Kiwi scratchbuilt

[raca]

why not bust their balls for it ?

[Dimi]

Hi Russ

Sorry to see you have been stung by these people.
From the photos you posted of the sump pan it appears to be some of the shoddiest poor quality workmanship I have seen in a long time.
I dont know how they could have sent this to you and expected not to cop some sort of flack.
I personally would pursue every avenue to have this corrected and to try and save anyone else going through this.

All the best with it.
Dimi

[Ron Rowse]

Hi Russ

Hope you have a great Birthday Party To-night.

I hope to see you early in the week.

I would like to look at this Bad Sump.(those bloody-americans)

All the Best

Ron Rowse.

[Russ Noble]

Dimi and Raca. It's not worth the time and effort. I've given them bad press in two threads on here, that should alert forum members who do any diligent research.

Ron, Just about to get scrubbed up and head out. I've booked out a local restaurant for friends, workmates, selected rellies and the race team. Going to be a great night...... Pity you're in the wrong country this weekend, see you later in the week. Are we allowed to mention that NZ will soon have a genuine car resident here in Chch? We haven't had one in NZ for years. Can't wait to see it.

Cheers

[Russ Noble]

Emailed ARE today :-

Hi guys,

You may remember early in the year I bought a 1306 from you.

I am not very happy about it. It is effectively unusable without a lot of remedial work.

Because of markings it had on it I am convinced you deliberately sent me a reject.

Also because of the time/distance/cost factor it is not practical to return it. This is why I think you chose to unload this on me to New Zealand..

I concluded therefore that any recompense was unlikely, but I didn’t want any of my GT40 Forum friends to get caught the same way so posted a warning in the “Consumer Watch” Section of that forum.

http://www.gt40s.com/forum/consumer-...dry-sumps.html

There is also some discussion on my build thread from Post # 77 onwards

Kiwi scratchbuilt

The guys there have urged me to draw the matter to your attention. The forum has been a big assistance to me generally so in deference to them, I send you this email.

I will publish this email on both threads, as I will any reply that I may receive.

Thank you,

Russ Noble



We'll see what happens.......



Cheers

[Russ Noble]

Just received this reply from ARE, which goes some way to addressing the monetary side.

Here is their reply :-

Hi Russ, I am very sorry about the problems with your oil pan. I assure you we did not "un-load " a defective pan on you on purpose. You are clearly upset, and I do not have the time to answer the threads ect on your forum. I will, however refund your money if you return it. You can send it by slow boat, so it will not be expensive to ship. The people we list on our web site DO use our products, and have won many, many championships. The Chevy Corvette successes with our Dry Sumps may not be of too much interest to you. but the Ford Powered Panoz which won Le Mans (twice) has our Dry Sump on it also, as well as virtually every formula Ford Championship winning car in the world. I could list hundreds, but I am not going to do that. I have been in business for 33 years, and you can not survive in this business by screwing people. I am sorry, the miss-fit was not intentional.
Regards, Gary Armstrong PS..... please see to it that my reply and offer make it to your forum. Thanks.

However it wasn't particularly the money that was my major concern. It is the time frame now and the extra work involved to cast my own pan. Never the less I will return the ARE piece and graciously accept their refund.

Cheers,

[Big-Foot]

Please don't take this the wrong way Russ...

I think Gary made a very acceptable offer to you considering you literally launched a volley across his bow...

Myself I believe I would have worded my initial contact a bit differently along with illustrations..

[Russ Noble]

Randy,

I have no problems with Gary's offer.

Maybe in an ideal world my contact could have been more diplomatic.

In an ideal world I wouldn't have been landed with this problem. I am just unhappy about the time and effort to get back to square one. i.e. A nice pan bolted up to the block. The monetary consideration is just that. It doesn't solve the problem. It's a bit different for you guys who have suppliers on your doorstep....

I'm kicking myself that I made the wrong decision to buy when I should have cast one myself to start with. But I decided to outlay the money to save some time and effort.....No brains!

Maybe we should consolidate all future comments on the Consumer Watch thread.

Cheers

[David W]

Russ, do you need to cast the sump? Perhaps you could fabricate it from sheet. You could use a thick bit, say 3mm for the flange, weld up a sump and braze it to the flange to minimise the amount of lapping required.

[Russ Noble]

Well I was up at 4 am this morning to watch Hamilton live winning the F1 drivers championship. That never happened! Now 19 hrs later I am feeling a bit stuffed and have decided to flag work on the car for the night and post a quick update.

I have been building the exhausts the last few nights. This is very satisfying as there is heaps of progress to show for a relatively small amount of work I will do the dialogue tonight and post pics in a day or two.

The main chassis and rollcage is virtually finished except that the door hinges have to be fabricated and mounted on the front rollbar legs.

Front suspension wishbones have been built. Rears yet to do but with parallel links they are just simple straight tubes.

