Formula Quantum: Where are the designers, builders, and drivers of this car?

I'm going to start a thread, the subject of which is an idea for a small formula car that I'd like to build. I've had this returning to my thoughts since the late 60's or early 70s when I saw an article in Popular Mechanics, IIRC about a plywood monocoque sports racer. I've searched for quite a while and can't find a single picture of it and wasn't able to access Popular Mechanics archives easily, so unfortunately, I can't show it to you.

Not long after I saw the article, I stayed after work one day and drew up my own plans for a very simple to build plywood monocoque autocross car that would use a bike engine. I ended up giving the plans to a young man at work who got very excited about building one for himself.

Since then, I've developed an interest in wooden boats. I'm not talking about 50ft. yachts, I'm talking about plywood "stitch and glue" 16ft. or less multi-purpose day sailers. After buying a set of plans for one called a Triad for it's ability to be rowed, sailed, and accept a small engine, I stumbled onto an old set of plans from Science & Mechanics called "Graefin 10", hence, my username. This is it:

I love the Colin Chapmanesque use of the lightest construction, using the fewest amount of parts possible. I have the boat hull cut out and stitched together but a long way from completion. If you'll notice, the basic hull consists of only 7 pieces of plywood: 2 halves of the bottom; 2 sides; a bow and transom, and a small deck. This, combined with attaching the seats to the sides gives the boat adequate ridgidity and strength. The sides and bottom sections both curve and twist, which also creates resistance to other forces. I wanted to build this boat not only to enjoy it's use but to have hands on experience with a plywood monocoque structure.

Like many of you, I have wanted to design and build a car from the ground up. So many of you have and are doing so right now that it's incredible. That's the main reason I spend so much time on this forum - to see what you've come up with next. About a year and a half ago I found this on the web: (refer to my avatar and these pictures)

They are pictures of two "Cycle Kart" builds going on. I got very excited about building one of those myself but over time talked myself out of it because even though the originators of the idea had great fun with them and many group "drives" and get togethers with their CKs and families, there's no venue in my part of the country for them.

This lead to the idea of building a more modern version and try to drum up some interest locally and hopefully in other parts of the country/world.

Forgive me for this being long, I'll continue later.

Graefin10 wrote: I've had this returning to my thoughts since the late 60's or early 70s when I saw an article in Popular Mechanics, IIRC about a plywood monocoque sports racer. I've searched for quite a while and can't find a single picture of it and wasn't able to access Popular Mechanics archives easily, so unfortunately, I can't show it to you.

Not this one, is it?

I know the bike dealer in St. Louis who unearthed this thing. I could barely wrap my mind around it when I first saw it.

cycle carts are cool. wicked cool.

BUT

if i am gonna build something like that i would wanna be able to legally drive it on the road. THAT would be the coolest.

Maybe i am missing the point

Ever since I made the decision that I would in fact like to have a go at designing and building a small formula car I've been searching the web for ideas, parts and materials needed to get started. I also downloaded Google Sketch-up and attempted to do the design there. I kept running into problems I coulnd't solve so gave up on it and intend to set up a drawing board to do it the old school way. I wanted to do it on the computer primarily so I could share it with anyone who might be interested.

At first I considered doing a car from the late 30s up until the advent of the mid-engine revolution. I want this car to be quick enough to require rollover protection and those cars just don't look right like that. Plus, most of those too have to have wire wheels to look right and I couldn't figure out a way to accomplish that without spending too much $. So, my next though was to graduate to a scaled down replica of F1 cars from my favorite era like this:

Then, a post about this showed up on the GRM forum:

That clinched it! I've decided to build a similar sized and shape car with a drive train of approx. 250cc and a max. for the first one of no more that 20hp. I've thought it over for a long time and that makes sense for many reasons. To me anyway. Many of you would be bored to tears with it, I'm sure. However, you, like me, have probably had times at the local "slick track" in the slow karts when you laughed till you cried over the "fierce" competition.

I welcome any and all ideas on this subject and my hope is that if one or more of you will talk to me about the idea It will help move my project forward.

BTW, why Formula Quantum? Simply because it popped into my head the instant I mentally asked the question of what is it called.

