CamT's build thread

Hi Cam,
Sorry have not been keeping up the details of your build, looks like you are getting lots done! Forgive me if you have already addressed this -

Make sure your suspension alignment is exactly where you want it and of course the same is true for the body alignment. All this to be sure those cool fenders you're making actually fit the way you intend in the end.
 
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Thanks Mesa - the spider has already been set and my suspension is pretty close. Both front and rear are currently at -1 deg camber though I think I’ll go a bit more negative before I’m finished.
 
One other thing I wished I'd done while making my fenders was to use some spacers on the wheel side just to have clearance options if needed them down the road. Cheap insurance.
 
I fabricated a fiberglass duct for my radiator discharge. The only other build I've seen employ such a device is Howard's. As Howard did, I used cardboard and foam board to construct my plug, along with a bunch of packing tape.

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From the side:

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I didn't need a whole lot of strength or stiffness from the duct itself so I only used a single layer of cloth and 2 layers of chopped strand mat for the main body. I used cloth and additional mat in critical areas for increased strength.

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A little bit of trimming ...

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Installed ...

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Here's an angle which shows what the curve looks like inside the duct:

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And here's a very simplistic 2D representation of what I (hope) is happening inside the duct:

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The most popular configuration I've seen in my reviews of other builds is to simply not run a duct or heat shield at all. The factory offers a fiberglass heat shield which helps to protect the foot box from getting exposed to all the hot air coming out of the radiator. I felt using a duct was critical - so much so that I located my battery in the rear of the car just so I had enough room to put this duct up front.

As usual, I have more photos and a more thorough discussion of why I chose to go down this path at my blog:

28. Full of hot air – Cam's Superlite SLC
 
Cam

Could not tell but at the radiator, is the width of the discharge diverted inside the radiator hose attachment tubes?

Do you have a crossbar factory bar on the vertical walls supporting the radiator? I have one that I would have to remove to do something like you have done.
 
Hey Dan -

Yes, the duct width is such that it sits within the radiator attachment tubes.

I am not currently running the cross bar you are referring to. My car came with that as well but I’ve removed it for now (it was originally installed where my rear most brake reservoir is mounted). I haven’t placed my front splitter supports yet and I wanted this cross bar to be located near where these will attach at the radiator box.

I’ll try to locate it in an area where the duct is fairly tall to give the airflow time to divert around the bar. Since it’s relatively small I don’t expect it’ll disturb the flow too badly.
 
I've been pretty busy these past few days working on body modifications to the center spider - where the heck did that spider term come from anyway?

All these mods are optional but I felt were important to making the car function or look better. I've drawn inspiration from several other builders - thanks to those who've come before me to chart out some of this stuff so it's available to later builders.

I believe Allan originally came up with front wheel well shields to help protect the coolant plumbing from being damaged by kicked up road debris.

The area being protected:
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The shield:
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And the shield in place:
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It's still a bit ugly right now but some trimming and a little more working and that's all that's really needed. These shields are completely hidden once the front wheels are on so they don't need to be pretty.

I saw this mod while going through Bill's build thread. The front wheel vent is completely open along the interior surface. It's hidden from view when standing from the side, but it's a great place for water, dirt, and other crap to get into the bodywork - it's basically in direct line of fire from anything being flung from the front wheels.

So I sealed it up!

View from the wheel's perspective:
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All sealed up:
aBqzlZV.jpg


Howard gets credit for the next 2 mods:

The side intakes have always seemed oddly small to me. The lines don't quite look right because it seems to me the lower edge of the intake should butt up against the diagonal line that runs front to back. Howard had a great how-to in his build thread for how he modified his intake.

Charting out the cut lines:
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About what the intake will look like once complete:
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Patched up and ready for some fiberglassing!
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Frank-intake complete!
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A couple shots:
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The lines flow much better and the front vent and rear intake are now in harmony.

Last one's not too sexy, a recontour of the rear wheel well. My rear tire makes contact with the forward edge of the wheel well - requiring the use of a jack to remove the tire when the suspension's at full droop. It's a pain in the butt; this subtle modification will (hopefully) be enough to eliminate the need for a jack. I'll need to get everything all mounted back up to be sure, fingers crossed I made a big enough cut!

mdTGewV.jpg


A lot more discussion and photos on my blog:
29. Body mods – all the kids are doing it these days – Cam's Superlite SLC
 
A major milestone has been accomplished - I've started the process for getting my car registered and legally on the road! Since I'm registering the car in California, we have a special process for component car registration. The beauty of it is it allows one to build a car and NOT have to SMOG the car every other year, as you would with just about any other car. I've got my SPCN #! The only bummer is the paperwork I received so I can bring the car down for inspection by the CHP is incomplete - they forgot to fill it out before giving it to me! I've made another appointment to head down to the DMV to get the paperwork signed off then I'll be off to the CHP for inspection - after my car is completed. That'll be a few weeks yet I imagine. Thanks to Howard and Rob for giving me advice on how to navigate the SB100 process.

