Progress!

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 ]

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 ]

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

can't wait to see what you do, giving me all sorts of thoughts about my prospective racer. 😎

This modified steering end suspension stuff is very interesting

:thumb

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

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

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

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

Ok,l:thumb:thumbking the goods ,JVLRacing

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

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

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 ]

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 ]

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 ]

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

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

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

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

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
!

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 ]

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

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

top stuff.

btw, what pedal setup are you using, balance bar? how does the hydralic clutch work? what slave cyl do you use?

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

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

Pete
I dont have a pic handy this minute but this page :
http://www.wilwood.com/Products/005-PedalAssemblies/Pages/techtip/pedaltech.asp
will show you what i have.
Most of this stuff is pretty typical frfom low to high end braking systems.
L8tr
E

thanks very much. that's exactly what I needed to see. :thumb

Easy as M8
L8tr
E

Just been looking at ya car again. Would I be right in describing the engine and gearbox as being "stress bearing members" in the chassis?

Pete
Ummmmm...stressed member?????? yer i spose you could see it that way.

Unlike a fully stressed engine in a motorbike, were the engine basically replaces the cradle in the frame.... this thing is basically slung there.

Yer you could certainly say its stressed into the chassis.

Further up the post is a pix of the front mount i had to modify. Thats the only mount at the front of the engine and the engine is only retained onto that rear crossmember by the two top bellhousing bolts.
It amazes me the engine and transmission actually stays in there as all the lateral loads are dropped into those 2 M10 bellhousing bolts. The fore and aft movement of the axles is taken care of by the trailing arms.
The front mount only has to deal with the engine wanting to rotate around the axles under power so does not need to be very heavy duty. Its only really a method of setting the engine rake in the chassis.

Rotational loads generated by power and moreso braking in the axle tubes are dumped into the chassis via the trailing arms.

The way the chassis (where the crossmember bolts on) is triangulated by the rear diagonal (roolhoop) braces would render the front mount to little more than and engie steady really (it only has an M8 bolt thru there), but at the end of the day, the engine does become a lower chassis "rail".

L8tr
E

A little more:
I finished the new battery box which has been fabricated to suit a particular battery and that has been brazed into position.
I also painted the last of the bits and bobs I have had to fabricate such as the oil cooler brackets and the belly pan/zorst combined mount and blew some paint over the chassis repairs.
While i was playing around with things, I started to look at the way the starter and battery wiring was done and it was a bit of a horror with cables here and there, bolted together and insulated with bits of split radiatir hose and bound up withy insulation tape.
The car is started with an external battery that plugs into the side of the car with an "Anderson" plug. The way all these heavy guage wires ran was pretty horrible so out with the razor blade and the wire cutters and I stripped it all out.
The master switch is located near the top of the RHS roll hoop and this system was positive side switched meaning 2 heavy guage leads ran from the lower LHS corner of the engine bulkhead, right across the chassis and all the way up the rollhoop...........bah over 2 meters of leads. The master switch is now a negative side switch and only one cable needs to run up there now with a tiny little jumper going from the switch directly to the rollhoop. Neatens things up a bit and when the master switch is off and the external battery plugged in, no flashing and smoking surprises when fiddling with the battery and or the starter!!!!

I have re-fitted the engine/transmission and all that remains is to refit the suspension pushrods and the trailing arms.

Lastly is the refitting of the fuel tankand lines, throttle linkages, wiring, gearshift rods and so-on...........plus a couple of sidepod screws and 4 dzus fasterners for the bodywork and the car is ready to rock.
THEN, its off to the wheel aligners for a front and rear alignment!
I hope that will be done either this weekend or early next week and then its time for a wheel at Baskerville to see if it was all worth it!!!!!
Isnt one off development fun?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
L8tr
E

Have completed nearly all of the job now save for a wheel alignment.
I could not arrange one on the weekend would you believe.
This is Tasmania after all!.
I fired the engine up ther opther night which has spurred me on now. The engine sounds very "bright" running on the high output Pertronix Ignitor 11 system and is very easy to start.
The exhaust note from the new system is simply awesome. However, it is very loud compared to my older system. It breaks into the most fiendish bark above 3500 rpm!! The barking howl when you close the throttle at high revs is sernsational!

