LocostUSA.com

Wow that flattie sounds wild aluminum,overhead cams,a blower, and injected, thats insane

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I USE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND ..BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT

Thank you it is a mix of classis style racing parts for the 50' and 60' with a modern flare with the fuel injection. I hope very soon I can part pics once the legal BS is over with a entirely different part of the car.


Never take sponsorship or manufacture help in a build. It will come back to bit you more than it was worth it.

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Having fun and enjoying the ride

1927 Roadster - custom build
1932 Ford, full one off custom build
2008 Corvette Z06
2009 Mustang GT500
2010 Nissan GTR

Here is the best I can do for right now to give you the good idea of the motor.


If you remember the Moon racing Rail dragster, We used this as the basis to the build. The rear blower to motor mount was custom machined from billet aluminum then finished to look cast.


I hope this is enough of an idea as to what we built. All of this was placed into a custom built 32 railed 27' Ford body car with suicide front style suspension.


As I was saying I will post full set of pic's one We can. Hate not being able to show mine and my husbands hard work to others that would also enjoy the car.




My newest Point in life. If you can not build it or make it on your own with out help from companies that are only out for there own selves. Don't build it now, wait until you can.

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Having fun and enjoying the ride

1927 Roadster - custom build
1932 Ford, full one off custom build
2008 Corvette Z06
2009 Mustang GT500
2010 Nissan GTR

AGain wow ..hey those kinda look like Ardun heads..Beautiful job..Ive just been reading an article about Don Ferguson producing those new flattie 356-T6 aluminum blocks....What you say is true ..it pays to rely on nobody but yourself when building project cars..partnerships and sponsorship deals only make the lawyers rich in the long run.Thanks for those pics ..My own efforts are somewhat at the other end of the build scale so far i have the frame built and painted, the disc braked rear end fitted, a buick 3.8 v6, which will be supercharged, just did some sums ..total to date it owes me $350 nz dollars and doesnt include the blower, but its taken time and lots of searching its gonna be my fun race car
Kiwi Dave

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I USE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND ..BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT

They are, it took 4 years of swap meet to find a pair that waas serviceable. Along with having to re macine a few parts for them. The block is also a Ardurn block cast in the 50'

We have been lucky after years of work for others, this includes myself and my husband both serving in the military. Now we are able to work for ourselves and make our favorite family activity a part of that job.

I am currently taking a few classes locally to learn how to run AutoCAD and Inventor program from them along with a few other programs at the same time. My husband is looking into purchasing a smaller sized rapid prototyping machine, which is used locally, to help in the design and building process. The machine he is looking at will be able to do 10" x20" x10" work area in one piece. We are figuring this will be good for most thing in full scale or 1/2 or 1/4 scale for other things.

One of my husbands other hobbies is R/C gas powered cars. He is thinking it may be best to build the car in 1/2 or 1/4scale pior to build the car. With trying to get this machine may allow us to do this on a more detailed version.

We are hoping to turn all of this in to a small business in the future, once we can ensure it will no longer eat or take away from our normal income and our other business. One way he is think is to offer a chance to build detailed /4 scaled models of customers cars and other also for sale.

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Having fun and enjoying the ride

1927 Roadster - custom build
1932 Ford, full one off custom build
2008 Corvette Z06
2009 Mustang GT500
2010 Nissan GTR

I have considered doing a semi-monocoque chassis as well, but I think my concern comes from not having an autoclave to cure the chassis in(not to mention my total lack of experience with CF lol).

I think I could make a tub mold but I am still not clear on how these monocoque chassis are made, as in do they use honeycomb panels for the entire car or is it mostly just multiple layers of CF fabric? I feel like on some of the cars that have the suspension subframes basically just made out of CF, I don't get how they make that hollow portion and cure it all on the back/inside of the part. Maybe that is where the pre-preg and autoclave come into play.

I was trying to think of a way to vacuum form a tub but I still don't know the answers to the above questions so that would be difficult. Obviously a steel space frame is still the easiest and cheapest by far but it would be fun to do a CF tub

Do you know any of the answers to these questions RebecaLynn?

Good luck with your project, sounds pretty awesome.

Ben

If I may address this a bit, I've worked with composites a fair amount, in design and manufacturing. Mostly FSAE with some school and personal projects, and some mold design and production (carbon/FG cases) for an old job I had.

An autoclave isn't necessary (the resin will set on its own at room temp with or without air/light exposure), but a vacuum bag setup with absorbent cloth is pretty much a must for decent pieces. It's not too bad to work with, but prepreg is sooo much easier and more precise to cut and lay, but it requires an autoclave (plus vacuum bag) to cure, which gives you a lot of time to lay up compared to dry mat. Fiberglass is easier to work with and more tolerant of manhandling during lay up (due to CF's wide weave and structural properties), but once get the hang of which ways it can bend and be shaped over/around/into molds or forms using the weave and apply the vacuum bag well, the end quality starts rising quickly.

