fixing my car, and other advancements

Last weekend I finally had time to fix the damage on my 1999 Acura Integra. The front bumper had a tear, as well as some scrapes to fix. As I've come to know, all accidents are worse than they look. It turns out that the lower rad support was bent beyond repair, and I had bent the passenger side structural rail. Lucky for me my father is an auto body repair technician. I'm still trying to figure out if his boss is going to charge me anything for the parts and paint. The bills from our families car accidents have a way of disappearing. The last 2 bumper repairs and wheel repair bills have never made it too us. I may have just been spared a $1000 dollar bill.

Having my father around will be very useful when it comes to building my car because of his knowledge of how cars are put together, as well as his very good eye for body shape.

I've gotten the go ahead for fixing up the barn and building a workshop there, so in a few months that should be ready for me to move in and get down to the car building part.

Found a place to build my car

Sorry if you've been a regular on this blog, I haven't had any updates in a while.
Exciting news tho, I've finally found a place to start construction on my car. My Aunt may allow me to use part of her barn as a build garage. All I have to do is build some new stalls for the 2 horses in there for rent. Much easier than building some sort of plastic shack out in the back. It's got lighting and electricity, and solid ceiling beams that can be used for hoisting the engine from the doner car etc. She still has to talk it over with the horse owners before I get the go ahead.

new renders

So it turns out that I decided again to make some more modifications to my design. It seems like every few weeks I decide that I don't like something on the current design and change it. I figure the longer I take to come up with a finished product the better it will look.
I've updated the renders in my "finalized renders" link, and I'd like you to vote or comment on what one you like better, the old more edgy look (grey coloured) or the more rounded one (orange coloured)
I've also decided to name my car the Equilibrium, meaning balanced in Greek I think. A great name for a sports car if you ask me, unless you can think of something better to call it.
Please feel free to comment on what you like and don't like about each design, as well as my choice of name.
Thanks

Asthetics

I've come to the final stages of design now and am working towards getting a 3d print of the finished exterior. In doing this I can have a realistic view to see if it's still aesthetically pleasing. Now that I'm finished with the exterior, I need to remodel some of the chassis so that it fits within the extended body. I have also gotten a hold of some chassis blueprints for an Acura RSX so that I can put the sub frame mounting points on my chassis model. That way when I build the chassis It will already accept the engine and transmission that I want to use for it. I have also placed a book on order called the Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics. Hopefully this gives me all the information I need to incorporate a good suspension into my design. Once I have the suspension geometry figured out, I can start constructing the chassis.

Getting Ready for a 3d Print

So I am getting my car ready for a 3d print. I have pretty much finalized my design as you can see in current renders

Major Remodeling

I just added some new renders of my current modeling progress.
If you look closely you'll see that I've made a number of changes to the current design.
First, I finally found out that the Lotus Elise MK1 has the same windshield as the current model. This meant that I could use the blueprint from the old Elise to make the windshield the exact same dimensions as the real one.
Same goes for the side windows.

I also just realized that my car was smaller than a Lotus Elise. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the Lotus was already a small car to fit in. Making mine smaller would not be a very good idea.
The previous wheelbase was about 2000mm. I just finished stretching it to 2265mm Which I think is plenty long enough.

It also allows more room for the engine as well as other things. I still have stubbier front and rear ends of the car, but we'll see how things go from here.

You'll also notice that I've added some baffles over the rear fenders. These are there to diffuse some of the air moving over the fenders that would otherwise produce lift.
I tried to stretch the spoiler across the entire rear of the car, but it didn't look very good at all like that, so I decided that baffles were a good compromise.

That's about all I've managed to do this week.
let me know what you all think.

Rendering

I recently had one of my close friends do some work on my model. He does 3d modeling for a living, so I'm getting him to fix it up a bit. My goal is to get a 3d print of the model in the future. That means that there can't be any holes in the model, or messed up geometry in my shapes. I'm also planning on getting him to do some professional renders of my car. You can visit his site at http://www.surrient.com/

I am doing some work on the rear end of the model, as I decided to make the rear track the same width as the front for handling purposes. I doubt that it will have a big effect on the visual profile of the car. You may not even notice the difference.
That's all for now

Suspension Engineer Wanted

I need an engineers input. I've made a photo album of the most recent stuff that I've done on my car. The photo album includes chassis pictures, as well as closeups of the front and rear suspension mounting points with some temporary control arms drawn in. The reason that they are temporary is I haven't figured out the best way to set up my suspension geometry to get the best handling possible. I've also decided to use large wheels, this way I can have less suspension travel, without compromising ride quality. Just like in the old days before suspension, they had massive wagon wheels so that it would go over ruts and bumps easier.

I am obviously going to have a compromise between handling and ride comfort, because some driveability is important in any road going car. I have done some research in the area of formula suspension geometry, but I'm not sure it's exactly what I'm looking for as the weight distribution from side to side is quite different from a car to a formula racer. I also found that suspension components from these cars are far to weak to be used on a road going car. I've also tried to purchase just the suspension linkage from the Ultima GTR, but they wouldn't sell them to me separately, and I have a feeling Noble wouldn't be to excited about shipping me any of those cheaply either.

I'm currently looking into using an RSX engine and transmission. I'm going to have a transverse mounted rear mid engine sports car. Possibly a turbo in there too, but that's a future endeavor. I tried to find a gear box that was short enough to use a longitudinally mounted engine, without having part of it protruding out the rear. If you look in the photo album, I haven't left much room behind the rear wheels for a transmission. I also can't afford a racing transmission that would fit from Quaife. Quaife makes very nice transmissions.

I have all the dimensions of my car set, as in length height wheelbase and width, but they can be changed to incorporate suspension and handling improvements. Because it is a rear mid engine car, there is plenty of room in the front to have long control arms. I understand that this helps with camber change in a corner as they can have a shorter distance between them at the chassis mounting point.

If anyone know's an engineer that could help me in this area it would be much appreciated.

My car Design Blog

Welcome to my car builders blog. My name is Dave, and I have been in the process of designing a car for the last 2 years. My Idea was inspired by the idea of having a small mid engined sports car built and styled the way I wanted it to be, as well as being able to construct it for a reasonable price.

If you look at my pictures, my current design is quite different from my original drawings. But there are still some styling cues from the original drawings. Feel free to ask any questions or offer any suggestions.