Plenty of little detailed (Iread time consumiong) jobs have been completed as well.

I ran into another issue with my "secret weopon" still air box. I had decided to mountthe fuel tank about 20mm higher but I had fabricated the airbox to sit on the fuel tank at the old lower height.....................now it doesnt fit under the bodywork doesit!
Oh well, pulled it out and reshaped the front of it to clear the fuel tank and al is well. Sadly tho, the light guage ally sheet had to be straightened out and re-bent again and it looks rather second hand now. Ill either make another one or I migh carefull panelbeat this one and use it as a mould and strap one up out of glass-fibre....dunno, we shall see as time goes by I spose.

In order to preserve as much battery power as possible, i have wired the aux battery connection below the master switch. this means i can start and run the car solely on the aux external battery and then simply switch the master switch on and pull the aux battery plug out so all pit running will be done on the aux battery.
Unlike the old points/coil system, The Pertronix electronic ignition system takes a dim view to low battery voltage and will not tolerate a partially flattened battery which results in the dreaded 4 to 4500 rpm missfire so the running battery will only ever have to run the car during the actual race and not whist in the pits.

I have installled rocker cover breather hoses which connect to a 1 litre ally catch tank I got off Ebay. $25 dollars! You gotta love Ebay!
The original crankcase breather and rocker cover breathers all come together at the catch can.

Well gentlemen, it has been an interesting "journey" modifying my car. I have growled, sworn at it, screamed blue murder and simply given up in disgust and shut the shed door during this phase of development but the end is at hand.

It kinda feels rather strange knowing I dont have this freakin great list of jobs to do in order to get it going but at the same time its a relief to know that I can get down to the business of actually doing some on-track development rather than workshop development!
I am really loking forward to doing plenty of laps and analysing the data collected on the laptop to see if my changes and modifications resulted in any improvement at various points on the track.

I use a Michron 11 datalogger in the car which is actually a karting datalogger that i have modified to work on the 4 cylinder boxer engine. I picked it up for 400 dollars a couple of yers ago and it is the most valuable peice of kit I own as far as on-track tuning is concerned.
It only uses, speed, time and rpm as inputs along with 2 temp analogue inputs but using the software for it, I can break the track down into 1 meter or 1 second intervals simultaneously displaying engine RPM and wheel speed along with gear position which shows me EXACTLY whether I have improved or buggered the car with a particular setting change. All the track corners are broken into 3 segments, entry, mid-corner and corner exit and I can instantly overlay the data from previous tests on top of the latest tests to see if a change has actually worked.
Sometimes, a change will result in similar lap times but a pick up in certain corner speeds which means that altho I am not any faster in overall lap time terms, I am faster in certain situations and I become extremely difficult to overtake. Very handy for tuning the car to be a mobile road block!

I reccommend ANYBODY who does ANY circuit racing and is even vaguely serious to consider the purchase of a data logger. The stopwatch only tells part of the story!

An interesting observation which only becam aparent with the logger was that if i remove the engine belly pan from the car, straight line outright speed was affected markedly to the tune of about 100 rpm at Baskerville and 125RPM at Symmons Plains! I find I dont really have time to closely look at the tacho just when I am about to bury the brake pedal at a hundred miles an hour but the datalogger does not lie.

I can also input some Co-efficient of drag (CD) and weight figures and the datalogger will log horsepower as well on a simple XY graph.
I found this useful when comparing major tuning changes and this clearly showed the changes I had made to an older engine with different porting and zorst pipe configuratrions by raising the torque peak nearly 800rpm and significantly extending it as well!. The torque figure itself was almost identical but raising it about 800rpm and widening it showed a significant increase in horsepower right where I neede it higher up in the RPM range.

So, those of you that are still awake after my wafflings may be interested in my test results which i hope to carry out in the next week or so.
I still have the same set of tyres to run on as last time so the test comparisons will be very relevant to one another.

