Our off-road rail.

[PhillipM]

Shiny, shiny!

Back together in the next month, dyno time!

[bajamike560]

Nice hotrod.

Mike
_________________
Jackpot motorsports

[PhillipM]

Ed's been busy again, yep, he's started chopping the front out now the rear's going back together. May as well have built a new car....
New front cross going in that mates to the beam stiffening bars we added a few years back, and is higher to clear the new pedals and fuel tank/battery/PAS which have been shifted backwards for better weight distribution:

New mounts for pedal box going on:

And some new floor bars, to mount the seat belts clear of the new bulkhead and help prevent anal insertion of the various large rocks we always seem to land on.

[PhillipM]

Been a while since I posted much, work has been delayed due to both family health issues and being ill myself, but yesterday I finished off some last bits of dashboard wiring(few extra's been added, launch control settings, etc), and tidied all the wiring behind it into neat runs, switched idiot lights out for LED's (which then required ripping them to bits and trying to add diodes and ballast resistors in the case of the alternator charging light....good fun trying to solder them in a space about 8mm x 4mm.....lots of swearing, some burnt fingers.

Anyway, kettle went on, coffee came out, shiny lights:

As promised, new front bonnet, ignore the steel box section, it was just there to hold the front square whilst welding as it's fairly thin aluminium, it's on hinges now and will get a gas ram lifter fitted to secure it, much easier to work on if you break down away from the service area then.

And new floorpan is on, new bulkhead, seat mounts, pedals, etc:

[bajamike560]

Looking great, glad you are doing better.

Mike
_________________
Jackpot motorsports

[PhillipM]

Few more bits and pieces done, will post up later.

Got fed up of upgrading the back so....shiny new front hubs - lets us use the VW bearings/discs/etc but with Mitsubishi wheels.
Bit of scalloping left to do to take some weight out but they're functional now:

[PhillipM]

Brake bells on the hubs, just need to make some new discs now - the old ones are fine, but, well, they're not shiny...

(No, we're not quite that vain - but the old discs can go with the 2-pot calipers and old hubs as a complete package to sell on then, might cover the materials for the new fronts.)

[PhillipM]

....annnnnd then we sat back, drank more coffee, decided the postage stamp sized front pads might struggle with the heat with another 100bhp, and decided to swap to some old dynalite 4-pots we'd been given, broken, but nothing we can't fix

But they need bigger discs to suit the pad shape.
So...

Anyway, hub got anodised, fitted, and the new calipers mounted after fabricating a new bracket:

Engine loom got modified for a better main connector that has removable pins and is rated to work under 6ft of water:

Thousands of miles and plenty of trophies to it's name, but that abused old Peugeot 106 steering wheel is finally retiring from it's life of misery and pain (Ed's taking around the back and having it shot*).

Of course, that means an adaptor is required for the new one. The remains of my 306 got butchered for a column spline to use for spinning a new adaptor up in the lathe - thankfully it hasn't been disconnected to sell yet!
Lightening scallops courtesy of a Mr A.Grinder...

Due to having to TIG the old centre spline in it's all in steel, so no shiny anodised ally things today for you all. Terrible, I know - I'm sorry.
I think that's -5bhp for lack of anodising and -8bhp for not being able to say 'Billet Ally!' when talking about it.

(*KIDS! I'm joking, the wheel has gone to a home for retired steering wheels, it's getting leather food every day and frollicking in fields with other wheels, it's in a caring, happy place - and definately hasn't been violently butchered by an angle grinder wielding maniac requiring the steel spline out of the centre.)

A barn door appeared:

And the spars are being 3d printed at the moment:

Roughly what it should end up like when it gets made and mounted:

Didn't get outside to see what she looks like in the sun yet, but the final parts came back from the zinc platers this week, so things are finally going together with proper seals, bearings and greased up ready to go!

