Hi guys,

I could use some advice on the most 'sensible' way to convert a FWD car to bike power.

In my mind it makes sense to keep the car transmission in place - only top gear and reverse would ever be used. All the actual shifting would be handled by the bike trans. This solves all the problems with the diff / driveshafts / reverse.

Am I overlooking something? Are there any significant drawbacks to this configuration? What would be the best way to attach the bike's output shaft to the car's input?

The second version Pell Genesis, arguably the first of the BEC, used a chain driven gearbox albeit in mid-engined configuration. They kept one motion shaft in the box plus reverse so that it had high and low ratio. It might be worth seeing how they did it - I have an old magazine somewhere, I’ll check if there’s any info there.

Some cars have chain driven a mini diff to go FWD....no reverse like that though.

The only one I've seen like that is the BMW boxer conversion for a 2CV, but I think they BMW gearbox isn't used in that example