Formula Quantum: any of the very small increments or parcels into which many forms of energy are subdivided. That'll do for a project name. I googled it and it turns out that an HMod car from the late 50s was called "Quantum".

alex wrote:

Graefin10 wrote: I've had this returning to my thoughts since the late 60's or early 70s when I saw an article in Popular Mechanics, IIRC about a plywood monocoque sports racer. I've searched for quite a while and can't find a single picture of it and wasn't able to access Popular Mechanics archives easily, so unfortunately, I can't show it to you.

Not this one, is it? No, It was considerably more modern looking than that. I know the bike dealer in St. Louis who unearthed this thing. I could barely wrap my mind around it when I first saw it.

CarKid1989 wrote: cycle carts are cool. wicked cool. BUT if i am gonna build something like that i would wanna be able to legally drive it on the road. THAT would be the coolest. Maybe i am missing the point

This idea definitely isn't for everyone. It's for the few crazies like me who have a burning desire to design and build something and their circumstances have them greatly limited. It's definitely NOT intended for the street. At one time I considered making it a three wheeler so that it COULD be street driven. Stay tuned and you may totally loose interest but soon you'll see the point.

Graefin, did you see my thread about Formula Kludge?

stroker wrote: Graefin, did you see my thread about Formula Kludge?

No, but I'd like to. Got a link? I'll google it and see if it comes up.

I always wanted to get a Hot Buggy but alas it was not to be.

Hot Buggy World Rally Kart

In reply to FlightService:

I'm glad I started this thread. It sure has been informative. I've heard/seen "off roading" events on TV of course but never in person. Not too many desert races in NE TN.

Stroker, I haven't had time to finish reading about FK.

In reply to Graefin10:

so I'm assuming you found the link?

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/formula-kludge/38588/page1/

So is this something your actually building or is this more like a proof of concept deal?

In reply to Graefin10:

Desert races? Your in NE TN as well? Cool!!! I am seriously thinking of a Locost. Then it evolves into using a RX-8 as a donor and then it becomes cost prohibitive. I also thought one of these would be easy to do.

I love, love, love the thought of a Bike engine car but the issues of no reverse and a weaker than required clutch is a concern, especially for street use.

Who am I kidding I need to clean out my garage first.

In reply to FlightService:

I've thought a lot about the no reverse thing and I think the simplest solution would be to use the lightest starter you can find, put a tiny pulley on it, a large pulley on the axle. A reverse handle would be in the driver's comp. that you release, & pull back toward you. When the starter takes up the slack from the loose belt, the pressure activates a switch which send power to the starter relay. Result, go backwards. Release the pressure and lock the handle back in place. The belt retainers would hold the belt so that it's not in contact with either pulley when it's not in use. Should work fine as long as you don't have to back up a steep grade.

Stroker, I found the thread but have only had time this evening to read about half of it. I'd love to see something like that happen. The diversity would make for some interesting racing.

nicksta43 wrote: So is this something your actually building or is this more like a proof of concept deal?

Like I said in the original post it's something I've wanted to do for years. I started this thread to see how the concept would be received. I hoped that there might be a person or two to help me make the final decisions on the drivetrain, specifications, that sort of thing. I'm in a situation where I have very little time to actually begin right now and that is, I decided a few months ago to take over acting as primary care giver for my 89 year old mother. Over the last few weeks I've been able to find some fairly reliable help with that so I can begin to have a little personal time. The next step will be to prepare a work place here. There are a lot of obstacles in the way, but isn't that always the case? It has been for me. Still though, I've finished a lot of personal restorations and prepped a couple of autoX cars that did well on the local scene where I happened to live at any given time.

I keep expecting someone to ask me WTH I'd even consider such a project in plywood in the year 2012. It's simple, wood working tools are all I have to work with here. My dad had a fairly well equipped workshop when he passed away in 01. For the most part, I will try to keep the metal work to a minimum. Kind of a strange way of thinking since I've spent most of my life repairing rusty old cars. I'll probably end up bringing at least one of my welders here. I'll see how it goes. It's hard to predict everything. I've got a lot of ideas about how to go about this.

