Stuff my dog says; on second thought I'll just build a race car

I just wonder, could this have been you some time ago?

I know it was a joke an all, but since it was brought up I've never been that enamored with just driving places. I like building and working on cars, but actually driving is boring 99% of the time. Hoping to get actual track time with this though because that should be actual fun.

When I got to the shop this morning one of the guys from up front almost immediately came back and asked about the dash bar and why it was so high. Laughed and went through the whole explanation about the engine height and sitting higher in the chassis than people expect and all that. He then asked if I was married to that particular engine or if I could use something different to lower the front end:rolleyes:

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Got the toe bar attached first thing this morning. Then started putting on the upper chassis bars.
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Switching now to one inch square tube for this upper level. The idea being to add stiffness to the chassis, especially the rear bit over the axle. It was about this point where I realized that the pictures are getting less and less easy to discern. There are enough tubes now everything seems to be blending in with the background
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The top row of square put on I started the diagonals. Triangles mean strength, they also mean difficult to get weld into the corners. The two guys I'm usually there with both took off early today so I was working as long as there were people up front, without a key I had to be out before everyone up there left. That means I left off with most of the diagonals welded, but not all the way. It still made for a full day. Things go pretty quickly when it's just connecting points with straight lines though and that made things real nice today. It feels like a lot changed,

 
Today I watched a UTube about a Tornado 230 engine. I thought it interesting to see the camshaft has only one lobe per cylinder driving both the intake and exhaust valves. Perhaps this could have been the XS650 if it were designed 10 years earlier?


See 2:00 minutes.
 
Today I watched a UTube about a Tornado 230 engine. I thought it interesting to see the camshaft has only one lobe per cylinder driving both the intake and exhaust valves. Perhaps this could have been the XS650 if it were designed 10 years earlier?


See 2:00 minutes.
I thought I misread that about the single lobe per cylinder till I watched the video. Verrrry Interesting!
 
Oooh Yes!!! Now we see the scale of the beast. The engine changes everything and all the proportions are looking just right ... :popcorn:

When we put everything together there I spent a good hour just walking around the collection with an idiotic smile on my face. It all seems like it's working out like I had pictured and it's amazing to see it for real. One of the guys from the regular mechanic shop on the other side of them building walked by and said "Oh shit this is actually happening."

I thought I misread that about the single lobe per cylinder till I watched the video. Verrrry Interesting!

Yeah, it's so bizarre it sort of makes you feel like you're seeing or hearing things wrong.


On a other note, I finally went and put the stuff I needed on the lathe tonight. It you look at the picture from straight behind the car you can see the right rear wheel is super crooked. Should be able to fix that now. Also made the heim inserts the right size for the pipe that will make up the control arms so those can move forward when I get there.
 
Forgot this picture, buddy there yesterday insisted I put on his helmet for a picture sitting in the chassis to send to the other guy that's usually there with us but missed the day.
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Not my idea, hence laughing while he took the picture.

Ordered some more stuff just now and crossed the 10 thousand US dollars mark for the project.
 
Pictures from "work" yesterday.
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This is the track I've had in mind building the car. We took a couple customer vehicles down yesterday to be able to drive and fiddle with them in a safer environment than city traffic.

Long day but was pretty good even as far as days at work go.
 
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Got some mounts made today for the engine and transmission. Don't have them finish welded yet obviously, just done enough to stay in place. With the engine mounts done like that we started fooling around with the blower and looking at placement for it. We came up with a stupid idea and got excited about it for a while.
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Also welded tube ends into the adapter sleeves, and then welded a pair of sleeves to the pair of long tubes for the rear suspension and took down measurements for some hardware.
 
So more about that last picture up there. When that picture was taken we were thinking how cool it would be to have the blower visible under the chassis from the side like that. Shortly after that picture was taken I remembered the steering rack has to go somewhere, and where it has to go is right where the blower drive would be with the supercharger low like that.
I went over tonight to fiddle around with things and verify that having the supercharger low really won't work.....and it won't. It's moving back up to where I was thinking before, the alternator does fit between the blower and the block though so nothing will have to be reworked there.
Today was also a day spent thinking about rear suspension and I'm changing that up. After much thought it's just going to make more sense to do a parallel four link than the radius rod plan. I've got all the stuff already so it doesn't really change anything but having to weld in a second pair of arm mounts to the body.
 
So layed out a paper for the lower control arms tonight and stumbled upon a problem. The uniballs I got to serve as ball joints have an articulation of plus/minus 15 degrees. The pitch change of the end of the lower arm at full compression is a little over 11 degrees. So within the realm of usable.

The upper arm is just over half the length of the lower arm. So the total change of angle of the upper arm plus the camber change in the spindle is 26 degrees. This technically is still doable, but the change under compression is 16.5 degrees which means I have to have a static rotation in the joint and that adds complication. Complication without much wiggle room.
 
Does this style of car have an auxilary seat so someone can ride along next to you to appreciate all the work e.g. wife, son or grand children ??
 
Does this style of car have an auxilary seat so someone can ride along next to you to appreciate all the work e.g. wife, son or grand children ??

No, just the single seat. I don't know how much it comes across in the pictures but the body outside edge to outside edge is 39 inches at the waist. The prop shaft is offset 3 inches in the front 4.5 inches in the rear so the drives haft tunnel is totally on the right of middle leaving about a foot to fit a second seat...if there wasn't a shifter and ignition box there.

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Got to this point tonight. Spacers and the "vertical" part or the spindle made the bolt holes for the hub able to be bolted together and the other pieces of the spindle cut. Nice to see how well the caliper bracket fits up with everything cut.

Amusingly we got everything drawn up and ready to cut and then I realized I wasn't paying attention to my own designs and forgot to include intention of using hub mounting to get static camber so had to go back and fix it. Luckily I remembered before actually running to table to cut affected parts out. It's slow going through this part but I think we've got a good plan and hoping to get the spindles assembled next week and do lower arms next weekend.
 
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