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There's a strong likelihood I'm talking absolute nonsense on certain aspects of this idea at the moment so I may well revisit some of these ideas! I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of the "bible" for this sort of thing so I can start reading up and realise how foolish I am!
I do also like the idea of alloy bodywork but I feel like the amount of equipment required to get into doing it would be a bit prohibitive...
Nahguavkire-
I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of the "bible" for this sort of thing so I can start reading up and realise how foolish I am!
If you want a reasonable starter on suspension geometry then I'd recommend 'Competition Car Suspension' by Allan Staniforth. If you want the bible on suspension, then that would have to be Race Car Vehicle Dynamics by Milliken & Milliken, but it's pretty heavy going. I did A-level Maths, but I still find the mathematics in Milliken & Milliken pretty hard going. It's still the default go-to book on suspension, despite having been written 25 years ago.
The chassis is, relatively speaking, the easy part. It's basically just a big bracket holding all the working bits of the car together. If you use 1" square 16g ERW and plenty of triangulation then you won't go far wrong, preferably with semi-stressed aluminium panels attached with polyurethane adhesive and pop-rivets. Or carbon panels if you really want to go bling.
Brommers
It does, as long as you keep the overall weight of the car and the weight distribution the same. If you don't, then you'll end up with the wrong suspension geometry for your car. You can't use the same suspension geometry from a front-engined car on a mid-engined car as the weight distribution is going to be totally different, so the roll centres, anti-dive and anti-squat are going to need to be different too. You could use it, but it's likely it'd handle like a total dog and at worst leave you in terminal oversteer situations.
You're also likely to have the issue that most production cars use McPherson struts up front, and they won't work with a low-level spaceframe chassis - the tops of the tower struts would be at eye height. On the Sylva range of cars they got round this by chopping the McPherson struts down and welding in a top-eye with a taper to turn the strut into an upright which could be used with a double wishbone suspension system. However, once you start doing that, you're moving so far away from the original suspension system that you're basically working from scratch albeit with some fixed geometry limitations.
Super bold. I've done quite a bit of work with carbon (wet lay-up and pre-preg), kevlar and GRP. Kevlar is a total and utter swine to work with. I do use it, but only very sparingly and only for reinforcing carbon honeycomb panels to prevent intrusion into the passenger cell. It is a total unmitigated bitch of a material to work with.