Kiwi scratchbuilt

[Straight 8 Racing]

Russ,

You are probably aware that we used heat exchangers for both the gear box and engine oil cooiling / normalisation. Happy to send any technical info that we have that might help, re internal bore size, pressure drop etc. It has worked better than I expected providing a really quick warm up cycle then maintaining an even temerature across all three components, engine water, engine oil temp & gear box oil,

I have asked for the wheel rates, which prompted a flurry of activity in the Susprog department that had gone to sleep !

Regards

Iain

[Russ Noble]

Thanks Iain, I'd like to see the info you have on heat exchangers

I have got the trans finally buttoned up with the new spraybar and billet sideplate that we have made. All filled with Swepco 201 and ready to go. Thank goodness something is all back in one piece!

The oilfeed to the spraybar is via the rear union.

The lower union on the sideplate is the takeoff to the pump, heat exchanger and filter, and is set at the height of the top of the crownwheel teeth.

The upper one is for the return from the adjustable pressure relief on the remote filter mount. I think this will really only come into play during initial startup when there is a high static oil level in the trans, the rest of the time the amount of oil going to the pump, and hence the pressure, will be determined by the amount that is constantly in suspension in the trans and the rate of drainback. Monitoring the pressure behaviour in use will also eventually determine the optimum static oil level.

[Russ Noble]

Work continues with the rear uprights nearing completion. The right hand upright is shown at an early stage in the jig. Forming the sheet metal shapes is not as easy as it looks. Very time consuming and quite tricky. Next time I will be seriously considering doing alloy castings!

[Russ Noble]

Fabrication of both uprights is now complete. Pics here show the almost completed left side upright.

They now have to go to my long suffering mate at his NDT facility for crack testing before we do the final machining of the inside of the housing. This is done after a satisfactory NDT result just in case anything needs to be rewelded. Rewelding could lead to distortion of the housing. We didn't have to do any rewelding with the front uprights so there's no reason why the rears should be any different. But you never know...

[Fran Hall RCR]

Russ,

are the uprights Chromoly?...

Whats the weight??

[kiwi ka]

Love those jigs, you can be confident in acuraccy with those.
Cheers

[Russ Noble]

Fran,
The majority of it is just 'ordinary' mild steel. Weight for each upright is 3.1 kg, or for you guys still in a time warp, a whisker under 7 lbs.

Russell,
The jigs are Lims handiwork and just make fabrication easier and totally repeatable.

[Bill Musarra]

Russ,
With all that fabrication, you and Lim should make a killing in the aftermarket sales!! Will be showing some of mine in a week or two. Not on your level though!!

Bill

[Russ Noble]

Well Bill, i don't know about a killing. All this stuff takes ages. I guess we could get into the aftermarket business and make a couple of (worthless NZ) bucks an hour.....

The fuel tanks are almost done, to the extent of only needing placement of the fuel filler neck finalised. Which meant refitting the spider and front clip to line everything up.. so it was an opportune time to fit the front suspension and wheel and tweak the front clip to accept the gulf front wheels.

When we fitted the screen we had to stretch the base of the spider to achieve a good fit for the RF supplied screen. This meant the rear of the front clip no longer properly fitted the front of the spider. So, kill two birds with one stone when doing the gulf chop. A quick chop up job with the cutoff disc was in order. This is a bit drastic so a bit of time sussing the chop lines out and marking out with a felt tip was time well spent

[Russ Noble]

Here the body is now in the right basic shape and ready for glassing in place. Pics of fuel tank shortly....

[Bill Musarra]

Russ,
While you are doing some glass work you might want to extend the air scoops in the bonnet. It will keep the air pressure down. Here is how I did mine. The fiberglass work included ridges and right angles at the edges to give it strength and rigidity. Some of the edges are notched for the cooling lines to the water pump. I plan to add some rubber edging to help seal the underside from any flow.

Bill

[Russ Noble]

Thanks for the thought Bill. That's a fantastic job you've done on your car!

I'm actually going to convert to single nostril for the reason you have mentioned and also because the single nostril has significant aerodynamic advantages.

[Russ Noble]

Well, I'm aiming to race my car at SFOS in three months. Should be especially good because Ross Nicol is coming over and has entered his car. So two GT40s out there will be a great sight.

