Stuff like the Road America 500 or Mosport 200 in the early 60's. The thought of building something like an early Cooper or Lotus or Elva or something is nagging at me. What would be the cheapest and easiest A to B path on something like that? Miata suspension with a VAG B5 drivetrain using a steel tube frame chassis and a fiberglass body of some kind?
General thoughts on the idea? WAG's on build cost?
For the budget question, we have several people doing similar builds for the challenge. Without some sort of deal being found, an actual period correct body would be the most expensive thing, I'd bet
For suspension, seen this? https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/cars-sale/free-wrecked-miata-roller/180028/page1/
In reply to stroker :
Fiberglass is a very easy to master material. And if you're not asking for a tool room copy of a particular body can be adapted to cover a lot of different engines etc.
glue foam blocks together and then with a sawzall and grater get them in rough shape. Once near the right shape slather on a thick layer or two of bondo. And go to it. Sand it smooth and to the right size.
I use whatever paint is handy. I prefer lacquer because it dries really fast. If you didn't make mistakes in painting just sand it down to 600 grit. And wax the heck out of it. Car wax will work but I buy paste wax for wood. It has more carnuba and less cleaning agents. Give it at least 4 really good coats. Buffed after each coat.
Now comes a trip to the fiberglass store ( or internet if you already know what you're doing). I still like the store because I don't keep up with the new stuff and they are helpful that way.
You'll want a release agent ( I use PVA, Poly Vinyl Acalaide That you spray on and when done hose off with water. Use cloth for the actual part ( it's stronger) and Matt for the mold. You might also want foam core. Use 2-3 layers of cloth. Then foam and another two layers of cloth. The foam adds depth to the part and makes it massively stiffer without the extra weight of a lot of layers.
the Matt you're going to use can be relatively thin. All you want is it to hold its shape long enough to make a part. I don't use Gel coat in most of my molds although if you want repeatable high quality parts you should use gel coat.
Once I pull the mold from my pattern I'm done with the pattern. Then I clean up the mold and wax it with 4 coats of paste wax buffing after each coat. PVA the mold, and then spray your gel coat. ( think of it like a primer ) lay out the cloth (and foam inner layer ) leaving at least an inch extra all the way around, to be trimmed off. Cut it. Using a very sharp scissors. Clean up everything. Stack the material fanned out so you can pick up one layer at a time with sticky hands.
Now comes the potentially messy part. Mix up your resin with the hardener. I use a wide short bristled brush to spread a layer out. . Then lay the first layer of cloth in place use the knife edged rollers to stick it into the resin. That should bring enough resin through the cloth so you can stick the second layer on. Repeat until not enough resin comes through then brush on another layer. Repeat until everything is in place.
Now take a new squeegee and squeeze the excess resin out. You don't want any more resin than what's required to dampen everything.
Depending on how warm it is and how much hardener you've used as soon as the resin starts to feel leathery to the touch use your utility knife with a brand new blade to cut the excess off around the edge of the mold. The sweet part is no fiberglass strands floating in the air.
let it harden at least a day preferably longer in the mold.
go one U tube and watch guys do it. Some are messy and some are neat. This is where neatness counts.
In reply to stroker :
Did someone mention Elva? We're building one now, in fact.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
David. May I respectfully suggest once you have you body work in primer you use it to make a mold and new body panels.
It will be safer, lighter, and nicer. It won't add dramatically to your time and should anything ever happen you have the mold to fall back on. I'm not just talking about racing incidents . Garage, and hauling it around can all be a cause of problems. Likely more so than during a race.
You don't have an original body any more not with all the repairs you've been forced to make. While some of it may be original the joint between old and new is a potential weak spot.
Okay, how hard would it be to build something like this?
I could see how the body/mold would take the majority of the labor involved, but per my original question--what's the Easy Button to get what's in that photograph above and how much would it likely cost?
The answer is, "Who is doing the work?"
I built a carbon shell mid-engine Mini (not entirely different looking under the shell from the above pic) and it cost me out of pocket around $25K, spread over 10 years. I worked out one time that had a shop built it for me, it would have run $150-200K.
