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

[davidimurray]

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

[MightyMouth]

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.