1st gen tercel with fiat twin cam rwd convertion

Thanks everyone for letting me be a part of the community here I'm a long time reader of the mag and I believe I'm going to love the forums after lurking around on here from time to time. Here is a pic of my tercel before I started the conversion, the car is not done but I feel I am at the point I could bounce ideas of y'all if needed.

Well like most of you I have an itch to race and after years now of being out of the performance car game I have decide to jump in to this build with both feet! The goal of this car is going to be a fun street car that I can autocross and maybe work up to doing some hill climbs.

I have had this tercel for a few years but it has been sitting because of a bad transmission. I love driving this little car in stock form but being I couldn't find a transmission I figured it was time to mod it!

I had a 1972 fiat spider in the yard that I learned to drive stick on so I robbed the drivetrain from it for the tercel being the fiat had to much rust to save.

Ok could I have chosen a swap with more power? Of course, but being I'm like most of y'all and on a budget with this build I decided to use what I had. Plus the stock 3ac that was in the car is about 60hp and the fiat engine should have around 90hp so that's a 50% improvement plus rwd!

I'm a little ADD so this build is going to bounce around a little bit hahaha

So the 1st order of business is to get the engine and trans a place to live.

The steering rack was taking up space the oil pan needed so it has to move.

Had to cut a little of the trans tunnel out

Another problem with the tercel the way it was is the front hubs were going out, I did find a replacement for the one that was bad but it being 30 something years old was on borrowed time too so it was time to tackle the front suspension.

When I started this build I told my wife I was getting rid of all my other project cars so when I came home with this 240sx roller she wasn't the happiest lady in town hahaha

I took the lca's and tension rods off plus the busted struts. I lucked out and the cut up 240 struts fit the tercel strut tubes! I will weld these when I get them to the right height.

The lca's where almost a bolt on, the factory tercel bolts where 12mm shank size and the 240sx are 14mm but are stepped down to 12mm thread on the end so I was able to widen the tercel mount enough to get the thicker 240 lca in there and was able to use the factory 240 bolt in the tercel mount! It's almost like playing with Lego! Hahaha

I still have not made mounts for the tension rods yet, I am thinking of making some with heim joints. Also thinking of making the lca's adjustable.

Awesome!

For the trans mount I made this up from a fiat mount some tube and some gussets. It uses the factory mounting holes on the tercel

I play Rollerderby so I have skate cushions around so I figured I would use them for the trans mount

I think it fits nice!

With the 240sx lower control arms at stock length, I think I am going to shorten them an inch and make them adjustable. I want to run a little bit narrower of a tire but on a deeper offset rim. These are 215 60 on 15x7 with +40 et. The tires rub the spring just a little.

Ok now time for some rear end love...got this gem from the local you pull it yard. 1985 rx7 gsl lsd diff!

I plan to do a triangulated 4 link for the rear and have got my heim Joints and tube ready to go!

Ok being on a budget I'm always looking for deals so I saw discount tire had drag dr20 wheels for $105 each and had a special if you used their in store credit you got a $60 mail in rebate plus a $100 visa gift card so I had to pick these bad boys up!

They are 15x7 with 0et have 195/50 on front with 205/50 out back. I had planed to use bolt on flares but being I'm on a budget and have a shop full of tools I started doin the flares in metal.

Cool project!

Woah

ONE OF US!

love it. Challenge car?

Those 124 twin cam motors are really cool. Weird that they never made much power. I think the best NA one State side was only about 105hp or so, that being the 2.0 EFI unit. I have owned 16 124 spiders in my life, including a couple of turbo cars. Pretty sure those were only 120hp. Nevertheless it is a well designed engine and pretty simple. I heard it is the most studied engine in history, not sure if that's true. I think if you put some decent compression pistons in one you could make some power. Or, probably easier would be to add a turbo! The 124 rearends are pretty cool, too. Disc brake with a good parking brake. I'm guessing you didn't use that because of the weird 4x98mm bolt pattern? And, no LSD.

This thing is crazy, and I love it.

In reply to carwhisperer:

Think of it this way, they made 100+ HP when a MG was making less than 60. The Fiat/Lancia twin cam was also used heavily in Rally, the most successful in the history of the WRC, it has a lot of potential.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: In reply to carwhisperer: Think of it this way, they made 100+ HP when a MG was making less than 60. The Fiat/Lancia twin cam was also used heavily in Rally, the most successful in the history of the WRC, it has a lot of potential.

Good point. Also, they have a very similar head design to Ferrari V8's of similar vintage. According to wikipedia the engine was designed by an ex-Ferrari engineer and the 1800cc version made 116hp. I kinda doubt that as the 1800 was kind of a low point. It states the 1600 made 108hp. I can believe that.

Why am I not seeing pics?

Yep I like these little engines and the one in the 72 I have is a 1608 with a bit of head work done, unfortunately one of the pistions is rusted into the bore but the other 3 look ok and all the bearings look good so it will get rebuilt when I get the money, in the mean time I picked up a 1436cc version with a trans too. They say the 1436 is around 90hp so it should still be fun to drive till I can get the 1608cc built up again

carwhisperer wrote: The 124 rearends are pretty cool, too. Disc brake with a good parking brake. I'm guessing you didn't use that because of the weird 4x98mm bolt pattern? And, no LSD.

The bolt pattern didn't bother me much as the rx7 rear is a 4x110 so it's not common either and I will have to run adapters anyways but I did want lsd if I could get it and I was able to snag this one for $150 so I thought that was a good deal!

Dusterbd13 wrote: ONE OF US! love it. Challenge car?

Thanks, no challenge car here this one is going to get finished nice live in my shop get driven on the street and flogged on the track when I got time off.

In reply to Jerry From LA:

Not sure Jerry? They are hosted on my Facebook page but I made them public so they should show up for everyone...

Toyota, Fiat, Nissan and Mazda.... yep, he is one of us.

Lomaxmotorsports wrote: Yep I like these little engines and the one in the 72 I have is a 1608 with a bit of head work done, unfortunately one of the pistions is rusted into the bore but the other 3 look ok and all the bearings look good so it will get rebuilt when I get the money, in the mean time I picked up a 1436cc version with a trans too. They say the 1436 is around 90hp so it should still be fun to drive till I can get the 1608cc built up again

The 1438 had a little horsepower with the European dual Weber setup but no torque. As in none.

Very cool. I really like your wheel choice.

In reply to Jerry From LA:

I plan to put a rack of Mikuni's on this one

Is that what is in the picture above?

In reply to carwhisperer:

Sure is, it's just sitting on top of the factory intake there it will drop about 3in when I make the manifold