And started making some labels for the dash

[PhillipM]

Been a while since an update but we did finally fire it up over christmas:


Link


Sound is terrible from the phone camera as all it picks up is a bit of an airleak on a dry gasket and nothing else, but it does sound rather rude in person.

However, since that, this happened:

[bajamike560]

Keep it running, great progress.
Like your dog.

Mike
_________________
Jackpot motorsports

[PhillipM]

Engine back together:

And car in McDonald's-Carpark-Lowrider-Spec:

Guest appearance by dog. People like him more than the car pictures

[bajamike560]

Both car and pup looking great!!!

Need to see some car action, keep plugging away at it.

Mike
_________________
Jackpot motorsports

[PhillipM]

Someone was asking me about the car yesterday and I forgot I never updated this thread, so a very quick picture dump:

Did a quick paint mockup to see roughly what I want it to end up like:

Roof scoop (on the roof scoop, a roof scoop-scoop?) and front bonnet straightened out:

Louvered the rear bonnet - look more like window blinds now:

Had to tweak some flat spots in them to clear the alternator on the right though:

Front discs/calipers, etc, fitted. Also shows the unfortunate kink needed in the front reinforcing cross - ideally it would be straight for maximum stiffness, there's a bolt in aluminium tie bar that goes in there to link it down to the floor and keep the front of the chassis stiff.

And on the recent louver theme....it wasn't just the uppers that look like a set of blinds...

Skidpan's - 6mm thick aluminium plate for the transmission - goes forward under the beam tube/seats and is overlapped by the main floor for a while so it's even thicker there. The transmission plate also overlaps the engine plate when that is fitted so there's no leading edges anywhere to dig in - making the underbody armour half an inch thick in some sections - it still takes a beating mind.
The front beam and front section of the floor gets it's own piece of 6mm plate too which wraps up around the front beam and up a few inches to prevent the beam digging in on a nose-hard landing/drainage ditch crossing.

You'll have to excuse the rear of the floor, one of the helpers thought a hammer was a good substitute* for a sheet metal folder - I'll fix it later.
*It is, but not how he uses it!


Couldn't afford a CAT scan to check the discs for flaws, so went for the cheaper alternative:

He said they were a bit Ruff.

Rerouting some piping before Christmas, along with some other changes the eagle eyed might notice - basically the hoses were a little close to hot spots for comfort, even with heat shielding, mainly because they'd been made few mm long by the supplier but with such short, wide hoses getting rid of the extra length meant routing at quite an angle into some of the fittings, and it also meant the dry sump belt was difficult to access - not something you want in the field!
Anyway, chances are the hoses would have been fine but after this amount of time an oil fire is not the way you wish to discover that they weren't...

Anyway, that knocked on to shifting a few bits and pieces (exhaust relocated by removing the right rear frame support tube, and shuffling of the oil filter mainly - although then I decided I didn't like it anyway, so then it got moved again to completely under the engine now there's room due to the exhaust shift) and then it meant remaking panels that were already done:

Welded up awaiting the top rolling over the tube:

And some louverly new vents.

I make no apologies for that terrible joke, you've already read it now so it's tough luck anyway

Anyway, if you were wondering how the exhaust had magically jumped 2 inches to the right for no apparent reason in the previous posts, now you know

Workshop elves have been making new CV flanges since the old were pretty sloppy on the flanges, I'm going to have them plated to to tighten up the clearances a little this time around, as the rock on the splines a little from the plunging forces, and it wears the seals out eventually.

More to follow...

[PhillipM]

A slight diversion from the car itself and started knocking up some skeletons for the wings:

Yep, just foam, plastic and balsa at the moment - but they have an aluminium spar, carbon strip for the trailing edge, and will have a fibreglass/carbon skin with foam filling underneath, this is just a cheap way to make them and they're fairly easy to repair from tree damage when you can just chop a section of skeleton out and bond a new one in:

Sometimes I do go away from Cardboard Aided Design and resort to stress sims in proper CAD though:

Should end up something like:

Back to the car proper!
Inlet for the supercharger got remade to give a better run for the throttle cable and smoother transitions - still not ideal as in a perfect world it'd be curved into a bellmouth too but space is very, very tight down there - there's not enough length to do it properly. Mind, I don't think we'll miss a couple of horsepower...