I have in the last couple of hours just been told by the powers that be that my entry won't be accepted unless I have done a race meeting at sometime in the 12 months prior to SFOS. That's thrown the cat among the pidgeons and I've been chasing around the last hour or so trying to borrow a car to race this Sunday. Not much notice and the only other qualifying local race meeting I'd be able to run in is in December which doesn't leave a fall back date if there are any hiccups. So this Sunday it is.

Friday night I've got to go and give the owner a hand to prepare the car and Saturday night will be loading up ready for Sunday. Two nights and one day that would have been better spent on the GT40!

Still, I guess it's great to have mates that will help you out at the last minute, even when you give them virtually zero notice. A big thanks to Geoff for stepping up with his car.

A minor distraction then back to the build next week.

[Ross Nicol]

Wow Russ you really are committed, I was about to contact you thinking you didn't look like you will finish the car in time. I will be willing you on over this side of the Tasman mate. Ah! don't prang the borrowed car on Sunday will you.

Ross

[Leon]

Russ,will see you out there as I will be on duty.Good luck

[John Shand]

Originally Posted by ross nicol

Wow Russ you really are committed, I was about to contact you thinking you didn't look like you will finish the car in time. I will be willing you on over this side of the Tasman mate. Ah! don't prang the borrowed car on Sunday will you.

Ross

looking forward to catching up and having two gt40 at the SFOS will be great

John

[Russ Noble]

Originally Posted by ross nicol

Wow Russ you really are committed, I was about to contact you thinking you didn't look like you will finish the car in time. I will be willing you on over this side of the Tasman mate. Ah! don't prang the borrowed car on Sunday will you.

Ross

Haha, that was never going to happen, it was a gravel rasher that I put slicks on. It was on the rev limiter almost as soon as it got to the main straight! More than twenty seconds a lap slower than the GT40 should do. Got last in every race, even off 'Go' in the handicap race!

Back to the serious stuff now though. Fuel tanks. Two 60 litre tanks are planned but with time being of the essence and only sprint races on the immediate horizon I am only building the LHS tank at this time. It is baffled and trapdoored and I don't expect any fuel surge problems under racing conditions.

Local aluminium boat builders, Hartz Marine, owed me a few favours so I took the opportunity to let them weld it all up. It's great to have mates, they did a magnificent job.

Tank is built from 2mm sheet, I was toying with 1.6 and that may have well been alright but I was worried that the high surge forces particularly under braking might over time cause cracking around the baffle welds. I don't want to be forever repairing cracks! Fuel filler is 3" diameter. The -8 fitting in the top corner of the tank is the fuel pickup which goes down to the bottom of the narrow, trapdoored reservoir. The one along side it is the breather and the -6 in the side is the return. The hole with the capscrews in the middle of the tank is for the gauge sender unit.

[Russ Noble]

Well there has been all sorts of furious activity lately and Lim has been busy too. In particular in the wake of that sorry ARE drysump saga we decided to cast our own sump....

There's nothing like jumping in at the deep end...

And with that in mind Lim decided to start cautiously by casting some smaller simpler items first. Fuel caps and door handles.

Lim made the custom wood patterns suitably oversized to allow for the normal shrinkage.

First pic is the base pattern being milled to size.

Second pic is the patterns prepared and ready for the casting process.

[Russ Noble]

Lim had a local foundry carry out the actual casting process and the quality was top notch.

This result showed that we could successfully produce a high quality and dimensionally correct product and we are confident we can turn out the more complex drysump pan with similar success and precision.

The casting is totally Lim's project. He is responsible for the entire pattern making process, the research into the casting technique, shrinkage allowances and how the patterns have to be made so that a top quality casting results. Part of that is selecting a foundry that is happy to work alongside you to achieve that result.
'
So far so good. Pics of the 'as cast' parts below.

The pattern for the drysump pan is also under control. Quite a bit trickier with really close tolerances and clearances. Will post details shortly.

[Jimmy M]

Hi Russ,

Fantastic job by yourself and Lim on the fuel caps and handles.

If you are taking orders (to help your cost offset) let me know as I would probably be keen on some.

Cheers

Jimmy M