Artyones carry based sports car project

[flyingbrick]

Loved your write up and pics mate! Welcome to the forum.

I hope you are planning a large cyclecar/lotus type thing.

[Nominal]

Sounds like an excellent plan!

[Chris.QCR]

Also really enjoyed your story's about your bikes !

Carry sports car will be a cool build !

[artyone]

I found this the other day and theres elements I like... and a lot I don't. The open framework and the simplicity of the cowl do it for me.

But stuff like this really does it for me which was why I got the A40, after seeing the open chassis with cutaway motor at the Museum of transport and technology.

But the thought of rebuilding a 64 year old engine just was too much of what I might enjoy a little of but don't like the most which is fabrication in light gauge steel. So out went the A40. 

 

Somewhere in the middle is where I'd be going I think and with a little bit of modern rat rod thrown in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTFx-uDzI7c

 

I made this quite a few years ago, really quickly, out of an old A30 I had lying about, and it actually worked. No suspension and everything set up so badly that it was an absolute thrill to drive and I realised it could be really simple, stop worrying about go fast stuff and just start building. It was really funny when the guy who comissioned it turned up. He's got some hot rods and a really radical sixties harley chopper a mate of mine built for him and when I told him it was driveable he was so keen. But when He let the clutch out and it leaped forward, jumped off the ground almost then stopped... he couldn't get away from it fast enough. I was real gentle with it and even I wasn't brave enough to go into third it was so scary and precarious.

 

I drive a Diahatsu Mira which is a 3 cylinder 850cc and I know it's not fast but when it winds out it has such a lovely sound to it, not exhaust note as it's on regular mufflers but this Suzuki is a 800cc four and once I get some headers made and a straight through fibreglass packed single muffler and some bigger diameter wheels to spread the ratios out it's gonna sound heavenly! Might even get some manifolds cast and get some Motorcycle carbs or a small weber... if I ever sell a painting!

[flyingbrick]

I had a mira too haha. The were a few low speed footpath overtaking maneuvers back then!

I totally get the Minimalist thing. The atom is one of my dream cars. As is the Exocet-another you should look at!

[Styles]

Awesome, welcome, and looking forward to progress! All the best!

[KIRK]

I think atoms are disgusting looking things but otherwise I agree with everything in your article here

 

9/10

[tortron]

Top idea, iv always been interested in the kit car conversions from the 50's

 

They may still be awkward to drive and slow, but at least they look neat

[thegreatestben]

My old man has a friend with an Austin 7, I think it may be a special? any who it's powered by carry van stuff as it's very similar in size to austin stuff and the ratio's of the gear box suited the original diff well.

 

Reckon's its flippin scary how much faster it will go vs the original engine. Especially with stock steering and brakes.

[artyone]

The biggest problem with this build is the front end and the basic setup of the single lower swingarm and the McPherson strut. It means that the frame has to be a certain way to properly hold stiff those six points of attachment and this then makes it difficult to put the radiator anywhere that isn't too far out front or makes me lengthen the chassis so it can be right in front of the motor.

 

The answer to this is to find older Suzuki front ends that used double wishbones which are rare as hen's teeth and I know this, that they'd be what I wanted, because I had two sets for the longest time. One was from a Suzuki fronte I found out in the old Wiri wreckers way back in the early nineties from which I also took the rear axles, bearing carrier swingarms and brakes. These I used on my Red Bull trolley in the two earliest sets of races but eventually threw them out when I got tired of moving them around the garage. They were good because they already had discs on them and the steering angles, though for a shorter wheel base, would have been close enough.

 

The absolute winner though would be the front end off one of the earliest Suzuki Carry, which may have been called something else, but was a bolt up subframe with double wishbones, coil springs and even the same steering setup. The weird thing about these was the two piece wheels where the brake drum was alloy and was also the wheel centre with the steel rims bolting to the outer of the brake drums. In maybe 1991 a friend down the road did alot of wrecking and I was again on the sports car thing and he dropped off a whole chassis, without motor and box, at my place one day. I kept most of it for quite a while but eventually cut it all up and made a sculpture out of it after seeing a movie about Picasso 'cause I was well into art by then and the idea of sports cars was well and truly too bourgeious... we're such idiots when we're young! (actually I'm still an idiot)

 

That's kinda been the thing one learns as time goes on. All these wonderful cars one had and threw away for whatever reasons were pertinent at the time but in hindsight would have been an absolute pile of treasure to still have around. But it's so the way of the world that the use by dates are getting so short and relevance of use so much narrower... thank God the price of scrap is going down and less is finding it's way back into the furnace.

 

The other option is, of course, to make uprights from scratch. I've had a few little bits and pieces sand cast in aluminium and my brother did a shit load of bronzes where he sculpted from wax then had it all poured in the lost wax technique so I totally get that stuff and it wouldn't be too difficult to carve some uprights outta wood then have some axles turned up. That way I'd have total control over camber and castor angles as well as being able to set the points where I wanted... but that'd be a last resort as I don't really want to go to that extreme of fabricating.

