What would you wish for
 

Good evening all.

My nephew has expressed the desire to design a new chassis from scratch.

He is a post graduate mechanical design engineer & a complete whizz with all of this fangled CAD software. ;)

What atributes would you like to see in an all new chassis.

My thoughts are for a rear engine jobby to make good use of the mountain of high power FWD donors available.

All thoughts welcome. Serious or daft :D & Yes it can be Pink !!?? :D

a plastic as in glass reinforced..chassis....;)

Hmmm......... Carbon farty burp monococque ( I'll never spell that right in a million years :o ) :D

Edit........ OHHH so close. Monocoque it is then. Not bad for an old duffer :rolleyes:

Crumple zones... other than your shins...

crumple zones = slow heavy cars!!! we dont want none of that now do we.

i would like to have a replica chassis of a zonda or radical please.

Agree on a rear/mid engine - it's getting increasingly difficult to find RWD donors. Something like the Sylva Mojo would be an interesting subject for a "build your own" book :)

I hope he knows what he is letting himself in for.I've been involved in this process before as part of a design team and to do it really well it is an enormous amount of work. I'd love to design my own car but don't think I could find the time! One interesting thing you might want to suggest to him is to try and draw a design flowchart to show how the car is designed and how everything interacts. I tried it once and it looked like an etch-a-sketch drawing! But don't listen to me - good luck to him I say! So what would be on my wish list -

Lightweight (preferably sub 500KG for the whole car)
A good analysis of chassis/suspension loading - probably calculated from tyre slip data (you would be doing very well to pull more than 2G)
Rear/mid engined - probably bike engined
2 seats
Lightweight
Steel Spaceframe (so we can still build it!)
Good Torsional Stiffness values
Lightweight
Adjustable suspension - at least camber and toes
Le Mans Style GT car inspired car - think Lister or similar
Lightweigt

Cheers

Dave

Brave lad he is...

I have been analysing the Haynes roadster as my final year project by using CAD, FEA(finite element analysis) and MSC.Adams which is a MBS (multi body systems software).

And its a pain!!!!!!

...although i am considering making my own design, which should be a veryyyyyyyyyy lonnnnnnggggggggggg process, maybe at age of 50 I will have it ready:o

In terms of what I would like to see, basically Ill just second Dave´s post.


Kind Regards
Dario

Hey Dario

Sounds interesting. Have you got any results yet? Out of interest what sort of torsional stiffness and FOS values are you coming out with? Are you doing a hub to hub stiffness? How have you calculated your load cases?

I warn you I have lots of question!

Cheers

Dave

I would say mid engined locost alternative which is as easy for the novice to build but makes use of more modern front wheel drive cars. If it could also make use of their steering and as much of the suspension etc. as possible all the better, a single donor car would be great.

Assuming that he wants to make this available for others to build either through a book or just the plans, making it as simple as possible without the need for fancy bending equipment or skills would be preferred which brings us to bodywork. A 7 style body is very easy to make if required as it is mostly all single curves with very little compound curves required and I think this is ideal for any DIY style car. The more complicated the bodywork the more dificult and expensive it becomes.

I mentioned this one before and will do again, slim down Roadster chassis to one seat, move driver forward through gearbox tunnel and fit 20 Valve turbo VAG motor and box behind, or bolt bike engine to VAG box and you have no problem with reverse and infinatley variable ratios.

Inboard suspension please

There is a project for your relation Ronnie.

Something inspired by this beastie!
http://www.webwombat.com.au/motoring...3-race-car.htm

Or noble m12 inspired

Lightweight
cheap and common donor

:D :o a front frame that made itself ! :D :o

sorry, i had to say it, lol
andy

It's not such a daft idea Andy.

That front frame had me scratching my head for a while :o

I can only imagine the trauma this could cause for the newbie builder.

Really surprised that no one is producing front frames ready made.

To be honest, I have thought about producing a tig welded, pre-fabricated front frame. ;)

Hi Ronnie, yeah i said it in truthful jest but it is a real head scratcher job, tho i,m sure i,ve seen someone on ebay selling the front frames welded together, i think they were £20 plus delivery.
i,ve had a another head scratcher today, doing the steering wheel support frame, just couldn,t get my head around it, put it down & walked away, :o
cheers
andy

Hi Andy.

Blade put a good a good diagram in this thread. It may help you to shed some light onto the sterring wheel supports.

Linky


___________________________________________

Some good ideas there chaps :)

I must say, my personal taste would be for a mid engine, two seater, full bodied Le mans inspired car. :cool: :D

Knowing my nephew he will turn this project into a labour of love. I doubt he will be under any illusions as to the amount of work involved. ;)

cheers Ronnie, just what i needed, as the song goes " i can see clearly now" :D
it was doing my head in today so after 2 wrong attempts i thought it best to walk away, clear head & all that.
thanks, i,ll get it done tomorrow now.
cheers
andy

Saw something built on the same lines a few years ago by a friend of mine Rik,
Tube frame bike engine and Honda gearbox driven by chain across the frame not fore and aft. It was a two seater Ferrari lookalike, passenger sat in rear after removing airbox, went like stink and boy did it get the looks sounded great too.
So no not inspired by the R8 and it is really making me think and if I had a working copy of Auto Cad I would have a go.

And the front frame should have "3F's" in it.

It made life a lot easier for me when I cut all of the initial angles, I then tacked them up. I then bent the two steering support pates up & then tacked them to the steering support frame. Clamped the whole assembly to the chassis.
I was the able to scribe the desired compond angles.

A little tweak here and there, the job was done. ;)

I hope this makes a little sense to you. :) :)

;) :D makes alot of sense now that i,ve seen blades diagram, my head just got fuzzed with all the angles, plus my mind was elsewhere , thinking about bodywork etc;)
cheers
andy

I know what you mean. I just wish I had the know how with all of this CAD software. ;)

When I was doing homers on the CNC turrett press punch I was still drawing the parts on graph paper for my X Y co-ordinates :o

Finally. If only !!??

All of my nephews are very gifted.

One is an mechanical engineering design graduate. ( Cornwall )

Another is electronic design graduate, untill very recently was working for Motorola, Micro electronics. Now a full time lecturer ( Scotland )

The other one is a free lance motoring correspondent, Gets to drive all of the cool stuff. ( Gloustershire )

What a team if I could get them all in the same place :D :D

Actually I'm thinking of doing a mid engined car for the next book after the single seater.

I have some ideas for a Le Mans type car and for a minimalist type.

God knows when though!

Cheers

Chris :)

Dude....I know just the thing and will save an awful lot of work. It's a lemon racerery thing by the way;)

I must admit I was very tempted to go for a Spire GTR as they look great, but decided against it as I didn't want a kit I wanted to build it all.

I think what I really want is a car that looks like the schoolboys wet dream! The chance to fulfill that supercar dream without spending supercar money. The 7-esque cars are the classic sports car, sleek elegant and pretty extreme. The single-seater will be a step back and time and be a total head turner. That is where I see the super modern le-mans style car fitting in next and filling a hole in the market. Something for the guys (and girls - out of interest do we have any female builders amongst us?) who have already built a car and now want to move on to the next level.

You'd best send me a picture mate:)

I like this



and this



I'd better finish this one first though!

Cheers

Chris :)

It's got a lid so it has doors so an every day lemon racery thing if you felt you had too..but it's only 'glass so easyish to fart about with...;)

No words needed

Ronnie, the chassis file is no problem if you want it.
And then get your boy to adapt it.

Nearly but yep you get the gist of it....;) Locost lemon racery thing, now wouldn't that be a giggle going to the shops in:D

Lemon and Pink Mark