Once I have actually run the thing and have some numbers to crunch Ill write up a bit more and well find out if al this effort has been worth it.
If there is anything further you'd like to know or want to see pix of any particular components of the car, feel free to pm or email me anytime.
Until then.
L8tr
E

great stuff, can't wait to hear how it goes. :thumb

can you show us a pic of the whole car finished now?

Pete
I havent actually put the car on the ground just yet.
I lift it onto a workstand in the shed and where it is I cannot fit up the entire bodywork!

Im waiting for a couple of M8's to come down and well set her up on the floor and do the wheel alignment the olde fashioned stringline method.
I need someone in the car the same weight as me sos i can set the ride heights and then string it up and see where we are.

As soon as I have it fully dressed up with the decals, numbers and stuff ill post up some pix of it from different angles.
Its a very sleek and businesslike looking jigger now. The new paintscheme has altered the apparent lines of the car quite a bit really at first glance.
Curiously, the car has definitelt taken on a "female" kinda visual "feel" to it whereas before it seemed a more "blokey" car..............kinda hard to explain really unless you have spent as much time with it as I have over the last coupole of years!!!!
It really does look very speccie now tho and the pix I have taken so far do not really do it sufficient justice.

L8tr M8
E

Mate, I love your work! Kudos to you 😏

Out of interest, what do you do for a crust?

Also, can you point me in the direction of what ppl do to build f vee engines? As in what are the usual 'tricks' to make them go.

Serious piece of kit you have there mate. Just need some nitrous for serious overtaking!

kkk

Bwaaahahahahaha thanks for the kind words tripple K!

Umm, im a heavy truck driver M8!
Im an aircraft maintenance engineer by trade (Qantas) and Im a qualified motor mechanic but ive not gotten my hands dirty for a living in a long time now!

Errrrrm "Make them go" hahahaha!
F-Vee and "make them go" is pretty much mutually exclusive really.

The tricks to making a good vee 1200 engine go are mostly in the really detailed stuff, engine balancing, polishing lifter bores, lightweight valve gear and the choice of head castings and the portwork.
The rules on the engine are fairly strict in Oz and we are only allowed to use a control cam made and doctored by Wade and a control inlet manifold on 1200's.
Its a prick of a cam actually and the stock 1200 (40 horse) can is actually a better option.
Its all in the detailed preparation really and there are precious few "performance" options allowed.
valve sizes are stock and the port openings must be less than a specified amount.
The carby is a carefully prepapred 28 PCI (36Horse) thing and the crank, pistons and rods are stock and have a minimum weight.\
The only room to move is withinin the actual ports themselves, a 3 angle valve job, degreeing the cam and the design of the zorst pipes.
The very best engines only produce perhaps 5 to 8 Hp more than the very worst stock engines. They usually produce much the same torque as a stocker but are forced to do it at higher RPM hence the power increase.
The real difference with a good engine is its ability to rev to around 6500 rpm reliably on a 28mm carb throat and stock valve sizes.

The "new" 1600 TP vee engine are even more difficult to get to rev up reliably and a well built 1200 is often faster down a straight than an ordinary 1600 as the 1600 will pull the lesser engine along in the draft but the 1200 will produce more HP right up in the rev range whereas the 1600 will sharply drop off power at high revs.

L8tr
E

FINALLY!, I took the much modified Kestrel out to Baskerville yesyrday arvo for some testing.

My apologies in advance tho. This post rambles on for a while and i reckon only those interested in circuit racing will still be with me at the end!

At the end of the day, i was very lucky I had called a M8 of mine on the way there as bonehead here had left his wallet behind. I live about 30 mins south of Hobart and had agreed to meet my M8 at a servo and I was about to pump some fuel for the race car and realised I had left the wallet at home...............idiot! I would have had to turn back and go home and that would have made the entire day a waste of time.
Anyway Adam bailed me out with some cash.

