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tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#441048
Well after much buggerising around, I have nearly finished the front suspension conversion on my F-Vee.



I have fitted a 1500 B/J beam in place of the old L/P beam and fitted a steering rack and moved the shocks inboard.
The LP beam is 30mm wider in the beam spacing than the LP beam and this necessitated re-doing the lower mount points. What made things more difficult was that the master cylinders would not fit back into their positions so i had to completely re-do the mounts for those and drop them about 20mm lower and about 30mm forward to clear the lower beam tube. Lastly, i had to make new pushrods for the pedals.

I wanted to use my original Konis without having to get them re-valved so i set up the bellcranks with a 1:1 wheel/shock travel ratio.
Thos bellcranks are the result of many hours of buggerising around and headscratching with cardboard mockups and a bloody calculator to get the travel ratio as i wanted it.
I also built in a small amount rising rate into the setup as well.
I prefer to have a long travel shock, lightly valved as opposed to a short travel shock heavily valved hence the large bellcranks. The bearings are a double row item sitting on a 25mm stub welded to the chassis and retained with circlips.

I am grinding off the stock bump/droop setup in favour of droop cables. Lightweight and simple to setup and make.

The "bump rubbers" are actuall rated rubber "Aeon" springs. One of the hassles with the BJ beam is that one spring pack is too loght compared to the old LP beam, even after welding the leaves so these "springs" wil become part of the primary suspension.
The rules say the ride height of the car with the driver in position must be maintained by the stock torsion pack only so I have set up the rubber springs to have a couple of mm of clearance at ride height but immediately work on just about any bump.
Its a way of getting around the rules. I can do it with coilovers as well but thats stretching the friendship and as far as eligibility is concerned.
For all intents and purposes these are simple bump rubbers! There is no rule preventing the use of these rubbers augmenting the primary torsion spring!!

The steering rack is mounted on a single crossbar that can be removed. I have used fairly light M8mm rose joints as a failure point in event of a decent hit on the front wheels to save the rack and also my wrists!
I still have to add some travel limiters to the rack as there is too much lock and the tyres hit the chicken leg retaining nuts.
A Vee does not need much steering lock anyway and if you go anywhere near full lock, you are either maneuvering in the pits of have lost it on the track!

The top shock mounts are in single shear with bushes put thru the tubes and welded in.
The retaining bolts are M12mm but they will be drilled down the guts to form a failure point in event of a decent hit.
Better to have a shock hanging off than damage the chassis tubes or break the bellcranks.

The next trick is to fabricate the rear mono-shock suspension.
This is fairly straightforward as the kestrel chassis comes with a monoshock in the kit but i dont have the bellcranks or pushrods so I have to fabricate them next.

i am using a mono-shock out of a Yamaha dirtbike which has almost infinite adjustments for dampening and once I have settled on a wheel to shock travel ratio, I just need to get the appropriate spring and then have the shock dynoed and re-gassed to suit the new spring rate!
Ill most probably go for 1:1 as on the front since the shock has about 4 inches of travel in itself which is more than enough which means I need a 125 Kg spring. I have estimated the spring fitted to the shock must be around 200 KG.
The shock has 2 positions for spring height but this is cool as I will make the pushrods adjustable and the ride height can be done with them rather than winding springs up and down. It makes no difference really other than the adjustable spring saddle is easier and quicker to adjust!

Thats about it for this installment of the Vee suspension saga.
I am about to disasemble the frontend and paint it and as soon as that is done ill spin the car and do the rear end.

More on that later.

[ Edited on 24/12/05 by tassupervee ]

[ Edited on 27/12/05 by tassupervee ]
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#441569
After pulling the entire frontend off the car to prepare for painting, I decided to move the pedals forward.
This was a fun job as the pedal "box" is completly fabricated off the floorpan and after drilling a million rivets out, i was able to move the pedals forward by about 60mm and still have enough pedal travel. The pedal stops had to be re-fabricated and mounted on the other side of the front bulkhead and all the master cylinder pushrods I had painstakingly fabricated previously had to be shortened.............(sigh)

The reason for this is to enable me to move my bum further forward in the seat sos i can lower my head height. After removing the front shock towers, I have lost a bit of helmet clearance under the rollbar.
The clearance is measured 50mm under an imaginary line drawn from the top of the roll hoop to the top of the front rollover structure which used to be the shock towers and that is now my steering support hoop. The steering support hoop is about 20mm lower than the shock towers.
Its only a few mm but i was right on the limit already.
Shifting my arse forward about 100mm has lowered my head about 50mm. All good, yay!
Fortunately, the seat tub is simply fabricated from flat sheets of ally and bolted together with upholstery press studded on over the whole show, so I can simply unbolt the front and rear seat elements, re-position and drill new holes and bolt it back in. Plain sailing!
Just gotta re-position the seatbelt pickup points to complete that job.

