My brother-in-law and I started work on Baja (prerunner type) F150 and I'm thinking about balancing out the weight distribution for jumping. I want to turn the engine around and put it in the bed of the truck (the fan will be pointing toward the the rear bumper and the t-case will be pointing toward the front bumper). How do I do it and still keep the driveline rotation correct? Is it done in the transfercase? If so, who makes a reverse rotation transfercase?

1973 F100 4wd
Pic Vid
http://www.ATV-Racing.com

 

Sounds like you will need a V-drive unit from a boat to reverse the direction of the rear driveshaft after the transmission. What you're contemplating is actually more of a rear engine than a mid engine, since the engine will likely end up being over the rear axle.

 

Maybe it is me, but, I would never want an engine behind me in a truck I was jumping for that 1% of the time when everything goes wrong. It was the main reason I never bought a small mid/rear engine car no matter how neat.

 

What kind of things could go wrong? Is there a safety issue I'm over-looking?

Looks like SCS Gear makes the units for the monster trucks. I imagine they are crazy expensive.
Ben
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1973 F100 4wd
Pic Vid
http://www.ATV-Racing.com

 

Edit:

Hook everything up as normal then flip the diff over so it goes the other way.

*Actually if it's a 2wd baha, as most are, running the actual rear diff from the transfer case wouldn't work unless the pinion was offset so the v-drive from transmission output would probably be the best way. You still may need to flip the diff over though.

 

I dont remember why I was thinking about doing that same setup, but I came up with the idea of building my own t-case using only two gears. That would reverse the direction of rotation, but you would only have a single speed. I already saved the sprockets from two NP 203 t-cases to try to use as gears, and then build the case around them.