'm not sure where the WMS is, I need to find hubs I guess and draw one up too. Maybe I'll draw up the Miata instead. I an going to have a huge pile of parts in the background, just like a real shop.
I made up a model of a Hewland transaxle, again pretty simple. I'm thinking more on the lines of Passat, but I had a Rhino case in the basement. It would be fine for a stock Duratech/Zetech. It is ~7.5" from bell housing face to driveshaft centerline. At first it didn't seem to fit, but I think my rear wheels were too far forward.
Ngpmike do you have models for the Miata rear uprights and diff? If you do I could use them and also work on a more normal rear end.
I still think the transaxle will work, but may be missing a bunch of details. Do you think passengers would mind holding one of those outboard motor gas tanks on their lap? It would be fun to see the expression on their face. Then I could say it was just water after we were driving for awhile. Then later I could explain it had beer in it and stick the hose in my mouth. No, this is probably wrong.... Sigh.
I put a couple of rear suspension trailing radius rods on the driver side. Just for basic space checking now. Not sure if they should be long enough to bolt to front roll bar, that's about 34". I will have to look at the pictures of a Lotus Seven shipped from the factory with this setup. We had pictures on this site a year or two ago from the ebay auction for that car.
I just have simple holes for the front suspension in the frame now. In real life it will have "tear tabs" or a setup for adjustable front roll centers.
Oh, I got lost inside the Duratech today. Hmmph, no pistons or valves in there... It was free though.