Festival and Race for Italian Supercars, Motorbikes, and Cyclists. Italy, Emilia-Romagna Piacenza, Castell'Arquato 16-18 September 2016. 

We were contact recently by the organisers of the Best of Italy Festival to get involved with a very special car project. They had purchased a mint Maserati 420 convertible from a dealership and had cut the windscreen off. Their aim was to produce a replica of the Candini monoposto Maserati 320.

They came to us because they knew we had the experience and technologies in house to to achieve the right result, first time and in the extremely tight time frame they had. So we were tasked with creating the canopy top that covers in the cockpit and passenger area.

3D Scanning

Due to the high degree of interface these new components were to have with the original bodywork of the Maserati, we needed to know accurately the shape of the car in the areas our components were going to fit. So we made use of blue light non contact 3D scanning. This is a very high accuracy aerospace scanning system than can capture the shape within a few thousandths of a millimetre. The picture below shows the prepared car surface and the scanner head in action.

The scan data is presented as a cloud of points and specialist software is used to interpret the data and convert the cloud into CAD compatible surfaces. In this case we required the surface data from around the cockpit opening and top part of the cars bodywork. We captured the entire bonnet because there is a future project for the car that may require this data.

3D Printing

During the course of the main project a couple of smaller projects were given to us to make use of our 3D printing capabilities. We have some of the best 3D printing technology in the area and combined with our 3D scanner we were able to create modified centre console parts and design a bespoke rear view mirror, within a few days.

The picture below shows super model Jodie Kidd in the bespoke designed and 3D printed rear view mirror, Jodie will be driving the car at the Best of Italy festival in September.

CAD Design

Designing a structure such as this with these highly complex surfaces, need to interface with the OEM body and the short lead times is extremely challenging. Modern CAD systems like ours have advanced tools for creating the shapes required, but, the nature of the shapes requires CAD operators with experience usually only found in the aerospace and motor sport industries. Luckily we have this level of experience in house and provides the link between all our manufacturing capability.

CNC pattern machining

Once the canopies design was complete and signed off by the customer we were able to use the CAD model and our CAM system to machine the pattern from which the moulds would be taken, on our CNC machining centre. The CAM system takes the complex surface geometry from the CAD model and directly generates machine tool paths from it. The result is the complex surfaces are create quickly and with an accuracy of tens of microns.

Mould Production

The final items for the project were made in fibreglass but there's a chance that future versions might need to be made in carbon fibre, which requires a high temperature cure cycle in our special oven system. In order to facilitate this possible requirement the moulds were made using a vinyl ester high temp capability resin system.

Carbon Fibre 

No high tech project car would be complete with out at least a hint of carbon fibre. In this case we made the aeroscreen from the black composite material, that's famed for it's high stiffness modulus and high strength to weight ratio. 

Links

www.equinox3dengineering.co.uk

www.bestofitalyrace.com

Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/equinox3dengineering

and on Twitter - @equinox3d

How to install a Zetec in a "7" style car

Normally i like to write articles on how to do things from my own experience, but, every now and then you come across other resources that blow you away with the detailed information they hold.

So for this particular How To Blog i'm simply going to refer all readers to the excellent www.zetec-cat.co.uk website where you'll be staggered at the detailed information it holds on this engine, its variants and the installation requirements for "7" type cars.

You'll find other blogs by Zetec builders within the magazine on the website www.kit-car-builds.socialgo.com that show other ways to do the induction system and variations on the common installations.

Darren.

Installing a Duratec 2.0 HE in a “7” style kit car.

Introduction

The Duratec I4 2.0 HE engine is a Mazda/Ford engine, using a all aluminium head and block design. The engine produces 145 BHP in standard Ford Mondeo specification and installed in a kit car will weigh around 95 kg’s. You can expect power outputs of 170-275 BHP when installed in a kit car.

The engine was used in all 2.0 litre petrol Mk3 Ford Mondeo’s from 2001 on. You should expect to pay around £500-£650 pounds in scrap yards for an engine of less than 50,000 miles. New engine are available for around £1500.

Installation

The Duratec is not a Ford designed engine and this means that unlike all other Ford engines you cannot bolt either the Type 9 gearbox or the MT75 gearbox to it directly. You need a bell housing to adapt the engine to the Type 9 gearbox. Given the power levels of the Duratec a later heavy duty Type 9 gearbox is the best bet.