Ran into a major hassle with the fibreglass bodywork. the painters did a stupendous spray job an it but they cooked the body at too high a temp with the bodywork unsupported. The body has sagged a bit and spead at the sides meaning it wont line up with the freakin sidepods anymore...fuk fuk fuk!
Got in touch with a M8 who is a professional 'glasser and he reckons i can easily re-shape it by tying it all into position with occie straps and stick it out in the sun for the day on a hot day with the bodywork supported only from the middle.
Thing is this is Tassie and hot sunny days are in short supply, almost mutually exclusive so ill lug the body down the road to a M8 who has a large glass greenhouse! Im really hoping the new paint will not crack tho. We shall see!

I just got to get some paint in the right colour, spray all the suspension bits and the whole shooting match can go back on for the last time.

Next.
Rear monoshock suspension...........arrrrgh! Should've left the freakin thing alone!!!

L8tr all
E

[ Edited on 27/12/05 by tassupervee ]
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

jvl054 Wolfsburg Wizard

403 posts · joined May 2005 ·

#441697
Tass,....Well done,shit about the body work! keep the photos coming.:thumbJVLRacing

56astro Custom Title Time!

1,772 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#441998
This modified steering end suspension stuff is very interesting

:thumb

VW car, VW engine ...... keepin it "real"
35MPG on 101.3kPa

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#442026
Thanks for the positive thoughts lads.
Sometimes i think I need some negative stuff to discourage me from tweaking it further🤓😏

I just finished mving the pedals forward and then reshaping the seat. The knockon of this is that i have to re-position the ssfety harness pickup points............it just never ends does it LOL!
Sadly, this has not quite lowered me in the car sufficiently to come inline with the latest rollover structure regulations.
Thing is my car has had a small extension done to the original rollhoop in the car.
Technically, this is illegal according to the regulations but tended to be accepted as common practise over the years in F-Vees.
However, things are tightening up and at some stage, i will have to remove the extension which will bring my scone above the 50mm clearance rule............
This means basically cutting the car in two to extract the old rollbar and to insert another.......I'm not too keen on that job.........
(You can add whatever expletives and curses you can possibly imagine here as i have used up my supply of them)

More in the next installment!.
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#448791
Bit more progress.

I have completed the entire frontend now, painted it and reassembled it.

The finished product was well worth the effort in terms of appearance and i reeeely hope this translates into lap times!
I ended up painting the suspension parts in a one pack epoxy enamel. To get the charcoal colour, we simply added some white to plain black and the result is pretty close to what i wanted. the plain gloss black is a little "blah" for me and this colour softens it up quite a bit.
I made a small error in cutting out the clearance holes for the suspension pushrods in the sidepods😢 Somehow I managed to make an error with the tape measure and cut the bit out about 10mm forward of where it should be so the pushrod exits the hole off center....grrrrrr, but stiff shit!

I added the pinstripes seperating thje three colours on the bodywork.
The dark and the light blue are seperated by a white stripe and the light blue and the white are seperated by a dark blue stripe.
i had the pinstrip cut 20mm wide which really seperates the colours nicely.
Once I add the racing numbers, Formulka Vee Association stickies and the sponsor decals it should look very speccie.

Speaking of bodywork, I have had the body sitting on tyres standing on their edges and had occie straps pulling the bodywork together where it had sagged apart in the oven and after being like that for a couple of weeks has pulled the sides right back in, in fact past where they originally were which is a relief!
A trial fitup reveals no issues as far as fit with the sidepods are concerned. Yay!

The car looks very sleek and businesslike now compared with the old suspension with shocks standing in the air and the colour scheme makes the car appear much longer and finer in the nose.

Im very happy with the results so far.

Pix shortly!

L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

jvl054 Wolfsburg Wizard

403 posts · joined May 2005 ·

#448796
tassupervee wrote:Bit more progress.

I have completed the entire frontend now, painted it and reassembled it.

The finished product was well worth the effort in terms of appearance and i reeeely hope this translates into lap times!
I ended up painting the suspension parts in a one pack epoxy enamel. To get the charcoal colour, we simply added some white to plain black and the result is pretty close to what i wanted. the plain gloss black is a little "blah" for me and this colour softens it up quite a bit.
I made a small error in cutting out the clearance holes for the suspension pushrods in the sidepods😢 Somehow I managed to make an error with the tape measure and cut the bit out about 10mm forward of where it should be so the pushrod exits the hole off center....grrrrrr, but stiff shit!

I added the pinstripes seperating thje three colours on the bodywork.
The dark and the light blue are seperated by a white stripe and the light blue and the white are seperated by a dark blue stripe.
i had the pinstrip cut 20mm wide which really seperates the colours nicely.
Once I add the racing numbers, Formulka Vee Association stickies and the sponsor decals it should look very speccie.

Speaking of bodywork, I have had the body sitting on tyres standing on their edges and had occie straps pulling the bodywork together where it had sagged apart in the oven and after being like that for a couple of weeks has pulled the sides right back in, in fact past where they originally were which is a relief!
A trial fitup reveals no issues as far as fit with the sidepods are concerned. Yay!