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! Now that most things that are going into/onto the car have been placed and routed, I've pretty much got whatever holes I'm going to drill into the chassis drilled. Time to take everything apart and add the sound damping and heat shielding! It's a total pain in the butt to do it this way, but I didn't want to be drilling and tapping through all that stuff so I held off installing them as long as I could. Now that all the holes have been made, I can modify the sound damping/heat blocker as necessary to clear the holes. I believe I'm using more sound and heat blocker than just about any other build I've seen. I think Mark's GTR comes close as he's following the same philosophy I am - heat shield, sound damper, sound absorber. We also happen to be using much of the same stuff from Second Skin. I ran a short test to see what the tub would sound like with and without damper added - pretty surprising difference given I only added one sheet of Damplifier to the tub. It gives me high confidence all the extra weight I've added to the car will make a difference.

Video of the test is loaded on my latest blog post, link below.

I've also been spending the last week or so working on my center console. I had originally intended to have it upholstered/covered in fabric but based on feedback from my Father-in-Law it seemed I would be best served doing it on my own if I cared to hold a schedule. Seems little odd jobs like mine would be on the back burner and would be super low priority. I didn't want to slow down my progress so I decided to dip my toes into carbon skinning.

Carbon skinning is laying a sheet of carbon down on a panel and applying resin to lock it into place. I think it ends up producing a much better part from an aesthetic point of view. Holding the RCR vacuum formed carbon piece next to the skinned piece I made and there's no comparison - skinning produces a FAR superior (aesthetically) carbon fiber piece. It's a lot more resource intensive (and wasteful), but as I said, I think it creates the most visually pleasing piece. It's certainly not the lightest - but if we're all being honest, I don't think anyone went with the carbon option because it was lighter (I know I didn't) =P

Carbon ...

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Comparison of vacuum formed vs skinned carbon:

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RCR vs custom center console:

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Installed:

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Another angle:

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I have a discussion of how I skinned the console and a bunch of photos on my latest blog post:

30. Interior refinement – Cam's Superlite SLC
 

Joel K

Supporter
Cam, just read through your blog today and all I can say is Awsome build and thanks for sharing all your build details. Looking forward to seeing you finish up your SLC.

JK
 
Appreciate the feedback gents!

I've been doing some more rough fitting of the body and I've hit the dreaded windshield ... I've got 1/4" gap on my driver side and 1/2" gap on my passenger side. I tried pulling the bodywork apart but there was a pretty extreme amount of resistance. I'm afraid to spread the bodywork much at all - it's crazy tough to do and it throws my doors out of whack. It also seems to mess with the side contours; so I can maybe get the edges pulled in closer but the rest of the windshield doesn't seem to like it as much.

I've noticed I can trim a bit more around the windshield and that might help it "settle" in a little more, pulling the edges inward - but there ain't much there. I've currently got ~3/4" for a flange so I'll try moving to 1/2" next and beveling the flange a bit.

With not too much force I was able to get the gaps down to almost nothing on the driver side and about 1/4" on the passenger side. I know urethane will fill in 1/4" and this is the direction I'm leaning towards.

Has anyone already fitted their windshield with this much of a gap?

I'll make some more cuts to the body and shaving here and there to see how much it helps. I've already pored through all posts on windshield fitting and it seems AJ's post (#86 of his build thread) is what people seem to point to - but the amount of effort to spread the body is really high.

I've also rough fitted my doors - I'm doing the "mini Mesa mod" that Allan mentioned in one of his videos. It connects a gas strut between the door inner and jamb. Doing this allows you to fully articulate the doors to almost vertical. I know there are variants to achieving this amount of opening. Thanks go to Allan for giving me some guidance on this mod.

Some pics:
OHWFrEI.jpg


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Howard Jones

Supporter
Cam even though you will finally setup the car with neg. camber, final fit the bodywork with no camber and no toe. Basically straight ahead and straight up. Set caster to your preferred value. Ride height to be check at street setting AND 1/2 - 1 inch lower to make sure a track setup will not cause body interference.

Now you know that when you add neg camber or toe the tires in these changes will ADD body clearance and if you lower the car some more you have room to do it. THEN see where you are with the windshield. Some redo may result do don't finalize fastening the body on the chassis.

DO NOT deform the glass to fit the body! NO FORCE! NONE! Get the body to fit the RELAXED windshield. THEN final set the doors. Now you can recheck the body clearance is still good as before on your setup alignment settings.

Robert Mesa or Alex might be able to provide you with good windshield fit advice. So could Scott the master of fiberglass in Oregon I would think.

Good work and really fast progress.
 
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PeteB

GT40s Supporter
Cam, just FYI, I went the "push in the corners of the windshield" route and about 2 months later, the windshield cracked in the corner.
 
