What would you wish for

[Bonzo]

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 & Yes it can be Pink !!??

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

[Bonzo]

Originally Posted by fabbyglass

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

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

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

[jasongray5]

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

[AshG]

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.

[Jezzer99]

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

[davidimurray]

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

[Username]

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

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


Kind Regards
Dario