The car looks very sleek and businesslike now compared with the old suspension with shocks standing in the air and the colour scheme makes the car appear much longer and finer in the nose.

Im very happy with the results so far.

Pix shortly!

L8tr
E
Progress is a good thing.Looks & sounds good.JVLRacing

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#449574
I took a couple of pix showing the completed front suspension and a quick look at the car with its new paintwork.

It looks a bit bland without the numbers, F-Vee Association and sponsor decals and so-on but you get the idea.

next is to finish off all the little detail jobs on the frontend and then lift the car, put it back onto the stand and fabricate the rear monoshock setup.
Gee, i cant wait:P:P:P:P:P





More later
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

jvl054 Wolfsburg Wizard

403 posts · joined May 2005 ·

#449614
Ok,l:thumb:thumbking the goods ,JVLRacing

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#449625
Yer getting there.
Too hot today to do much tho.
37 Deg.C is pretty warm for Hobart so the cricket is looking good!
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#451515
A bit more.
The frontend is completely finished now with its adjustable droop cables in position and I have lifted and spun the car around and begun work on the rears suspension.

The shock I have chosen is off a Yamaha MX bike and has a collosal spring on it which was going to get the boot as I was going to run a 1:2 wheel/shock travel ratio.
Sadly, that idea has smoked itself as the shock hits the inside of the dodywork whn the suspension lays ove one way or the other so I have re-designed the bellcranks for 1:2 wheel to shock travel ratio.
One nice part is that the stock bike spring may be now much closer to what i need spring rate wise and if its close then I wont have to dyno the shock to the new spring. Thats a fair whack of money saved...fingers crossed.

I have designed the bellcranks to hit the crossmember mounting bolts to prevent the bellcranks from going "overcentre" and poking the shock out thru the fibreglass or damaging the shock body which is the first thing to hit the bellcrank housings when they travel too far and rotate too much which would surely fuck the shock body in short time!.

All this tucks the shock down low enough to clear the bodywork (just) but creates other issues with clearance between the spring retainer collar at both ends of the shock and the actual bellcrank body itself...grrrrrrrr.

Another irritation was that the retaining bolt for the pushrods will foul with the crossmember so I have to space the bellcrank assys back off the crossmember about the thickness of the bolt head (say about 8mm) . This messes with the method of retaining the bellcranks onto their mounting stubs but I can get around that with a little bit of chicanery!

Newhoo, after a bit of messing around with different mounting heights I have arrived at the best compromise I can find without resorting to cutting up the bodywork and having the shock ends protruding out of the fibreglass!!!.

I had to work backwards with the measurements sos to maintain the ratio I needed but all seems well at this point.

I have cut out and finished all 4 bellcrank sideplates and tomorrow ill get up there and braze them to the bearing housings.
I can do a trial fitup of the shock on the car and measure the lengths of and fabricate the pushrods. I had previously machined up the threaded slugs that are brazed into the ends of the pushrod tubes so I wont get held up there.

Thats close to the end of the job save for the droop control and I have not yet settled on any particular method of controlling wheel droop. It might still be an adjustable rod yet.....dunno just yet.

I also folded up a still air box out of some 0.9mm ally sheet.
This box now completely isolates the carb inlet.filter from the engine area and breathes cool air thru the louvres already cut into the toip of the bodywork.

The airbox is not attached to the carb or engine but solely to the air filter sos not to breach the rules of having anything attached to the engine/tinware. I just got to get some foam strip to slip over the edges of the airbox to seal it against the underside of the bodywork a-la F-Ford and so-on.

Thats where I am for now.

more later with a few pix when i get the rear shock on and the pushrods doen!

L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#451883
Finally got the car sitting on its rear suspension now Yay!

After brazing up the bellcranks and a bit of messing around grinding one end to clear the shock body which is a bit wider at the base than the top.

Drama here is that the hose for the gas cylinder exits directly out the bottom of the shock body and when fitted up, it clouts the bodywork. You can be assured i am not going to hack holes in the body to allow a bloody hose to poke out.
I tried turning the shock over which gave enough clearance but the bloody hose fitting fouled the pushrod rosejoint...........
So, ill have to let the gas out and remove the hose and get one made up with a 90Deg angle right where it exits the shock body. This should allow me to point the hose down and away from the bodywork.
If not then its off to the wreckers to search for another shock with the gas line exiting from the side of the shock body.

Apart from that the rest of the job went pretty smoothly.

I just have to make some spacers for the rose joints and box up the compression side of the bellcrank sides to prevent it from collapsing and its done.
Machine up some spacer rings that go behind the bellcranks to give the bolt heads clearance off the crossmember (only 4mm) and fabricate up a retaining washer to keep the bellcranks in place!
That will be nothing more than some stepped ally washers and a long M6 bolt and nut that simple passes thru the crossmember and the washer locates on the front bearing of the bellcrank.

