Shed build racecar & RX7 update

The willingness to make the hard, time consuming and expensive decisions to re-do something will pay off when the project is complete.

The sum total of all the "Good enough's" undermines the final results of a lot of car projects.

In the meanwhile I was busy with finishing off the removable gearbox cradle, creating it with enough stiffness to take all the torsion generated by the v8. It works a treat as you can remove it complete with engine and gearbox. In its’ basis, 6 bolts and the whole combination comes out…easily. Nice.





The front wishbones…ohhhhh, the front wishbones. I have a love-hate relationship with those front wishbones. Actually I think it would probably be more accurate to say I have a hate-hate relationship with them, but they’re kind of necessary and do cool stuff, so there’s gotta be some love in there somewhere…really, very, spectacularly deep, but it’s there somewhere. Getting a proper set of wishbones made as a journey of epic proportions. Silly as it shouldn’t have been that difficult really. The problem is that after having re-designed the front-end, we in the process discarded the idea of basing it on the original Lola geometry. The pickup points were too far inboard, so this meant starting from scratch. Peter used an online tool to ensure the suspension would behave appropriately ie. no ridiculous amounts of camber during suspension travel, etc. The position of the wheels was chosen visually by simply putting them in place under the body…not the most scientific way of calculating it, but the only way we could think of doing it and so the seeds of despair were sown. I'll just sum up by saying that weeks of agony (with a good bit of procrastination involved) were caused by having to make four sets before they were correct…during which time the “parts graveyard” was created containing all the incorrectly made parts that we’ve produced along the way. Maybe it’d be cool to create a scale Transformer model from them some day in the future or something We even had Mr Lathe Man remake some lovely threaded inserts after discarding his first versions, although for the life of me I can't remember why right now.












…then the rear suspension. Our original intention was to make some nice, spanky ali uprights, so we researched how to cast ali, even to the point of pestering an old schoolmaster of mine (from my days back in the UK) who had played with this quite successfully. I find these sort of old-school techniques/crafts to be quite fascinating, but it was all getting a little complicated. I’d have to say, the idea of having a forge with molten aluminium in my garage at home didn’t really sound like a good idea, but what could possibly go wrong?

Nonetheless, we decided in the end, due more to the time factor than anything, to go for good old pragmatic steel versions…at which point Peter put more focus onto another mini-project he had had in his head for quite some time and build a CNC plasma cutting table…as you do.

So eventually the table was ready to go and with MUCH fiddling, cursing, blood, sweat and tears…as well as some not insignificant investments later (after the Chinese-quality-plasma cutter couldn’t even cut the mustard), we could cut out parts to quite some precision. I’d have to say this thing is the absolute mutts nuts. You design a part in a quite simple 2D CAD tool and then upload it into the table software. After initialising the tool (start x/y co-ordinates, material type/thickness, etc.) it then goes ahead and will cut out parts from material up to 1cm in diameter. Made something that’s not quite right? No problem. Back to the designing tool, move things a couple of mm’s, re-upload, cut it out and Bob’s yer Uncle, Fanny’s yer Aunt and the job is a good ‘un. Lovin’ it. No, that’s a misunderstatement of epic proportions…needin’ it! It really makes projects of this undertaking so much easier…as if its’ easy in any way shape or form, but you no doubt get the meaning. I told you, Peter is a bonafide magician.

Getting back to the story, a design was made for the uprights and one was fabricated, only to find out it didn’t quite work (here we are again: make it - try it - swear - repeat 😃 ). We’d neglected to leave enough space around the upper mount (and to a certain extent, also the lower mount) for the rear trailing arms which would then be too close to the tyres that will no doubt shift during acceleration as tyres tend to do. So, back to the design program, adjust the drawing, recut it, re-tack it and whoppa! We have ourself some rear uprights. Given the tooling a new one was complete within an hour. Fan-tastic.









