44 months on…

06:30hrs Friday 4th June 2010.

A thirty-year old man yelps somewhere in a sleepy former mining town in South Wales. A black and white cat leaps for cover, unsure of what caused this most unusual of sounds. The cat peers from around a corner to see the yelping man holding aloft two reams of white A4 paper. He looks happy. Over 3 ½ years of endeavour has all but come to an end. His Masters in Business Administration degree is finally finished!

I’ve just got back from the binders having dropped-off two copies of my final and most extensive piece of work. Joy fills the room. There’s more good news; my chassis is nearly finished as well. Joe and Steve spent an obscene amount of time getting it welded-up last weekend. The hope was to have it finished. The reality is that there is probably another five hours of work to do, mainly focussed around the front suspension. In any case, here she is with Joe ar the wheel

I’ll get some better photos when I go up to Joe’s for final fitting for the headrest and steering column. I should hopefully bring it home the same day which should be good. Then its off for powdercoating. Splendid!

I haven’t forgotten about the exhaust end pipe that I mentioned in the last instalment but I’m now going to hang-on until I’ve got the slice of catalyser to fit it before I try to explain the issues and plan on here. I’ve sourced some very smart aluminium bearing carriers for the back to replace the heavy cast iron ones, which I hope is going to make my drum and hub assembly somewhat lighter than even posh Wilwood billet calipers and the associated bracketry.  That’s the plan anyway.

Enough for now; I feel knackered! That’ll be the lack of sleep resulting from the final push to get the dissertation done!  Plus, I’d better do some proper work…

TC

Dissertation Distraction.

Apologies for the lack of updates.  I'm rather busy trying to finish the dissertation for my MBA (sooooo bloooody close now!)  Anyway, today we got news... the chassis has gone off for final welding.

There she goes:

Steve has enlisted the help of (total star) Joe the Welderman.  Here's the two fine specimens concerned - engaged in some fetching hand-on-hip action:

My own efforts have been limited to devising 'an innovative tail-pipe solution.'  More on this next time.  Do not get excited; you will be disappointed.

TC

Paddling (Upstream.)

I’m quite proud that I’ve managed to use the verb ‘paddling’ as both a metaphor and in a literal sense in the same post. I never claimed to be terribly normal….

In the literal sense, we now have a ‘flappy-paddle’ (do I need to credit Clarkson for that term?) and rocker assembly - two of the major components to be used in the rod-arrangement paddle shift system that we’re employing on the car. These aren’t just ANY old components however. They’re not made from steel or even aluminium. There are made of kevlar composite. Steve created a sheet of suitable material by building up layers of matting, sheet and resin. I’d love to tell you more about the process put it might as well be juju for all my knowledge of it. Anyway, I’m told that it is very light and should be more than strong enough to do the job. The sheet was then cut to shape by AndyW7de using a water-jet cutter. Here are the results:

The sheet was big enough to get couple of sets out. My paddle is the larger one. I’ve experimented with wheel sizes and have found that I don’t get on terribly well with tiny wheels. My wrists are increasingly prone to aches and pains (no lewd remarks necessary!) and I just feel a bit more comfortable with a 12” wheel. The intention is to finish the edges either with gel coat or possibly by polishing with cutting compound. I did the same on the carbon back panel on my MNR with good results.

I use the paddling upstream metaphor in relation to Steve’s activity on the chassis of late. I really do not envy him trying to find time to work on the car and help look after a new baby and work full time. I’m in no rush so everything is fine my end – I just wish I could help a bit more. The two Ds, distance and dissertation, don’t lend themselves well to this unfortunately.

That said, I’m hoping to have a day off studying to go to Brands Hatch on Sunday to see the RGB race and to have a look at some of the new cars that are joining the Championship. Hopefully, Saturday’s race will be without incident and I won’t miss anyone.  My old comrades from the Locost Championship are there too so it should be a good day.

TC

Top ball joints. Or not.