Our bell housing uses a Mondeo hydraulic slave cylinder (V6 version) to operate the clutch. You can use the original clutch and flywheel if you want. However it’s better to take the opportunity to fit our lightweight flywheel, bolts, and heavy duty clutch to handle the increased power output. You’ll need to adapt your car to have a clutch master cylinder to operate the slave cylinder.

You’ll also need to replace the sump with a low line version, that is baffled to suit the installation. In the Mondeo the engine is transversely mounted and baffled as such. You will need a properly baffled sump, the LSIS type cars produce far more lateral acceleration than the Mondeo and to avoid the very expensive condition of oil surge you are best to invest in a proper sump arrangement.

In a properly designed sump you’ll find a windage tray arrangement which you can assume will give you 5% more horsepower, due to reducing losses associated with churning the crank shaft through the oil mist in the bottom end.

Engine mount plate can be provided, and engine mounts fabricated from them, using the triangular arrangement of three M10 holes on the inlet side and the four M10 holes on the exhaust side. You will need to isolate the engine and the chassis using rubber type engine mounts.


The original ECU could possibly be used, but, is very likely to be more hassle than its worth. The ECU requires lots of inputs from the car and alternator etc, all things that we can’t provide on a kit car. We recommend and provide the Omex 600 ECU, with a Duratec wiring loom that makes fitting it to the engine easy. You will need to use a normal style alternator however as the Ford item needs major electronic trickery to make it function without the Ford ECU. We provide a very small 55 amp alternator and mounts for the engine. This saves weight and makes the installation package smaller, making it easier to fit in tight engine bays. The position of the alternator is dependent on whether the car is LHD or RHD and whether it has an external dry sump pump fitted or not.

You can use various inlet systems. For our entry level kit we have designed a plenum chamber style, which retains the original Ford single throttle body. With the Omex ECU arrangement this generates 175 BHP, a 30 BHP increase over the standard Ford Mondeo. The power increase is achieved with out needing to modify the internals of the engine at all, thus saving very expensive specialist labour costs. If your engine bay is big enough to accept it, it is possible to retain the original Ford inlet plenum, although certain features would need to be blanked off. You will also need a blanking plate to blank off the EGR valve system.

For approximately 200 + BHP the use of multiple direct to hear throttle bodies is required. More than 200 BHP requires new cams, valve springs, pocketed pistons and heavy duty big end bolts.

We have used a modified standard exhaust header before, but, these are not suitable for more than 175 BHP or RHD cars. Therefore you will need to manufacture a 4-2-1 style exhaust manifold, with about 30” long primaries, and short collector and 6” diameter x 24” long silencer. Off the shelf systems exist for the Panther, Caterham and Westfield. The Panther system should also fit MK Indy’s, Luego Velocities, MNR Vortex, Locost and Stuart Taylor cars.

If you require a Catalytic converter for the SVA, then you will also need a Lambda probe fitting in either number 4 cylinder header, or in the collecter. Cat’s are commonly fitted within the silencer, although you will need to make sure the cat is very hot prior to any test.

The water system is fairly straight forward. It has an electronic thermostat that’s controlled by the ecu in the Mondeo, and us such this needs to be disabled and a manual thermostat system needs to be put in the water system somewhere. There is a water rail kit available that makes life very simple. It features a mechanical thermostat in a cast aluminium housing, that replaces the Ford water connector and makes the installation a fair bit smaller and neater.

In 7 type vehicles you may find you have a bonnet height clearance problem, and to help overcome this there is a cast aluminium low line cam cover available also. For the Panther GTS model we have opted for a very slight bonnet bulge for the Duratec to save the expense of a replacement cam cover. The Panther GTS bodywork however is a taller than commonly used, therefore the bonnet bulge required in other makes of car may be less discreet.

Making Money from Vehicle Salvage - 100% profit margin

Making money from Vehicle Salvage - Copyright GTS Tuning 2010

Introduction

This blog is a redacted version of a pay per download file thats on the downloads section the www.kit-car-builds.socialgo.com website. The full guide shows websites and other top tips that this blog doesn’t. The £4 cost for the article is justified by the huge earning potential of the information held within it.

