that last pic is sweet. looks like you just stuck tires on the sides of a motor. oh wait..
that last pic is sweet. looks like you just stuck tires on the sides of a motor. oh wait..
Liking this... 
Hey everybody, my name is Aaron and I just wanted to introduce myself. First time posting on the board, first time building a rear-engine N600. Bryce and I are building this car in my garage, I'll be posting on here from time to time (along with Bryce) to answer questions and give updates on our progress.
Welcome Aaron. I'm curious how you handle the rear suspension, that's what tripped me up.
Dan
914Driver wrote: Welcome Aaron. I'm curious how you handle the rear suspension, that's what tripped me up. Dan
It's going to trip us up for a while too. It's a modified Civic AWD setup, I think the best way to describe it is a trailing multi-link. When we get a little further we'll post some detailed pictures. We've just passed the proof of concept phase and are in the "OK, now make it happen" phase.
Grudge wrote: Hey everybody, my name is Aaron and I just wanted to introduce myself. First time posting on the board, first time building a rear-engine N600. Bryce and I are building this car in my garage, I'll be posting on here from time to time (along with Bryce) to answer questions and give updates on our progress. - Aaron
Welcome to the neighborhood. I like your work so far!
Tom Heath wrote:Grudge wrote: Hey everybody, my name is Aaron and I just wanted to introduce myself. First time posting on the board, first time building a rear-engine N600. Bryce and I are building this car in my garage, I'll be posting on here from time to time (along with Bryce) to answer questions and give updates on our progress. - AaronWelcome to the neighborhood. I like your work so far!
maybe GRM could add a rookie of the year award to the challenge. this could be a contender.
bluej wrote: maybe GRM could add a rookie of the year award to the challenge. this could be a contender.
Thanks for the encouraging words. In the spirit of full disclosure I should point out that this is technically Bryce's project since he's financing it and doing most of the research, part scrounging, etc., I'm mostly along for the ride, though this is a new type of project for both of us in terms of fabrication and end goal.
I think I had a hand in convincing him to cut up this nearly rust-free N600 (sorry purists), and sweetened the deal by offering my garage, tools, experience and fabrication skills (or lack of).
Very cool project.
I can think of multiple reasons why this DOESNT make sense but after our recent discussion about a 1g Insight that wont need its gas motor the thought did occur to me of putting a turbo 1.0 3cyl in the 600.
This will be easier, more convenient, and make more power, though!
Keep up the good work :)
i love those things... super awesome build man... this is what makes me miss the old forums readers ride section :(
always thought an n600 would be awesome with a liter bike engine... this just tops that so much
We are on a hold pattern for the tubing in the rear until we get some DOM to make a roll hoop out of, so in the meantime we started figuring out what we want to do with the front suspension. This was perhaps the hardest part of the job to do so far...not physically, but mentally. We winced more than once cutting this fantastic stamping up, but had to keep reminding ourselves that we would rebuild it even better.
Before:
After:
The metal removed worked out to about 30 pounds total, definitely the strongest part of the car, previously! The shell, now that it's totally stripped to the bare minimum amount, is just under 300 pounds. Nowhere to go but up from here!
We are using the Civic knuckles, control arms, and dampers for now. The knuckles are flipped left to right in order to change it from a rear steer to a front steer. If we stuck with a rear steer setup, the steering rack would be way into the passenger compartment.
As you can see, we had to remove quite a bit of material to give the tires enough room to move up high enough and have room to steer. The driver side still has some more clearancing required; we're going to get into the pedal area, so we are going to have to carve that area out pretty precisely as we figure out exactly what clearance we need.
We are really trying to keep the stock steering rack because it's about as miniature as any steering rack I've ever seen. Since the stock steering arms were also a front steer, this works out perfectly with flipping the knuckles left to right and converting the Civic knuckles from a rear steer to a front steer for packaging reasons. It looks like the tie rod ends might even work without any changes, very lucky on that. Check out how tiny this thing is!
The forward suspension attachment/arms is still up in the air, but if we use the Civic style setup it will make for some decent radiator clearance. The Civic had a relatively new looking radiator in it, which will have plenty of cooling capacity.
Still need to get some DOM to do the roll hoop, but until then there's plenty to be doing. Who am I kidding, there's a metric crapton to be doing.
Bryce
Box flares!!!!! 
Great progress so far. Keep us posted!
This will be so much awesomer WITHOUT box flares!
ww wrote: This will be so much awesomer WITHOUT box flares!
Yep, I hope you are able to tuck it all under a stock body.
<--- Is contemplating just how many Benny's he'll have to pack in his suitcase in order to drag this back from Gainesville to Atlanta.