‘Plan A’ to connect the upper front wishbone to the Cortina upright had been the usual Locost method of using a ball joint in the form of a drag link or track rod end from a Ford Transit. We’d also intended to use a ‘quick camber adjuster,’ essentially a threaded sleeve that sits inside a 1” inside diameter (ID) tube and allows you to move the ball joint in and out without removing any parts. However, there has recently been some discussion about the fragility of these items following a total failure on a road car. In addition, 1” ID tube was proving frustratingly difficult to obtain. These considerations, along with the fact that the rest of the suspension uses rose joints, were enough for me to look at replacing the upper ball joint with a suitably tapered pin and rose joint set up.

My MNR had used this system. However, I had a feeling that they no longer offered the parts to use the Cortina upright – in the back of my mind I was pretty sure that I’d had the last set for my old car. I contacted Chris Nordon to see if this was the case and indeed it was. My next port-of-call was the ever helpful Matt Gilmour at Procomp. I had a chat with him about design and joint heights and he made it clear that he could make the parts. However, I was also pretty conscious that he and Ivan are up-to-their-eyes in work. No surprise – they really do sterling work. So, I started to investigate alternatives. I had a look at some of the Westfield specialists like CAT Motorsport but had little joy. I then found a post on the Locostbuilders forum by someone calling themselves ‘mintici.’ The post showed a very similar set up that had been machined for a Westfield. On further investigation, it turns out that ‘minitici’ is Douglas Anderson, proprietor of Westgarage Engineering Services.  Douglas usually specialises in chain drive differentials, carriers and associated parts for mid engined cars. However, it’s clear that he can turn his hand (pardon the pun) to most things.

After some efficient communication via e-mail, I sent one of my Cortina uprights to Douglas so that he could be sure that the taper was right. I also sent him the relevant measurement from Steve’s suspension drawings. The great thing about this setup is that the height of the top joint can now be changed relatively easily to aid fine tuning of handling characteristics. Good news all round. Douglas’ pro-forma invoice suggested that delivery would take up to 4 weeks. No great problem for me. However, just two days after posting the upright I received some pictures of the first pin, top-hat and rose joint assembly. It’s clearly a relatively simple job for Douglas and I’m likely to get the parts much sooner than expected.

As Douglas says in his e-mail, “The pin and top hat have been shaped to allow maximum articulation of the rod end.” This can clearly be seen in the pictures.

One other thing that the pictures show quite clearly is the casting marks on the upright. If I was in any doubt before, these are definitely getting powdercoated now. I know that it’s a race car, but cosmetically that just will not do!

TC

Safe and Sound...

Few words this time around; just a couple of snaps.

Cage from 'Caged' - rear supports yet to be installed:

And an apparently foggy shed:

If anybody reading this has access to 7/16" high tensile bolts with a 2" shank/shoulder and overall length of 2.75"-3" could they please let me know?  The only ones I've manged to source would cost over £15.00 each - and I need 22 of the things so that just isn't going to happen!

Thanking you!

TC

The other consequence of tobacco advertising…

Let me be clear: I am not and, aside from a few experimental puffs as a teenager, I never have been a smoker. In fact I intensely dislike the habit, in particular what it does for the smell of one’s clothes when in close proximity to a smoker. And then there are the health implications! Despite this, Tobacco advertising is good for a few things. Who could forget some of the brilliant Hamlet TV adverts of the 1980s? Well, me actually although a quick search on YouTube brings it all flooding back.

Tobacco advertising has been good for something else though, and it can be summed up in three little letters: JPS. The John Player Special livery was on the first ever race car I can remember seeing. I had a model of what was almost certainly a Lotus F1 car when I was quite small. I can still remember it to this day. I don’t think I have it any more, but I might raid my parent’s attic in search all the same. Anyway, it has always struck a chord and when it came to selecting a colour scheme for my new race car there was only really one option.

