3/4 Race - Lazarus FFR Coupe

Awesome to see this project getting resurrected! 

3/4 wheels made it

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

3/4 wheels made it

Ooohhh! Good one!

I was so tempted to buy this, excited to see what you do with it

While Robbie was here Saturday, I was lamenting the potential scope of Lazarus and my resultant analysis paralysis. "What I really need to do is jus-"
"Start," he interjected.
"Yes, that."

And so I did

Removed the nose and the doors. Cut out the broken windshield.

Then pulled a bunch of interior stuff to get at the panels bridging the floor and the door sill area

The clamshell is huge when off the car!

It was amazing to see this in person!

Also, a great reminder that even the best kit cars are still kit cars, and personally, a good reminder that execution in what I'm doing matters. Taking time to learn and do little things the right way adds up to a large difference in final product. 

I think Gumby can see all the small things that the original builder either shortcutted or just didn't know better. Most people don't see those details but they can 'feel' it in overall quality. It is lot of work looking in now, but the end will be very rewarding as it will show a massive shift in quality of the car as a whole. 

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

I think that applies to hand built instead of stamped as well. I was at a local shop not that many years ago and there was a Lamborghini there. I was shocked at how much the engine bay looked like a kit car. There were square tubes everywhere with obvious human welds holding them together. It was a neat perspective change realizing that real cars, worth lots of money, could be built like a talented  guy in his garage with a welder would build them. 

Time to uncover sins of the past, and the skeletons in Lazarus' closet. But first, we gotta deal with one of my greatest peeves of other people's projects: components which cannot be removed without cutting wires.

Ok, with those out, time to snatch the body

Now it is much easier to see issues with cockpit space vs. a cage





The Kirkey was bottom mounted on a slider(no #1), the slider was bolted to the aluminum floor pan(no #2), the crotch strap was also anchored to the aluminum floor, and the shoulder harnesses were improperly wrapped(noes #3).
Even sitting directly on the floor, my helmet touches the level on top of the hoops. I am 5'11", 185lbs. I have seen much larger guys than me get in and out of these cars. I can't even imagine.
Lazarus not being a dedicated racecar, I would prefer not to wear my helmet every time I get in. The tubes connecting the roll hoops hafta go. Currently about two fingers away from my temple, I cannot get low enough in the car for them to not be a danger to my unhelmeted head. I would also like more than a helmet's thickness of free space between my head and the top of the roll hoops. There is roughly another inch of space above the hoops to the roof, but I don't want my helmet rubbing the headliner during autoX, and I don't want the roof introducing itself to my head in a rollover. It seems I will be lowering the floor pan which will involve relocation of some bracing and notching the main rail.
 

With the body off, we can also see some other things I noticed while on a creeper under the car shortly after it arrived.

Axle off center in the chassis

This is a three link with a watts(Levy 5link in the FFR community). I believe the misalignment is simply a case of not being properly setup originally, but it also appears the watts linkages may not have enough adjustment to get this corrected. More investigation and measuring required.

Fuel cell partially collapsed and loose in the mount

Make sure your cell is mounted securely, kids! This one is held up by a single, lateral strap with no padding. While I am confident it would never fall out the bottom of the car, it did try to eject itself forward during the crash. There is a large dimple on the front face of the can where the watts bellcrank was blocking the escape route. There is also collateral damage to the rear floor structure

I totally wouldn't fit in that car!  I'm all torso, I don't fit in miatas without a drop floor installed.  So given that the floor is aluminum, how can you properly and safely mount seats in there?

We've been sorting one of these out for a customer at Eclectic and are seeing many similar things...

One issue on the one we're working on is that when the rear suspension is in full droop, the short driveshaft takes the U-joints past their limits and they bind. You may want to check for that too.

On my Type 65 there is a steel plate welded to the frame that the aluminum floor panel sandwiches to. It should be relatively trivial to cut that and lower it to drop the seat height if needed. My biggest issue with getting more room was the seat trying to occupy the same space as the rear wheel well unless you massively offset it relative to the wheel and pedals. 

In reply to docwyte :

There are frame members under the aluminum floor. FFR's intention is that all your seat fixings will land on these members. In reality, this installation went 1 for 4 in that arena.
I will be removing a majority of the floor bracing to lower the seat and replacing it in locations as required to properly mount whatever seats I decide on.

In reply to Carl Heideman and EDT :

The deeper I get, the more I find. This is the way.
I appreciate the commiseratory comments and advice. Are yous working with gen1/2 cars or gen3?
Carl, which rear suspension does your customer's car have?

Regarding rear suspension. I haven't looked at it in awhile, I think it has the triangulated four link. 

A large part of our business at Eclectic is sorting out cars. We see a lot of ground-up restorations that have a lot of sins and usually about 40 hours of fine tuning takes car of them. Kit cars are usually much worse, no matter how nice they look.