Nashco wrote:
Heh, I just noticed that every other vehicle in that lot is a truck. You guys sure look out of place...
About the alternator: any reason you couldn't drive it off of the cam pulley?
just something you may have already thought about... but most likely your ackermann steering geometry is going to be "messed up" by simply swapping the knuckles from one side to the other...
Random link with basic explanation...
http://www.smithees-racetech.com.au/ackerman.html
But then again it might not hurt a thing at all given how radically everything else is changing..... and you might already have a plan in place... But just checking... I have seen this mistake made before..
Curmudgeon wrote: About the alternator: any reason you couldn't drive it off of the cam pulley?
Nope, you can run it off anything...even the axle if you wanted to, as long as you have the right pulley ratios. First attempt is to leave it on the crank.
ronholm wrote: ..... and you might already have a plan in place...
Don't worry, Honda suspensions don't need Ackerman adjustments, they're not McStrut based.
Just kidding!
Bryce
ronholm wrote: and you might already have a plan in place... But just checking... I have seen this mistake made before..
Bryce is going to "measure" and "do some math" and "do things correctly", sheesh...
He's taking all the fun out of it 
We've been trying to keep busy with little details over the last week. We're waiting for DOM for the roll bar and a die for the tubing bender, so we are focusing on fab work we can be doing in the meantime.
I've been wanting to get the tarboard off the floor, and I've never tried the dry ice trick that's fabled all over the internet. The other guys thought it was an old wives tale, but I had some faith that it would work. I got a few pounds of dry ice, crushed it, spread it. The tarboard instantly started making a popping sound as it contracted and snapped itself loose from the floor. Totally awesome! It worked like a charm, what would have taken us several hours the "hard" way took about 20 minutes with the dry ice. Here's what we pulled out...note the huge sheets of tarboard that would have been about quarter sized without the dry ice trick.
All the gray parts used to be covered in tarboard:
We weighed all the stuff we pulled out...8 more pounds!!! I was surprised how much weight it was, considering the only stuff we pulled was enough to cover that tiny floor. We've been trying to be very weight-concious, keeping track of everything we add and remove as we go.
We have started the cardboard template frenzy. With all of the sheetmetal and tube work required on this car, we'll be going through LOTS of cardboard. Here's the beginning of the roll bar tie in:
We spent a bunch of time making brackets today and I did a little busy work making some more room for the left front tire by shifting the pedals over a couple of inches. The dimple dies AND the bead roller got used today, I'll get some pictures in the next update.
Bryce
looking good keep the updates coming.
Still waiting on tubing and dies, still doing busy work in the meantime. Today Che and Ethan helped us out and we continued stripping the chassis, cleaning metal, building patch panels, etc. It's a little time consuming, but all of the new panels are seeing lots of TLC. Here's Aaron's DIY dimple dies that we're using in the arbor press:
The beginning of the roll bar tie in:
Aaron is just about done with all the rear patch/brace panels in the rear...trying to turn this left over floppy sheet metal into something that we can tie some structure back into:
We also shaved about two more pounds of junk off the car...that's ten pounds lost since we thought we couldn't get any lighter. Have to keep thinking about every ounce! I continue using Jessica's..ahem..borrowed food scale to keep track of weight. This diligent focus on weight is about the exact opposite as the Fiero project, where the focus was just to make it work as quickly and easily as possible. We're definitely getting to the point of diminishing returns on the shell, I think we had about three man hours into the couple of pounds we lost today...the intent was mostly cosmetic cleanup with the stuff we pulled today.
Finally, I am almost done relocating the pedal set to make a couple more inches of room for the left front tire. We're trying to reuse the factory pedal set, master cylinder, steering rack, steering column, etc. and so far it's looking pretty good. Here's some before and after of the pedal location...note that these pedals aren't tolerant of some size 12 boots, pretty narrow setup!
Before:
After:
It'll be a few more days until we can work on the car again, life keeps getting in the way.
Bryce
Nashco wrote:Curmudgeon wrote: About the alternator: any reason you couldn't drive it off of the cam pulley?Nope, you can run it off anything...even the axle if you wanted to, as long as you have the right pulley ratios. First attempt is to leave it on the crank. Bryce
I tried to find a reference for the alternator.
Anyway- this is a challenge car, why do you need an alternator? Longest you need to run at once is like 2-3 min for an autocross run. If you plan on charging the car between runs- you should be ok. It's not as if you have any power hogs on the car...
sorta the anti-hybrid then.... :)
My thought was running the alternator off the cam would make for more room at the bottom. I'd keep the alternator to make sure the EFI fuel pump, ECU etc had proper voltage.
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