New member - Bought an RA107

[MadMatt]

don´t be naive...
each F1 car produced by Wirth set Virgin back 1.5Mill€ (wirth was speaking of the equivalent of less than a Bugatti Veyron)it was reported.
And that´s a f1racer designed with costlimitations very high on the agenda.
to even think of keeping a reasonable stock of spares -reproduce them - would be commiting ecomonmic suicide.If you can get some surplus ,fine ,but reproduce parts is just not feasible .This is a 750 headcount producing 5 chassis per year type of car...think about the workhours that went into it to produce and run it.
this is at least comparable to keeping military aircraft airworthy...
Any major off with this (in case you get even near to running it) or any fault in terms of correct proceedures will potentially render the thing effectively a writeoff due to the cost to bring it back to life after destroying expensive components.A very good step would be to try and find its sistercars and purchase what you can get hold of just to have a remote chance to not run out of importanat parts.

I do not fully agree with you. Yes the cost of the car is high but most of it is development. Making carbon parts is not so difficult. A lot of companies are able to do them at quite low cost (especially in Chine), and with GOOD quality (at least as much as original part) !

Having the part 3D modeled is not so difficult either, just be careful and 100% committed with it and it should be ok ! Otherwise there is still the laser machines that can help you but it would cost a lot more. Of course I'm not talking about redo a chassis, but small parts which may subject to break after a contact with barrier or something.

[F1snake]

Kurt,

We plan to use the original BBS rims. I'm just saving up for a set of Bridgestone wets I've seen, also on the BBS's. There's a soft Avon hill climb tyre available in the correct sizes aswell.

Tim,

Many thanks for the kind offer to help with 3D CAD work, I might well take you up on that! H1V8 photos comming here soon, watch this space!!

[bettonracing]

Relax buddy!, just because motorsport has no purpose has not stopped me from investing far too much time, money and sanity in it.
...
Tim

...

F1Snake,
All this talk about reproducing body parts got me thinking: Are You looking to replicate the car's aero as much as possible, or do You plan to go with something a little more "amatuer team friendly"? (e.g. larger diffuser volume, raised front wing height)

You may also consider using a layer (or few) of vinyl wrap to protect the exposed carbon parts from shrapnel (AKA pebbles @ 180mph) - über-precise aerodynamics be damned.

Regards,

Kurt

[F1snake]

Hi Kurt,

Good question, we plan to leave the aero as it currently is for now, and see how we get on. Although we are trying to keep close to Hondas original set up, eg weight distribution, but will our engine cradle have the same torsional stiffness for starters... some of the data is unknown, and we won't have the monitoring and interpretation capabilities of an F1 team (or driving skill!) to dial it in. Until everything is finalised we just wont know how the car will behave. Suspension set up will be a big area to work through, so we'll leave aero alone and see how it behaves, unless we are sure something feels very wrong with the car, then we'll think about playing around with wing angles later. On the front aero, we will be starting of with the thinnest shim on the nose to front wing, and run different thickness of stick-on rub strips underneath to gauge what clearance we have on track against damage, maybe this wont be an issue, but on less than super smooth tracks I feel it could be. Its probably safer to run a soft suspension set up initially for good mechanical grip, we're not going to be able to go out and drive fast straight away for the aero to come into real effect anyway, not until we get some seat time and build confidence. We can then work on the balance through corning antics, its my understanding that some of the cars front aero determines also what goes on at the rear, by the way the air is scooped and channelled over and around the car. I am looking forwards to being able to play around with different settings at different tracks, depending on what the car feels like its doing, once we get to that level of understanding we will know we at one with the car. That to me is the main goal to achieve with this project in making it a runner, the speed should naturally develop then in a safe manner.

Regarding 180 mph stone chips... I'm not planning on following any car in front very closely at that speed!!

[marcush.]

as for the reproduction of cf parts...
every molded part comes from a mold.So You start of by taking plugs from your original bodywork and parts...
thats engine cowling,sidepods,radiator ducts,brake ducts ,floor ,nose,front wing,flaps,endplates ,difusser,rear wing ..the list is endless,we are talking about around 50 to 60 separate molds of varying complexity plus bonding fixtures.
..very quickly you will realise that most of this stuff will need very complicated moldmaking to arrive at something you can demold.Second thing all the
cf needs vaccum bagging and or pressure +temperature curing..so the molds have to be quality= expensive material as well .Moldmaking is a very skilled profession so nothing that will lead to good results when you think of it as a quick thing you need to do to be able to produce shiny CF parts.
China ..other people swear you could get parts manufactured in India for low money.how would you do this in reality ? We are talking of a lot of work to produce 1 or maybe two parts of each...even if the labour cost are considerably lower you will face a brutal sum at the end ..shipping ,customs,complete loss of parts ,parts not matching your expectations.