The stock bike spring, even with the revised travel ratio is still too hard tho. I reckon I could use it happily on a billiard table like Symmons Plains but Baskerville is very lumpy with a very uneven surface and I think it will be just way too hard.
Nice thing about Vees is that suspension is a no brainer and spring rates are pretty much a standard thing. 125Lb for coilovers or a 1:1 travel ratio and 250Lb/" spring for 2:1 as is my setup now.

I jacked it up and down a few times without the spring fitted and the wheel to shock trave relationship is just fine with the shock only needing about a 15 to 20mm spacer under the bump rubber to limit travel.

Last job is to fabricate the droop control and I have decided to use a simple cable like I have on the front. Lightweight, simple and cheap!

Heres a pic of my still air box. All nice and legal! Not the best pix but gives the idea.

L8tr
E

[ Edited on 29/1/06 by tassupervee ]
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

Chewy Fahrvergnugen

889 posts · joined Jul 2004 ·

#454142
Why didnt you get a more recent shock? The newer ones have full external adjustment like Hi/lo speed compression and rebound, you will actually be able to buy different weight springs for it and in general shit all over 80's shocks. That shock looks like its from the early version of the "Mono Cross" yamaha suspension, I doubt anyone will still make springs for a shock that old, you would have to get one custom made.
Other than that lookin bloody good :thumb

[ Edited on 6-2-2006 by Chewy ]
.

pringa8 Seriously Crusin Dubber

132 posts · joined Feb 2006 ·

#454201
Cause sometimes there's such a thing as too much adjustment!!!!

G'day Tassupervee, good to see the conversion is coming along nicely. I converted my Vee from 1200 to 1600 last season and didn't that give me some troubles!!

I'm still running the external shocks off the H beam mounts and using the leaf spring set up at the back with 8 point adj rear shocks. It's doing me fine for now!

[ Edited on 6-2-2006 by pringa8 ]

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#454352
Chewy wrote:Why didnt you get a more recent shock? The newer ones have full external adjustment like Hi/lo speed compression and rebound, you will actually be able to buy different weight springs for it and in general shit all over 80's shocks. That shock looks like its from the early version of the "Mono Cross" yamaha suspension, I doubt anyone will still make springs for a shock that old, you would have to get one custom made.
Other than that lookin bloody good :thumb
[ Edited on 6-2-2006 by Chewy ]
Hehe thanks M8 for the nice comments.

Umm , one of the major reasons for beginning with this shock is that for the shocks you are talking of, starting price is around 1500 to 1800 dollars rising to over 3000 dollars for top shelf Penske and so-on.

The shock i have is from a rising rate late 80's to early 90's Yamaha with externally adjustable high speed but no low speed. It is in perfect condition and cost me 60 bucks with the spring.
Another consideration was the overall length of the shock itself. It was difficult to find a shock as long as i wanted as i didnt feel like making adaptes to fit a shorter shock.
I was very limited with the length of the shock from eye to eye due to the fact that the bellcrank mounting points had already been set on the crossmember and I had to choose a shock around that, rather than position the bellcranks to suit the shock length which would have been infinitely more desireable but so much more work.
In hindsight, I should have gone down this road for other reasons as well but this is the way the thing is for now.

To be honest, id be mighty lucky to exploit all that infinite adjustment capability in later high end stuff. Seriously desireable, but at this early stage, not really necessary.

This setup is in its early development stage and it wouldnt matter too much iffen i had used a stock adjustable car shock with a coilover spring added. It will suit the purpose of something to start with that does not cost a bomb and who knows, it may just work well enough.

Springs are not an issue. The spring fitted is a standard dimension spring available from a legion of car spring manufacturers for the purposes of coilover setups to stock shocks and quite cheap in rates from as light as 100Lb up to 800 Lb!
The only issue at all is that the Kings spring (250Lb/In) I have is 25mm shorter than the Yamaha spring. Cant do a lot about that tho as its the longest coilover thay make.
The spring lower seat/retainer is retained on the shock body by a simple plain wire circlip that lives in a shallow groove machined on the shock body and its a 5 minute job in the lathe to spin a couple of extra grooves in the shock body to accommodate the slightly shorter spring.

Still a few annoying issues to get around yet such as the remote reservoir hose but by and large its down to a matter of machining up a couple of special washers and spavers and painting it all.
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#454355
pringa8 wrote:Cause sometimes there's such a thing as too much adjustment!!!!

G'day Tassupervee, good to see the conversion is coming along nicely. I converted my Vee from 1200 to 1600 last season and didn't that give me some troubles!!

I'm still running the external shocks off the H beam mounts and using the leaf spring set up at the back with 8 point adj rear shocks. It's doing me fine for now!

[ Edited on 6-2-2006 by pringa8 ]
Yer sure does M8.
Some cars are just too difficult to do at all without major surgery to the arse end of the car and with the revised rollover rules and side inpact, not to mention the extra barwork needed to satify that fool square inches rule between bars, its a very big job even for guys setup with all the necessary gear.