The track conditions were very cold and windy and the track was pretty dirty. Just as i fired the engine up, the rain started......christ, this is going to be fun. Old wooden Brigestone RA500 tyres, over inflated to buggery on a dirty track that has just been rained on...........................oh well, bugger it, this is Tasmania! Were made of stern stuff down here!

Greeted with a track somewhat like an ice-skating rink and the first time I have wheeled my car for close to two years!!!. Im seriously considering entering the next Driftmania day at Baskerville. Some of the slides I caught and held had me pissing myself with laughter inside the helmet. So much so I fogged up the visor and couldnt see shit!

Oh well, press on. Southern Tassie is a strange place weather wise. Weather here is... errrmm.... predictably unpredicdable.... (make sense?)
When the shit comes from the south-west, you get a rain shower and always followed by sudden clear and a fucking cold wind. Good thing is the wind is so dry, the track dries in the space of less than 5 minutes.

So, onward I go, the first task is to try and clean off the old rubber on the (very cold) tyres which is always an entertaining task in a Vee......NOT!
Secondly, to bed in the brakes.

Once the track dries this thing is actually feeling like a race car again.

As always the frontend of the Kestrel is very predictable and "pointy" but the rear end is generating very good mechanical grip but it goes away violently when it looses.......yuk.
On a track like Baskerville this kind of behaviour makes for a very long and taxing day!

The tyres were cleaning off and the engine was making excellent power. I noted that my main straight RPM was well above anything I have achieved in the past. The new pipes I have fitted which belong to my new race motor really like my old engine and I find I am regularly revving the old girl to in excess of 6000rpm. It never made power up there with the old pipes.

The brakes are really good by now, front grip is good and the steering is delightfully precise but I still have this violent loss of grip on the arse end, particularly in slower corner exits?? This is directly the opposite of the previous suspension setup.
Im still very very rusty on what is an extremely demanding (for the driver) race track and finally the engine looses its edge, the oil pressure drops like a stone and the temp guage has gone skyward.....eeeeyew!
It turns out that the engine had thrown its fan belt and altho I have an indicator on the dash to let me know no air is going into the engine, I failed to see it. I was very lucky I didnt fry the engine as it was smoking and crackling when i shut it down.
Refitted the belt, fired it up to cool it off.....no real dramas. Fair bit of smoke from the zorst tho. Oil pressure back up and oil temp back to 80Deg.C.

Measure the tyre pressures when I stop reveals there been almost zero pressure rise and the treads feel cool to touch.

Ok, drop the pressure back to a colder friendly 16Psi front and 18psi rear and out we go.

This time the car is up to speed withing 2 laps. The rear end loss of grip is now quite predictable and actually fun to test out. The car is extremely "pointy" and I can place the nose anywhere on the track I like.

At the end of the session, and only because I actually ran out of fuel, I had put the car back into the 64 to 65 second bracket.
Now this sounds pretty slow (which it is) but remember, im running tyres that should have gone into the rubbish bin many races ago, have never seen a track in close to 2 years and are running on an entirely different suspension configuration they they have ever known.
The last time I raced the car, on these very tyres, I only managed to run in 65 seconds flat on a warm and sunny spring day with no wind and other cars to pull me around so im very encouraged by this.

Sadly, i was unable to get any datalogger testing results as the timing beacon was not receiving and unless it reads the beacon, it wont record any data so i could not tell where I was going fast or not.

Now, some observations on the new suspension setup.
The rear mono-shock setup is smooth, handles the bumps well and is far more controlled and compliant on the very harsh Baskerville surface than the original single leaf spring and twin shocks.
It is so good i could think of NO adjustment I could make save for ride height (to try to induce a little more rear grip) The car feels very sophisticated and tied down in the arse end and is a pleasure to drive!

The front end is a little bity iffy but initial impressions are that any dramas it has will tune out easily enough.

The front ride height settled quite a bit over time and resulted in a 45mm ride height which reduced front end grip in slower corners quite a bit. the front end was firmly riding on the Aeon (rubber) springs alone and was fairly harsh and easily knocked off line making the car fairly nervous in the straights.
However, the reverse was true under hard braking where the front-end became rock stable and predictable????
Given the bump steer tendency is to toe out, this kinda makes little sense to me.
Another thing is that the front end does not have enough caster and is very light in the steering with virtually nill return to centre, and made worse by the sagging front end.
I think a couple of degrees of caster here will tone this down.