When a car is stolen/recovered or damaged in an accident the relevant insurance company makes a decision on whether its cost effective to repair the car or write it off. Its not only the physical repair costs that they have to take into account, its the cost of collection plus giving the owner a hire car etc. The result is that a lot of cars are written off for fairly minor damage. These write offs are collected by certain companies and sold on. Some go to the scrap yards to be broken for parts and then crushed for the the metal content. Other less badly damaged cars are bought by the trade, repaired and sold on.

This is where you can get in on the act and make good profits.

In my mind i believe that cars of under £2,500 retails value are likely to be written off for any amount of damage no matter how small. My own car had a book value of £2500 when i bought it for £400 as a Category D write off. It took me about 5 minutes to fix the wonkey front bumper enough so that from a few feet back you would never know it had been damaged.

Regulations

To stop cars being ringed and two cars made into one, the government introduced new proceedures to cover vehicle salvage.

Cars considered to badly damaged to be safely repaired are given a Cat B designation, and only council approved dismantlers are allowed to purchase these and break them for parts. They are not allowed under any circumstances to put them back on the road.

Cars damaged fairly heavily but not structurally are given Cat C status. These are allowed back on the road but only after an MOT and government test called a VIC, or Vehicle Identity Check. This is a short test and takes about 5 mintues for the VOSA tester to check the chassis numbers tie up and there is no evidence of stolen parts being used in the repair. The VIC check costs £41. Examples of the types of damage are dented wings, doors bonnets etc. You’ll need to apply for the log book when you tax the car, as the log books are held by DVLA for all Cat C cars.
Car with light damage will be given Cat D status and these are allowed straight back on the road after an MOT.

Cat C is the most common classification that you’ll deal with. Cat D cars are few and far between and tend to go for more money. You will luck in every now and then and find that for one reason or another the Cat C car you bought is actually registered with DVLA as Cat D and this is always a welcome bonus.

Where to buy Salvage Cars

There are several companies offering salvage vehicles. Most have an online auction process. Not dislike using Ebay, there will be a weeks pre-bidding on each lot, and then a short and often frantic auction one day a week. The price of each lot starts at where the pre-biddig got to, and you have a 5 seconds count down to place your bid. If no one bids against you then you win it. If someone else bids within the next 5 seconds countdown then, they’ll be another 5 second count down for the next bid. So on and so on until everyone has finished bidding and someone wins the lot.

I use the site is listed in the full guide and they have auction yards all round the country. My local yard has about 1000 lots for sale each week. You have to register with them before you are allowed to bid.

Each lot tends to start at a nominal price of £50 and bids go on from there. A car of retail price £1000 is likely to sell for £125, on top of which you’ll get charged about £50 of fees, which includes the charge for the company to pick the car from the lot and deliver it to you in their car park.

Repairs

If you choose your purchase carefully you should be able to do most of the repairs yourself. Swapping a wing or bumber etc. You should be able to find a local spray place that will paint panels or the car for you for not a lot for cash. I pay about £240 to paint the entire front of a car,and £90 for a single panel. They do a great job and turn them around within a few days.
I buy all my repair panels trade froma great company whose details i have detailed in the full guide, a Fiat Punto wing is £30-ish and they deliver for free next day direct to you, no minimum order.

If you are up for painting panels yourself then the full guide lists a good website for supplies. The 2 pack paint that you’ll need to use is hard to buy from local shops, and they want to see health and safety regulations etc. Online its not the same problem. Take care and follow the safety instructions though, 2 pack paint is nasty stuff although now i’m into using it and a bit more experienced its pretty straight forward to get acceptible results in a normal garage.
If you need to pull out dents in crash zones etc, then you can use lamp posts, and other cars with tie down straps to restriant them. I do it by hand and just rock the car against the restraint until its pulled out. Some people drive the cars in reverse in order to pull them out. I find that 90% come out easily by hand and its controlable. If you go to far you can always drive the car into something solid to push it back to where you want it. Its pretty brutal sounding,but, its effective and gets good results. I’ve a dedicated strapping point welded to workshop now for the job.

Financials

Practical example from my personal experience.