The decision to go to this monoshock rear end and the inborad front shock was more a vanity thing than from a performance viewpoint.
Another good reason I have done the conversion is because I can!
To pay someone to do it would cost more than the car itself!

To be frank, there was little wrong with the old setup other than it looked "old"

I wanted my car to look up to date and "modern"

A 1600 conversion to my car is a very straightforwad affair as the engine fits straight in save for shortening the inlet stubbs and only the addition of the extra horizontal barwork 500mm from the ground and 2 bars to close up the gap on the forward facing rollbar struts is all thats needed (apart from the side impact protection blah)
I dont think 1600's will see the light of day for some time in tasmania just yet.

Good luck with you thing M8
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#458537
Ive been pretty busy at work last couiple fo weeks and the car has progressed slowly as a result.
I have decided not to compete at Symmons for the season opener in a couple of weeks tho which takes the pressure off.

I have machined up a heap of snazzy tapered spacers and stuff to replace the ugly (and temporary) washers that space the rose joints in the bellcranks and the lower pickup points of the front end.

machined the shims needed to space the rear bellcranks off the crossmember and I have finally completed the bellcranks themselves.

All that remains there is to paint them and the pushrods.

I ran into yet another hassle along the way with the shock tho.
As mentione before ( I think) the oil/gas accumulator hose exits the shock directly in line with the shock from the bottom end of it and this line hits the bodywork. No drama, Ill remove the hose and fit a 90Deg elbo on the end. Wrong!
When the bellcrank is fully rotated, it is prevented from going too far (overcentering) by hitting the crossmember mount bolt heads. Thing is, the fitting on the end of the shock still bashes the inside of the bodywork and Im buggered if I am going to hack ionto the fibreglass to let a hose end poke out!
The hose itself is simply clamped onto a removeable barb on the bottom of the shock and this fitting is threaded into a specialy cast area of the shock. So, I set to with a hacksaw and a file and remove most of this casting and end up with an 8mm hole exiting the shock at about 45deg.
I drilled and tapped this hole to 1/8" BSPT and threaded in a small 90Deg brass adapter.
On full travel of the bellcrank, this brass adapter just touches the bodywork which i can happily live with sos i dont have to start again with a different shock Yay!.
Only bummer is the shock has no gas and oil in it now. Ah well! Can get that re-done at the local bike shop!

I sourced a rear spring from King Springs (250Lb/In) but this was 25mm shorter than the bike spring but i simply machine a couple of extra gorrves into the shock body for the lower spring seat retainer clip. All good.

The car sits at a good ride height with plenty of adjustment either via the spring adjuster and the pushrod lengths!

Apart from a few details the rears suspension is pretty much done now and it all seems to work well.

I still have to modify the crossmember mounting holes. For whatever reason they are only 1/2" I.D but the other three crossmembers I have the bolt holes are 5/8" I.D>???
This is a bit of a shit as the holes are bushed with thick walled tubing so i have to drill the tubing out and insert and weld in bigger tube blah blah!
I also need to fabricate the brackets for the rear suspension droop control.
i reckon i could do without as the bikes dont have any droop limiting and the shock just tops out on them but the Vee has a lot more weight to consider with axles, tubes, wheels, disks and calipers on wither side so I will include a droop cable there just in case.

I had agonised on how to install a droop limiter but just about every setup i came up with interfered with the bodywork. I was originally intending to use a rod but no room under there no matter how i fettled it.
I nearly used the original droop cable was a horrid affair that attached down at the shock pickup point and up and over the gearbox, thru some really nasty 3/8" square tubing that was bracketed onto the exhaust studs and to the top of the gearbox and down to the other side.
The cable was setup with lots of those little clamps and a dodgey turnbuckle for adjustment and looked crap. it worked fine but was dodgey to look at and it flogged around on the bodywork when the suspension was compressed.
The new cable will simply run across the back of the shock and attach at each shock mount bolt. Its so simple it embarrasing and i cannot for the life of me work out why i did not see it in the first place.
I need to machine up a couple of ally spacers to space the cable out to clear the spring and use some longer shock bolts to accommodate the spacers and the cable itself but this will result in a very clean, neat and lightweight adjustable setup!

The gearshift linkage mounting has to be re-worked as well as the shifter shaft interferes with the pushrod on full droop on that side.
No biggie here but it only just fits where it has to be with about 2mm to spare in all planes so yay for that!

After all that, the whole lot comes off again to be painted including the suspension trailing arms.

Put it all back together and its off to the wheel aligners!

More later.
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#460173
Getting close now.
Get the shock re-oiled and regassed, make the droop cable and machine up 2 small ally spacers and paint the bits!
Final assembly and wheel alignment
Then off to Baskerville for some testing. Woo-Hoo!

(TSV rubs hands gleefully)

L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#461628
I have completed all the fabrication needed for the new setup now.
All that remains is re-oiling and gassing of the shock.
There was a bit of an issue with the shock and its hydraulic line but after a bit of playing around with some threaded barbs for the hydraulic line, all is well.

