Datsun Roadster: 2020 Challenge Build

maschinenbau said:

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

You mean the Bad Decisions Triangle? I'm just waiting for all 3 of their cars to merge together Voltron-style at the hotel parking lot.

I got you 

In reply to maschinenbau :

That transformation sequence would look like 3 dumpsters fighting.  

I'm not a boastful person but If Junkyard Wars was still a thing the BDT would win. 

nocones said:

In reply to maschinenbau :

That transformation sequence would look like 3 dumpsters fighting.  

I'm not a boastful person but If Junkyard Wars was still a thing the BDT would win. 

I loved Junkyard Wars.

nocones said:

.....Or we would make the most insane unfinished overly ambitious car in history.  

This is a BDT truth if I ever read one. 

gumby said:

.....Or we would make the most insane unfinished overly ambitious car in history.  

This is a BDT truth if I ever read one. 

So, uh, when do we start?

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

gumby said:

.....Or we would make the most insane unfinished overly ambitious car in history.  

This is a BDT truth if I ever read one. 

So, uh, when do we start?

$2000 McLaren F1 it is..  (or Alpha Romeo Carabo) who has a nearly Free Boxster we can start with.  

nocones said:

In reply to maschinenbau :

That transformation sequence would look like 3 dumpsters fighting.  

I'm not a boastful person but If Junkyard Wars was still a thing the BDT would win. 

This thing already has “Transform” in its name. I'd say that's some destiny-level E36 M3 right there. 

Little more tab work this morning, will get them all welded on shortly.

527 hours.

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

What is the $2000 challenge hour count? Is it just for fun/reference or is it a rule somewhere?

In reply to preach (fs) :

The hours notation is a good way to document how much time you spent not spending money on a $2000 car...

In reply to preach (fs) :

Yep, no specific rule, but I think it is fun. It also helps tell the story of why many of these cars are so great. 500 hours is 1/4 of a work year. 3 months of salary is huge compared to the $2k. 

and im not even a good fabricator! Some of the challengers are people who would easily charge $100/hr or more for their building skills. 

That is essentially what makes the challenge so cool to me. So I'm tracking my hours just for fun (but I don't think it hurts the concour score either!)

I've enjoyed tracking hours on mine.  Prior to this activity I would of never guessed that I could of done what all has been done on the LMP360 in ~300 hrs so far.  It really makes me kinda depressed to realize that based on the rate of work on Subaru the MG probably was only ~500hrs of work spread over 10 years.  

Is it 100% accurate..  No it's probably off by a few hours here and there due to only documenting to 0.25 hrs but I try to keep it accurate. 

preach (fs) said:

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

What is the $2000 challenge hour count? Is it just for fun/reference or is it a rule somewhere?

Personally, I think it is a huge reason Robbie won the concourse last year.  It helps fill in the edges and takes a basic story to an entirely different level.

If you aren't tracking the hours as diligently, you lose track of what happened when, you lose track of the great things and the huge setbacks.  You remember that it took a lot of time to get over, or saved a huge amount of time, but you don't remember how bad/good it really was.

In addition, it helps keep you honest and moving.  You're at 487 hours and don't want to do anything this week? Thats 500 with only an hour per weekday and four hours each weekend day.

Some good hours in over the weekend. First I worked on turning this massive and heavy front middle part into 3 smaller parts, a bumper and two lightweight multiuse front fender brackets.

You can see that these now mount the front of the fender to the frame, but they also have a tab to mount the front of the canoe inner fender.

Next up I finished up the door welding. This part really was frustrating to me, some welds were so nice and others so garbage. 

I noticed that not only the Bondo on this fender, but also lead or some other solder had been used in the past, that was screwing up my weld for sure!

Whelp. It is what it is at this point. Need to be crossing stuff off the list.

I also started hacking up the already hacked up hood.

More on that later.

534 hours.

In reply to All :

Thank you for the background. I love this challenge but have to live vicariously through you all due to project backlog and a LeMons car.

Maybe one day!

I also put in an hour so far on the exhaust. Since the canoe is now in the way, I had 2 options. 

One is reroute the exhaust. I do have a pretty straight shot out the back here, and I could do a blown diffuser (cool).

Unfortunately that's not in the cards this year, and it would cost money for the 1 7/8s primary tube needed to connect to the headers, and the 2 3/8 tube needed to connect to the muffler. I'd need to do a lot of fab work to get it all integrated too.

So, cutting a hole in the canoe it is (which I think will be cool too). Here is mocking up some reference points.

I heart templates.

535 hours.

More template work ensued:

Then measuring and more measureing

Then I got brave enough to start cutting. Unfortunately this business happens right where the canoe 'bulkhead' is, so first I had to cut into that. 

Measure twice cut once right? This was more like measure/measure/measure for 3 hours and then cut/test/cut/test/cut for another hour. But it looks rockin' now!

Oh and I also started replacing the old hard rubbers with fresh new softies!

539 hours. 

It came to my attention that the pictures were not showing for everyone, hopefully I fixed them in the last post!

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

yup, thanks!

Progress is looking great.  The exhaust turned out pretty good.  I still can't get over how nice the canoe parts work for body parts.

That side shot of the canoe around the motor and exhaust gave me the giggles. Epic! Can not wait to see this in 4 weeks!

I might try to come down to see the cool cars this year.  Everything is just epic about this and a few other builds.

This is like an old rc pan car with a t plate.

Man, I am apprehensive about those new rubber pucks.  I hope they do the thing.

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

Your progress looks amazing.  Are you going to have the opportunity to do some dynamic testing ( Auto crossing ) before the event?

Mr_Asa said:

Man, I am apprehensive about those new rubber pucks.  I hope they do the thing.

Cut them for him from the same sheet as the pucks I am running on my F500 currently. Old pucks get hard and less compliant, at the very least the softer fresher rubber should disappate energy much better, if it's enough to slay the pogo effect...  Well, it's worth a shot. The initial (older f440) design he's based his build off of struggled a bit with that and the wheelbase and weights have been changed so much from where it started that it's anyone's guess. It should help though, and was a MUCH easier lift than design change to springs and shocks.

In reply to Apexcarver :

I agree with the decision process and route taken due to other factors, I'm just leery due to the possibility of how closr we are and how little testing and dialing in it might get,  y'know?