Quote:
Originally Posted by Coyote X
an oddball idea I had but never did anything with was make a spacer that fit on the outside of the wheel with the lug nuts holding it in place. On the spacer put a sprocket of whatever size you wanted. In front of the tire drill a hole in the body and stick the motor shaft out the side of the car. There you go, an easy way to drive a back tire that will only look strange if you don't build a cover for it.
Lots of advantages to a setup like that. Easy maintenance and doesn't take much room up. Just a bit of the back seat at most. Still easy to maintain and repair the car. And if something breaks the worst needed is to use the lug wrench and take the sprocket and spacer off the rim. You would not even have to jack the car up to do it.
I figure since oddball ideas are being tossed out I might as well toss some of mine out there. Maybe someone might want to use it  |
Oddly enough this does have some merit, but would definitely need a means of taking up slack when the suspension cycles... and fast. That idler sprocket would have to be under significant tension (to keep up with suspension rate) and would cost efficiency, despite being on the "slack side" of the chain.
You would probably also want to start with a vehicle that has a live rear axle (not driven, but rigid side-to-side as opposed to multilink - think Sciroccos) so that the wheel doesn't have much movement in/out as it moves up and down its suspension range of motion.