Cam,
The reinforcement of the hinge to door location is vitally important, I'd consider laying fiberglass weave in the area in addition to your metal panels.

Even without the inner door trim panels installed I am using 75-pound gas pressure shocks and they are not unreasonably rocketing the doors skyward (just as a reference point). That being said the least amount of gas pressure the better (see above comment on additional fiberglassing), as the pressure tends to push the doors rearward flexing the door hinge mount area when they are down. This makes door gap alignment more of a challenge. I see that you have your jamb attachment plate higher on the jamb, this is how you have more vertical. Although hard to tell, the attachment plate in the door is affixed to the bottom plane of the inner door. Reaching the wide open doors when seated may be a challenge, a pulldown provision might be worth considering.
 

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Thanks Mesa! I had sanded both sides of my reinforcement plate in case I opted to glass the plate in - I'll do so on your advice, thanks for looking out!

It took me quite a bit of playing around to figure out how to get your mod to work. I temporarily attached my inner door ball joint to the outer skin. My plan next is to fabricate a bracket that allows me to float the ball in space, where it is now, but secured to the base of the door as you've done.

Thanks again!
 

Howard Jones

Supporter
Cam here's my door hinge backing plate. Then I made two 1/8 inch alum plates and sandwiched the fiberglass door end from both sides after bonding the inter one on with two part epoxy. The hinge was bolted through all of this.

On the center section body side I added fiberglass until the door post spot was about 3/8" thick and extended around the edges as much as possible. Again I added a alum plate to the hedge mount point and bolted through it.
 

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I find myself doing a lot of rough bodywork these days. It's consumed a surprising amount of my build time - I really didn't think I'd be spending so much time working on bodywork/composite stuff but it seems the last 20% of the build is what takes the most time. Getting to go-kart status seemed way too easy (and seemed like so long ago!).

To be fair, a good majority of the work I've been doing for the last month or so has been because I'm off-roading. It doesn't seem like I'm going off the path by much but boy oh boy, any deviation from the "standard" build and you're really tacking a ton of extra time onto the build!

I've been having a lot of fun learning about how to work with fiberglass; next up was to try my hand at making a mold from a pattern, making a fresh part, then prepping it for final.

I'm running the race tail and I've purchased a fresh air intake scoop. Unfortunately there was some asymmetry in the part that was driving me totally bananas. When standing directly behind or over the intake, it was clear the driver side was "sagging". At first I attempted to fix the piece by laying down more fiberglass and bondo. When I'd finished the part weighed a ton and I'd added about 1/4" of material.

So I decided to use my modified piece as a pattern and make a mold from it. The mold making was pretty fun - it was the biggest wet layup I'd done to date and learning how to work with the resin and fabric together was a good learning experience. After completing the mold I then "fixed" it up and made a new part.

By "fixing" the mold what I really mean is there were some flaws in the mold which I tried to correct - and ended up making even more flaws! Certainly a lot to learn about doing this sort of thing!

Anyway, with my new part in hand I wanted to continue with the carbon theme I have running on the car - so I skinned it in carbon. This time around I used a 2x2 V-twill pattern weave, it's super cool but also horribly tough to work with. The V pattern means you really can't mess around with fabric alignment and any shifts in the weave will be super obvious. I did a pretty decent job of it after making a few mistakes and learning.

As for scoop mounting - I've come across a few different mounting methodologies but haven't really seen one I was super happy with. I've seen scoops bonded to the bodywork or bolted. The ones that were bolted, it was obvious where the fasteners were. I scratched my head on this one for a while but eventually came up with a low-tech way to bond nuts into the underside of the scoop. It's definitely one of those "get'r done" solutions but in the end the fasteners are invisible and I have a flush fitting scoop.

It took me about a week to do all this - no wonder my build has slowed so much! But I've been learning a TON about an area I used to think was a black art. The biggest lesson learned so far? Pay attention while cutting your carbon fiber!! hen I cut my carbon fiber sheet I cut it in the wrong direction, so the chevron is pointing backwards when I really want it pointing forwards. DUH. So .... yeah, I'm going to finish this piece and use it for a bit but I plan to make a new one with the chevron pointing in the correct direction next time. There was just too much money invested to not finish the part.

So ... if anyone wants a lightly used carbon fiber scoop for their race tail let me know. I'm not sure when I'll complete the replacement but when I do this one will be up for sale.

Here's my modified scoop getting ready to be glassed:
cydg3wB.jpg


And this is the angle that was driving me totally bonkers to begin with. From this angle it kind of looked like 2 different scoops split down the middle.
CUq0Rhb.jpg


Mold:
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Part pulled and some bonded nuts:
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A close-up showing the V-twill weave - you really need to see it in person!
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Another view:
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As always, a ton more discussion and photos on my blog:
32. A breath of fresh air – Cam's Superlite SLC
 
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