 

Who knows where there's a rusty old fronte? Or one of those really early Suzi vans?

[insanebrain]

awesome idea - I've had similar thoughts!

 

I've always wanted to get involved in a bit of motorsport but the $ are too much. So I thought about why it costs more than it used to (when it appeared to be within the reach of the average guy) and my conclusion is traction. Modern tires have too much which (a) means we go faster and thus need more safety equipment/better protection and ( traction exerts more force on the vehicle, meaning they have to be stronger/more reliable etc - all of which costs dollars. Hence why I thought of a light weight chassis (and yes I have considered carry vans) with space saver tires just like you are talking about, a bit like the cyclekarts that are discussed in the General Car Chat section. I am leaning towards using a modified quad bike chassis now (cut behind engine, extended to allow for a seat etc).

[flyingbrick]

I'm not sure if using space saver tires is actually legal.

Aren't they Max speed 80kph or something

[artyone]

I actually don't care if stuff is legal as it's not my intention to ask any authority as to what I do is right or wrong. That said the space savers definitely could be a bit precarious on heavy weight cars, or normal weight anyways, given the amount of pressure applied but if the car is a quarter to a third of that wait then it can be pushed 3 or 4 times harder before those limits are realised... and I'd be going for cheap motorcycle tyres on the rims anyways as traction definitely would be something I'd be after. I suppose it's all about using what's available and plentiful and then replacing it later if it proves not up to the task.

 

Hey Insane, I went that way too, motorcycle engines and spent lots of time figuring out how to take a diff head and chuck a sprocket on it... and now you can buy them. http://quaife.co.uk/

 

And I agree with your summation that traction is the culprit. My nephew was going on about going fast and my brother said " All you need for fun is your ass as close to the ground as possible and really skinny tires" which surprised me coming from him... as if he'd been listening to me all along and then been able to quantise all of it down to one simple statement.

 

For me the go fast bit has been fun in the past but that kinda pales in the face of taking on the challenge of building something that actually works. Then if you add in going off the beaten track and getting behind ones own ideas of what's actually going on, and how one can successfully achieve what is actually appropriate for ones self, then I'm a happy chappy.

 

I kinda call it the efficiency of happiness ( I just made that up) and it's a fine balance of idealism and pragmatism. I'm still working it out but over the years it kinda comes down to all machinery being beautiful in some way if we can figure out how to use it essentially for what we actually require from it. This is the art taking over and it's kind of a discovery about how far you might be able to push something if you know it well and trust it. But it also very much about tolerances, our own, and that they can be pushed very high through too much participation in the status quo and if we lower those tolerances, make what we actually have really stretch, then possibility widens out into whole new territories.

 

And also, with the art, I've always tried to make what I do approachable in the sense that the materials are simple and hopefully cheap and so is the method of construction so that whatever the outcome is people with less skills or different skills don't see it as some arcane rich man's pursuit of excellence at any cost but as something, they too, could achieve with the minimum of effort so that the creative part becomes the task and not the entry level requirements... too much socialism in my youth I think.

 

So by now you've realised I enjoy writing... and I do.

[h4nd]

Love the concept, why use an axe, when a scalpel works better in the right hands?

 

This guy is building a 100mph, 100mpg kubota diesel, lotus 7 based machine which looks like a 60's race car:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/search.aspx?tags=MAX#axzz30DZmAY6q

esp. rad, cos he's a yank, then x2 cos he's been to NZ and loved it.

[h4nd]

also:

http://www.andysautosport.com/supercharger_kits/suzuki.html

 

and low speed awesomeness (Lotus gymkhana)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHgjFPhhzY8 

[artyone]

Cheers, h4nd... very handy! A man after my own heart... no reason we can't go fast and eat lot's of lettuce and beans! I met a chap years ago who gave me the inside scope on the hydrogen converters and that'll be going on this for sure... maybe even homemade alcohol!

 

I'll get back to the Earthy stuff as I gotta run right now. The other one was years ago meeting this chap at a motorcycle show with a 500 yamaha single with a MR1 supercharger... that'd be sweet too, as yesterday I found a bin full of high grade tool steel for a buck a kilo and the slabs were for a high speed chomper so were like huge planner blades and they'd, the steel, make nice connecting rods for big compressions being squeezed in. And my old mate Richard Livingston would be the one to make them for me... pity he's way up in Whangarei.

[Goat]

This thread contains so much awesome!

[artyone]

Today I went with my Dad to visit the nephew and it turns out he can get me an MR1 supercharger, he'd rebuilt one for some chap and set it up for him and the fellow had a few spares so he's going to try and get one for me... and I also had a wheel still in the back of the car, a space saver I found yesterday, and he reckons it was most probably from a Nissan skyline and is 16" and has hardly any offset and with the size of the wheel, all that room inside around the piddly Suzi brakes an idea of using a front wheel drive hub and bearings might be easier to fabricate a set of uprights for.