On the basis of the new uprights we were able to make rear wishbones, trailing arms (including front bracketry, straight from a standard race-apparel catalogue) and tie rods. In combination with shock-absorber mounting points, the basic rear suspension is complete. It was a bit of a puzzle to work out where best to put everything with not getting in the way of driveshafts and bearing in mind that an exhaust needs to be around here somewhere, but it’s worked out quite nicely. Of course this setup belongs on a classic replica such as this…and looks quite the part, I’d have to say. Much chroming will have to be done in the future!







The driveshafts were easier than we thought. What with having an Audi transaxle and trusty Sierra (it’s worked on many other projects, so why not here) hubs, the two had to be mated together. After much measuring and dismantling, we once again called on Mr Lathe Man and the end result is really rather nice. We’ll drill some holes further down in the bored out shaft to spot weld the inner shaft in place. Should be strong enough. The added bonus is that if something breaks, it won’t go flapping around the rear of the car (with the obvious consequences), but should simply rotate in place. At least, that’s the theory.

Awesome work fellas - really appreciate the hard work you're putting into this and the skills you're using. congratulations and keep your heads up!

Hi Jon ( Thyck ) thanks for the update, looks like youre english is better than mine  


@ Edwardbear, Jon put a half year of work in 2 posts , so it is a lot slower in real life 

edwardbear : as Peter said, the developments we’ve posted over the past weeks have taken place over the last few months…it’s moving on, but can be frustrating to find enough time to work on it what with all our other commitments
oioisavaloy : thanks!
bjornagn : haha, I’ll try to remember the next time I’m using it! Now I’ve built it up so much it will of course come over a bit like a soggy fart, but at least you know what to expect now 😃
grizz : haha, it's no rocket science at the end of the day, you just need to look at every part separately. I'd have to say I probably wouldn't attempt something like this without the vast knowledge and experience that Peter has

So on to the last bit (for me at least) and the steering. It’s not the widest of cars (in which we have created a problem what with us both not being particularly small), but we’ve made quite a wide footwell relatively speaking. This means we need quite a big steering rack, in contrast to the normal single seater small steering racks you’d find. Solution: Escort MK2 quick-rack. We’d rather mount it on top of the chassis, but the footwell is also quite tall (we both have size 12 feet), so the only viable option is above the legs on the inside of the chassis, so we just went with it. After making a couple of tubes to hang it on I then spent quite some time using up Peters’ complete supply of tie wraps getting everything in the right place.



Next step was making some cardboard cutouts and then making up some mounts...





...but it turned out it wasn’t going to work. Big. Hairy. Balls.
Something I often find is that only once everything is in place and bolted up can you truly see if something is really gonna work. The idea was to be able to adjust the rack for bump steer, but if we want it in the right place, it needs to be directly under one of the main cross beams. Ah well, so be it...out comes the design tool again!





With the new ones tacked in place, I tested it out, with time being made for brrrm brrrm noises, naturally!


We took some time to think about steering arms and cut a couple out of nice thick steel. Don’t want to scrimp with steel here 😃


I made a couple of brackets to hang the steering column bearings. We just need a couple of rack extensions in place to make sure the track arm joints are in line with the wishbone rotation points and we’ll have the steering done!

…and then there’s the sump, but maybe Peter should say something about that as it was entirely his making. @fat-stig, over to you!

@ georgeb , Yes and No, We haven't done anything with the Lola Project.

We are having some issues with the front suspension design, after having made several different wishbone's we still are not happy with it.
So mojo was low, and we decided to leave it as is for now.

But as a person it is hard for me to do nothing  , so in Januari this year a bought a new project : a Mazda RX7 .

I, made a different topic for the Mazda, but have decided it is easyer to putt all in one topic.

The engine and gearbox are on the front seats, so that should be a easy fix .............or not.

some photo's of the pick up.

The chassis seems to be in a pretty good state, some welding to do , but not a lot

the engine supose to be good, the gearbox is broken

So the first thing to do was to source a gearbox, A quick search on a buy and sell page got me a nice 5 speed original gearbox.  

It bolted straight to the engine and after a couple of hours it was in.

I bought a shiney alloy radiator, because the one that came with the car was in a very bad state, looks good i think

So after we got the engine in, we could start it. after a couple of drip of fuel in het carb she firerd right up. The previous owner had told me that the engine was fine, but the gearbox had failt.

