Rear wheel drive Conversion

In India for less amount of money currently we don't get any 4x4 hatchback/sedan or rear wheel drive hatchback/sedan.Even rear wheel drive sedans which are available in India today are away from many Indian pockets.

In this blog i will be sharing some ideas to convert Fwd into Rwd.

Rear wheel cars which are available in India at affordable price are like:-

• Old granny HM Ambassador, which is Indian version of Morris oxford.
• Tata nano.
• HM Contessa, which is also Indian version of Vauxhall VX4/90.
• Primer padmini, NE 118,etc.

But as we all know none of them have that much power to put smile on our faces.  some of them are not even possible to get in petrol engines.

So, we are only left with conversion of drive to enjoy driving of rear wheel drive cars in India at affordable price. But i hope you all know conversion or modification is not legal in India. But if you need a fun car for your weekends then sure you can go for this.

Before we start further that what you will need or what kind of modifications to be made for converting a FWD car to RWD car.first lets see the most important part.

 

Which vehicle to pick for conversion

Most of sedans and hatchbacks have there engine placed in transverse direction. in order to save space of engine compartment and more room inside the car. this means they have have gearbox, differential specially designed for the engine and vehicle layout of FWD.

Image below will give you and idea about the placing of engine and gearbox cum differential.

If you want to convert any vehicle into RWD you have to either make new engine mounts to place the engine in longitudinal direction which is again tough job as mostly all sedans and hatchbacks don't have ladder frames. instead they have monocoque chassis which is not an easy task to to shape or make new mounts. In addition to that you have to cut a tunnel through over all length of passenger compartment which is compulsory in conversion until you opt for mounting engine itself at the back .

so while selection car for conversion if possible try to get a car with longitudinal mounted engine car which is going to difficult because i don't remember any car like that ever available in India. if you will find any longitudinal mounted engine vehicle it will be RWD. which means the same under-powered ambassador and so on. 

If you want to skip tough job in making engine mounts and other difficult things. Then Another idea is you can pick whatever car you want but source a gearbox which can easily mesh with transversely mounted engine and. GIVES drive to the rear axle instead of traditional FWD. 

After lot of research I found that in India we got only one car which have this kind of power transmission layout and that is Honda CRV GEARBOX yes by using Honda crv gearbox you can achieve RWD OR EVEN AWD in transversely mounted engine vehicle. if it is possible for you to import parts then fiat panda gearbox can do the job.

if you want your zen or other hothatch to give you feel or WRC cars that means conversion of zen from FWD to AWD THEN  you can use normal rear axle of omni van for the cars like ZEN which have dependent suspension at rear you can easily replace the beam axle of zen with axle and differential of maruti omni or eeco. it wont give that much pleasure of driving WRC car but surely u can enjoy your ride.

If you managed to get through engine mounting and gearbox mounting then comes another confusing part as we know many of the sedans like lancer, esteem, accent,etc all of then have all four independent suspension system which is a good thing. suppose if you are doing conversion from FWD to AWD or RWD.

 But if you are doing conversion for purpose of drifting then you cannot depend upon the basic dependent suspension if you do so there will chances of flip. and  if your car is having independent suspension at rear then you have to put differential or axle which will work with independent suspension and again we are stuck in India  we can get this type of differential and half shaft for rear wheels but as it comes in only high end cars  it is going to be soo expensive if you will take differential of BMW 3 SERIES .

The only car in India which can provide you this type differential at budget is Renault duster Awd yes, duster Awd have independent suspension at rear also so you can source parts of duster for this.