All the components have been painted and I have done a trial fitup of all the bits.
The entire setup looks very businesslike and if it performs at least as half as good as it looks then I cant loose.

Im not overly happy with the sheer bulk of the rear bellcranks. This is due to the size of the bearings I was forced to use.
Each bellcrank houses 2 bearings and they are a lot heavier than i would like. If I cant fine a pair of needle bearings to fit the 1 1/4" stub on the crossmember, Ill look at cutting off the existing stubs and starting again with some 25mm tube.
This will allow me to make another pair of bellcranks using the much lighter, single (double row) ball bearing I used on the front bellcranks.
I do have a bit of a problem with the pushrods and bellcranks "bottoming" when the suspension is swung fully to one side (the bellcrank bottomed against the travel stop) and the suspension fully compressed on the other side.
i think the only time this could actually occur is during a crash but the top pushrod rosejoint "bottoms" on the bellcrank body and could severly stress, or break the exposed threaded shaft of the push rod rose joint.

if I can reduce the actual diameter of the bellcrank bearing holusing, this potential issue will go away.

When I did the original bellcrank "mules", this interference was not an issue as the distance from the centre of the bellcrank bearing to the rose joint centre was much longer. "overcentering" and interferance of the bellcrank housing andf rosejoint could not happen within the range of movement of the suspension. However, with the bellcranks this physical size, the shock was spaced up too far and interfered with the fibreglass bodywork and one of the provisos for this job was to keep all the suspension within the existing bodywork.
I just did some more sums and rduced the dimensions of the bellcranks that would end up with the shock within the bodywork and the wheel to shock trave ratio remaining the same.
I can reduce the inteference by altering the length of the pushrods relative to the shock length (compressed) to "unwind" the bellcranks a bit but this tends to compromise the working angles of the bellcranks relative to the shock and pushrods.
In the meantime, Im going to fabricate some simple shock travel limiters (spacers) which space the shock bump rubber further down the shock shaft.
I have excess wheel travel on bump now so i have the option of limiting this via this spacer method. I was just hoping not to have to bother with it.
The spacers need to be machined, and then split down their length into two halves so they can be placed around the shock shaft (without having to dissassemble the shock) and clamped into poisition. I dont have a final design for these spacers just yet tho. Gotta think about that for a while. Its a balance between what is easiest and what looks good enough!

A M8 of mine in Melb, who has the same car as mine, has generously offered to make me a set of aluminium air ducts for the oil cooler.
The cooler originally lived in the cold air duct for the cooling fan inlet, but I cannot use that system now with the monoshock in place.
I have been mulling over and over where to actually place the oil cooler now without having to cut up or drill thru the bodywork. There is a neat place on these chassis, on the firewall, between the back of the seat and the outside bodywork that is just "made" for the cooler but this requires the hassle of ducting air from outside the car, thru the cooler and back outside the car. The other issue is to actually place the inlets and outlets so there is and air pressure differential to actually get air to go thru it and make the job worthwhile!
The Kestrel has a fully enclosed engine/gearbox bay and there are some pretty weird and wonderful things happening around this backside area of the car with regards to air pressure and airflow. The air travels in thru the bodywork vents on top, to the fan fan and out the bottom of the engine and then does some rather weird things and blows out of and sucks in places you dont expect resulting in potential overheating.
My M8 has used a predictive airflow analysis computer programme to determine the best compromise for coolers' airflow supply and has designed and built the ducting out of very lightweight ally sheet.
Seems like a heap of hassle to deal with the seemingly simple task of mounting a freakin oil cooler that actually works!!!!!
On the mainland, they get air and track temps skyrocketing in warmer months and for them, cooling is, and can be a major issue.
Down here in Southern Tas., its so much cooler and we actually often suffer the opposite of not getting the engine and oil nearly up to a decent temp! Often, most of the race here is done with no temp indicating on the oil temp guage (bad) or at best sometimes up to 75 deg.C. (still no good)
Hence my use of a oil cooler thermostat. However, on the times that I actually do need oil cooling, i want my cooler to actually work!
This job will require the cutting of louvre vents into the sidepods bit I can live with that as the sidepods are essentially flat where the vents go.

Its all getting close now tho. I was a bit miffed at missing the first round of the Tas. State Championships but there were other factors at work there as well outside of my control.

Anywhoo, ill post some pix of the entire conversion once the job is entirely completed.
I hop to have it out for some development runs in the next couple of weeks or so.

Cyas
!
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#481600
I have added a couple of pix of the work done the other night.
I have to apologise in advance tho. The digital cam highlights the dust and stuff on the car like you wouldnt believe.
On the side pix, the dust on the front beam and suspension parts is barely noticeable to the eye but the cam/flash brins out the dirt in all its glory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ill make sure I run the rag over the car in future before taking happy snaps.
These pix have been compressed to buggery but check out the paint finish in the side view of the back end of the car. it looks awesome up close!
______________________________________________

A bit more.
I have completed one of the most time consuming and irritating jobs on the whole conversion.
Fitting the lower engine cowling. Sounds easy enough right?.............bah!
The engine on the Kestrel is fully enclosed which makes for a very sweet looking Formula Vee.
Since my last post, I have finally received my new engine from Melbourne along with the complete exhaust system that was developed specifically for that engine.
Its a sweet zorst system, nicely made and ceramic coated but it required considerable cutting up of the lower engine cowl to fit.