There are a variety of ways of making monocoque chassis, from laying individual layers of dry mat soaked with resin, to premade honeycomb sandwich panels which you can cut, bend and bond, to additions of kevlar layers or aluminium or nomex (among others) honeycomb between layers of varying thicknesses, cut and laid around or inside a mold, which is how F1 monocoques are constructed.

Tubs can be made from pretty much anything that will hold its shape during curing, release the part easily, and allow a vacuum bag to reach the entire surface not exposed to the mold. Milled billets are great for smaller parts, but I've used everything from coated MDF, fibreglass (usually a negative mold off of the original/concept with wood bracing), machined alum and steel, though I'm sure there are many more ways to skin this proverbial cat.

Thanks for the good info.

Yea I was thinking I would do the tub out of coated MDF/plywood if I were to do it. It would just be hard to justify the cost difference. I could do a practice one in fiberglass before buying the carbon but I'm wondering if I can make it as good as I would like to. I'm just not quite sure how they do things like aluminum threaded inserts and such. I also am wondering what they use for supercars because the Aventador I think they said the monocoque was 158kg and that is a lot more than I would expect for a CF chassis unless they were including the front and rear subframes? Either way I'd think you could do a space frame out of tubular steel of similar stiffness and weight but I have yet to attempt it so I'm not totally certain.

Just to clarify I'm looking to do a full bodied coupe car not a locost or replica so that's why I'm looking into these exotic options more.

Looking at the RCR SL-C aluminum chassis makes me want to consider an aluminum tub as well, obviously it's all a trade off...

Ben

look into prepreg, you can get it in low temp laminate if you need it to cure at a reasonable temp,

i know for a fact that the rowing eights used in the olympics were not cured in an autoclave, just in a tent with a space heater poking in one end.

i have for some time been looking into aluminum laminate and what you can get away with as core material, i think you could make an aluminum tub with two sheets of aluminum and a polestyrene foam core or a honeycomb of some kind, have a look at Alko travel trailers, they have a lightweight teardrop that is made like this and weighs half of a comparable frame made trailer, there is a video of them actually laminating the panels.

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

I had no success finding Alko trailers... did you mean Aljo? However, even there I couldn't find a video of how they're constructed.

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

my mistake, it's ALTO trailers

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

John, or someone with knowledge, can you comment on how they do the hollow shapes of the monocoque with a single mold? For example i see the front suspension subframe as a hollow CF structure but there is no way they could have vacuum formed on the inside to cure it.

For example look at this new monocoque for the Ferrari F70. I can picture how you could lay up a single the main tub but how do they do the suspension box and the side sills which appear to wrap around under the car as hollow structures? I can see they do the main tub and the roof structure and different pieces but do they do multiple other different pieces with say 3 layers then put them together and wrap more layers around that to make it a single solid piece?

I am trying to figure out the best way to model this in solidworks and get an idea for weight and stiffness, not to mention the best way to actually make it if it turns out to be an ideal way to go.

thanks, sorry to Rebeca Lynn for hijacking but hopefully this will help her as well.

Ben

One way I have used personally is foam core shape then melt it out with petrol later on.

I didn't actually make anything I was just experimenting based on what someone told me, worked well.

I know one fibreglass works here were making long hollow fibreglass tubes by laying up around the cardboard cores their matting came on but I never asked them how they removed the cardboard later - probably simply soaked them in water I'm guessing.

In the bicycle industry we generally use some sort of inflatable bladder inside of tubular structures for support.

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-Keith

What would be ideal about going this way? I think it's good to ask the question from that direction too. I think it would be educational, perhaps you could talk your way into a better job after you show someone the possibly multi thousands of hours you would put into Solidworks models. What else will you get from this? Every project has risks, including that you will not come in on budget and on time.

This is not just 10 times the effort. On top of that it's hard to do fiberglass work singlehanded.

Then when you have this built, if you want to drive it on a track in anything but the most casual manor, you will be required to install a steel tube roll cage. Then where are you?

I'd like to see you do your project in a way that would provide more benefit to more of our members. I think I remember you have made good comments in some of our mid-engine discussions. Blazing a trail that other people follow is a big reward, Blazing a trail with a bunch of people standing around saying, "whoa, look at that fireball! " - not so much. :rotfl:

Making that chassis looks kind of similar to what you have to do to make molds for an engine block or cyllinder head... It's interesting stuff.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.