fatstigs racecar shed

With the upright done, it was time to start making wishbone's.
Looking back at this, we should have done it differently. because I have made a shitload of wishbone's , more on that later.
But at the time it was how I did it.


started with a welding fixture






trial fit.



Other side 






Made a upper wishbone.



some one with a sharp eye may spot a problem in this photo.

A friend of mine who runs a CNC lathe for a living made me some nice stainless steel adjustment nuts




adjustment nut in place




The problem we got with this setup is that the upper rosejoint doesn't leave mutch room for movement due to the angle it already makes ( note this should be ride hide ) 


So I remade the upper wishbone with the rosejoint already at an angle. This took 2 atempts because I could not figure out the exact angle. ( so thats uper wishbone mk3 ) we have on the car in this photo


Trying to measure the correct angles.



the pile of wrong wishbones 





Looking better right



NOT, I have made a huge Donut dipping up because we are not in to CAD design ( we have tried but we are more of a hands on kind of approach ) we design things on the spot. I was in the impression that I made the front end in such a way that the lower wishbones left and right identical. But I have not checked the wheelbase. So the complete set of wishbones is wrong, the wheelbase is to long and the front wheels are to mutch forward.


As I'm easily side tracked from any project it is also happening with this build. To be honest, I bought a Mazda RX7 witch I would like to convert to a trackday car sometime, thing is after I completly stripped it, it has became clear that it would take a lot of time to get running again. So I parked the car behind my shop, waiting for better times.





Another side project witch is kind of cool and usefull for this car.



The last couple of months I build a CNC controled plasma table.



I'm not going to write up the complete build, but here are some pictures.








first test cuts were not very inspiring 


After buying a 3k Hypertherm this became the standard




done.

Why do I need a plasma table
*1 it is just cool to build
*2 I need to make lots of parts for the Lola.
*3 it is just cool

Loving the way you work, and firmly plugged in!

Beautiful work there. 👍🏻😊A plasma cutter is something I have always wanted,but unfortunately I cannot warrant the space it would take up. The reason I haven’t really pursued it,is I can get laser cutting done in a couple of days,and more often than not cheaper than what I could buy the steel for. Not that that makes me want one less 🤣🤣I have messed around with just a handheld torch unit. From my experience the thing that made the most impact on cut quality,apart from the speed you move the torch,was air quality. Really dry air at a lower pressure than you would think, resulted in the cleanest cuts and the consumables lasting the longest. Those Hypertherm machines are definetly the way to go 😊

Great post with great detail, total skill and workshop envy!

We started on the rear upright. Our first idea was to cast some nice alloy uprights, but because we both don't have any experience in casting stuff, we abandoned that idea. After some fiddling behind the pc we designed a rear upright, of course we cut it on our own plasma table 





















left and right side

The uprights are made out of 2mm high tensile steel, and uses a simple ford bearing.



Shock mount


Now we have the rear uprights, we could get on with the rear wishbones.
nothing realy fancy, just as Lola did it.

All wishbones are made out op Chrome moly steel tube

Update time:

With the rear uprights in place we could start looking at the drive shafts.

We sourced some Audi A6 drive shafts of witch we need the gearbox side and some Ford shafts for the wheel side.

Luckily the Audi ones are hollow and the Ford one's are solid.



So after machining them to a press fit I will press them together ( Will do that later as I'm not sure about the length )





So with the rear end kind of sorted we could go back to the front end.
As we had the wishbone's and uprights in place we could start mounting the steering rack.

some carefull measuring


some CAD drawing


We came up with 2 brackets


test fit

As I'm building this car with my best mate Jon we are always day dreaming about going to the track together and have Average weekend ( thats why we started building this car ). But I must say, it is simpelerr said than done, building your car from scratch.
So talking online to a former race mate about our car he suggested buying his racecar so that we had a car to go to the track, enjoy ourselfs and renew our energy for this project.

So this is what Jon bought:





A 1989 van Diemen Formula Forward 

the only problems was it came like this 







minor detail 

The engine had a conrod failure so first thing was to source a replacement engine block


striped the engine for full rebuild.

The original engine had a flowed head with special made camshafts so we had the head rebuild


The camshafts have some serious lift so the pistons require a pocket to clear the valves

made a drawing


asked a friend to do some machining 











next update coming soon

Cant beat a project to take your mind off a project!

My mate Jon and I took his Van Diemen to the Zandvoort racetrack for the firsttime after the engine rebuild

Jon didn't want to drive the car that day, so all the hard work was put on to my shoulder

We loaded the car up, pakked the car full of tools, and some racing essentials ( read: ducktape, tyraps, oil and some nuts and bolts )




After scrutineering we were set loose on the track.




We invested a lot if time and effort in rebuilding the engine, so I was very keen on giving it a gentle wakeup.
so the first lap I did not rev it above 3000 rpm, and came to the pit for a quick overlook bij Jon.
Everything seemed fine, Oil pressure was good, water temp was good, the engine felt good.
So after a couple of laps I decided to take the revs up 500 rpm every lap.

Our stint was 30 minutes so I came to 6000 rpm.

After we got back in the paddock, we took off the bodywork and gave it a good look over, checking everything, every nut and bolt.
But nothing disturbing was found.

The next 3 sessions on the track, were great, the car preformed absolutly brilliant, the engine never missed a beat, gearbox works good ( for a hewland that is ). As I have never driven a racecar with downforce, I was end still am flabergasted by the cornering speed and grip it develops.
I'm not a proffesional racingdriver by any means, but this thing is mental. I realy need to work on my driving skills to be able to get this car to its racing pace.










So next month we have another trackday booked