Un fortunalty all the brakes were seized, so we could not drive it. But the engine did run nice and started cold and hot ok, so in theory this should be a good motor.

As I'm growing older, I'm liking retro cars more and more. 
Someday the Lola will be a very thrilling car, but as it is a newly build car, In a shed, by 2 metal unstable persons I doubt if we ever get allowd  to race in a competition. So we ( or I ) need a backup plan. Thats were the Mazda steps in.

For a classic race car there a more and more competitions set up , with the YTCC from holland mabe one of the best.
So this car will be build with period correct specs.

I think it is goining to be something like the car  they won the 24h of Spa with.

So in order to get it in that kind of state I set out to dismantel the thing.

Maybe thats where my true tallent lies, dismanteling cars

got all the carpets out, dashboard lost the fight so eventualy it came out in one piece

I ordered 15kg of dryice and some alcohol en started removing the sound deadthening, I can tell you for sure, there is a lot of the stuff in a RX7

Real nice job under the pedals

Still some stuff left as I run out of dryice, but 90 % came out within 2 hours of work.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a rearaxle with a LSD.

After reading a couple of topics about racing the RX it came clear that the original setup has some design faults in it.

So I have decided to modify the original setup to a simpeler 4 links setup with a Panhard rod, mutch like a lot of escorts are using.

stripped the rearaxle of all its brackets

dropped the Original axle

 Removed the original tank

Made some new axle brackets

Getting them  in the right place

First try of get maximum  wishbone lenght.

Meanwhile I had a lot of parts coming in from different suppliers, the biggest order came frome my favorite UK shop ( rallydesign ),  got front and rear shocks , big brake discs, fuelcell, and lots of smaller stuf.

Also got a new set of wheels fitted with Nankang NS2r semi slick tyres

Could not resist trying them on the car

Also the rollcage has arived, not sure how this will turn out. I realy think a got the wrong fitting kit, but customcages are telling me that it will fit this car ( they send my some pics of the wrong car ) so that didn't help to clear the discussion. I going to make the rear suspension prior to fitting the cage, because it makes it easyer to get in and out of the car.

After some serious thingking and looking at differend ford escorts setup I came with a final design.

Made a model and cut it out on the plasmatable







Reinforcement plate


 Reinforcement plate  spotwelded 



Trial fitting in the car



tacked in place.

After I tacked the boxes in place I could work out the length of the rods.
Made a set of rods, with left and right hand threath on each side.



To get the rod length equal I had to remake the axle brackets.

So I made a cad design and cut them out on the plasma table





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 Also made some reinforcemends for the shock towers




Welded them in place

I also removed the old shock tower and made a new bigger tower to accomidate the new coil over shocks. I bought a set of Ford escort MK2 rear shocks of Bilstein
I have looked a different options for front and rear shocks, but within my budget I could choose between B of C quality brand adjustable shock or a A brand non adjustable shock. so that is what I choose. I don't think i'll adjust the shocks after a first adjustment, so why bother with less quality witch i'll never adjust.

I have also figured out a awesome front suspension upgrade with high quality shock absorber , but thats for a later update.

    

Very happy with this suspension set up, next is going to be the Panhard rod .

So thats in a nuttshell to where I am with the Mazda.

Butt to be honest, this is not the only project I'm working on at the moment

YESSSS. this a great addition to the LOLA topic!Fantastic the MAZDA build and plan to race with it..a few of my friends do race in the NK GTTC...with Simca's, Renault 5 Alpine and a F/I/A/T/ 3P...an other friend is building a F/I/A/T/ 128 for racing, and I.... a F/I/A/T/ 127 mk2 Ciao

I quite agree with you shock choice. I run Bilstein non adjustable on my mk1 Escort rally car. I had Spax adjustable on there and never adjusted them. What would I adjust them too? If Bilstein's were good enough for Ari Vatanen and chums, then there good enough for me.

Fantastic fabrication skills

Very neat work.
That cutting table you made is a superb tool.