[Caito]

You don't need to go fast for good aero. The wiki says an F1 car generates its own weight in downforce at 130km/h. Added 650kg would mean lots more grip!

[Giblet]

I wonder if MercedesGP would be willing to give you drawings for parts if/as they break.

[Marco]

There was an article recently in Octane magazine (maybe Motor Sport magazine) about a UK based company now able to scan every component of your car and create CAD "drawings" from them so that replacement parts could be made. The company founder had done a Bugatti Type 35 as a project to prove his software.

He might be a chap to know with regard to getting new parts made??

[Richard]

Good idea, that would be useful to build an "as built" record. That sort of scanning is commonplace in a number of industries from CGI through to a chap I know who flies a blimp along railway tunnels and inside chimneys. All you need to do is find someone nearby with a portable scanner who will do the scan for a PR demonstration project.

[bosanac1]

There was an article recently in Octane magazine (maybe Motor Sport magazine) about a UK based company now able to scan every component of your car and create CAD "drawings" from them so that replacement parts could be made. The company founder had done a Bugatti Type 35 as a project to prove his software.

He might be a chap to know with regard to getting new parts made??

you must be talking about this

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/extras/ar ... d-parts-1/


not sure what the cost would be but it wouldn't be bad idea to check quote

[spacer]

Have you contacted Judd (UK)?

You might want to do so as they sell retrofit engines for the BOSSGP cars (late model F1 cars, fully stressed etc). They more or less specialise in these sort of engine rebuilds.

http://www.engdev.com/?page_id=81

Our GV 4 litre V10 is the premier engine for retro-fitting into late model F1 cars, when the original engine is no longer available or cost effective to rebuild. The GV4 produces 750hp in unrestricted form.

[Scotracer]

I choose to come back here and I see this thread.


Awesome.

[slipstream]

. That to me is the main goal to achieve with this project in making it a runner,

Hello F1snake

I'm involved in buying/selling and running race cars http://www.breezemountmotorsport.com and must confess your fantastic purchase has grabbed my attention. I totally think you are bonkers!!! What were you thinking of?? But you know what...its people like you that could just pull it off!

You simply can't purchase contemporary F1 machinery to run in private hands. The specialised manufacturing needs for maintenance never mind the parts required, staff to run etc etc the list goes on...its just not the same as running a 80's or early 90's F1 chassis which is possible by for 1 man to do.

But I duff my hat to you, someone like you might just have the enthusiasm to work out the thousands of issues to squeeze something in the back and make it run. But I fear that making it just run may prove to be its downfall, to keep the chassis with current wheelbase and external silhouette most definitely means that making the thing run under its own steam will be require a power train so small and absent of power that you would have been better off spending your money on a used World Series by Renault, or one of the many 1st Gen GP2 that are coming onto the market. Both of which come already sorted with contemporary F1 looks and parts availability.

However F1snake, I think you could be just the person to prove me wrong and totally support your efforts...I certainly will follow your thread and so in the meantime ask you to visit website below. at least you will know where to come if we get a ready to run contemporary single seater chassis!

http://www.breezemountmotorsport.com

[Edis]

Have you looked at the possebility of using a champcar engine in the car? These are 2.65 litre V8 engines and should make about 500-600 hp with the turbocharger removed. Cosworth XD and the older Cosworth XB are the most common champcar engines widely availible. Honda have built a few champcar engines too, but they seem hard to come by. In any case, these engines are built to be fully stressed and compared to indy or other production derived units they are very compact.



Some pictures and info on these Cosworth engines can be found here:
http://www.lolachampcar.com/

Two ads for Cosworth XD engines:
http://www.race-cars.com/engsales/coswo ... 6217ss.htm
http://www.race-cars.com/engsales/coswo ... 0485ss.htm

At about £30k they aren't cheap, but neither impossible to afford.

[Marco]

There was an article recently in Octane magazine (maybe Motor Sport magazine) about a UK based company now able to scan every component of your car and create CAD "drawings" from them so that replacement parts could be made. The company founder had done a Bugatti Type 35 as a project to prove his software.

He might be a chap to know with regard to getting new parts made??

you must be talking about this

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/extras/ar ... d-parts-1/


not sure what the cost would be but it wouldn't be bad idea to check quote

That looks cool but it was definately a chap in the UK. He had some deal with the bugatti owners club or some such club and had scanned an entire T35.