So, the "easy button" is to pay someone - a lot.
Original parts? You'll need to do a lot of searching and be willing to pay far more than actual value.
Alternative parts? Depends on your skills and how much you can do yourself.
When I built similar cars for vintage racing. I calculated it would take me an average of 2500 man hours. One exception was a lotus 11 LeMans mk2 that was bought with a freshly Re-English wheeled body and updated mechanicals. But the frame was dangerously thin. At the time there were no replacements so I did a tool room copy of the frame. You honestly couldn't tell it from original except the welds were better. That took around 1000 hours. Disassemble, copy frame, reassemble check and test.
if it didn't have to be a tool room copy it would have been about 400 hours less.
Body work for something like that from scratch would be roughly a month. Plus or minus a couple of weeks. ( no, I can't work at that pace anymore and I won't do it for others).
If I had to form the body out of Aluminum figure triple the amount of time. A skilled body guy would need a helper who would listen carefully to directions and want to do a perfect job.
stroker said:Okay, how hard would it be to build something like this?
Can you weld? The frame there is mostly just 1" round steel tube cut and welded together. You get to design it first. The cost for the frame is pretty low - just some steel tube. The cost is all the stuff in the picture that you can't build yourself: wheels, brake disks, brake calipers, uprights, steering rack, master cylinders, radiators, engine and transaxle.
The easy button is to buy someone else's old sports racer project and learn to live with the restrictions that their design decisions place on you. Sports racers from the 1960's are likely to be pretty expensive at this point. More recent (1970's, 1980's) DSR cars are around that are cheaper and could offer a starting point. There is a build thread currently underway over in the build section of an old sports racer - looks like it was once a DSR but I'm not sure what it class it would fit into now. Imagine putting a new body on that to get something that looks more like a 1960's sports racer.
Per my original post I'm not looking to build a copy or a replica. I'm interested in the concept--something light, simple and low powered on the same pattern. The issue to me always comes back to the transaxle. I see 914 boxes available consistently but it seems to me that the either the V6 or the turbo 4 from a B5 would be the easiest to do. Just for the sake of discussion, let's take that off the table. What "60's" period engine mated to a 914 transaxle would be inexpensive to acquire and maintain? I'm guessing that unless it was common the parts and aftermarket support are going to be expensive. Perhaps something more modern like a Miata engine with that gearbox...?
In reply to stroker :
You can adapt any engine to any gearbox. And the process varies from simple to a lot of engineering. Obviously the 914 to a 914 or any other Porsche. would be the easy button. The chassis if you want simple, can weld and fabricate. Should be a months work. ( 200 hours or so ). But only if you use light, thin guage, square steel tubing. If you insist on round tubing better plan on a lot more time. ( and the loss of all the hair you pull out of your head out of frustration )
Just remember triangles are your friend when planning it. And build a work table at a comfortable height.
In reply to stroker :
I don't know how similar or not the 914 transaxle is to the VW bug or bus transaxle are. If real close then you have the makings of a Hewland etc transaxle.which can take a good amount of HP and parts are readily available.
Kennedy Engineered Products can adapt a huge number of engines to VW and Porsche transaxles including the 914's transaxle (which is a 901, I think). They have the clutches and all of that worked out so that it is pretty much a bolt up affair. Their website lists all the engines that they can match to these transaxles. Pick out an engine you like from their list.
Sports racers of the 60's generally ran engines that would be very expensive today. They used stuff like the Lotus twin cam, the Coventry Climax and a few (like the Elva - Porsche Mk 7) used the four cam four cylinder Porsche 2.0 liter. The BMW 2.0 liter was also used in the late sixties and might be the cheapest option today. I would consider going to something a little more recent. The 2.0 liter Ford OHC that is used in the Sports 2000 cars and the Formula Continental cars is robust, makes about 140 hp and isn't that far off of some of the 60's engines. They have carbs and distributors so they don't look out of place in that sort of setting. The dry sump stuff that you'll need is readily available for that engine so you don't have to engineer and build your own (if you're really building a sports racer for track duty, I think you'll need the dry sump).
