It very much depends on what your intended use is going to be. If a road car is the plan then suspension needs to be compliant , chassis needs to high enough to avoid all obsticles , diff' should be high enough for quiet high speed cruising and economy , gearbox similarly matched .Engine would be better as light as possible to keep the nice carpeted beast nippy. The list is endless.Tango Man wrote:Did mine the hard way
However , if you intend tracking the car competitively then it's a whole different ball game . Almost everywhere you go on a track there are fast and slow anti camber corners and not many banked corners as you find on motorways/dual carraigeways and good A roads. So speed becomes more sensitive to dynamic chassis ability/handling. Massive power will not neccessarily get the job done , unless of course you have both power and the chassis to use it effectively.
I have found out the hard way (which I think is the best way) how to be quick , mainly down to understanding what adjustment/alteration will achieve which result . I.E. I have the same power in my Stylus as when I built it in 1999.
You might of course want a compromise , to have a road car that you can drive to the track in then circuit it or to the shop. If I were going up that route then I'd probably have a nice mildly tuned Duratec in a chassis with road charactoristics(as described above)but with a set of heavier springs and shocks to suit / double adjusters if you can afford them. C/R synchro box and either 3.89 or 4.1 diff' depending on the power you've chosen. I.E. powerfull Duratec = 3.89 will be fine , a little less power then the 4.1.
Hope Iv'e cleared a few points but of course they are only my very personal oppinions on set up based on my own experience with my Stylus.
Rob. Get building
Tim's is 525kg, 200kg of difference perhaps thats what he meens the engine is to big for the car 
whos good at mathes. How many bhp is required to give a car that weighs in at 710kg a power to weight of 400bhp per tone.