Long ago, I had decided to use a spare lower cowling I had with the car and we went ahead and painted it with the rest of then bodywork.
The original lighter cowling was quite cut up to allow the old zorst pipes to stick out here and there and there were other cutouts for the old leading arm suspension and some damage blah so rather than spend a million hours filling up all the holes and cutouts, bogging and so-on , Id use my spare.
Bah! On closer inspection tho, the substitute cowl had been cut up quite a bit and all the tabs that carry the Dzus fasterners had been fuckingwell cut off!. In fact, most of the "flange" that locates the main bodywork had been ground right down. It didnt seen to be much of an issue at first glance but later on........................became quite a headache when the time came to actually fit the bastard of a thing.
I had to cut quite a bit of the guts of the cowl out to allow the new pipes to exit at the rear and after almost splitting the cowl in half, i found that i didnt have to cut so much out......grrrrrrr!
The very front edge of the cowl that usually engages into the floorpan that extends past the main engine bulkhead had bee cut off as well which necessitated the fabrication of special mounts to hold the cowl up in the middle at the front.
The low pressure under the car at that point at speed actually pulls the leading edge of the cowl down almost 2 inches and grinds on the road as i found out a while ago!...... ahh well.
The usual mounting tabs at the sides of the cowl where it meets and attaches to the main bodywork were also ground off.....more fabricating...............
The main bodywork fastens down to the lower cowl via 4 dzus fasterners but since some clown had ground all the existing mounting tabs off, I was forced to fabricate up new tabs from 1.6mm steel sheet. A real pain in the arse as the lower cowling is much thicker than the main bodywork by quite some millimeters sos the tin tabs needed to be "stepped" to work.
I never bother using ally sheet for bracketry. its too prone to failing down the road due to work hardening and fatiguing and there is little weight saving to make it worthwhile.
Good lord they took some fiddling with the get them to match up sos the dzus fasterners actually engaged and then actually closed tightly. They do look shit but they work.
Lastly, I had to fabricate the rear bracket which holds the whole arse end of the cowling up to the gearbox and also supports the exhaust.
As mentioned above, I had split the arse of the cowling when i didnt have to so i had to make bracketry more scientific than I should have had to.
I agonised over this for hours and the bloody bracket i made is an evolution rather than a "revolution" I would have hoped for. However, its functional and should be reliable and thats all that matters.
The job should have taken (at first glance) a couple of hours but in the end it took me a full day! Just for a freakin lower cowling and its brackets!!!!

Anyway, the entire bodywork is now fully attached and fastened and it looks schweeeeet as!



I have finallr received my new oil pump from the US. Its a nifty thing made by Shadek.
The job of plumbing in the pump, the oil temp thermostat and the oil cooler is well in hand now.
More nuicance is that the Shadek oil pump uses 16mm threaded hose fittings and everything else used in the world is either BSPT or AN stuff.
Of course, a 16mm/-8AN and 16mm x -10AN flared fitting is a pain in the arse to get and the only fittings I can source are these snazzy anodised aluminium SpeedFlow things. They look nice and are worth a bomb........idiot tax I spose!

I also got my new Pertronix Ignitor 2 ignition system from the US as well that fits my Mallory twin point dizzie.
The ignitor 2 employs intelligent dwell extension and varies the dwell time according to coil current draw.
Along with the module, I got the Pertronix racing epoxy coil. A 65,000 volt affair. This will guarantee to fire the U-Bewt plugs that i use which have a non adjustable gap of over 2mm!

Another annoying issue is that the oil cooler I have will just not fit into the nice little spot in the sidepod that the ducting i have got accounts for, so the current oil cooler will go back close to where it was originally which will be mounted off the rear suspension crossmember, just in front of the rear shock. It only misses by a fucken poofteenth but thats a fucking poofteenth to far..........sadly!
The cooler will be subject to cool air being drawn in by the fan and will work well enough.
I will eventually find the size of cooler to fit up with the custom ally ducting my M8 made for me but that can wait for another day.

Anyway, getting very close to absolute completion now.
Its all the fiddle arsed jobs that are taking up the major time now. I must admit that a lot of these stupid little jobs were certainly unforseen and have taken up so much time to get around.

Tis ones a side view of the front suspension showing the droop control arrangement.
To keep things simple, I used cables with an eye swaged on one end which attaches to the top shock bolt and the other end is a threaded rod which passes thru the brackets attached to the bellcranks. The little brackets contain a cube of urethane sos the droop drops onto a tougn bush as opposed to dropping hard with no cushioning.
The threaded rod gives about 40mm of droop adjustment.