Bid £90 for 10 year old car with dented front wing. Book value £950, sell for £895 taxed.
Fees - £52, VIC - £41, MOT £50, Tax - £67.50, advert - £15 (online 2 weeks magazine 1 week)
New wing - £35, Painted professionally - £90
Total cost - £440.50 profit of approx. 100%

This 100% profit does seem to apply to almost all cars at salvage auctions. If you spot a car that you like the look of,and figure out the sale value, halve it, take off the costs to repair it etc, you’ll end up with a recommended bid price. 99% of the time the cars will sell for this predicted bid cost. All traders in this game are looking for the 100% profit margin, and getting it.
I tend to sell these sub £1k cars throuhg a leading magazine in 24-48 hours of advertising them. Quite often i repair them to order for the people who missed out on the car i advertised.

Further tips

If you download the full guide from the Downloads section of this website you’ll get some further tips for maximising profit.

Conclusion

Where there’s muck theres brass, and this still holds true. The recession has made these cheap slavage cars highly desirable. It's time you cashed in on it too.

MX5even Prototype Build - Day 2

Now the alloy panels are fitted to the chassis and the little boost in motivation that has given me i'm cracking on with the next stage of the build. The customer is due to visit soon, and i need to get the car to the point where he can sit in it and try out the seat and pedal positions pretty soon.

First step for today was the side panels. They are really the only part of the body work that needs fitting in the early stages of the build. I cut them so the front suspension passes through them so they look nice and neat and tidy, and hence they have to be fitted fairly early else the suspension must come back off. I rought trim them with a 1mm thick slitting disc in an angle grinder so they'll fit on over the chassis. Then using a template i made some years ago in MDF i mark out the appropriate suspension holes and the trim line for a nice fit to the nose cone. I use the point on the chassis where it starts to taper in to form the engine bay as a reference point and transfer all the holes from the template to the side panel. Hole saws are ideal for making the initial hole and then i open them up to the correct size and shape with a cheap copy of a Dremel mini die grinder.

Before fitting the side panels properly i fit 6 rivnuts, 4 for the scuttle and 2 for the nose cone. Its easier and a better fit in the chassis to fit them before the sides. It can be done after but its more fiddly. I mark the position of the mounting hole on the scuttle and nose first, basically half way through the width of the return flanges, and at sensible points along the sides so you can get inside when fitting them, with a spanner. Then i transfer these measurements to the chassis remembering to take account of the thickness of the layup of the side panels. That way everything fits nice a flush.

To fix the side panels, i use rivets anywhere they can't be seen. It doesn't need many rivets to hold them securely, along the bottom edge and a some in the engine bay area and under the rear wings will be fine.

I personally like to then fit the majority of the rest of the bodywork. I find it motivating to see the actual shape of the car sat there in front of me. It does mean the bodywork is prone to getting knocked, but it does also help it keep its shape. Today i fitted the back panel, scuttle and the nose. It's nice for the customer to see the car starting to look like a car too. The scuttle and nose are fitted with M6 bolts with repair washers down into the rivnuts in the chassis. The back panel is fixed with rivets along the underside of the chassis and around the chassis area hidden by the rear wheel arches.

Before fitting the nose i trimmed out the front panel for the air intake to the radiator. I left a few tabs of fibreglass around the edge so i can mount the grill mesh. The trimmed out section i kept as a template for the grill mesh, i found making it about 1" bigger all round worked perfectly. The grill mesh is held in by M6 plated button head screws in 6 positions around the edge. I sourced the mesh from a local car accessory shop for this job. It's a pretty expensive way to buy it but i needed it in a hurry having forgotten to pick any up last time i was at my normal supplier. £25 bought me enough mesh to do two noses.

As i wanted to get the seat and pedal positions signed off with the customer in the cockpit, the next item i fitted was the pedal box. This is the same hydraulic pedal box setup that i've been supplying with all kits for the past year or so. It's floor mounted and only requires two M6 bolts to secure it to the floor. It is secured to the footwell bulkheads as well via the master cylinders, but, for now i'm fitting it only to the floor. I still need to trim and fit the footwell bulkhead panels and i find it easier at this stage to leave them out in case there is some big problem, requiring an extreme solution, when the customer tries it for size.