Below are a couple of pictures borrowed from the excellent www.jpslotus.org website. I’ve picked these in particular as they show gold wheel rims and black centres:

I’ve been fortunate enough to come by (via Steve) as set of Superlite’s Ultralite 3-Piece wheels that are in need of a refurb. As such the idea is to replicate the wheel design seen above.

I also had in mind that I wanted to have the chassis powdercoated in gold too. This I felt was a bit of a risk as the car might end up looking like a complete ‘tart’s handbag.’ However, my mind was finally made up when I saw the vehicle below on the MEV stand at Autosport International in January.

Now, admitedly, this is still a bit 'in ya face' but there will be a lot less tube visible once the racer is clothed.  Essentially the roll cage will be the only expanse of gold chassis visible.

The wise Tim Hoverd is a keen advocate of lighter finishes on chassis as it allows easier crack detection, so as well as looking great I’m hoping that it will be relatively practical too. That said the wishbones will be black as anything else on a ‘7ish’ just looks wrong to me.

Steve has been busy again. Yes he did do some work on the car, for example finishing off the radiator mounts as seen below.

Much more importantly though, he’s been busy after his lovely wife Milenah gave birth to their first son, Josef. Many congratulations to all concerned!

In other news, there is some steel tube sat in my garage that is hopefully going to come together to form my roll cage. More detail on this at a later time.

TC

Paradigm Shift…

After much debate, Steve and I have decided to call the new car the Mercury Motorsport Paradigm. Dictionary.com defines the word paradigm as: “a set of forms all of which contain a particular element, esp. the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.” This rather sounds like the ‘sevenesque genre’ of cars to me and hence it stuck. The same source also gives the following as synonyms: “mold, standard; ideal, paragon, touchstone.” Well, we hope so.

I said that I’d give a few more details about the car. There is absolutely no doubt that the car is a risk, or at the very least an experiment. Steve and I (particularly Steve) are pouring everything we know about these cars in to this new build in the hope that we make something which is greater than the sum of its parts. My input comes mainly in the form of knowing what I like, and more importantly knowing what feels comfortable for me on track e.g. pedal arrangement etc. Despite all this, we’re still researching as we go along on some stuff. The majority of the mechanical spec became apparent in my last post. The final departure from convention is that we are going to use (Sierra) drums at the back. We could have easily used Sierra disc brakes but they weigh a shed-load. The alternative would have been aluminium callipers and light weight discs. The cost would have been considerable though and there seems to be some concern over mechanical advantage for the handbrake no matter what brand of calliper one uses. And so, having overcome a totally illogical hatred of drum brakes - largely through great experiences with both Striker and Locost - we decided to give drums a try. We then had to decide whether to use 8”, 9” or 10” drums. Taking some advice from RGB racers, we concluded that 8” drums were a bit marginal on some cars so we went to the next size up. It should be interesting if nothing else.

My original plan for bodywork was to use aluminium alongside a Locost nosecone, scuttle, bonnet and wings. The idea was that it is cheap and easily replaced. Unfortunately, because Steve had made the chassis an inch taller than the standard Locost to help accommodate a tallish bike engine, the nosecone looked ridiculous. Fortunately Steve had a couple of Westfield nosecones that he was prepared to sell to me. These look great, and are very (VERY) light since they are pimpy (PIMPY) carbon fibre. They aren’t perfect but since I’ll need to paint the aluminium side panels, bonnet etc this is no great problem.

Here’s a few more pictures – very little has full welds as yet – the idea has always been to tack it together in case we incurred unexpected interference. That said, apart from the roll cage and some of the smaller parts like harness mounts and earth points, it’s almost ready to weld-up.

Custom-cut brackets:

Radiator and Oil Cooler mounted:

Pedals mounted:

Back-end:

So, there we have it... most of the big decsisons are now made.  This includes the choice of colour.  Given my penchant for retro race liveries, what do you reckon I've gone for?  It won't be Gulf-colours again though.  Those colours are cursed!

TC