The new steering rack is deliciously direct, but, unlike the old box, transmits enourmous amounts of feedback from the track making the car a bit tiring on the hands and wrists to hang onto after a lot of laps. However, it now steers more like a superkart which I am more used to.
The rack is only marginally faster in ratio than the stock T3 box it replaced and is an absolute pleasure to steer.

Some final overall observations are:
1: The car is now very stable in really high speed, high G turns whereas before its forte was the tighter stuff and its ability to track over rough surface and still make grip. High speed turns were always a bit of a headache in this car which would compromise straight line speed. basically, the faster the car goes in a corner, the more stable it is and the better the grip.

2: Slow speed corners now are a different animal.
The car is predictable but seems more prone to corner exit oversteer. This oversteer is very predictable now, (and vastly entertaining) but slows the car on exit. It may be me being too savage on the steering and throttle but in the past, the car was alway rock steady in slow tight stuff. Its not bad now, just different.

3: The front end is quite harsh over the rough surface and is not tracking well in a straight line but amazingly enough, will ride the kerbs with considerable aplomb!
My car was alway sweet in kerb hopping and soaked up the punishment well with the old fashioned and long travel LP front-end. It now bounces pretty hard over them and lofts the inside wheel a fair way but the overall stability of the car sees it land back on its wheels, kinda bounce a bit and continue on with little deviation in line. With the greatly reduced front suspension travel and increased front roll-bar stiffness (now a 19mm bar as opposed to a 16mm), I was alway concerned with the behaviour over kerbs. Insted of knocking the car offline or into a wild oversteer, it simply bounces over the kerbs and tends to knock the front-end across the track rather than the arse. This is very good and encouraged me to ride some pretty savage kerbs with confidence.
I think a lot of this stability here is due to the new rear end soaking up the punishment better than the front.

3: The rear suspension setup is just so superior in every respect to the old setup i cannot belive it.
There was nothing out of the ordinary with my old single leaf/twin Koni shock arrangement that has served F-Vees for so long so i think I have arrived at something really good with my new setup.
Altho the rear end is very firmly sprung (in comporison to the leaf spring), it soaks up the rough stuff with real style!
I made no adjustment to the motorcycle shock at all. The dampening was set to mid point (about 25 clicks out of 50) and it did not fade, bounce or do anything. I am seriously impressed with my 60 dollar shock over a, say 1000 dollar Penske jigger.
I doubt I could make an adjustment to it that would improve this beautifully stable and compliant suspension apart from raise the ride height to induce a little more mechanical grip and try to calm down the corner exit oversteer.

In closing, the cars is definitely faster now than before, bearing in mind the very cold conditions, seriouly wooden and rooted tyres and my lack of practise.
The changes have resulted in the car generating far more grip and stability in the really fast turns but has really changed its behaviour in the very slow stuff. Its not really worse, just different in the tight stuff.

The initial corner entry on trailing brakes in the fast stuff results in the car roll-steering (drifting) gently in and when its going where i want it to just hammer the throttle and it just sits down and blasts out.
Mid corner grip and stability is awesome but the exit slides will have to be ironed out. I cant quite get my head aound this just yet. It actually wheelspins on exit, noted with considerable amusement by my M8 who is a total horsepower freak!

One of the most awesome corners anywhere in the world is the approach up the hill to "Skyline" (turn 5) at Baskerville.
This is a very steep hill to climb and the corner is completely blind as the track drops sharply away and to the left and in order to make the corner, you have to turn in to the corner BEFORE you can actually see it.
The initial turn in is done on the crest of the hill and the car is extremely light and nervous here and with my old suspension setup, I would pull 4th gear just as the car turns in and hold it flat thru the corner.
Its a white-knuckle ride around there i can tell you and has reulted in many a car burying itself in the tyre walls close to the exit, but the new suspension'ed car seemed to want to fade up the track here on turn in. It was again, quite stable but seemd to just drift up the track.
This may be a function of the stiffness of the front end and its too low height but its a cause for concern. Once again tho, stabiliuty was very good. perhaps a personal fear factor in play.