In this car i'm fitting our most popular GRP bucket seats. I lay them up with M8 anchor nuts in the base, and i have a template for these hole positions that i lay on the floor of the cockpit and drill through. I use M8 sets screws with big repair washers to spread the load. These seats are designed to take a seat runner whilst still allowing the driver to sit as low as possible. So when i fit them without seat runners as i am in this car, i use hard poly type suspension bushes as spacer blocks.

I have also trimmed and fitted the front indicator pods and the headlights. I'll probably remove these again but it was a quick job for today so that i could get some more fibreglass trimming out of the way whilst i had the equipment out.

MX5even prototype build - Day 1

After a long wait i finally got to collect the chassis from powder coating for the newest of our models, which is going to be forming the basis of a new book; It's easy to build your own sports car. Whilst books on this subject already exist, the object of my new book is to unite buidlers from around the world by using a donor car that can be sourced easily around the globe.

The book will include all the chassis plans etc required to make it. This blog is really the build diary of the prototype car. Pictuces and instructions from this blog will also be included in the book along with technical instructions on how to weld and other useful skills. Some of these technical instructions can already be downloaded from our website, http://www.gtstuning.co.uk/

I'd already borrowed a friends guillotine to cut out the aluminium panels for the chassis, so the first few steps in the build was to fit these. Some of them had to be refined to clear welds and have cut outs added to go around tubes. I started with the transmission tunnel panels, as they are probably the most technical of the panels to fit. Having access to them from all angles in the chassis helps, plus drilling the holes closest to the floor is easier without the floor fitted. Next i did the seat back bulkhead panels. I have split these into three square sections for ease of fitting and cutting. The seat backbulkhead was fitted with silicon sealant underneath to seal it from water ingress into the cockpit.

All the panels have been fitted with 4mm aluminium rivets. Simple fitting process of clamping the panel in position to the chassis, then drilling through panel and the outer skin of the chassis section. I then use a bigger sized drill and by hand deburr each hole, so the rivet can pull down properly. For this job i usually use a pneumatic rivert gun, as the hole job takes about 500 rivets. In this case i did them all with a standard hand rivetter, as my friend has forgotten to return my pneumatic version! Yes, my hands are stiff and hurt. On panels that require sealant under them i drill all of the holes first then remove the panel apply the sealant, before fitting the panel and rivetting. I position rivets at approx. 50-75mm intervals. To get them equi-distant so they look nice i use elastic with equi-spaced marker pen dots on. If you stretch the elastic along the edge you are rivetting the marker dots stretch out and you can copy them over to the job, knowing they are all equi-distant. Thanks to the boys at Car Builders Solutions for that top tip.

Last panel being fitted today was the floor. I turned the chassis over onto some carpet to protect the roll hoop from damage and offered the floor to the chassis. I ran a marker pen around the underside to mark where all the chassis tubes positions on the floor. Then i drilled off all the floor rivet holes, refitted to chassis and copied the holes over to the chassis, applied sealant then rivetted.

Not a bad start although i was hoping to achieve more. This project has really caught my imagination as everything seems to fit into place so well using the MX5 donor components. Building a sports car from a sports car works so much better than from an old reps car.

Why is the NHS being ridiculed in America?

Is the whole of America, the press and the British representatives in America all stupid? Sure we all have our complaints about the state of the NHS, but, if you're sick you turn up at Hospital and get treated. Want nicer surroundings and faster treatment times for non essential operations then go private. In America 50 million people can't get treatment no matter how ill they are, yet the commentators out there seem to think that by adopting a national health scheme they'll reduce the quality of their entire health care system. Why? Surely 210 million people can still afford to pay for their private medical schemes as our better off citizens do, yet the 50 million poor people who currently are left to fend for themselves will get the help they need.

I get so frustrated at the obvious failings in the arguments we hear in the press. The NHS doesn't represent the only option for health care in this country, and wouldn't be the only option in the American system. America must think we are a nation of the sick and poor, believing that we all have to suffer under funded basic health care. Even the worst examples of NHS incompetence wouldn't live up to the American vision of us.

The NHS has a poor reputation because of successive government mis-management. But not long ago it was something the whole world were jealous of. The principles work and would work well for an uncaring country like America. Just learn from our mistakes, spend money on it wisely. Don't waste money, don't starve it of resources and give support to the health care workers who commit their lives to its success.