I was thinking about Porches and how they effectively have the engine in the back. Benefiting from reducing the drive shaft distance and minimizing the loss of power from having to deliver it through a drive shaft to the differential. The shorter the distance from having the engine mounted in the back where the back wheels drive the car minimizes the extra power loss from a drive shaft. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. What if our engines where placed in our trunks like porches.

Would we see big gains? How much of a difference would it make in the power delivery to the wheels?

Is this a worthy experiment? Is it possible to fit an engine in the rear?

Also the Hood of the car would provide way more storage space.

What do you guys think?

 

This is the worst idea ever. You're going to spend nearly 20 grand in fabrication and maybe make 10 more horses to the wheels. You'll also have a huge rear weight bias making the handling much worse. Talk about oversteer city.

You can get a turbo kit installed and tuned for 5000-6000 and be done with it.

 

Just add a SC or turbo and be done with it - you'd have to reengineer the whole car.. Btw, Porsche's rear engine design is not considered ideal, but it does work.

 

First of all, it is spelled Porsche. I have not found a way to drive my front "Porch" or my back "Porch". Second, the drive shaft is a rigid tube with very little or no loss of power at all. Power losses usually come from "turning" the power, either through the gears or the differential. Our S2K's enjoy a perfect 50/50 weight distribution and the balanced handling that goes with it. Why screw it up? Porsche has had to go through great pains and expense to engineer the inherent oversteer the rear engine out of the car. If you want a "Porch" go buy one, lets keep the S2K just like it is. P.S. I used to have a Porsche and I will take my S2K any day.

 

It would be a very poorly designed NSX? LOL

S2K is just fine as is. Add mods if you want to change something, but don't change the best qualities of the car.

PLEASE GOD NO LS1's.

 

Typo on the "Porsche", my bad.

That's not the point being made, I'm not suggesting that the best approach to gaining power for our current S2000 be this route, but rather thinking out loud about the design of the s2000 in general before release. If it were rear wheel drive, wouldn't we have benefited from the added power and the extra storage space?

Handling being worse because it is more rear bias is subjective to your definitions of handling. I wouldn't consider a Porsche to have bad handling, they've been proven to track fast times and handle curves well. OF course the obvious counter is...it's been engineered and balanced well...so go on with that thought and grant that same engineering to a S2000 that Honda could have made.

The question still remains...what if the S2000 were designed rear engine rear drive?

What reason's would have prevented Honda from making the S2000 with this set up.?

From my intuition, I think the reasons why the NSX is as good as it is, is because of the engine placement. If it were Front engine mount, it would not deliver the same power. With Honda's approach to engineering cars (think about all the Front wheel drive cars) utilizing smaller engines than competitors, they continue to stay in the Front engine front drive design. Yes it's safer, but I also think it relates to the implications I'm making here about engine placement and power resulting from it and Honda continued approach to working with smaller engines.

From my perpective, it looks like they engineered the NSX very efficiently to gain it's power from the placement of the engine.

Now think about the price tag relating to it's engineering design. These are some of the "What if's" I'm refering to here.

Would it make the Honda S2000 more expensive?
Would it over shadow the NSX?

 

A) This is not the worst idea ever. Historically, there have been worse ones, not the least of which was making an airship that's hydrogen-filled with a nitrocellulose skin.

B) It's still a pretty bad idea. Jackk is completely correct- the prop shaft is very rigid (and made from an elastic material in any case), so the power loss through it is zero. Making it shorter will not help you.

C) A severe rearward weight bias is not a good thing (ever drive a Corvair?). Porsche makes 997's that way for nostalgia, and has to jump through a lot of hoops to make it close to being as good dynamically as the mid-engined Boxster/Cayman. Nobody starting with a clean sheet of paper designs a rear-engined racing car.

 

The different location of the engine does not provide any significant gain in power if you are running the same engine. If anything mid and rear engine are a nighmare to keep cool. You endup having to add air scoop and cooling ducts all over the place which screws up the areodynamic of the car.
the only things that will affect is the handling of the car due to different weight bias. Mid engine is the best, front engine is the safest and rear engine is the most diffcut to control.

 

Our car is more front-mid than front anyway. The overall power difference would be around 10 horses, which does not offset the incredible oversteer you'd have.

 

i think Honda designers/engineers knew what they were doing (and wanted) when they designed the S2000 back in the 90's. let's leave it at that.