Some serious CAD'ing.

A lot of things have changed since my last post.

As you will be able to see later on, the car is now a rear-engined one (well, technically it's still mid-engine, but practically, the engine is in the rear). The funny thing is that I was about to finalise the chassis for the front-mid-engine one, when I decided that it was crap and needs redoing. Why, ye ask?

1. The chassis was too heavy, its weight was around 63 kilos. That's with all the tunnelling for the drive-shaft and what not.
2. The engine barely fitted under the hood in the front. I did not want to make the frame taller, and I was not willing to risk anything later on.
3. Rear-mid-engine cars supposed to be easier to build. More or less everything is in the back, so you don't really need to run things across the car.
4. It is way easier to find a FWD donor than a RWD one. RWD cars that can be (and mostly are) used:
Ford Cortina, Ford Sierra, Mazda Miata (MX-5), maybe a Nissan 240ZX or a BMW 3 series. Well that's pretty much it. Now, when the engine is going to be in the back, cars that could be used as donors: all the rest. Yep, that's probably every second car on the street. I'm talking about Golfs, Civics, Rovers, you name it.

On other news:

Kids, the fun prototyping part is over. For now.
The thing is, when I realised that I needed to make a new frame, I also realised, that I am going to need a new suspension as well. So, I thought I should take things seriously. That means 'Research time!'
So I made a list of all the parts I'd need for my front suspension. That was a pretty long list, to be honest. All the spacers and bolts were pretty annoying. But the most annoying thing was finding the right uprights:

First I thought I could use Ford Sierra's. It took me quite a while until I found the right drawings and dimensions, then it took even more time for me to model them. I hate 'organic'-ish forms, they're so irregular! After some hassle I managed to finish them. Then, when I decided to use Miata (MX-5) as a donor, I had to remodel the uprights. Same thing all over again - research, dimensions (there were no, I had only wan dimension. What I did was I scaled the image to fit the dimension and ploted everything else on that image) and modelling. When the engine was transferred to the back, I thought that I should use the donor's (currently it's a Civic) uprights, but  I couldn't find a single dimension for them, so I decided to use Cortina's uprights. They are pretty cheap and still available. Found some drawings as well, but they were not complete, just the crucial mounting points were specified. I got the mounting points right (well +- 0.01mm), but I did not get the exact shape of the uprights. (And I can't be bothered to get the right shape, because I won't be making them myself)

So the front suspension contains:

• 2 Ford Cortina Uprights
• 2 GTS Tuning Shocks and springs
• 6 M10 Rod Ends from 'cbsonline.co.uk' (Instead of using traditional ball joints (which weight a lot and are very hard to find), I decided to use classic 'rod ends'. )
• 1 Custom Steering rack (found on locostbuilders.co.uk)
• 2 15 inch wheels + 195/50R15 Falken ZE-912 tyres (found on http://locostcadfiles.wikispaces.com/)
• 12 Buckling safety washers (to absorb a hard bump, and protect the rod ends)
• 8 M10 Nuts and Bolts (Thank You, Autodesk Design Accelerator)
• 4 Custom wishbones
• 16 Nylon bushes for the wishbones
• 2 Civic Hubs
• 2 Civic Disks
• 4 hard rubber spacers
• 2 steering rod extension tubes
  

So, as you can understand, the suspension design is final.



And let me remind you that this suspension is completely mobile. I mean I can move it up and down, check the amount of bump-steer I get, turn the wheels, ect. (I am really proud of what I did there, heh)

That's it for today!
I'll try to unveil the shape and the design of the new chassis and body tomorrow. Stay tuned lads and gals!