Nocones $2020 challenge build thread

I’m taking notes. Thanks for making videos. 

nocones said:

Suspension design is complete.  Tonight it was on to seat position mockup.  

It's a mixed bag.  I fit, I think I can maintain 2 seats.  It's going to basically be like riding in a Formula Ford.  I did decide to raise the body 1.5".  

It's nearly time to start chassis.  That's like real fabrication.

I'm editing the video for the suspension design also.  Hope to have it done early this week.

 

I am really interested to see how you fabricate a seat to match what you've mocked up as this is what i need to fit in my Fiero project.

So driving position is finalized.  Chassis will have a 3" rise beneath the feet area.  Here is the eye level view.  

I decided to recontour the hood area.  The suspension wants to live outside of the body.  This little pie shaped cut raises the front by almost 2.5" and gives tons more space for A-Arms, shocks, and brake master cylinders.

Next step..  this evening.  Is chassis fabrication!  I will likely be bending the main hoop.  

Brake master cylinders are a discussion point.  I want to run Willwood floor mount pedals.  But they cost 25% of the challenge budget.  That's not going to work.  I think I'm going to make the car work with the Subaru MC with power brakes..  and then convert it after the challenge.  I may look at building a pedal cluster that's manual and uses the Subaru 15/16 MC.  Or if anyone has a line on cheap Race pedal set??

In reply to nocones :

I have a number of old single master cylinders and a NOS Wilwood dual master cylinder pedal I'm not doing anything with, feel free to PM me if you want info/photos of any of it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to nocones :

I have a number of old single master cylinders and a NOS Wilwood dual master cylinder pedal I'm not doing anything with, feel free to PM me if you want info/photos of any of it.

Dude, you're like the patron saint of challenge builds. Good on Ya!

In reply to nocones :

I finally had time to watch both vids, these are great!

I'm just a redneck hack but could you have bent the upper A arm so that it cleared the hood edge?  I assume that as long as the pickup points are the same place then physics doesn't care if the arm is bent or straight.

In reply to Stampie (FS) :

That's a thought it's a good one.  I think the nose extension is going to work and make the high ball joints work just fine but I will keep the idea of just putting a bend on the end in my back pocket.  

Chassis Fabrication has officially started!  I asembled my JD2 model 3, and promptly realized that it was hard to use manually.  I bent 1" using skill and cunning without a big elaborate mount but the roll bar tubes were to much.  I would either have to build a big robust stand that I could get into or convert it to hydraulic.  The hydraulic conversion kits cost ~$100 and are built for a $80 harbor frieght cylinder I don't own.  But you know what I do own...  An Engine hoist.  And it has a really long stroke hydraulic cylinder.  So instead of spending a few hours building a robust stand, I spent that time building a hydraulic adapter.  And here it is in all it's Gnarl.  

Total Cost $12

-3x2.5" exhaust clamps.  The nice ones with thick metal and 3/8" u-bolts

-a piece of scrap 1/4" x 2" HR Plate 24" long.  

-3" piece of 1" OD x .125 wall DOM

-2" piece of 1.25 OD x .065 wall DOM

And then I put it to work

And made this!

Fit is tight as possible.  O/A width is 42" and height is 37".  I'm very pleased with how it went.  I used the "Template bend" method described by JD2 on their website.  I filmed how I did it so again hopefully that will help someone.  I think that's going to be the end of the next episode.  Fabricating the seat buck, front suspension pickups, modifying the nose and bending the main hoop.  

The halo tubes will bend up slightly before going forward to the A-pillars since they will basically be right over the drivers helmet.  

I started with a 117" piece of metal and cut exactly 6.5" off of each leg.  I will trim it a further 2" for the chassis tube.  So the main hoop will be right at 100". 

I paid $6.50/ft for the 1-5/8 .095 4130 (NHRA requires .083 which would of been $4.55/ft) .  I'm going to keep track of these in the open for fun.  I want to include the NHRA spec cost because the spreadsheet will do it for me and if someone else was going to do this they wouldn't need to use the heavier gauge.  

Total Chassis so far - 8.33' -  $54.16 (NHRA spec $37.91)

I dig your hydraulic conversion on the bender!

I went ahead and paid the man for mine. SWAG Off Road mount and HF cylinder because air over hydraulic and, I mean, what if I need to use the bender and the hoist at the same time??!!?!?

nice looking hoop and i like the bender solution

In reply to gumby (Forum Supporter) :

I am not prepared for that emergency.  I feel like I'm tube bending with Jigsaw*.

"Dan...  Da..  daaa...  Dan.  I have created a hydraulic atachment for your bender.  It uses the same hydraulic cylinder as your Hoist.  Do you either lift things or bend tubing.  The choice is yours.  Make your choice".

*Hopes you get the reference to "Living with Jigsaw" Youtube videos.

Have you seen this Fiat 600?

https://www.tubes.rs/Cars/Racing/Fiat600Abarth/UltimateFiat600.htm

Reminds me, in a way, of what you're up to . . . at least visually.

I've never tig-welded 4130 tubing.  How's it differ from regular mild steel?  You have any special procedures?

More chassis progress.  I cut and located the 3 main chassis cross bars these are out of the 2x2 .083 that makes the bottom chassis plane NHRA legal.  

The biggest accomplishment was that something has been (tack)welded.  That means chassis fab had really really started.  