In reply to stroker :
If you don't insist on a rear engine car there are welded up chassis available for Lotus 7 kits as cheap as $2000 plus all the body parts are available.
That Lotus 7 was introduced in1957 and it's brutally fast. On tight tracks with a solid driver it will beat Corvettes with a little105 hp 4 cylinder pushrod motor.
You can spend a little ($2000- $15,000+ ) or a lot on them. There is a thread going on right now. Yes you can retrofit carbs on them. If you want ( no won't hurt power very much.).
In reply to stroker :
You've seen this, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJt6sr31caY I think he has some other videos going into the details, but from what I've seen - it doesn't look like it would be more than $10K to build that.
The key to is getting a shell for cheap. There's a tremendous amount of labor in making a metal or composite shell from scratch, so that's the first thing to source. What you decide to put under it actually comes second.
kb58 said:The key to is getting a shell for cheap. There's a tremendous amount of labor in making a metal or composite shell from scratch, so that's the first thing to source. What you decide to put under it actually comes second.
Anyone know how much a used Spec Racer Ford or generic DSR/CSR body costs?
In reply to stroker :
Those are likely stored up in the rafters or in a shed/barn someplace. Best way to find them and a fair price to pay is go to a SCCA meeting and start asking around. Every region will have a public meeting at least once a month.
frenchyd said:In reply to stroker :
That Lotus 7 was introduced in1957 and it's brutally fast. On tight tracks with a solid driver it will beat Corvettes with a little105 hp 4 cylinder pushrod motor.
You can spend a little ($2000- $15,000+ ) or a lot on them. There is a thread going on right now. Yes you can retrofit carbs on them. If you want ( no won't hurt power very much.).
A Lotus 7 is a great slalom car, but unless the rules you race under allow modification of the front fenders you aren't going to do well on te track. I ran against a friend who ran a BMC powered Mk 1 and when we hit around 60 mph on the start lap, it was as if someone had grabbed his car and jerked it backward. He had the cycle fenders which aren't quite as bad as the later front wheel arches, which were basically a large air brake on each side of the car.
stroker said:Anyone know how much a used Spec Racer Ford or generic DSR/CSR body costs?
I think it will be hard to find an old DSR body without buying the whole car. You could look at the old DSR Forum classifieds. ApexSpeed also has a sports racer section with classifieds that you could monitor. I don't follow the SRF stuff so I don't know of a source there. They crash those all the time so I think there is a pretty big demand for bodywork for those. You could probably find out who supplies new body parts for that (SCCA Enterprises?) and see what new body parts cost. The busted up and repaired parts would be cheaper but not free.
wspohn said:frenchyd said:In reply to stroker :
That Lotus 7 was introduced in1957 and it's brutally fast. On tight tracks with a solid driver it will beat Corvettes with a little105 hp 4 cylinder pushrod motor.
You can spend a little ($2000- $15,000+ ) or a lot on them. There is a thread going on right now. Yes you can retrofit carbs on them. If you want ( no won't hurt power very much.).
A Lotus 7 is a great slalom car, but unless the rules you race under allow modification of the front fenders you aren't going to do well on te track. I ran against a friend who ran a BMC powered Mk 1 and when we hit around 60 mph on the start lap, it was as if someone had grabbed his car and jerked it backward. He had the cycle fenders which aren't quite as bad as the later front wheel arches, which were basically a large air brake on each side of the car.
That's why I mentioned a tight track. Both front and rear fenders really shove around a lot of air. Fender flairs do the same thing. But some of that could be the BMC engine. Really falls on its face with the ports it's stuck with
If I was to do it again I would take a feather light modified / Pro4 car and square it up (simple to do with the older cars as the chasie is square the offset is in the suspension) and put a body on it.
This is the last one I was going to do (but never completed) .
You can argue that the motor is in the wrong place but these can be had for cheep and they are usually sorted out very well.
You'll need to log in to post.
