After the previous attempt at a pedal box and steering column mount I went back to the PC and had another go at the exercise.
I was able to move the pedals up 50mm, forward and to the outside of the vehicle by 40mm, the master cylinders may be too close to the windscreen in this position but they can be spaced back from the pedal box if required.
In the new position the brake and clutch pedals have 7″ of travel which should be more than sufficient.
You’ll note compared to the previous example this version has no lightening holes and is only tack welded in at this stage. This is just in case a Mk III version turns out to be required.
The steel required for the new arrangement is actually a bit less than the previous version so the weight is about the same even without all the holes. the old version is shown below…
Next on the list of things to do was make a mock-up seat to use until I buy some real ones, this has helped in getting comfortable about what it actually feels like in the car and where various bits need to go as a results.
I’ve also started the radiator support frame, Initially this was in 25 x 1.2mm EA which just felt too flimsy as part of the function of the thing will be to support the front of the body of the car, so going for the next available material meant 25 x 3mm EA which probably is over the top.
One other valuable lesson to come out of this was TIG welding galvanised steel apart from being bad for your health, is more or less impossible, the galv pops and splatters contaminating the Tungsten almost immediately.
The pictures below show the pedal box and bottom steering column mounting taking shape and mounted, as you can see from the progress pictures these parts were cut from RHS 75 x 50 x 2.5.
Even just tacked in to the car its clear this arrangement should be plenty stiff enough in supporting the clutch and brake pedal.
The throttle pedal has yet to be designed so I’ve left two bolt holes to attach this as a sub assembly to the side of the main support structure.
Getting this all assembled into the car has revealed some issues with the design…
- The physical amount of travel that the pedals can travel through before reaching the end of the stroke of the master cylinders is huge (290mm, 11.4”), there’s no way I believe it could all be used in real life I am sure.
- The ends of the pedals are too close to the floor of the car, I had been worried that they were going to be too high, they need to be roughly 40mm higher.
- The face of the pedals is too far forward, allowing for the full range of motion on the pedal then when sitting in the expected driving position the pedal face too far forward by probably 100mm
- The steering wheel is too big at 370mm diameter and will probably need to be a ‘D’ type unit.
- The clutch pedal lightly interferes with the bottom steering column mount. This I should have realized this looking at the CAD model its clear they’re going to touch at some point in the movement.
Compounded with the above is the fact there’s not really that much room to move the pedal box further forward or higher due to the proximity of the master cylinders to the base of the windscreen.
I’ve a few ideas on sorting the pedal box issues so I don’t imagine the above will be impossible to overcome, I guess this is just typical of dozens of issues that are bound to come up through the course of the project.
To properly address most of these issues it’s become apparent I really need to source the seats I’m going to use in the car. Without these it’s going to be more or less impossible to 100% figure out where my seats are going to end up in the foot well.
As the structural completion of the frame nears the finish it’s been necessary to take the frame down off of the rotisserie setup to turn it fully upside-down to finish off the welding, this gave the opportunity to weigh the frame once more.
The current weight of the frame came in at 240lb (109Kg), this is as I said structurally complete though there are a lot of brackets and other bits to add to the frame yet.
I set the frame on blocks to five an idea of its final running height what’s shown below is roughly 1/2″ lower than where it’ll actually run at a minimum, depending upon how it goes on the street I may need to raise it some more 4″ ground clearance doesn’t look so much all of a sudden!
One other item of progress acchieved laely is the sourcing of some damper units which came off of eBay as so much of the project has. The guy has one set left to sell if you are interested.
All I seem to be doing at the moment is welding, welding and more welding.
Below is a typical evening in the garage, it’s gradually get there though.
After a long break in doing anything on the car due to a whole bunch of reasons, recently some more progress has been made.
I’m close enough to the end of the frame to actually count the bits to go and in the main structure there’s roughly a dozen tubes to go plus the 20+ plates and brackets identified for welding on to date (I’m sure that there’ll be a lot more before the finish).
In total theres over 190 individual tubes in the design, which seems like a lot, but I’d set high goals in the strength and rigidity departments, which I hope I’ll meet.
On the parts front, the pedal box and master cylinders have been source from Willwood and dampers from eBay (more details to follow on those once I get them in my hands).
It’s been over a month since the last post and basically nothings happened on the project since then.
Three weeks of business trip have limited the garage time to basically nil. On top of that we move house this week so I do not expect to be getting much done anytime soon.
A little while ago I got hold of a Tube Notching attachment for the pillar drill…
This has enabled me to get on with the parts of the frame using round tube, which is basically the roll frame roof.
The smaller dark blue tubes in the roof and coming vertically down at the front of the roof were used as a jig to get the windscreen frame into the correct location.
There’ll be a further X in the top of the roof to finish it off, amongst other tubes that still need to go into the frame.
I’ve now gone to the point where I’ve run out of material so this has called a stop to play, it’ll be a couple of weeks before any more progress is made, as yet another overseas trip is coming up.
