2 replies to this topic

[howey]

I'm new to the world of BEC. I'd like to attempt an R1 conversion at some stage. I followed some links that came up in my endless web trawling that lead to a guy in the US doing a conversion with a kit made by mini eXvo. It would seem that the people who made the kit have gone out of business, as I cannot find anything current on them except for a webpage telling me the site is no longer active.

The part of the kit I find most appealing is the gear based transfer system to go from the output shaft of the R1 gearbox. I like the idea of that much more than the chain drive arrangement in the pro-motive kit.
I know Quaife make something that can be adapted, it's quite pricey and seems a generic "1 size fits all" arrangement. I'd like to find who made the mini eXvo unit, just to satisfy my curiosity and see if something similar is still available.

Can anyone shed some light?

[R1mini]

I don't know if I would class them as a business, seemed more like a single guy doing them on the side, maybe that was his original intention. As for the kit, I'm aware of only one sold, but there could well be others.

From memory I think the diy kit was £6,500 I think, with a big chunk that must have been for the transfer box, making it very expensive. I know from speaking to the guy at Castle Combe he got the boxes custom made and they were very expensive, even more than certain quaife boxes you may be looking at

I enquired years ago through quaife, how much ballpark figure a custom box may be, I was told around £10,000

I did something similiar years ago, here are a couple of pictures


Cheers
David

Attached Files

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•  Quaife Box FWD Mini.jpg   63.96K   63 downloads

[howey]

Thanks for your reply David. I've done some more trawling through the archives here, came across Bossanova's build thread, which also seems to track the evolution of the pro-motive kit. I probably have more questions now than answers!!

I also came across a snow mobile called an RX1, which uses an R1 engine without the gearbox, and a dry sump system. Now I'm wondering if it could be adapted to an A series gearbox? I'm just having real trouble getting my head around a chain drive, and my wallet around a custom gear train. I suspect I have many nights of dreaming and drawing ahead. Next thing is to find some accurate dimensions of the available options and of the old A series, and start to crunch some numbers.