Good Donor car??

Originally posted by Thalass Mini's are expensive, though. I looked into them before settling on a brumby. It's quite hard to find a mini for less than 8k! Even the old ones. Roundies are rare and prized. Though I'm told they were making the later models (pre-BMW) untill only a few years ago, so finding a good young one should be possible.

I've got at least 3 of them sitting at my parents place so finding one isn't really a problem.

Finding one cheap that doesn't have rust or need a fair bit of work is pretty hard they are getting on for almost 50 years old after all, and Aussie minis would be 30 years old at their youngest. It's a testament to thier design that the mini was still basically the same car for almost 40 - 50 years, either that or BMC / Rover's lack of R&D and vision.

Your right round noses are prized, but I got mine for $600 but a fair amount of rust and it needs to be stripped back and painted. Maybe by the time I've done that I might be able to afford to do an electric conversion.

Yes they were making Rover minis up until I think the mid 90s but they didn't make it to Australia (Japan and UK), there are a fair few engines and brakes etc come in from these as half cuts but not too many whole cars AFAIK.

Originally posted by moemoke My choices of donor cars would be a Moke (of coarse) GVM 998kg, weight 640kg, A series motor/gearbox 130kg, replace gearbox with Suzuki you could have upto 400kgs for batteries, motor etc, should be do-able or an Austin 1800 ute trouble is you would most likely need to do a resto job before the conversion. One of the newer cars that I would like to convert is a Honda Civic hatch from about 1988 to 1995, cheapish, fairly simple and can be made to look good.

I couldn't get past the moke's even worse aerodynamics but the light weight is tempting and they are just so funny and basic. I was also thinking of a Morris 1100 but in the end you'd get more weight than a mini and not much more carrying capacity (from memory).
Besides, I'm a small car kinda guy.

If I went the mini I'd go an AC motor (did calculations with a AC24LS) direct drive to the diff or failing that a small gearbox of some sort. Working out what ratio I think I'd need and a 6:1 or a 7:1 diff looks right which would be about the equivalent of taking off in 2nd gear but would still give enough revs to get to 120ish (AC24LS revs to 11000 but I wouldn't want to go that far).

Trouble would be where do you find a 6:1 or 7:1 IRS diff? Small 4WDs seem to get the closest(5.38 for a Sierra) and fitting a diff and AC24LS into a mini engine bay might be very tight...

Oh well I'll keep thinking it's not like I've got the cash anyway.

Originally posted by moemoke Fuzzy hair man, I guess you've seen the mini conversion underway on ausmini (I see you're a member) using a Suzuki box, he's doing a good job, must be nearly finished as I think there are some vids posted. What about using the motor gearbox combo that BEV use in their Electron.

I haven't posted on ausmini for quite a while but yeah I've seen that one after following up a reference on here, thanks. It is a very nice job
I was wondering what the gearbox was that BEV used, from what I could figure they are using the AC24, it's all theory until I can afford a conversion anyway so... I'm window shopping if you like.. I ride my push bike 5 days a week at the moment anyway so a conversion isn't really worthwhile.

I was looking at the Michelin hub motor topic pity there's probably never going to be any hub motors that will fit inside 10" wheels