WHOA!

Screw the cars. I'm going to make that boat.

Where are you in East Tennessee? I am in Morristown

There was a guy who was selling a mid-engined Hayabusa kit car about 10 years ago. He'd worked out a simple linkage activated by something like a handbrake that (dis)engaged a starter motor with a gear that worked as a reverse. Supposedly it worked slicker than snot on a doorknob.

FlightService wrote: Where are you in East Tennessee? I am in Morristown

Erwin

HOLY CRAP, I was raised in Erwin. PM sent!!!

Oxford Bookes FSAE car, folded and bonded Aluminum honeycomb. I love this car. Big single thumper :D

Formula put put is cool

we were working on a carbon fiber moncoque at Clemson a few years back but it was cost prohibitive.

I woke up at 3:00 again this morning and immediately my FQ brain fired up. I "saw" a mental picture of what I'll refer to as a "fully articulated live axle rear suspension". Since deciding to use a kart rear axle assy. I've begun to think of it as the same as a regular passenger car's live axle. So I sketched it out in a notebook and then decided to have another shot at Google Sketch-up. I pulled it up and it offered the latest version so I loaded it up and located my first sketch of the first attempt to draw the side profile of a generic formula car. I really did LOL when I saw it. It looks like something I did in first grade and colored with crayons.

So, I opened a new page and all was going well until I started trying to include circles with rectangles. I ended up with a mess again and moved on. When I get time, I'm going to start studying the tutorials. There's still no guarantee that my old school brain can grasp it without an 8 year old tutor. You never know though . . .

I've seen a lot of current off road buggies that have a quite sophisticated looking front suspension but the rear basically works like a motorcycle's swing arm. Often they just have one rear coilover assy. but most seem to have two. Watching videos of them in use seems to indicate that it's not a bad solution off-road, but how would that do on paved roads? Let's say you're driving down the road in your pick up truck and the LR tire drops into a pot hole and the RR tire hits a bump in the road at the same time. What's going to happen? Seems to me that if it had that "swing arm" style suspension the entire rear axle would rise and part of the load would be transferred to the LF, right? Let's say you had zero roll front suspension. You could turn that sucker over. So the fully articulated idea comes from not wanting that kind of load transfer to occur. It would behave like your pick up does. The LR would drop into the hole and the RR would rise, still transferring some of the load to the LF but if my understanding is correct, not as much. The question is, how to design a system that will work out of the box.

Part of this exercise for me is to built and experiment with a push rod suspension system. I've been studying what I can find on-line but haven't found enough info. yet to even put it on paper. Let's face it, there's a lot going on there. How much camber, caster, and ackerman steering. How to accomplish anti-dive and squat that works. I had an 01 VW Jetta Wolfsburg Ed. that squatted F&R under hard braking instead of diving a lot. That's what I want.

Another subject I've been trying to understand is zero-roll designs. I THINK I see it but there are some subtle details that I'm not sure about. How well would zero roll work with a live axle? If you'll notice the pictures of the Hyper Pro car in a previous post, it has zero roll up front and a live rear axle in the rear but must be what i call "fully articulated" other wise why would it have a rear anti-roll bar? So it must work. If you're interested, explore their web-site carefully because they post a lot of very interesting pictures of the car, it's frame, driver's postion, etc. Worth checking out.

BTW, I did some metric to english conversions for some of the Hyper Pro's specs. and this is what I got: dry wt. = 407.8 lb.; length = 90.5 in.; width = 55.1 in.; height to top of roll bar = 36.6 in.; ground clearance = 1.57 in.; top speed = approx. 125. Cost per mhp = , well never mind that.

In reply to RXBeetle:

Thanks for posting the pictures of the FSAE car. That sort of thing is where many of my ideas come from. I would have lost my mind if that had been available for me when I was in college. I majored in IT and did build some projects for my bug-eye Sprite for class projects. I built my own bolt-in roll bar and made a set of steel reverse wheels out of Sprite centers and reversed Corvair rims. The car was International School Bus Yellow and the only spray bomb I had when I painted the wheels was medium green. My buddies loved it. One of them ended up talking me into a trade for his Cosmic wheels.