New inlet, new boost piping, heat shielding/lagging, shock reservoirs mounted, looms routed through bulkhead fittings, etc:

New PAS pump is finished and in, old relegated Peugeot pump sulking in the background...

New pump is a more powerful new unit with a solid-state electronic controller - we now have more fluid flow at full power it can vary it's speed to hold a target pressure vs loading - so we use a lot less electrical power the rest of the time, including a low speed/low power automatic idle mode when the steering isn't in use such as queueing for a stage start. Might not sound like a big benefit but it's a little more horsepower from the engine due to the lower electrical load, and it eases the strain on the alternator as although we run a large 160amp unit to keep up with the various heavy loads, it still doesn't have much spare when everything is running.
Also means less heat in the fluid and other niceties such as built in fluid filters/air removal chambers and baffled pump inlets to prevent any dirt or air getting sucked into the system whilst bouncing around over the rough.

One for old Citroen fans - the new oil pump drive system, soon to meet the lathe for some serious weight reduction and some aluminium centres - shouldn't have any issues with any mud/stones that get through the seals either with these!
They also run a lot quieter with less vibration/stress as an extra bonus.

....can't be leaving those pulleys like that can we? Where's the lathe gone...

More odds 'n' sods ticked off the list, this time it was the Magic Box of Ultimate Power!
Has those electrikery pixies inside. Aligns electrons in the wiring. Obviously that means it's worth at least 30bhp.

Alternatively, might just be a soft starter/fan speed controller to reduce the electrical load spikes when the fans fire up. Your choice. The pixies are more fun.
Also means they can be left on low speed just to dissipate engine bay heat in the pits instead of going flat out SO YOU CAN'T HEAR. CHECK WHAT? THE FANS ARE STILL ON, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

Bare pulleys all machined up, awaiting brazing and plating:

Small pulley brazed up - the heat required discoloured and burn off the protective layer of oil on the steels - which mean the cast iron on the pulley rusted before my eyes where my fingerprints were - not much good even for mockup, so I raided my cocktails bar (Careful what you drink in my house )....back in black and shiny again, crisis averted

If you recall the last post we'd straightened up the front bonnet with a bit of filler/primer - bit strange for a race car, right? Well, yes, but we had someone that was going to knock us a fibreglass one up using it as a pattern, unfortunately we never heard back from him so we made up yet another front bonnet

Due to ongoing lack of shiny pictures, found some from this time a few years ago when it was running at Kirton.
It looks like it was fun when it actually moved. Not sure if I remember that bit....

More to come yet....

[PhillipM]

Whilst sorting out the new belt pulleys, the end fell off the dry sump pump, that was careless...

Then it fell back together again. Better put it on the car before anything else happens to it...

It had an endfloat issue that was that ball bearing there - there was a flat spot on the outer race and some spalling, possibly had a knock in storage/transit as it's been there since we got it - the firm offered to sort it out if I sent it back but for the sake of 10 minutes and a £2 bearing...

Progressed from Cardboard Aided Design to masking tape:

That painters tape is good stuff though, it expands overnight!

Few more safety additions to the cage, triangulating (well, as close as we can get) the front a-pillars. Gussets going in underneath to spread the load down the cross.

The 'CNC' brand fiddle brakes turn out to need rebuilding yet again, seems to happen with alarming regularity - so decided to ditch them and make our own with less slop, less friction/hysteresis and a few more tricks, work in progress:

Oil pump went back on and the new pulleys too:

Gussets and A-pillar reinforcements finished:

And roof gusseted at the same time - overkill really up there but regs is regs (For French events overseas):

New dashboard:

Now, since we can't see the rev counter because:
a) It's behind the steering wheel paddles that are coming shortely, and;
b) The new mounting ring around the steering column fouls it - then we started the search for another, smaller one.

