Some buggy pics for Baloo

[PhillipM]

More wing pictures time - finally got the first skeleton up to full width - need a thin sheath of balsa in certain spots just to give it some shape in order to skin it with either fabric or fibreglass to give it a structural skin, the wooden spars will get replaced with aluminium tube when it arrives, and it needs some carbon + epoxy reinforcements to go in on the trailing edge to stiffen/strengthen it, but at least it's getting closer - just another 3 to go...

 

[jpmillermatic]

How are you at making 1/4 scale radio controlled fighter planes from balsa, aluminum, etc???? pretty good I bet looking at that wing skeleton!!!!

JP

 

[PhillipM]

I built myself a jet turbine as a kid to use on a model plane


Not that it ever got mounted to the plane mind, I strapped it to the back of my go-kart and went nowhere quickly. Thrust vs power got me good on that one.
Was good downhill though. Until I took 6 inches of skin off my kneecap.

I can make little 'snap out' plastic wing spars on sheet though like above scored with a little CNC plotter, but only up to 0.5mm thick plastic, done them for a few people making model kits up, makes nice light spars when laminated to some depron as above. The thicker 1mm ones I used for that it scores but you have to hand cut out after.

 

[PSweeney]

reminds me of a remote control car I has as kid, would love to have ago in this.

Ref the wing I did one in 0.8mm ally for my dragster but used CNC machined T6 spars. I used an internally threaded tube to join the spars, then skinned the wing with cleco's then removed the tubes so the skin holds it all together. Make sure you incorporate a means of mounting into some of the spars. I used opposing thread turnbuckles to alter the wing angle.

 

[PhillipM]

I'm not mounting on the spars/ribs, it's terrible from an aero perspective, the mounts are going on the endplates.

I did think about an aluminium skin but with the amount of rocks and branches it will get hitting the skin it would look pretty sorry for itself in a short amount of time I think.

 

[PhillipM]

A road trip yesterday means we now have some nice new GKN CV joints complete with chromoly race cages and stars - they need a little bit of hand finishing to the races so a bit of time before they go on - but that does mean the driveshafts can be built up with the new CV's and some fancy racing grease shortly.
Then it needs the clutch piping making up properly instead of the mock-up it has at the minute and it can finally go for a short trundle up and down the lane to bed things in.
At last!

 

[PhillipM]

Inlet for the supercharger remade to give a better run for the throttle cable and smoother transitions - still not ideal as in a perfect world it'd be curved into a bellmouth too but space is very, very tight down there, so there's not really enough length available to do it properly anyway.

 

[PhillipM]

Mind, I don't think we really need to chase every last horsepower yet anyway.....

 

[Robotstar5]

Mind, I don't think we really need to chase every last horsepower yet anyway.....

I would think reliability is more important than max power?.

 

[PhillipM]

Big time, that and keeping heat down. And not stressing a white van mans gearbox that's as old as me...

There's an easy 150bhp or so left in this setup just with more boost and some ancillary changes so I'll save fancier intakes for after that

 

[PhillipM]

Finishing touches slowly going on, new inlet, new boost piping, heat shielding/lagging, shock reservoirs mounted, looms routed through bulkhead fittings, etc:

 

[Jim Davey]

Have you considered doing this sort of thing for a living Phil?

 

[PhillipM]

Won't make much money at one car every 4 years

The recession ******** us up last time we were making cars and we all went our seperate ways in the end - although getting a few people in for odds and sods again now.

 

[Jim Davey]

Sorry to hear that Phil, I expect someone with your skills could walk into a job at M Sport or Prodrive but hats off for trying to make a go of it off your own bat.

 

[PhillipM]

To be honest there's enough money back in the sport I could make it work again, but I don't have enough pennies to set up again on my own for actually building them rather than just parts - bearing in mind we were making our own diffs, sumps, gearboxes, etc, so a decent mill was required...in fact just had one of the diffs back for some upgrades, you'll like this....

But given the price to start making things like that again - I will stick to servicing the already made ones for the minute

 

[PhillipM]

Well, that's one (still needs it fibreglass skin, has a thin* balsa layer at the minute to form the cloth over and it's allowed me to foam fill the leading and trailing edges for dent resistance)....

*So thin you can see the ribs through it, saves at least 10 vital grams of weight!

On to the always growing list of 'additional **** we shouldn't touch until it's finished but we're probably going to do anyway' - the front mudguard mountings tubes are going, they were originally left separate to the damper mounts so no damage occurred to the suspension if a mudguard got ripped off, but we've worked out a smaller, neater way to do it which gets that curved tube out of the equation. Should be lighter, look a lot neater and gets the tube out of the way of the wing endplates.

 

[PhillipM]

Front wing skinned and foam filled in the leading edge for dent resistance, just needs the edges trimming ready for the sideplates fitting then it can be finished off:

 

[PhillipM]

More upgrades today after some testing - and a few teething issues (you know, the normal sheared bolts, oil all over the floor, nearly breaking wrists trying to hold steering wheel against the P/S going nuts) - but I forgot to take pictures, sorry.
The venerable old 106/Saxo pump unit for the power steering system is finally retiring from service, in favour of a more powerful new unit with a solid-state electronic controller.
We now have more fluid flow at full power - which is welcome as with a very short ratio steering rack (a single turn lock-to-lock) the old pump could sometimes lag behind the wheel input in tight corners.
In addition to that it can vary it's speed to hold a target pressure vs loading - so we use a lot less electrical power the rest of the time, including a low speed/low power automatic idle mode when the steering isn't in use such as queueing for a stage start. Might not sound like a big benefit but it's a little more horsepower from the engine due to the lower electrical load, and it eases the strain on the alternator as although we run a large 160amp unit to keep up with the various heavy loads, it still doesn't have much spare when everything is running.
We also have other niceties such as built in fluid filters/air removal chambers and baffled pump inlets to prevent any dirt or air getting sucked into the system whilst bouncing around over the rough.
Anyway, testing today showed everything worked well....eventually anyway...so now we just need to make a new tank for the PAS fluid to suit and perhaps some upgrades to allow a control knob to enable quick switches between various assistance settings (not so much for our car but might be fitting a few to other racers which require more/less pressure).

TLR - New P/S pump. Works better than old pump. Is shinier.


Also not mega happy with the throttle response off idle with the amount of charge piping to fill and the charger, despite making a few mapping changes to improve it, got a few more tricks to try but I might look at a bypass valve just to help things at low loadings.

 

[PhillipM]

And just in case you hadn't had enough of half finished wing pictures yet....another rear element skeleton built up awaiting foam + skinning:

Also decided to draw 'em up properly in CAD rather than just a skin - means I can work out where best to put the slot gap spacers then. Hoping to get away with a single centre one just to keep things where they should be:

 

[Jim Davey]

I'd love to learn how to use CAD, that looks so cool.