Project Car / Motorbike thread. Let's see 'em.

Cardy George

Piercing rural members since 1981
He sounded like a douche 30 seconds in. "When you're being original..."

There's nothing original about rich asians, doing dumb things to cars.

Sent from my SM-T820 using Tapatalk
While this is very true, it's the first Lambo I've seen with an Exo-skeleton
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
Screw that tossbag - start watching Goonzquad:


Seriously, they are addictive viewing! And bloody skilled for young polite southern boys.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
This weeks instalment.

Escorts suffer badly from bump steer at the front. This is mostly because the arms off the rack are very short and as the wheel articulates the angle on the short arms changes the steering input to the wheel. Not much you can do without major changes and the best thing is to get the arms as level as possible at normal ride height. On rally cars, like our donor, they often spin the rack arms upside down to fix this as well as running a lowered rack mount. Our Escort has longer struts cobbled together off a Capri V6 which doesn't help with a road oriented car. The rack ends are back the right way and with the lowered rack mounts look ok...

Also the cars dive pretty badly under brakes because the front radius arm is also the sway bar. The bar tends to flex in the middle. Fitting good front shocks fixes much of this (we are running compression biased damping but don't tell anyone) but you can also fit an antidive kit which stops the sway bar flexing and lowers the bar 1". These are about $300 landed with freight and Gerry Harvey tax. So I made my own... Actually I am making two, one for a mate with an Escort that is getting an SR20 turbo.



Raw materials. Imagine the rhs full length and also some 75x5 and 50x5 flatbar. The rhs was split with the jigsaw and then cut to length with the bandsaws. I was intending to use 10mm nb pipe for the crush tubes but had to buy a full 8m length so I am using an offcut of 13mm shs instead. All up $65 for materials including longer bolts for the ends.



Box cut to length with flatbar. lightness and stiffness added. I bought the dimple dies and I am going to use the fuckers!





Antidive bracket tacked up ready for test fitting. The only section that really needed welding was the centre since the loads are taken by crush tubes to the chassis brackets but welded is betterer.



View from above. This will also stiffen the front end somewhat without adding much weight.



View from the front. It is quite difficult to fit this because of the way the front end is bolted together so I dropped the sway bar back out of the lower arms and pretty much unbolted everything. Jack is under the left to check articulation and clearances.

I took the opportunity to check Ackermann geometry based on the nominal centre of the rear axle and all is good. I will adjust the camber and castor and measure the link lengths before they come off again for painting.

Hopefully we will have the diff next week and then the fun starts. I have done a fair amount of googling and the brackets for the Watts link droppers are going to be fairly substantial. The longer link especially. I am thinking now of using some 50x50x3 shs as the dropper trimmed to fit the link end and then bracing that front and rear and to the centre with left over 50x50x3 and the 100x50x3 box from the antidive mount. Easier than bending up a complex shape from 3mm plate.

When the diff is in I will fit the under floor fuel tank and see if I have room to fit a VE Commode charcoal canister. This will free up some space in the engine bay and get the fuel vapours away from the engine. If not it will have to be a VT (?) Cylindrical canister in the engine bay next to the catch can.

And I have found that the ride height is about right when these heavy front springs are set with the maximum strut length. That wont work on the road because the springs are too stiff and they have about 50mm of clearance on full droop but with the free height of the strut and the free height of the spring and compressed length at normal ride height I can get a feel for the spring k and see what is around that will suit.
 
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hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
That is super duper impressive DC. Still trying to ascertain why dropping the swaybar will control dive.

Hit the brakes, the front sinks, the swaybar rotates as a whole, doing its job as a fore-aft locator but how does its design stop dive? I can only see that happening with the bushing fit between the lower arms & the swaybar itself (this fit being too tight to allow twist.

School me.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Two parts to this; twist control stopping the bar deforming where it is unsupported in the loop and removing flex that isnt controlled by the bushes and dropping the bar loop changes the angle that the ends enter the lower arm bushes and as the suspension compresses this tries to bend the bar between the lower arm and the loop. Bar too has gone from 19mm stock, probably 3/4" to 24mm.

The geometry is odd. That is why it is a two person job to swap out a bar or fit this section. Lots of forces transferred.

I copied the basic design from one of the aforementioned proprietary items.

However as I mentioned the shock will bring the biggest difference over stock and compression damping even more again over the usual stiffer suspension out there.

I did some calculations on spring compression which suggests the sprung load on the spring is 130kg. Unsprung is about 40kg. Looks like I will go from a 250 lb/" spring to 150 or 175 lb/". The difference between driving on the street and jumping the whole car in a rally.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Wont get to the Escort next week and I am still waiting on diff gears. Had a few hours this afternoon so I made a couple of bits. Length to be finalised later. Look ok I reckon.





I raided a Mk V Golf that a mate has as a parts car and took the low level electrical connector off the expansion tank. It doesnt fit mine. Guessing my aftermarket one isnt a Mk V after all. And I stole the washer bottle filler to see how that fits in the space between the expansion tank and radiator. I took the washer bottle too. Looks like more Golf parts in the build with a little fettling. Need to get a new washer bottle though, this one has many holes in its UV affected plastic. That will have to wait for a week or two.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Nice job. When you said you were going to give the dimple dies a workout you were not wrong.

I've had some fun times over Easter replacing the front diff bushings on our Jeep Commander. Requires the removal of the front diff so fairly involved (although could be a lot worse).

Got my nephew staying with us over Easter, and so as an exercise I got him to help write some gcode to make an adapter so we could press the new bushings in on the hydraulic press. I make a lot of fixtures out of a type of black plastic I get from a place in Fyshwick that often has lots of various sized offcuts cheap. Everytime I grab some, I ask what sort of plastic it is, but no-one there ever seems to know.

It's not HDPE (although it has a similar surface feel). It's some sort of industrial reinforced plastic, perhaps the sort of stuff used in hydraulic systems or linear bearing sliders or something like that. Anyone know? @Ultra Lord or @born-again-biker any idea?

 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Aaargh... those dimple pics are giving me a strong desire to go and buy some dimple dies, drill holes in everything and get dimpling...
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Aaargh... those dimple pics are giving me a strong desire to go and buy some dimple dies, drill holes in everything and get dimpling...
Expensive bastards for what they are. Mine are JDSquared, very well made. Not sure I will be able to use the 21/2" die on the Escort build. After the Watts linkage I will need to make up some small brackets for the mastercylinder reservoirs and washer bottle. That will be about it.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
It might HDPE based (smells a bit like wax when burnt) but the flame is blue with yellow tip (which is typical of nylon). It also machines nothing like HDPE (very minimal tearing with nice chips). It might be HDPE with some sort of fibre reinforcement or impregnation or maybe some sort of nylon. I "think" it's used for glide rings/sliding surfaces. Don't think its teflon.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Looks like FRP which typically has a nylon base but not always. Odd that it machines nicely, the only FRP I have turned tore like a bastard even with sharp tools.
 

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Would love to know the 1ry and 2ry lengths. I hope they still have a bit to do to the rear brake lines.

Very nice work.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
Latest bit of awesome:

It’s such a trip seeing the Ro80 in this series... Grew up with it as the family car and I forget it’s rare. The car I grew up in is still complete and technically running, but has 250000 Miles (not kms) on it (only the third engine, NSU wankel reliability not quite as per the reputation) on it and hasn’t been registered in 15 years since I bought them the first magna wagon...

Dad traded his 2yo 240Z in on the 3 year old Ro80 when Mum became pregnant with me. I still kinda wished he’d kept the Z...

I should go down with a trailer and take it off him - and hand it back restored. Win tatts and send it Restopower...
 
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