Chassis design

[shh120m]

Iv had a weekend of burrying my head in the sand and making like an ostrich. Everyone needs to get have a break sometime, no matter how dire life is. Some turn to drink, drugs or kicking the dog! My escapism lately though has been getting stuck into the laptop on sketchup and inventor.

Iv had an idea brewing in my brain for a while to make a whole new chassis, single seater, mid mounted. And since the single seater book is taking forever to publish i thought id have a go at designing my own, but with a different take on things. I wont be building it though as im uber broke, its something i wouldnt mind having a crack at in the future when things are rosier though.

the main ethos is something mid mounted, single seat, although it could be widened. It wants to be "locost" so chain drive diffs are out of the question. Also, i thought it best to design with the use of as many "off the shelf" book parts, mainly for ease of build and familiarity as well as keeping cost down.

So i thought the best way forward would be to use stock rear diff cage, sierra diff, coupled to a type nine and duratech or zetec. A nice simple linkage sees the gear selector straight through to the cabin. No peeing about with clunky bike gearboxes. Ive yet to draw out rear wishbones, but rear uprights are intended to be book spec, with an extended rear track of about 4 inches, so longer driveshafts would be needed. Also the idea is to try and make the body entirely from flat alli paneling, to keep it locost, but it needs doing in a way that is pretty to the eye, hense why iv used round tube for a semi naked look. There is only 5 curved tubes in the whole concept also to try and keep things simples.

Passenger area is spacious enough to accomodate the larger chap, but wide enough at 650mm to take a one piece seat for two, just incase you dont want a single seater. Front of chassis is to take standard haynes wishbones.

I need to shorten the passenger area by six inch or so to het the proportions right, so its about 6inch longer wheelbase than the roadster and alter a few rails/ add a bit of bracing etc. Its not intended to take on haynes or be commercial in any sense. I just thought I needed a pipe dream hobby as something todo and thought id share it with you as it progresses. I do have a shit load of steel left over though so i might have a go at mocking the chassis up when time allows and when i get my welder back (hurry up david!!!!!! ).

Anyway heres a couple of pics, il update it as it evolves if anyone is remotely interested, il add drawings and dimensions too. There is a lot missing at the moment such as rear suspension mounts and shock pickup etc but feel free to coment, imput criticise or even waggle your willy at!! It would be a nice "group" project where we can all play nicely. Now i best get back to the missus before i end up single. again