Wiring is usually a mess on kit cars.  Here's a before/during/after on the Daytona we work on:

There were wires that were over 6 feet too long in there, burned up wires, and wires spliced where the color changed twice. All tangled together.

Carl Heideman said:

Wiring is usually a mess on kit cars.  Here's a before/during/after on the Daytona we work on:

Your picture didn't come through.

In reply to CAinCA:

I typed the text on my computer, then uploaded photos from my phone and it took me 5-10 minutes to find them.  They should be there now.

I'll throw this bonus picture out there...this is a custom VW that we'll be sorting this winter.  Turbo, Megaquirt, Air Ride, beautiful cosmetics, and this wiring hidden underneath. You can't make this stuff up.

Sorry if I'm highjacking this thread, Gumby, just trying to continue to commisurate with you.

Carl Heideman said:

Sorry if I'm highjacking this thread, Gumby, just trying to continue to commisurate with you.

All good!

This seems like an opportune moment to ask for a wire termination recommendation. It is time for me to step up from repurposing OE pigtails.
Do you use a terminal/hard shell/crimper system that is DIY affordable, or are you forced to jump between multiple systems to match the incoming vehicles?

Looking forward to watching this progress!

gumby said:

Carl Heideman said:

Sorry if I'm highjacking this thread, Gumby, just trying to continue to commisurate with you.

All good!

This seems like an opportune time to ask for a wire termination recommendation. It is time for me to step up from repurposing OE pigtails.
Do you use a terminal/hard shell/crimper system that is DIY affordable, or are you forced to jump between multiple systems to match the incoming vehicles?

The short answer is that I am forced to jump between multiple systems and have a set of tools and terminals for Lucas, Bosch, GM, etc..

The longer answer when I'm not quite as fussy (but still pretty fussy) is that these are the five tools I use most for generic wiring work, in priority order left to right (i.e., I don't use the stripper/crimper on the far right that much).

The crimpers are the most important ones, so I've included a close-up of the jaws.  I don't have a PN for the Thomas and Betts, but they seem pretty available for $20ish.  The other one is a Delphi that's available from Mouser for about $100 and is worth every penny. 

I don't like the vinyl or nylon terminals sold at most parts stores and greatly prefer non-insulated terminals and shrink tubing. I made up this assortment from Terminal Supply and use it nearly every day. These are high quality terminals and cost about the same or less than the vinyl and nylon stuff.

I put up a post on the main GRM forum awhile ago Can we discuss crimping tools? with some more details. I was hoping more people would chime in with their favorite tools, but mainly it's just my favorites.

Thank you! That is great info to start with. The crimpers on the right are all I have at the moment, but now I know not to throw them out after I upgrade. I didn't realize they could trim machine screws! That will come in handy when I get to replacing a bunch of sub-par hardware on this build.

I moved away from the vinyl covered connectors at the FLAPS or big box stores a while ago and had been buying solder shrink connectors from a local electrical supply house. In my experience these are great as a butt splice, but less gooder for terminations.

When my local place shut down, I found Del City online and have purchased quite a bit from them. I added Terminal Supply to my vendor bookmarks now, too.

Ugh... that picture of a rats nest of wiring reminds me of my ex's Spitfire.  The downside there is I know who to blame for it - me.  The parts of the wiring where I had time are nice and neat. The wiring behind the dash board, however... not my proudest work.  Part of it is the harness kit we bought wasn't really meant for a Spitfire, so physically routing the wiring was more than a little challenging. And then it became a race against time to get the car done.  My ex- still has the car and maybe when I run out of projects to do (ha hahaha!), I'll take it from her and clean up that wiring.

Regarding kit cars (and "exotics" like Ferrari perhaps) - I do a lot of inspections of kit cars and amateur built vehicles here in Europe and what strikes me is that I rate Factory Five as one of the better "kit cars". Compared to a lot of British or other European suppliers they really are very good, in my opinion. Most things work fine and are reasonably well thought out.

But then there is also a builder, and they can induce all sorts of surprises. Wiring not to say the least...

...and that is also why I found it interesting to mull over some partly finished Ferraris at the Ferrari museum in Maranello years ago. Let´s say a good deal of "my" builders exceed Ferrari standards in fit and finish :-)

Gustaf

As a control system engineer I have seen electricians try to get away with all sorts rat nests. 

I have a Gen 2 car and the 3 link rear. I know my rear wheels are not symmetrical with how they sit relative to the body (passenger side sticks out more), and I believe my axle is centered in the chassis but I would have to check that. My axle is out of an sn95 which I think I read is a bit wider than the foxbody 8.8. Wiring in the limited area behind the dash got to be a bit difficult due to also having A/C and the subsequent ducting, but splitting the dash panel to separate the vertical and horizontal sections made a world of difference for access. 

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Normally I quote, but won't. I had to catch my breath audibly after seeing that wiring job.

I plan on biting the wallet and ordering generic hot rod looms for my 914 and my Opel. Not really the easy button but 50yo wires suck.