Another thing now is that the nights are getting mighty long down here in southern Tas and very cold as well. Im less and less inclined to get up into the shed after tea now and its a long time between weekends!!!

L8tr all
E

[ Edited on 1/5/06 by tassupervee ]

[ Edited on 1/5/06 by tassupervee ]
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#482858
Danm bugger and shit.
After some measuring up, the new oil pump outlet interferes with the front engine cradle on the right side.
This is a bloody nuicance and i have to remove the engine and transmission to alter the barwork of the front mount.

Some things are sent to try us....................................................
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#484702
Hmmmmmm, an annoying setback last night. i discovered that the new oil pump hits the front engine mount tubes...............grrrrrrrr. There is not enough meat in the pump outlet boss to machine that off so I was forced to dismantle the rear suspension and remove the engine/transmission assembly to get access to the front mount tubes.

Its not that drastic a job as i bought some time ago one of those hydraulic engine cranes which makes life so easy when dealing with engines and transmission removal. But, nonetheless, its a bit of work to. This engine lifter cost me less than 200 bucks! Its been a very handy bit of kit.

The front engine mount is made out of 4 tubes that attach to the 4 corners of the engine bulkhead and the bottom tubes are parallel with the bottom of the chassis and angle in about 45Deg each. The top tubes angle in the same but also angle down at ablot 45Deg and intersect with the bottom tubes and this froms the front engine mount.
The mounts are made of quite light tubing as it only has to deal with up and down loads from accelleration and braking transferring thru the engine from the axles.

In the end, I ground off the gusset, cut the top tube right where it attaches to the bottom tube, bent it down slightly and re-brazed it to move the top tube forward along the bottom tube to make the necessary clearance for the pump outlet. I only had to move the tube about 8mm forward along the bottom tube to make the clearance.
The mounting sleeve itself that sandwiches the front of the engine case has been repaired before and I added some 3.2mm x 17mm steel strip along the outside to toughen it up and then replaced the gussett.

Anyway, while I have the engine out, I have also decided to rework the battery cradle to accept a slightly larger battery and orient it fore and aft rather than across the chassis it is now. ill do that on the weekend after I have actually got a battery to fit.
I also bought off Ebay an aluminium oil catch can kit. This little blighter comes with all the hardware necessary for 25 bucks! bless Ebays little cotton socks! I love Ebay! I have mounted that as well.

Im leaving the engine out of the chassis for the weekend as Im having the 2 threaded bungs in the back of the chassis that locates the main crossmember helicoiled on Monday evening by the local thread repair dude.
Its a large NF thread (the capscrew needs a 1/2" allen key) and by the time i buy a helicoil kit and the right sized drill, it will be far cheaper to get this job done.
The threads have become pretty worn over time and a fair whack of thread has been stripped on one side necessitating using a longer bolt on that side. Since these 2 bolts carry the entire engine/transmission/suspension assembly, its prolly worthwhile to ensure that the bolts dont pull out at some embarrasing time on the track!

I have drilled and tapped the alloy rocker covers for the breather lines this new engine uses and I have completely plumbe the oil thermostat, cooler and remote filter assemblies.

Getting closer now.
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#484844
Hi Pete
The "pedal box" is actually fabricated right off the floor pan. It is simply fashioned from light guage angle rivetted thru the floor pan and drilled across to locate the pedal pivot bolts. The pead pivots on this bolt with a bush.
It employs a balance bar that is adjustable via a teleflex cable and a knob on the dash.
The master cylinders are mounted in front of the beam and are connected to the pedals via a tubular pushrod with a small M6 rose joint at thew pedal.
This pic loosely shows what is going on.

The master cylinders are simply those generic Girling one piece master cylinders you see on a million overrider brake setups on bigger trailers. One of the cylinders has a remote reservoir for clearance issues with the original steering box
5/8" bore for the fronts and 19mm for the rears.

The clutch release is a generic slave cylinder that is mounted on the chassis crossmember and "pushes' the stock clutch release arm.
Again, a generic Girling master cylinder is employed.
You can sort of see the release cylinder hanging under the crossmember sitting just in front of the stock release arm in this pic below.
The pushrod is not there but it shows how its done.
There are some very nifty and trick looking "puller" slave cylinders available making mounting of the release cylinder a doddle but for the money, this system works just fine.

L8tr M8
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....

pete wood 23 Windows of Awesome

6,828 posts · joined Jan 2004 ·

#485035
cool, I can sort of see how the pedal box works. What I don't understand is how the balance bar works exactly. have you got any pics of the other side of it, ie the inside of the car? looking onto the front of the pedals, and looking down right on top of them?

ta
"stoopid is stronger than axles"
http://drivingnotpolishing.blogspot.com.au/

tassupervee That really hurts doesnt it!

1,171 posts · joined Sep 2003 ·

#485357
Easy as M8
L8tr
E
Im not a complete idiot, quite a few parts are missing....