I’ve nothing to say really, but posting things makes me think that things are moving forwards, and I can continue whining to you lot about the tedium of panelling.
I added another two of the little b*******s to the car today, the first being the “shoulder” panel in the photo. By the way, in the background you can see the Fury sitting there all unloved and neglected. However, I’m going to have to start re-invigorating it soon. I’m hoping to get the J15 to a rolling chassis versi0n fairly soon so as to facilitate that.
I also added the panel at the front of the passenger side of the car, as in the photo.
The next thing I want to do is to add the side panel along the passenger side of the central tunnel. As on the Fury, I want to attach this with rivnuts so as to facilitate access to this area of the car. It’s rather less important than on the Fury, as there isn’t a propshaft in there, but nonetheless it would seem daft to make the top panel the only access.
While thinking about this, it dawned on me that as the handbrake lever was attached to the outside of that chunky upright, just near where the handbrake lever is loitering, then it’d make sense to make this panel in two pieces, one for the front of the space and one for the rear. As I’m using the same rear calipers as on the Fury I’m going to have to do the same sort of thing to increase the mechanical advantage of the lever as I did there. (Essentially a pulley giving a 2:1 advantage.)
I’m also going to have to arrange for the cable from the lever to turn around a corner, due to the geometry of the lever. Looking at Jeremy’s photos, a detail of which is shown here, he seems to have done this with a block of some plastic, and I could probably use a lump of Delrin for the same job, as used for the suspension bearings.
Now I’ve got the footwell panel in place, I can see the space that Jeremy uses for the fuel tank, as shown here. I did some preliminary calculations a while ago and the volume here was suitable. I did wonder about mounting the tank further rearwards, at the back of the passenger compartment, but this is probably the easiest place just at the moment.
Now I can see the space properly, I’ll measure up and draw out a tank. I can then get it made, as I’ve done before.
Hi Tim
Interested in your comments on increasing the mechanical advantage of the handbrake lever. Would love to see pics when done. I believe you are using the Wilwood Powerlite handbrake calipers. I wonder if your system would pass IVA (SVA that was)? Rally Design seemed doubtful themselves and a successful RGB car builder at the Autosport Show, who shall be nameless, reckoned they were c**p in the handbrake department.
Regards David
David,
Mechanical advantage is just a matter of putting in a pulley or two. The Fury has a 2:1 advantage by running a cable from the handbrake lever, around a little pulley on the compensator and back to a fixed point on the chassis. You could get any amount of mechanical advantage you wanted, at the cost of increased lever travel, by using more pulleys.
There’s some photos of what I did with the Fury here. The photos are a bit “busy” so you’ll need to squint a bit!
With respect to IVA, I don’t know really. You’d certainly need to use very stout cable (which I don’t because of the weight) to stop it stretching very much. I really don’t know whether you could get them to work well enough. I must admit that if I was engineering a car for IVA I’d probably use a different caliper, or a separate “spot” one.
Tim
David,
I used Powerlite HBs on my road-legal Fury RGB car – picture of my pulley arrangement here – http://www.danstuff.info/furyracerb76.jpg .
At the first SVA test, with the modified Sierra handbrake lever and pads which hadn’t been bedded in, it nearly passed. At the restest it wasn’t tested, but the car still passed.
I think it is possible to get them to pass an SVA test (and AFAIK the IVA requirements are no stricter) but you’ll need to maximise the mechanical advantage you give yourself – i.e. have the handbrake lever as long as possible, have the attachment for the handbrake cable as close to the pivot on the handbrake lever as possible, and use either the pulley system which Tim and I have adopted or a lever based system.
A lever based system would involve a lever (no surprise there) with, for example, the bottom end pivoting around a fixed point on the chassis, the top end being pulled forwards by a link from the bottom of the handbrake lever, and the handbrake cable compensator attached at some point down the length of the lever. This would mean you could increase the mechanical advantage above 2:1, which is what the pulley system provides.
But yes, it’s possible. Just not necessarily easy…