 

By doing it the old fashioned way it'd include getting stub axles made up... or just using trailer ones then heating the cast upright to slide them in then bolting and pinning I suppose whereas with the fronts used with CV jointed drive shafts, and forgive me if I'm wrong here and have overlooked the end of the driveshaft and it's bolt holding it all together, but this setup only requires the upright to be cast as the bearings will sit in that... am I wrong.

 

And with the wheels so big there's room at the bottom to tuck the upright under the disc and be able to then have the A-arms sitting right down. I'll take some measurements of the wheel and do some drawings tomorrow.

 

The other things that's starting to occur is that my Mira bodies almost at the end of it's usable life even while the engines still pretty good and I've had thoughts in the past of using that in the back end of something or other so maybe I'm going to end up building two cars.

 

Maybe with the second one actually following a legal route.

 

And, of course I have to find cash to do all this, and what's crossed my mind is absolute silliness.

 

A friend of mine has been painting up a coffee trailer, the one that is at Titirangi each month for the market, and it's quite a lovely bit of kit that foldsa out and makes a counter. So it occurred to me that the Suzuki van body could be chopped up and made into a trailer.

Cut the body off at the back of the rear doors then cut the front off and weld it onto the rear section. The cut out the floor behind the axle and drop it right down and build a compartment for batteries and an inverter and then in the front part put in water container and pump. The build shelves and cupboards and whatever for a fridge and a coffee machine... then sell it. Still kinda mulling it over.

 

But really what I gotta do now is forget all this day dreaming and think about building a shed to do it all in... and hope for a few hundy to pay the rental on my bottles. Just got new ones recently... the biggies at 6.5 cubic litres and kilos, so I should have enough to build all this stuff, and thank God for those 1.2mm cut-off wheels, all my past efforts were with a hacksaw!

[artyone]

Then at the other end of what ever spectrum may be spectrumising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atorQzE_8KE

 

It's like I used to have a b1600 for a little while then years later managed to get a b1200 and put a 1300 in it 'cause the 1200 was pocked... man, I even had a spare one... whole ute that is, but the rusty blues got me and some young rotary freak fellows come round and got the both of them for free.

 

So I hope they ended up doing something like the above 'cause I really appreciate this mad kinda testosterone fueled stuff some of these 20 somethings get up to. And it makes me wonder how when I look back, eventually, on what I'm going to do now, how much what could be happening around me then could've affected me now before I begin. I know that sounds weird but I try and look at things that way.

 

This other idea I've had for a while is to make suspensions that are old style traverse leaf springs and those way old lever action dampeners but mix them up with progressive rate rod actuated swing arms and such... the above reminded me of that.

[artyone]

On a roll now... maybe clearing some bush to build the shed will bring me back to reality.

 

With my Mira I have this guy I go to who has a paddock full of them up in Kaukapakapa and he's a lovely chap and sells me what I need cheap kind of on that we're all trying to save the world buzz so let's share what's needed to give us more time and energy for world savin'... which I really like and appreciate.

 

So while the suzuki is tending towards all my fantasies of what a car should be which is a rolling artwork which defines all the idealism a person might aspire to, a total metaphor of the encapsulation of any persons dreams about the world... except there's no room for soil to plant trees on it, with the Mira almost at the end of it's days body wise it might be an idea to build a shed capable of making two cars with one being the dream state and the other, with a Mira base being a totally pragmatic (not completely though but mostly) legally binding, as in compliant, run about which could easily take on the form of a kitcar.

 

Because with all these years as an artist I'm looking at bread and butter concepts as the requirement I can never seem to fulfil to be able to fully go off on flights of fancy but have this backdrop that pays the bills. For the past decade the emphasis has been on lowering the bills to almost no-existence while at the same time building up the floor space to have lots of different work areas to accomplish whatever and now that this is mostly acheived it might be an idea to have the flight of fancy, the Suzuki, as a test bed or sketchbook which allows me to go off into silly land, with no need whatsoever to make it legal in any way, but use this 'freedom' to be able to then take a few steps backwards and apply these ideas in a more pragmatic gesture.

The above could not be in any way construed as pragmatic except in the sense that it's a really straight forward design style and something similar with a bent towards agricultural tractorish simplicity could possibly be quite simple to make legal.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_783944&feature=iv&src_vid=r6oDCbcmtWw&v=hsfgwEUXtTc

 

The video above is about making an arc welder using two microwave transformers  and I'd so love to be able to build a really basic chassis with a Mira motor in the back welded up using something like this. And a coupla years ago I finally got fibreglassing added to my repertoire and even though an English wheel and some bead rollers are my dream acquisitions and what I'd love to have to do the Suzuki, the old sticky resins and glass matt being sprayed into molds also quite appeals as a very pragmatic way to cover a vehicles oily bits from the rain.

 

Years and years ago I made quite a few visits to the chap who was in Onehunga building the Lotus copies using old Vivas and the rugged simplicity of his RHS chassis and fibreglass bodies, at the time, were somewhat abhorrent against what I aspired to... in hindsight were a special genius I should most probably embraced.