Can you build me a spaceship when you'll be finished with this project?
This is beyond amazing skills level!
Thanks dude! Karl and I have both worked on rockets and spacecraft already. Race cars are more fun.
Cool to see "you guys" show up in Bill Washburn and Grabau's instagrams this weekend at the Mt Washington hillclimb. Makes me wonder... is the fake racecar destined for hillclimbs?
The hillclimb is always a highlight event, super bummed Bill crashed out this year but the Maxi will be back stronger next time. The 242 might do some hill climb but it'll need a fairly major damper, spring, and gearing change to go up anything on the north east hill climb calendar. A fast setup for a track is very different from a fast hill climb setup.
Big update time.
Welded up the outlet endtank for the intercooler. This was a bit of an adventure learning the quirks of the sheet metal brake but I think the bump forming and welding ultimately came out ok.
Fabricated the brackets for the CAN keypad/E-stop switch and shifter cable bulkhead
Ordered and received the shift cable (plus a spare) which let us finally hook up the shifter and do some fake shifting.
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Also verified that the reverse lockout works as expected and, thankfully, it does. Big relief to check that item off the list.
As part of the shift cable/reverse lockout extravaganza I designed this weird rubber panel grommet to pass the cables through the trans tunnel. Originally I was planning on ghetto injection molding this thing out of silicone with a syringe and a 3d printed mold but I priced it out and realized I could just get the part printed out of a rubber-like material for less money and hassle. Fingers crossed it doesn't turn to mush in a few years.
Machined and welded up these turbo support things to offload some weight from the 1mm wall exhaust manifolds. I would normally prefer to hang the turbo from a strut arrangement like this but there just isn't room anywhere to make that happen. This solution did get the Duder seal of approval so I think it should be ok.
Settled on and purchased a fire suppression system, went with a 3M Novec-based Lifeline zero360 with electronic triggering. It's pretty swank and the build quality seems nice. Welded in an extra square tube brace behind the drivers seat and added some weld nuts to mount the bottle
Fitted and stitch welded all the rivet flanges for the main hoop closeouts. Below the harness bar will be aluminum sheet and above it will be lexan for rear visibility. The laser cut holes are just pilots, they will get match-drilled to the mating pieces
Got the rear toe links finished up. I only machined wrench flats on one end but I might put some on the other end before they get sent out for plating.
Made a big push to get the control arms finished for credit. First task was to machine these weld-on bars that the rear swaybar droplinks attach to.
After drilling, tapping, and milling/grinding the tapered edges I had to figure out a way to machine a 1/2" radius on the back of them to match the control arm tubing. There are many more or less sketchy ways to do this but the unholy creation I landed on was bolting the four bars to the inside of a suitable steel tube and boring them on the lathe.
I set the control arm jig back up and used some 3d printed plastic v-blocks and kinda convoluted assembly of tubes and rods to locate the damper mounting tabs.
The only part left to do on the arms now is some mild straightening to get them back in shape and they will be ready for zinc plating.
Brake reservoir and ABS pump got attached:
The A-Class mercedes power steering pump has a post sticking out the bottom that fits into a rubber isolator. For an upper support I first made up this boss for a p-clamp but it was way floppy and after sleeping on it I decided to cut the boss off and start over.
Made up this saddle bracket that just uses a breeze clamp with some rubber lining stolen off a large p-clamp. Way more stable.
Picked up these strain gauged indycar ARB drop links a while back for very cheap and I decided to see if it was possible to shorten them to an appropriate length. I have some prior experience with stuff like this and the strain gauge elements are usually very fragile. These particular ones are heavily potted with extra fancy built-in amplifiers so I figured it was worth a shot.
Cut and cleaned up the bungs on one end.
The front drop link is very short and the new weld was going to be less than an inch from the potting compound so I cobbled up this clamp-on heatsink thing to try and keep the electronic bits cool.
I stuffed a wet rag into the counter bore of the heat sink and skipped between short, hot welds and blasting the tube and heatsink with compressed air. Both drop links survived the ordeal and the gauges appear to still work as before. Karl is going to dead-weight calibrate these later so we can get an accurate voltage vs. load curve and we should be good to go.
Also been hammering away at the interior sheet metal parts. This upper firewall section around the steering column was much more challenging than I initially thought but I think it came out pretty well.
Fabricated this weld-in brace mojangus for the shift cable anchor point.
Trial fitted all the shift cable bits, everything seems to line up nicely and the cable mount appears to be stiff enough for a solid shift feel. The 3d printed grommet lined up nicely as well.
This is the current state of the interior sheet metal. Two more pieces left to make for the trans tunnel then we can move on to the lower firewall sections and inner floor panels.