Turn 6 (Calvins Corner) is a real hairi raiser as well as the approach is quite steeply downhill and the track drops away sharply and has a lot of positive camber here which is reassuring!
However, as the turn opens out on exit, the track flattens and actually drops away on corner exit due to the crown in the roadway. This always result in the car fading sharpyl up the track to a marauding ripple strip which has brought undone a legion of unwary drivers who have let the cars up onto this beast of a kerb!
I find i can approach this turn now with so much more confidence and once setup, I can plant the throttle hard and the car simply shoots out. Steady as a rock, and no fucking exit oversteer!

Corners speed here is vital to be able to stay ahead of a following car towing down the straight or indeed to be able to get a run at a car in front and this has always been a dram with the older setup.
My straightline speed is now about 200rpm faster at the end of the straight. This is very good indeed as i used to get eaten alive on the straight due to a relatively slow corner exit at Calvins.

So, thats about it for this thread ladies and gentlemen.
As mentioned before, this has been quite an interesting "journey into the unknown"!
I am heartened by the high speed stability of the thing and my main concern is that I have not lost any speed on the previous setup. There is plenty of potential in the thing and I know I have a top engine to race with now. My old clunker I used today is getting pretty tired now.

If any of you are still with me here, thanks for you patience and time.

L8tr all
A

great stuff. so all the hard work was worth effort, eh?👍

Yer it was Pete.
It can only get better with some more development.

I have completely stripped the arse end out this arvo, seperated the 'box from the engine and am preparing to refit the new engine in readiness for next sunday.

I gotta rob the tinware, the inlet manifold, dizzy, gennie stand, oil pump and front pulley from the existing engine tho as the engine i bought does not have these goodies and I dont have any spares right now.

I cant wait to give this thing a run at Symmons next Sunday!

L8tr M8
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could that front setup work in a bug to go to coilover set for wheel clearance even the rear could work.

whats the difference between your old and new motors?

Malcolm
Yep! If you wanted to you can adapt this kind of clobber to anything....however, its a matter of whether the results are worth the effort.
Im my case, it was more done out of vanity than anything else.....and because i can!!!! LOL.
In a road car,,, i couldnt see a lot of advantage other than to create clearance or something.

Pete
Altho the engines are both professionally prepared, the new engine is light years ahead in development. My old engine was ported in the old fashioned way when engines were expected to rev to perhaps 5500 at most and so the ports are very large in volume to produce good low down grunt.

The new engine produces much the same torque as the older one but the engine will make power way higher in the revs resulting in a wider torque curve.

This engine will happily rev to 6500 before valve float sets in and the porting done to the heads along with the shape of the valve seat cuts has been done to minimise the increase in port volume which tends to kill the engines up high in the revs.
Kinda sounds contradictory, big ports=less power up high, but in the Formula Vee scheme of things, bearing in mind the limitations of the crappy camshaft we have to use and the tiny 28mm PCI (36 horse) carby and the stock 40 horse valves, the way to get them to rev AND produce torque is to keep the port volumes down to a minimum.

The whole show changes when you factor in that different casting heads vary significantly in performance and performance potential as some of them do not take to beign ported at all whereas others are really good.

Good Vee engines are not just built from a box of good parts, they are arrived at, as a result of continuous development and constant fiddling in order to achieve a set of components that all work together to give a good balance between the width of the torque spread and where in the rev range the torque peak is produced.

You can make a 1200 Vee produce more horsepower on a dyno but at the expense of the width of the torque spread and bearing in mind we are hamstrung with a given set of diff and G/box ratios which means the high horsepower engine that looked so good on the dyno sheets is actually functionally useless on the track due to the precious short period of time the engine actually spends in that narrow sweet horsepower spot!
Not much point having all that go is the rest of the field pisses off out of sight while you are still winding up the rubber band!!!!!!!!!

