Custom designed car body (no not just a tacky paint job) help?

Question

this may sound extreamly mad, and well it is in a way but its more an idea as opposed to a plan. i have a friend that builds his own cars so it might be possible.

as my ideal car doesnt actually exist, i figured why not dream up a design myself (yes this is based on an actual asleep dream!) ......

the theory would be to have a car resembling a victorian horse and caridge (minus the horses obviously) if poss id love to use a victorian caridge i just happen to have lying around as the body of the car (with adaptions to make it fit a standard chasi and be road safe and have a roof of course)

its probarbly compleatly impossible, but anyone have any ideas (no nasty posts as i have already stated this is a rather mad and impractial idea, dreams usually are!)

:-)

Answer 1

Well if you look into tube frame dragsters and race cars they make some crazy body shapes and are safe. I guess if you could support the body and weld well enough you could shape almost anything imaginable.

Answer 2

(Assuming your carriage already has 4 wheels,and is sprung using leaf springs!)

Probably difficult to adapt a modern car chassis to fit, but probably not that difficult to adapt a horse drawn carriage into a motorised vehicle. After it's how early cars started.

So long as the body isn't rotten it's probably strong enough. You could perhaps reinforce with plywood, or if needs be some "scaffolding tube".

Steering the front wheels would be a little awkward as the front axle probably pivots from the centre rather than being an Ackermann steering geometry. Would be fairly awkward to have the individual front wheels pivot, while needing custom parts it wouldn't be impossible. Easier (but not as ideal) would be to keep the carrages front "axle", and have a horizontal steering wheel (like a truck), and a vertical steering column, drive a  large cog (rather than a steering rack), to alters the angle the front "axle" makes to the body. You'd need to have many-many turns of the steering wheel to change the angle, otherwise the steering would be very heavy. To may find it easiest to change how the front wheels fit the carriage, in which case, I'd probably consider the unconventional sliding pillar suspension (you may still be able to use the car rage's leaf springs, and simply use the pillar to guide the wheel/keep it at the right angles)

To sort out the rear, I'd probably go with a live axle. You may be get one of an old van. I'm not 100% sure but I think land rovers still use them too, as they are VERY robust. These work VERY well with leaf springs, and get's you the differential/ a way of connecting your engine/gearbox. You'd also need to fashion some adapters to fit the carrage wheels on

Then you just need somewhere to fit your engine/gearbox, and rig up an electrical system such as lights.

--

If you're a farmer, you may be able to bypass the tests for road worthness by regestring it as an agriculture vechicle (Think you need to be a farmer for this!) Otherwise you'd need it to pass the SVA test, to use it on the road.

I don't think you'd be able to get much performace out of such a vehicle, for a number of reason. Firstly the vehicles center of gravity would be a lot higher than a cars, causing problems with cornering. Will have a very wide turning circle, and not be too stable going around corners given the stearing geometry  The wheels wont have tyres, so anything faster than a horses canter would be very unconfortable.

Answer 3

any thing is possible you could make the body out of fiberglass i mean the Munster mobile is close to that look

as seen below it can happen

Answer 4

You've got to have some mechnical skill to build one or will cost megabucks.  Look at some kit cars that are available that use engines, suspensions and electrical systems from current models (toyota, ford) to fit custom bodies, some classic, some avant garde, some just unique.  Best deals are unfinished kits that builders got bored with or couldn't complete.  I built my "dream car" years ago, and after a couple of years of racing and street use, just wasn't worth the trouble of replacing parts that were still old and worn.