Wanted uva fugitive as rolling chassis or with duff engine etc, rough condition would be ok to keep price down. I have 2 suzuki gsxr 1000 engines (one to drive each rear wheel! :o ). Any one interested in assisting me with this project ? i have an engineering workshop near stoke on trent.

Thanks Lee.

hi Lee.......heres some blurb that I wrote in a previous post about fitting a bike engine to a fugitive-4......in short I'm thinking with a fug-2 the engine will have to be rear mounted, as there is no room for a mid installation......a fug-4 should be able to accomodate a mid engine set-up......stick to one engine mate.......two engines sounds like fun but will be more hassle than its worth.......

to be honest, if I was putting a bike engine in a fug, I would not use a chain........I have previously built and raced a blackbird powered single seater race car, and if I had the option of a non-chain system then I'd do it, as chains are bad news, they can cut the engine in half when they break, as many racers have found out......

I originally bought my fug-4 with the intention of fitting a bike engine, then realised I was happy with the alfa-boxer engine........but I was intending to do the conversion like this.......mid mounted longitudinal engine installation......the fug-4 is perfect for this......so thats a rearward pointing bike engine chain sprocket - linked to something like a sierra differential, with a double wishbone suspension like on a Ford GT40.......to cut a long story short I think the torsion bar housing will cause you a lot of grief, as mounting the engine on top of the torsion bar housing will be a crap way to do the conversion - but it might work..... therefore it may well need to be completley cut out for a new rear engine and suspension system.

failing that, if you want to use a chain, if your off-road only, mount the engine transverse, do a solid diff system that bolts to the back of the bike engine, keep the whole assembly as short as possible, then simply plop it behind the torsion beam assembly, you will most probably need to cut off the 2 chassis rails which the gerabox sits in, but keep the torsion beam in place - it might work, that will be a simpler way to do it.....dont forget to weld up a brick-5hit-house of a chain guard!.......be warned, if you go this route, you will be sitting literally on the exhaust manifold........if you go the diff and longitudinal route the exhaust will be much easier

if you want my advice about engines, go for something with a minimum of 1100cc like a ZZR1100, blackbird, ZX12R or Hyabusa, as they make great power and good torque......all the 1000cc engines make OK power but really crap torque, hence you need to rev the tits out of them to get them to perform, and they go pop very easily when you mis-shift, which you will do quite often - as I did!......but dont get me wrong plenty of people use 1000cc engines and are more than happy with them......hope that helps........

Hi knighty, Thanks for the advice, always welcome.
I used to have a king fisher/chenowth with a 2.0 pinto and a type 2 ? vw tranaxle that i raced comp safari (bit like a rally stage but a lot rougher) with a friend but it was not very fast so we decided to put a v8 rover engine in it with a renault master gearbox. This was alot faster and with all that weight hanging out over the back it gave excellent grip in mud. The problem was the front wheels were spending alot of time in the air so steering was not so good unless you shut off. We soon found out how to use the fiddle brakes (slowing the inside rear wheel which makes the outside rear wheel go faster and makes you turn, bit like a tank)

I learned alot from this and so i came up with the twin engined idear, one for each driving wheel. No diff to worry about, you can have fiddle brakes, and i think some sort of cam on the steering column so that when you turn the revs drop on the inside engine, again making it turn. As with the rover v8 buggy all the weight at the rear is a good thing in mud with two wheel drive, so rear engined is a must and torsion bar may not be a problem.

I agree with what you say about chain drive but i used to have a formula 27 kit car that i put a 98 gsxr 750 engine in, driving to a sierra auto estate diff (the lowest ratio they do, 3.8 to 1 i think) using 205 gti wheels and tyres and that was about as higher ratio you would want to go, would struddle with big off road tyres that would be needed for ground clearance. chains and sprockets are an easy and cheap way to get the gearing correct, good quality chain and rivit link would need to be used. And yes a heavy duty chain guard

I know what you mean about the torque i have a gsxr 750 road bike and a zzr 1100,(seems like i have got or had just about everything," proper petrol head") on the 750 you are constently changeing gear to keep it reving yet the zzr pulls from alot lower in the rev range. My gsxr 1000 race bike seems closer to the zzr and with two of them on loose ground it should not be a big problem.

As an experiment a while ago i built a rough off road buggy with two scooter engines complete with the scooter wheels one at each corner at the rear, it steered very well no sign of understeer with both wheels driving all of the time if you tried to drive with a locked diff understeer would be a big problem on a vehicle this heavy.

How did you go on with your blackbird engined car, did you dry sump it or just a baffle plate. The oil in the wrong place at the wrong time seems to cause some problems with bike engined cars, bikes lean in to corners cars lean the other way.

Thanks for the interest Lee.

Hi Lee - I still think using twin engines will be grief, the thing will probably have no traction whatsoever with 150bhp on each wheel - keep it simple and use one engine......as for sumps.......I used a cut-down and baffled wet sump from Mistral who do loads of side car stuff, cost was about £300......as long as a wet sump is done properly it will work fine, dry sumping is only needed for the race track where you see very high lateral G-loads (fast cornering).......also placing baffle sandwich plates between the alternator and clutch covers prevents a lot of oil surging about too - cheap and simple.

Most of the dry sump systems require the removal of the water pump in order to drive the scavenge pump........so you therefore need a davies craig electric water pump - they are expensive and crap........a dry sump can often cost more than the engine......not to mention all the plumbing for the oil tanks - wet sumps are a neat simple solution

lee offroader

good luck with your chassis hunt

I'm on the look out as well

may the best man win :D

does it matter whether fug4 or 2

if a 4 will do I may be able to help depending on your budget

Hi bobacat, whats the fug 4, maybe for what i want to do the longer the better.
More important how much ?
Thanks lee.

I don't know how much this is going to help,but i'm sure one of you must know who it is. I bough my glass fibre body from a guy in Guildford. The fugitive it was on wasn't properly registered so i never bought the whole car. It may well just be sitting there as he was more into bikes. The frame itself was fine,infact really pretty good but that was about as far as it went. I no longer have his address or phone number though.

Hi, I have two fug 2's that I should really get rid of. They were bought with all the best intentions but I never seem to have the time or money to get on with them... Anyway one is complete, just needs a fair bit of TLC. And the other is striped down but I think I have all the parts except for the engine as a friend of mine borrowed it for his camper (I can get another one back from him if needed). They have both been stood for some years and will need work, but it sounds like you have big plans anyway. If you are interested in either or both and want pics ect. you can contact me at ed.hinton@ntlworld.com (by the way I’m in Swansea, south Wales). Hope you find what your looking for, Ed…