The front subframe to mount the front clip and radiator, and the rear subframe to mount the rear clip have been fabricated. These are bolt on for ease and speed of repair. Rear deck snorkels have been installed and both clips mounted and hinged

Most of the motor parts have now arrived from the various suppliers. So I have had a mate, whose specialty is NDT at a local aviation facility, crack test everything. All OK, but it pays to check!

Interestingly, his boss is a guy who who used to do my crack testing when I was racing Brabhams 35 years ago. So we're quids in there! Nothing like having mates in all the right places. In typical Kiwi fashion, always FOC

So I'm in the middle of the initial dummy assembly, checking clearances, determining pushrod lengths, deck heights etc before sending it out for balancing. No mates in balancing unfortunately!

The inlet manifold seems to have gone astray in the shipping though. Nothing special, only a secondhand Victor Junior off ebay. Keeping an eye open for another one, although it could well turn up in the next Stateside shipment.

Lim has almost finished machining up the alloy flywheel to take the 930 ring gear, 7 1/4 " triple plate clutch, and 928 front mounted starter. The starter is going to be mounted on the LHS of the motor on the rear motorplate/adaptor to free up the RHS for the dry sump outlets on the relatively shallow pan. The starter is going to be a tight fit so we have dummied up the rear section of the proposed pan in perspex so we can see where everything is before we make the actual pattern for casting the sump.

The hydraulic release bearing has been sussed out and modified.

The front motor plate has been fitted up as has the rear motor plate which incorporates the transaxle adaptor and I've started on organising the water lines.

We have just got the roughed out hubs and driveshafts back from stress relieving (One of Lim's mates this time!) before Lim does final machining.

Stripped the sideplate out of the spare 930 yesterday and measured up in preparation for making the billet side plate.

It's all go, heaps of things underway and half finished. That's the way it happens with a scratchbuilt, you start on something and it affects, or is affected by, something else and you have to nut that out before you can continue with the initial item. Ad infinitum. One day there'll be some real progress!

And then there's the simple issues like which sides do the hubs go on?

Photos soon.

Cheers,

[Dalton]

Not to side track this fantastic thread on scratch building, perhaps the next poll should be on which side owners have their clockwise and anti-clockwise hub threads?

Switching back to the build, fabrication of your sump from sheet sounds like a good idea to me, provided you are set up to weld alloy. Bit of a bummer time wise. Every so often you get optimistic and think that some specialist or supplier will obviously do a good job and save you time. Then reality sets in and you remember why you are doing it all yourself, so that it is RIGHT.

Dalton

Dalton

[Russ Noble]

Some photos of the exhausts.

Because room is somewhat restricted around the back of the motor, I decided it was easier to put the collectors in place and then work back from there. Photos here of the rhs headers show them half finished. A bit of a mission because they had to go under the rollbar backstay and over a diagonal brace which goes from the crosstube between the shock mounts by the bottom of the backstay and the rear of the engine block. It can be seen in the second photo.

Because of way everything had to be routed it was necessary to run the right bank into the top four collector holes and the left bank into the lower ones.

The rod going through alongside the gearbox and under the headers is the gearchange rod and I had to make allowance for movement of that.

[Russ Noble]

Lhs exhausts.

These had to be routed under both the rollbar backstay and the rollbar diagonal brace. As well as this of course, I was trying to keep all the primaries equal length and as short as possible while at the same time being able to easily get at the spark plugs, header bolts, head studs and also be able to get the rocker covers off. I also wanted a rotational firing order in the collectors. A heap of conflicting requirements! That's why the headers are the strange shapes they are as I managed to satisfy all the criteria.

I have also incorporated AR features in the pipes. Many thanks to Jac Mac for technical input.

The backstay diagonal brace with the green tape on has not yet been finally welded in place. My inlet manifold has gone astray in the shipping and I need to fit that first to make sure there is sufficient clearance.

Anyway that's the headers done, heaps to show for not all that much work. Quite satisfying really. Mufflers yet to build

[Jim c]

Go Russ.
These projects you go to sleep thinking about it and wake up thinking about it.
Your chassis looks more bird cage p4 come dino 206 ish.

Jim

[Russ Noble]

Haha Jim,

I wouldn't think about it half as much, were it not for your emails!

I'm trying to build the chassis as light and stiff as possible. Everything that doesn't have stressed alloy panels fixed to it is round tube. The engine is a stressed member and should stiffen up the whole rearend. I'm trying to keep the chassis design as 'pure' as possible. The compulsory rollcage weighs a heap though, as does the iron block that we must run under the regs.

Just put the bare chassis down on the ground tonight (easy one man lift) and took some photos. Will post later.

Cheers

[Scott Calabro]

Sweeeet!

[brianstewart]

Looking great Russ. Are you going to Teretonga?