After several versions of sticker shock and not liking some of the cheaper tat available - which seems to be aimed at getting as many lights as possible in and the crap fonts that you can't read in the dark (Fast and Furious has a lot to answer for) - the next best thing came to mind.
Mount it in the middle of the dash and move the fusebox.

All well and good, unfortunately the ECU is behind the dashboard in the middle at the bottom, and at the top is the windscreen wiper mechanism, and the tachometer is almost 5 inches deep. Bugger.

So, out came the screwdrivers and the soldering iron, the original dial came to pieces and the internals have been shortened, moved or rearranged and re-soldered.
Next step is to machine a new case out of a bit of 5" aluminium pipe and some sheet in the scrap pile, et voila, one half height rev counter:

Prototype fiddle/steering brake frame gone together to check clearances/operation + let us get the mounts welded in the chassis whilst we wait on some metal back from the laser cutters. Might get used as a jig for the first one too depending how fast the laser cut ones come back.

Rack got machined and rebuilt with acetal strips to reduce friction/wear:

Finished off those pesky hydraulics this weekend, brakes, steering, dampers, etc - the damper interconnects are top secret so here's the pre-watershed pixellated version - cor, look at them blue pixels!

It's charcoal and chewing gum time!

It doesn't seem to like the welder, any ideas?

[PhillipM]

Remember making 2 dashboards and then modifying the rev counter and things to fit?

Yeah, threw all that out of the window....

Which mean rewiring everything again:

And because we're running the sensors through the digidash now all the old analogue 1/2 wire sensors had to come out and 3-wire solid-state sensors feeding the ECU went in....so back into the main loom we go...I think this one is V4...

Waterpipe no longer needs the fittings for temperature sensors, as it's now read through the 3-pin unit on the CAN to the dashboard - of course this just means you bung the fitting up or leave the old sensor in there to keep it sealed, no way would you remake an entire pipe just because of 50 extra grams.

Anyway, here's the new pipe:

Then we started bolting the new bits back on:

Re-made the front mudguard mounts too, the surplus steel tube is gone, it's now on ally mounts inside the guard instead of those big external mounts - also realigned them as the new suspension and wider track meant they weren't quite right at full bump any more:

And started on some new door/window frames as the old ones were pretty battered/bent and the polycarb is scratched to hell now:

New side panels too, because why not?

This years must-have-accessory, colour-coded brake pads, worth at least 10bhp:

Carbotech XP8's and XP10's

Then threw all the bits back on and checked all the new loom and dash worked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOVW0BTWDko&feature=youtu.be

[PhillipM]

Front suspension got stripped to work on the new stuff:

After a lot of trial and effort to get the required angles and clearances, we've managed to get just about get enough room to switch out to a new upright using a pair of spherical bearings instead, which means everything can be bolted up tight, camber can be adjusted easily by just shimming behind the upright, and friction should be a bit more consistant as all the loads are taken through the bearing surfaces with no pinching/rocking effects like the old link pins had.

Whilst we were at it I took the opportunity to correct some of the VW front geometery at the same time - so we have less castor gain, less mechanical trail (as we have a fair amount with the castor we run and the big off road tyres give quite a bit of pnuematic trail as well), and I've corrected a lot of the scrub offset issues the Kingpin setup had

We've also shifted the axle down to the lower arm point - this lifts the arms further out of the dirt if running in deep, soft mud/peat, etc, and also means we can have a bit more travel up front (as we were only limited by arm angles in droop)

We're just waiting for the parts back from the laser cutters and the actual ones can go together:

Bad news...rear CV boots don't work, the shafts are crushing the housings on the fancy aero boots because they stick out so far:

Fortunately some front boots from an Astra seem to work out about right, so knocked some new mounting rings up from EN19T (The drive ring bolts through these so they need some strength)

Well, just as we thought we were sorted - the car ran fine when fired up - the intermittent starting reared it's head again, been tracking that down again over a lot of wasted weekends - traced it down to what we thought was the alternator or the ballast, so I pulled the loom apart and added a larger ballast to the field coil, no difference, bought a new alternator - no difference.
Take alternator off, starts fine.
Much head scratching.

