Well I figured an update is due...
In case anyone is interested the King of Britain race took place last weekend, was a great event. I really cannot wait to get this thing finished and start racing!
Anyway onto the update.
I built a cradle for the fuel cell to sit on, I'll be adding in a few sections of angle iron to the base to stop the cell from being able to to move and then making up a set of formed metal straps that will bolt in place to replace the ratchet straps.
Next I needed to sort out the rear lower shock mounts, I needed to move them in a couple of inches as the tyres were getting a bit too close to the shock body at full articulation. I made the new mounts with a few options in terms of mounting locations, the extra holes will also give me somewhere to bolt the limit straps to which will stop the shocks from ever extending when airborne.
Then after that I went on to mount the cans for the rear bump stops. The bump stops currently have 4" of travel which is a bit too much considering I'll have approx 6" of compression available from ride height. To reduce their stroke a friend of mine will be machining up spacers to put inside them that will reduce the stroke to 3".
Then onto the front end, the more I looked at what I had ended up with the less happy I was with a myriad of things. Initially the plan was to race modified and keep the car resembling a 70 series which is what the front end was built around, but given that I have decided to rather race Legends where the car doesn't need to resemble a production vehicle it seemed silly not to redo the front end. There are two reasons for the decision to change classes.
Firstly, Modified class in Europe just doesnt seem to be growing. At king of Britain there were only 5 teams racing in this class. In contrast Legends class had closer to 20 teams racing and the numbers seems to be going from event to event.
The second reason is the steering. I have been talking to the guys over at PSC in the states and they have pulled their 4500 class steering kit due to some issue and they basically said I'd have to cobble parts together. The cost and time needed to do this to race in a class with so few teams competing didn't make sense. So now I'll be running a standard full hydro steer setup.
The elements I wasn't happy with on the front end as it stood were namely the shock mounts and the rake of the shocks, they were leaning pretty far back and I wanted them a little more upright. I also needed to figure out how to provide a lower brace across the ends of the chassis rails.
So out came the grinder to cut off the front end...
After a bit of playing around in Bendtech I came up with this, the blue being the new front end:
I started with the lower brace first
There will be additional russetting going on the top and bottom of where it welds to the 45' plate.
Then onto the rest of the front end
I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. The angle of the shocks are better and I am overall happier with the way it looks. The next step will be to add in additional bracing. Something along the lines of the blue and yellow lines in the pic below. The yellow line should extend to the outside upright (A-Pillar)
Thats it for now. Other than additional bracing in the cage I am now getting to the point where I need to start mounting various components which I am looking forward to. I feel like I have been cutting, bending and grinding tube forever!