L8tr M8
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very interesting. How much power does a good motor make?

Pete
It depends on who you talk to and how the dyno was operated as HP figures can be "manipulated" quite easily on a dyno by tweaking a few operating parameters whilst doing power pulls.

However, in the high 40 are is a good indication.

there are some pretty interesting claims of in excess of 50 HP around but its doubtful these figures are relevant. If so, it even more doubtful the engines are legal.
L8tr
E

I raced the now much modified Kestrel at Symmons Plains on Sunday.
With a fresh set of tyres on and a drying track, I managed to qualify 4th fastest on the first drive in almost 2 years.
I think I have arrived at something quite special with this car after actually being able to compare it against other Vees in a race.

The real standouts are braking and mid-corner speed.

The braking of the car is quite sensational. Immense power and feel in the pedal and the harder you brake the straighter the car pulls up. It doesnt shake its head, squirm around or dip its nose.
With the very limited bump travel on the frontend, the dive is only just noticeable now and this car simply looses speed at a rate i would never have imagined in such a regal and unfussed manner that in the end, I was not even bothering taking my hand off the gearshift under severe braking in the heat of competition! Doing that into the hairpin at Symmons is as close to suicide as you care to get but this car just goes straight. Even locking a wheel only manages to twitch the steering wheel!
If I am anywhere near another car approacing a braking area, i just move over, wait till I see his nose drop and then lean on the pedal and just drive on by then stand the car on its nose knowing I can turn it in so late. It really is that good!

The corner turn-in is stable and predictable but the real standout trait here is the sensational mid-corner grip and stability!
Never have i felt so comfortable in a Vee as this thing now and I know i have a lot more in me yet.
Remember, I have not driven the car for almost 2 years and I am no spring chicken anymore!
The car simply turns in with no fuss and settle down onto the outside tyres and just motors along out with no fuss, squirming or sudden false moves!
The corner exit speed is very good but the car is prone to long and graceful slides out of the turn if the throttle work is too savage. Its amusing to do and must look speccie from the sidelines but sadly it looses a fair bit of drive out.
Im not quite used to this trait tho but i modified the way I used the throttle and the drama went away. There is so much mid-corner speed that the car simply carries this speed on exit with less throttle and away it goes.
The nice thing is if it does go tail-happy, it does it in such an unhurried and graceful fashion that instead of dreading hanging it out as in the past, i found it amusing to occasionally do it on purpose out of the pit turn. Evidently, the circuit commentator was as amused as i was!!!

Overall, the car behaves in a very businesslike and "aloof" manner and the car is easy to drive and rides well. The rear suspension simply soaks up any bumps and just doesnt do anything wrong. It feels very tight but never harsh.

The frontend is a little less sophisticated in its ride qualitybut it is so grippy and "pointable" in any part of a turn that i was at pains to adjust anything.

My mates who were with me noted that the car appeared exceptionally fast thru the corners compared with the other cars and they also said i was simply eating them up under brakes but all was not well with the engine which was well down on power and i was left way behind on the long pulls along the straights. This is a mystery as my new engine is a proven high horsepower engine but not today!

My day was made a bit of a trial with a couple of gremlins in the form of a flicked off fanbelt in qualifying, punted off in race 1 by a poor fool who thought he could match the braking of the Kestrel....managed to hit me on the rear outside wheel on a left hand turn and spun me off the track to the right! Go figure some people.
Race 2 ended early when a loose bleeder nipple on a rear brake caliper emtied the master cylinder and i had no rear brakes. (WTF)
The final straw was in race 3 when working my way to P3, the engine front pulley simply fell apart. There was a disc of 1mm steel sitting on the crank with the bit that actually carries the belt sitting in the engine undertray........
Since a spare could not be found, it was time for the trailer.

However, Im simply over the moon with the results of the good laps I actually did and all the previous months of hard work have paid off with a car that is simply unbeatable under brakes, is able to be placed anywhere on the road on corner entry and is stable and grippy in fast turns and is an absolute pure pleasure to drive really fast!

