Is this Possible

[Scorpma82]

Hi guys, the story goes like this,

The automatic in my gf's car ('98 excel 3-door hatch) has finally kicked the bucket after it many years of (suprisingly) reliable service........i had been toying with the idea of a purpose built track hack and thought that this would be a great sarting point. The problem i have is this......the second someone mentions the idea of a racing Hyundai excel..u get laaughed at.......someone dares to put that racing Excel on a track.....u get laughed at even harder and being the subject of being all the slow car jokes......so....to turn the tables u gotta have something special.....my ideas were to buy a wrecked GSR/EVO/RVR and transfer all the running gear in the Excel....engine, turbo, gearbox, suspension, brakes, AWD system...the lot........OR...could a go one step further an buy a glant VR4 with the twin turbo V6 running and transfer all that over to the Excel?????? do the Galant run the same engine mounts for the 4 and 6?

[damian]

mate, I have an Excel X2 track hack. I got a top ten (9th I think?) outright in it with zero mods at Round 2 State Khanacross Championships late last year, up against some serious competition.

we also took it out couple weeks ago to the first khanacross of 2012.
I drove like a nutter for the crowd (they loved it), but one of the drivers (we had 4, hey why not) finished 4th O/R, and just missed out on 3rd by a fraction.
It was running bald as f#ck tyres of random pressures, and zero mods other than stripped interior, fire extinguisher, and 100 RON fuel.
He actually went out the next morning and picked one up off gumtree - that's how impressed he was with it!

vid of me driving for the crowd - handbrake everywhere.
http://youtu.be/N1Co3S9cBAg

pic of it with the Stigma


so maybe it's not as bad a car as you (and I used to) think...

total cost so far:
$200 car
$200 3 months rego and stamp duty
$50 mudflap material (for the hell of it)
$80 4 x 2nd hand 13" rally rubber (fitted, with loads of tread - cheers Mark @ SAMotorsport Tyres)
fun factor - priceless
this car has done 5 events now, with between 3 and 7 drivers in it at each event - hehe

[75gus]

We run a x3 on the dirt sprint track at QR. pretty much the same story as Damian.
It the toughest little thing I have ever driven.. Can't break the thing, yet.
We have eBay 2nd hand konis and 15" wrecker special alloys. Need to bend the exhaust again to get the gas away, you get a bit high after 20 laps lol.

In short do it

[Tj.]

Fitting the awd system would be way more trouble than its worth. You'd need to basically cut out and refabricate the rear floor pan.

However I do believe the 2L 4G63 twin cam should go straight in (dont quote me on that) as the early excels ran Mitsubishi 4G93(??) And I believe that the blocks were the same. Gearboxes may be a challenge but one from a Hyundai sonata (which actually run the 4g63 twin cam) might be a good place to start.
I believe that excels were reasonably similar to the Mitsubishi Mirage so see what's being done to them.
I know for a fact that the 2L V6 from the Mitsubishi FTO does fit into the mirage, that could also be an option.

[JimmyG]

This would be a very cool and very fast car if you built it. However there are a number large questions that need to be considered.

1. How much do you want to spend?
2. Who will do the work?
3. What class/type of racing will it be used for?
4. Are you going in with your eyes open in regard to the amount of changes to the floor pan needed?

As has been said there are 4g63 powered FWD excels out there. If your keen do it but just make sure you plan for it first.

[geezer101]

The Excel X1's ran all Mitsubishi mechanicals - struts, brakes, stabiliser bar, engine and gearbox. The engines were 4G32 1.6L's. They were basically a reshelled early 'R' series Colt (but for some reason the Excels got a better brake and strut combo...). All you would need for a starting upgrade would be a custom modded left hand engine mount and a new exhaust system to match the engine manifold. From there you could use any fwd model 4g62, 63 or similar engine. As has already been mentioned, it depends on how serious you are and the $$$ to do it.

[Tj.]

Yeah, for the money you'd sink into building one into an AWD car, you could easily buy an early evo and build it up into a modest weekend racer and save yourself a huge headache. Depending on what sort or racing you want to do, the car may need to be logbooked which means it needs to be approved by a scruitineer (not the ones at the track, this is all before the car is even allowed by cams to go anywhere near a circuit) and I don't think it'd be too easy to get mods like that approved. Anything is most certainly possible, but its far from an economical way to go racing.
And this is all before making the car competitive within it's class too.

Lets face it, the suspension design in an excel is probably just a few steps up from a busted shopping trolley so to make a rounded and enjoyable race car (let alone competitive) that'd need to be sorted so it could handle the sort of grunt a '63 turbo setup would produce. I'd focus on that first and start with a mild motor, go compete, have some fun, get a feel for the car and then start tweeking.

When the old Datsun 1600 that dad and I use in motorkhana's and khanacross goes to the special stage in the sky I'd be looking at an excel. It's cheap, I'm certain you can get any number of motors into them and if we stuff it into a tree shells are a dime a dozen, but we race for fun, we're not really competitive
I wonder how you'd go about fitting a 4AGE 20V into one ......