Turns out the alternators we were getting from the local supplier (an electrical specialist, not just a factors) - were basically noisy as hell when they were trying to get to the right voltage at low rpms (i,e - startup only) - a cap in the line doesn't fix it, some shielding might but we've just sacked it off and got a different type of alternator instead, need to alter things to get that to fit properly again now, but after rigging it up today it's purring like a kitten. Need to retime it now though as not certain it was 100% before as it idles smoother now.

It never rains, it pours!

On the upside, I was rebuilding some other dampers* so I rebuilt/revalved the rears on ours to suit the new arms and bled them, so that's one more job off the list and ready to go - although I have just acquired some new go faster parts to machine and fit - Hi/Low speed compression adjusters:

It's all very well getting shiny adjustable parts for your dampers but then I spent hours modelling the damned things yesterday - nearly there, housings next.

And a smaller version with some slightly tweaked internals will fit the smaller 5/8" shaft dampers on the front too, sorted. And about a third of the the price or less compared to buying the official kit to fit adjusters....

Anyway, got plenty of other bits done in the meantime, made up a little jig and counterbored the CVs - things were a little tight for plunge travel made a tool up to clamp the CV stars in the lathe, and we've counterbored the stars slightly.
That gives us a couple of mm more plunge on the shaft just to allow for a bit more flex in bushes/chassis/arms, etc, and also encapsulates the circlip at full extension - so it can't get knocked off the shaft and let the driveshaft fall out of the car - yes, we've had that before.

All the little boring stuff that takes up too much time, but the devil is in the details....

Now we're done mocking up and measuring to build the new hubs and arms:

We've stuck the old front end back on (the new ones will get done on a jig now off the car so it can all get swapped as one unit and the car can run on the old front end for now) and rebuilding the front dampers back to their old spec and length, etc, as I'd lengthened the stroke to work out positions for the new front mounts, etc.
Anyway, now she's purring like a kitten, need to double check the timing, bolt the wheels back on and find a decent dyno...however, there's a shiny red launch control button the dashboard I hadn't had chance to try yet...

https://youtu.be/W7IzaCFzJQU



That's on it's lowest setting for wet mud at about 3krpm, pulls ignition timing for a soft cut and then runs through a set of random cylinder cut patterns as it gets past the target rpm, so it's fairly benign on the engine.[/img]

[PhillipM]

Colour coded driveshafts?
Yes, not content with being the fashion leaders with colour-coded brakepads, we're now forging the way for the Next Hot Thing™ of 2019 - colour coded driveshafts, you saw them here first

The short Vauxhall CV Boots on the left there.

hock adjuster housings roughed out, everything seems to work okay, needed a little fine tuning for o-ring clearances:

Anyway, back on the lathe for a debur, tweak the clearances and make it slightly less clunky looking:

And the final article, I might shorten it slightly yet as I found some smaller fittings for the rear end:

Couldn't get circlips to fit anywhere so I ended up having to wind some myself from piano wire

Went OTT and made some for the front dampers too - they're still dry at the moment anyway as they're getting rebuilt shorter - problem is now I need to re-shim/valve and tweak the adjust internals to work with the smaller shafts (otherwise they don't blow off early enough on the high speed compression, and don't generate enough pressure against the smaller shafts either).
Need to print some clamps to piggyback them onto the front dampers too....you'd think we'd have learnt about altering one thing turning into 3 other jobs by now....

[PhillipM]

Just bumping this thread for Orangecrusher - although most of the pictures are dead, bloody photobucket.