When I get the lack of power mystery sorted and in the future, pare of a bit of weight off the car, it should be an absolute weopon!

Yeeeehar!!!!!!

L8tr all
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Heres a nice pix of the car running hard at Symmons Plains.



I have run into a bit of an engine breathing drama which causes the engine to chuff out oil past the front pulley.
Not a huge amount but enough to coat the front of the case and spray back a bit along the exhaust pipes.
My old engine always did this and i didnt pay too much attention to it really but when i described what was going on to my new engines builder he felt the breather system was way too small. After decsribing my system he nearly choked!
Interestingly, they are using around 30mm breathers to the catch can by modifying the existing filler post!

Sadly, I cannot run my existing catch can as there is no provisions for adding such a large inlet AND outlet along with 3 other breathers so ill have to fabricate a new custom tank to get the job done properly. Bah!

More later
E

[ Edited on 25/7/06 by tassupervee ]

Hey Tassy,Progressing nicely.Good stuff.:thumbJVLR

Another one.
This is going into the hairpin at the end of the front straight at Symmons

This type of shenaigans went on lap after lap. I could just sail up and past these two guys under brakes but theyd gobble me up again down the back straight.
Id get them again in the braking area at the end of that straight and they blow past me agin down the front straight and the cycle would repeat untill the dude in the yellow Trowbridge (#5) must've got fed up and put his elbows up and punted me off in the braking area at the end of the back straight after I rounded him up for the umpteenth time!
I have NO idea how I get punted off to the OUTSIDE of the track when I have passed him on the INSIDE and could see him in my mirrors....go figger.

I tried mounting my rack and peanut steering like that and had shocking bump steer.
After some reasearch, the rack needed to be mounted further forward, but I had built
the chassis around the rack, so I modified it to a center pivot on the rack
and extended the seering arms on the stubs.
Once the steering rods were at an angle that was closer to the trailing arms, the bump steer was minimal.
Funny thing is, on the stock short side(VW tie rod), the bump steer is less than on the side with the long tie rod!

Dave
yes your right.
If the rack is positioned right agains the back of the beam tube the bump steer is minimal. There are a couple of nasty arcs of movement working against us with a trailing arm beam suspension.
However, with the rack I am using there is little support in the rack body to handle radial loads which would be imposed on the rack during hard turning and id expect the rack bushes to slog out in short time.

However, in my application, I used that very handy bit of kit that Baja Wes made up which predicts bumpsteer based on the X,Y & Z co-ordinates of the steering rack.

After messing with the position of the rack I placed my rack in such a position that bumpsteer was minimal bearing in mind the very limited range of suspension travel I need to use in a Formula Vee.
In my case the suspension only bumps about 25mm and droop is about 10mm from static ride height.

The bump steer is no worse or better than the stock arrangement within these parameters but go outside this range of movement and the wheels simply turn by themselves!!
I did however optimise the position of the rack to have the least amount of bumpsteer actually during bump. The bumpsteer increases faitrly dramatically on droop tho.

Since it toes out on droop I dont really care and it has proven to be a non-event as far as any handling woes are concerned.

There is another very nifty rack that has come on the market after i purchased mine that operates in a similar fashion to a Camira rack and the tie rod ends pick up right at the centre of the rack. It is lightweight and compact in size and surprisingly cheap.
However, experience has shown right across the Formula Vee board that this kind of rack, altho really desireable, is not absolutely necessary.

However, it would be just the ticket for a road car that employs more wheel trave or a fast drag VW that needs some weight off!!!!!!!!!!l.

L8tr
E

tassupervee wrote:However, it would be just the ticket for a road car that employs more wheel trave or a fast drag VW that needs some weight off!!!!!!!!!!l.

L8tr
E

Hmmm, whatwas the brand? :thumb

http://www.chircoestore.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=320_626&osCsid=ec43f10ce26b937d78573cb8cd3299da

Part no 1 CPR415119 RACK & PINION - OFFROAD

Approx cost $170.23 US

L8tr
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[ Edited on 30/7/06 by tassupervee ]