1969 S2 Europa Hill climb car - 700whp Turbo Honda K24 swap

[Taimoshan]

Hi All,

For those interested, I bought a basket case 69 S1 about 6mths ago from an Englishman living near LeMans in France, with the intention of doing a restoration, but when I dug into the some of the older frame restoration work done there was a huge amount of rust and poor repair under the paint mainly the front cross section requiring the front suspension to be cut off and rebuilt.  This is where things got a little out of hand and the chassis morphed into a full blown race car project.

6mths on I now have fully adjustable front suspension, camber, caster, toe, anti-dive, with cantilever monoshocks and the rear is a 1960's Lotus F1 car inspired suspension design, again with fully adjustable camber, caster, toe and cantilever monoshocks and finally I  have a K24a mounted to an Audi  01E 6 speed transaxle and heavily modified chassis.

I also significantly modified the chassis with a narrowed and boxed the rear section to fit the Honda K Series and to make room for some significant defuser aero between the frame and the 12" wide rear wheels

I have 2 turbos at the moment and have not yet decided which to run,  a GT35 clone and a GT45 clone, the 35 can flow for 600hp and the 45 can flow 800ish. I am aiming around 700kg wet with driver and 700 whp, so should be "fun"

I will start adding a series of photos of progress.

[BDA]

Very cool and nicely done!! Please continue to post about your progress. Driving a Europa with the power to weight ratio of an F1 car should be very interesting!

[gideon]

That's a lot of progress for 6 months work.  I'm impressed by that.

I have a lot of questions though.  Why does the front cross section appear to now be higher than the backbone?  Where did the front and rear uprights come from?  The Honda engine looks very tall in that chassis - will it fit under the bodywork?   Where will the body mount at the back?   You have the rear suspension lowers mounted to the transaxle - are you sure that's the best plan?  How close were you able to get the rear wheels relative to the bodywork?

[SwiftDB4]

Very Impressive! Please keep us posted.

[TurboFource]

  wow!

[S2Zetec54]

Oh my giddy aunt! Can’t wait to see this completed and in action

  

[Taimoshan]

That's a lot of progress for 6 months work.  I'm impressed by that.

I have a lot of questions though.  Why does the front cross section appear to now be higher than the backbone?  Where did the front and rear uprights come from?  The Honda engine looks very tall in that chassis - will it fit under the bodywork?   Where will the body mount at the back?   You have the rear suspension lowers mounted to the transaxle - are you sure that's the best plan?  How close were you able to get the rear wheels relative to the bodywork?

Hey, lots of questions there. The front cross section was 40mm raised when I rebuilt that front. The reason was to lift the body 40mm so the chassis backbone was flush with the flat floor in order to improve aero and to give me extra height under the rear engine cover to fit the taller Honda motor ( which you rightly spotted is significantly taller than the Renault engine.

The front uprights are alloy Cortina uprights as used on the Ford GT40 replicas, the rear are fabricated uprights as used in a number of Lotus 7 / caterham clones with independent rear ends. The suspension arms I designed and built myself, with geometry designed using suspension software.

Rear wheels could fit under the std bodywork, but thats not what I am after as a race car and under body aero defuser would be radically reduced.

Re lower rear suspension mounts, what is your concern ?

[Taimoshan]

Thought I better add some pics of the front and rear suspension.

The aero profiled and round tube is BST45 motorsport steel, similar to Chromoly, but without the post weld heat treatment requirements.

I went a bit OTT with the tube dia's but for almost no weight penalty with this thin wall tube, I think it was worth it.

[gideon]

Re lower rear suspension mounts, what is your concern ?

Just the problems of connecting the suspension to engine & transaxle movement.  As it's a race car you might have the engine and transaxle rigidly mounted.  In which case that concern goes away.

[Taimoshan]

Re lower rear suspension mounts, what is your concern ?

Just the problems of connecting the suspension to engine & transaxle movement.  As it's a race car you might have the engine and transaxle rigidly mounted.  In which case that concern goes away.

Yes the engine and gearbox are rigid mounted to the frame, you are correct :-)

[Taimoshan]

Thought I would try and post some pics in a sort of timeline order.

This group is the evolution of the rear chassis section, engine mounts and lover rear gearbox mount for suspension

[Taimoshan]

This next group are the front cross member rust repairs and modifications

[Taimoshan]

This group of pics are rear suspension related

[Taimoshan]

Where I am up to now is I have tacked up the front cantilever suspension ready for full welding.
I have cut some of the fibreglass sections to clearance the front linkages, but will need to rebuild the fibreglass around this area to minimise water ingress
I also need to make the bottom brackets for the front push rods and need to solve for the new body to chassis fixtures needed to accommodate the cantilever suspension.
I need to mark up the rear bulkhead brackets as the originals are about an inch too low now with the body raised, then the body comes off again and I can finish off the final bits of chassis work and welding

The other task for this weekend is to test fit the Wilwood calipers and discs for the final measurements so I can order the 10x15" front and 12x15" rear wheels.

[TurboFource]

Wow! I will definitely be looking for your updates on this!