Calling Cjulian
Discussion
Looks fab 
I'm doing something slightly similar with my Spyder.... basically I will have a flat plate of steel from tip to toe on the underside with a shaped extended front splitter, side sills and a fixed rear diffuser. Will also weld in steel internal panels
I'm in the process of bonding ALL the bodywork together, so it lifts off in one-piece. No shut lines to worry about anywhere! I'm moulding in 4 steel plates with threaded anchor points that I can screw hooks into and lift the bodywork off with the winch on my garage roof when needs must (the two forward anchor points will double up as the inserts for my wing mirror mounts and the rears will have contoured bungs in them when not in use).
Basically I want to be able to strip the car down in a day if I need to re-coat the chassis and not have to worry about drilling out a zillion rivets, then re-riveting the little buggers! Just a convenience thing!
I've using twin rads where the old tanks used to be, and moved to one single 'inboard' tank behind the bulkhead. The side sills will be used to channel the air to the rad as I'm modding the bodywork to 'stop' halfway down the sides.
Because there is no rad up front, the only things I may need regular access to in that area will be the cylinders... I can easily get to them by removing the offside front wheel, so no worries there. I'm fitting a hinged inspection hatch on the rear clip (similar to the Lotus Exige one), for routine engine service access.
I've removed the 'u' cross member on the bottom rear chassis rails for improved ground clearance and fitted a flat tube in as the Audi box I'm using clears it easily. I'm also looking at ways to beef up the chassis so that I can remove the tranny and engine in one go as someone said earlier.
Only other remotely interesting thing I'm doing is glassing in a pair of 'joined' bucket seats so the interior forms part of the overall bodyshell (think Ariel Atom interior)... allows me to sit REALLY low in the car, so I can drop the roll bar height considerably (always hated the standard Spyder bar as it looks like a gawky piece of scaffolding)!
Thought about the inboard suspension, but the gains are marginal when put into context of the engineering input... let's face it, the Intrax shocks are not a great deal heavier than the push rod / pivot required to move them inboard. Only real advantage I could think of was it would keep the shocks nice and clean!
The steel floor and steel tub will add weight (40kg by my rough calculations), but my Audi RS4 / 01X box combo is a good bit lighter than the Chevy / Porsche combo, so I'm negating that. I'm also losing a fair bit from all the GRP trimming and I'm not fitting anything that the car doesn't need... no stereo's, etc, so still hope it can be a bit of a lightweight!
Things have ground to halt right now as my welder died the other day, but hope to get going again next week!
I'm doing something slightly similar with my Spyder.... basically I will have a flat plate of steel from tip to toe on the underside with a shaped extended front splitter, side sills and a fixed rear diffuser. Will also weld in steel internal panels
I'm in the process of bonding ALL the bodywork together, so it lifts off in one-piece. No shut lines to worry about anywhere! I'm moulding in 4 steel plates with threaded anchor points that I can screw hooks into and lift the bodywork off with the winch on my garage roof when needs must (the two forward anchor points will double up as the inserts for my wing mirror mounts and the rears will have contoured bungs in them when not in use).
Basically I want to be able to strip the car down in a day if I need to re-coat the chassis and not have to worry about drilling out a zillion rivets, then re-riveting the little buggers! Just a convenience thing!
I've using twin rads where the old tanks used to be, and moved to one single 'inboard' tank behind the bulkhead. The side sills will be used to channel the air to the rad as I'm modding the bodywork to 'stop' halfway down the sides.
Because there is no rad up front, the only things I may need regular access to in that area will be the cylinders... I can easily get to them by removing the offside front wheel, so no worries there. I'm fitting a hinged inspection hatch on the rear clip (similar to the Lotus Exige one), for routine engine service access.
I've removed the 'u' cross member on the bottom rear chassis rails for improved ground clearance and fitted a flat tube in as the Audi box I'm using clears it easily. I'm also looking at ways to beef up the chassis so that I can remove the tranny and engine in one go as someone said earlier.
Only other remotely interesting thing I'm doing is glassing in a pair of 'joined' bucket seats so the interior forms part of the overall bodyshell (think Ariel Atom interior)... allows me to sit REALLY low in the car, so I can drop the roll bar height considerably (always hated the standard Spyder bar as it looks like a gawky piece of scaffolding)!
Thought about the inboard suspension, but the gains are marginal when put into context of the engineering input... let's face it, the Intrax shocks are not a great deal heavier than the push rod / pivot required to move them inboard. Only real advantage I could think of was it would keep the shocks nice and clean!
The steel floor and steel tub will add weight (40kg by my rough calculations), but my Audi RS4 / 01X box combo is a good bit lighter than the Chevy / Porsche combo, so I'm negating that. I'm also losing a fair bit from all the GRP trimming and I'm not fitting anything that the car doesn't need... no stereo's, etc, so still hope it can be a bit of a lightweight!
Things have ground to halt right now as my welder died the other day, but hope to get going again next week!
Hi,
Here are a couple of pics of the rear clam hinge system. My rear diffuser design was forcing me to either fully remove the rear clip for engine bay access or redesign the hinge such that the rear clip structure lifted ~4” as it rotated back. This was a royal PITA as the Ultima rear clip has very limited space to move within before contacting the rear tires. It took about 4 physical design iterations to come up with the resulting prototype. This design pivots the rear hatch at a point just behind the rear tire. The result was an opening angle of ~75 degrees. It’s not done yet as I still need to design the proper gas strut arrangement.
Thanks for looking, Chris
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