I also bent the right forward tube.  This piece has bends in 2 dimensions at a 35* angle from each other.  I'm pleased to announce that It is only 1/4" off target.  It sticks forward of the intended base area by a bit because the angle between bends (tube rotation) should of been a bit less.  I can either move the cross tube forward or just have it hit on the side rail.  It's not a big deal either way.  

Visibility is as good as I could do.  I don't want to cut the inside of the body out so there will be both pillars.  I could cut the inner skin and push it out further.  I'll consider it before I finalize everything but I think it's going to be ok the way it is.  I'm not sure why I want to keep the inner skin but I just do right now.  

Ok so that brings up to date.  

Tube used is now

4130 - 161.5"@ 6.50/ft = $120.79

2x2 - 107" @ 1.67/ft = $14.89

Total = $135.68

Ok now a question I have.  Do I need to run plates are the termination of the roll bar?  NHRA seems to not care (And Robbie didn't run them on his), NASA/SCCA say the cage should be integrated into tube chassis.  Does that mean no plates?  I may throw plates in to be sure but..  weight and cost. 

Welding 4130 is very similar to Mild.  Some people stress relieve the welds by heating the joints post welding.  Apparently that's not recommended as much as it used to be.  The interesting part is I will have a lot of Mild to 4130.  Apparently that is just a simple weld though I want to make sure I shouldn't be using a special filler rod.  I will let you know what I find out.  

ER80S-D2 is the droid you are looking for.

Pretty sure the nhra does not require plates if you are going directly to frame. At least that's how I interpret it.

Re pedal box, why not diy? Seems a design like this wouldn't be too hard to fab up:

Dig the use of 2x2--that's GT1 (however defunct that is) spec, which is awesome.  That said, I'd be wary of crush and warp (in the case of the teakettle pouring up) without plating the mount points with some .120, unless your round tubes are thin-wall chromoly (like tubing sizes, as opposed to mating a hammer to tinfoil).  NHRA says many things are okay, but SCCA and NASA differ broadly in many structure areas . . .

Just to keep it real, my own standards are not those of anyone who knows safety or engineering (just what I can get away with).

Edit:  Ah, I see you are using chromo, so yeah, there is tubing wall parity.  Cool!

I think I'm going to run plates just to be safe.  I have .108 thick Chromoly sheet that is $11/sq-ft.  I need to cap the cross bars anyway so I will probably make a 2.5x3 long plate with a 2" 90 to put under each vertical tube.  That way I can weld them to the tubes, cap my ends, and weld them to the chassis nodes for ~12 sq-in which is ~$1 a piece.  

Last night I spent some time pondering how to integrate the pedal box area with the front suspension.  With the pedal box 3" above the chassis bottom I had this wierd 2.5" offset that I needed to make to pick up the inboard ball joints.  So I decided to make the pedal box 5" above the chassis bottom.  This improves the situation at the front suspension and improves the seat layout.  It takes 2" of verticle space away from the front beneath the dash but I still have ample shin/knee clearance as the dash is far enough forward.  I can while seated bring my heels straght back and my knee clears the dash by a good margin (Better than most Formula type cars that require you to pull your legs out of the footwell while you lift your hips).  Getting out will be pull your feet back by your butt and use your legs to drive you up out of the car.  So I spent some time changing the build table around to accomodate this.  Then to verify that I would have ample footbox width I build the footbox side rails.  I also fabricated the 2nd forward downtube.  The almost match.  The Left side leaves about a half inch larger gap.  I'm going to tolerate this as I highly doubt I would do a better job the second time.

Finally I finalized the way I intend to run the side tubes through the cockpit.  I originally intended to just run a straight tube, however reading the NHRA rules I thought a strict inspector may challenge that the tube is "bellow and beside" the legs as the seats would actually have some portion beneath the bottom of this angle piece.    I did some more thinking and realized that If I make this 2 tubes joined I can run the cross car seat support at the bend and solve a lot of problems at 1 time.  So here is a sketchup ROUGH outline of what we are working towards in the cockpit area.

*Note not all tubes are shown some are just black lines, some are ignored.  

In other news the chassis looks exactly like Darth Vader's Helmet.  With the planned radiator placement it even has the cape on the back..  Pre-body installation test events are going to be hilarious in this thing..  Emporer your angry little LMP car is here.

Tube used is now

4130 - 223"@ 6.50/ft = $120.79

2x2 - 155.75" @ 1.67/ft = $21.68

Total = $142.47

This is awesome and I've been following the video updates on YouTube as well. I have no suspension design knowledge so it's all very mind boggling to me. 

Edit: You do a great job explaining what you're doing as you go, so the boggling is kept to a minimum. I was blown away by the string computer. 

I'm looking forward to continued updates!

Dang!

If this don't have an empire strikes back vibe when done, I'm going to be seriously disappointed. Cause now all i can think about is darth vader....

Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:

If this don't have an empire strikes back vibe when done, I'm going to be seriously disappointed. Cause now all i can think about is darth vader....

To this end if you could find/make the electronic controls/switches look the panel on Darths chest that would be sweet.

Unfortunately the theme has already been decided.  It is sadly not star wars.

Not a bunch of progress last few days.  I did cut the dash out.  I didn't want to but I realized that I can't very well make tubes pass through it and still remove the body for welding.  I intend to make it bolt in.    

gumby (Forum Supporter) said:

ER80S-D2 is the droid you are looking for.

I ordered some it should be here next week.  For now I will switch to doing tack welds with the TIG with ER70S that I have.