Hi All:

I finally got my car to the point where I'm not ashamed of it! I built the car from scratch over the course of two year. The chassis is tube framed and the engine is a CBR900RR turned sideways. I have a chro-mo adaptor where the sprocket was and a normal drive shaft connects to it. Total wet weight as 920 lbs. 0-60 under 4 seconds. The engine has simple mods like a custom stainless exhaust, baffled sump, new filter and rejetted carbs.

Last month, Car and Driver tested the car and it should print in the autumn timeframe. I don't know of anyone in the US that used the 919cc engine in a car application, so I thought I'd post here. There is much more on my website www.fiaccone.com. The whole build from start to finish is documented in the build section.

I'm going through the registration process right now and hope to be legally on the street in a month. Let me know what you think.

--Chris

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damn bro, thats pretty bad ***. good work getting the cbr engine to push that car,especially making it 0-60 in under 4 seconds, impressive.

 

That's AWESOME!

I've always been a huge fan of the Lotus/Caterham 7 and it's knock-offs and replicas. And I don't mean to belittle your car by saying that. Actually quite the opposite. For example, even though I'm a Ford guy I would have absolutely no use or desire to own an original GT40 or Shelby Cobra. However, I'd LOVE to own a CAV GT40 or a Factory Five Roadster. The replicas and lookalikes are always way cooler than the originals. [8D]

 

Hi:

Thanks for the comments. Using a bike engine instead of a car engine was actually easier than using a car engine. It's also nice that the motr and gearbox are light enough to lift into the car by myself.

As for the car, it's actually not a kit. Another guy and I designed the suspension in 3D (SolidWorks). There is nothing special about the front suspension but the rear uses double adjustable R6 dampers. With the exception of the exhaust, I fabricated everything you see. The whole thing cost me $8 but I splurged on some stuff like the carbon front fenders (not seen in the pics) and the carbon seats.

I learned quite a bit about the motor during my build, so hopefully I can offer some advice to others. For example, I kept frying rectifiers until figured out how to wire in a Nighthawk rectifier. Now it works perfectly and isn't very hot to the touch.

Having never ridden a bike, there is much to be learned here as well, i.e., how to shift properly...

--Chris

 

I reserve the word "kit car" for those Pontiac Fierorarris and Fieroghinis. Slapping fiberglass body panels onto an existing chassis/body to imitate something of a much higher pedigree with the intention of pretending to be exotic without any thought given to performance. My buddy's dad has a CAV GT40, but it's a replica- not a kit car.

That's a lot of fabricating you did. Makes it even more impressive. Driving on the roads must be scary. It's intimidating on a motorcycle, but at least on a bike you're high enough up that people see you, and you can even see over the tops of other cars. The Seven and its siblings/cousins are essentially karts. It'd take some getting used to, to say the least.

There are many higher performing engines available. And since you're not a bike rider with some nostalgic loyalty to the 900RR, I wonder what made you choose the 900 for your powerplant. To be completely honest, I'd have gone with the ever present Busa engine or possibly a Gixxer1000.

 

There are honestly some much better engines out there. I wanted to go very light though and most of the engines over 1 liter are pretty heavy. The Busa in particular is very expensive, then requires a $2k dry sump because of the engine orientation--many say the ZX12 needs one as well. I really could not afford it.

I bought my engine, all electronics, dyno tuned carbs, exhaust and a reverse box (a 1:1 box that allows reverse) for $900. I sold the reverse box for $300 so i was only out $600 for everything. If I did it again, I'd go with an injected R1.

I'm watching your turbo project closely. Any way you can send some closeup pics of the plenum. I cannot wrap my head around how your pressurizing the carbs.

--Chris

 

I think you did a wonderful job on ur car. I would also be interested in how you wired the rectifier and did this allow you to run higher wattage lights and such. Also i am having trouble understanding how he preassurized the cabs but from what i understand everthing has to see the boost just like a ram air bike.

 

Let me did through my notebook to see exactly what I did. IIRC, there are 6 wires off the Nighthawk rectifier, not three like ours. It was a matter of of plugging in the standard 3 yellow wires from the stator, another to ground and another to switched ignition device (I used my oil temp gauge).

For the exact details, I'll have to get back to you though

 

All of my pics are posted up on this board. At least I think they are.

The floats/bowls are pressurized via a pitot tube (running perpendicular to the airflow, mounted at the end of the air tube just prior to the airbox) and the slides are pressurized via the airbox. The little tubes are pitot tube, the big middle one is airbox. I don't know if it makes any difference, but other carbureted turbo guys swear it does. Static pressure vs dynamic pressure.