Zink Formula Vee

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Thanks for the tips about composites. I did wonder if epoxy would cause issues over time. I was mainly thinking about rates of expansion but your comments make sense too.

Regarding the hose tether, you can't see it very well but we put shrink tube over the end and the shrink tube is longer than the wire underneath.  We've found that pretty effective to keep from stabbing us over time. But yea, we should bend it up too.

In that vein, we're very careful with zip ties and often dull them with a lighter if we can't cut them flush enough to nip off the sharp edges (we always use a flush cut tool, not a regular diagonal cutter). A zip tie can really cut you if you're not careful.

In reply to Berck :

Sorry about the incident. Please do share how you go through the repair process.

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Evidently, right now you can learn about composites from all the mistakes I made and how to not do things wrong.  Ups and downs, right!

On the epoxy + filler question, I've not had any problems at all with epoxy resin and polyester filler.  When I was doing rowing boat repair, the matrix was always glass and epoxy, and I used good quality automotive fillers for fairing.  Several years later, I saw some of those boats again, and they looked great.  These were boats that spent 100% of their time outside in the intense Colorado sun.  If you're super nervous, you can use epoxy thickened 50/50 with glass micro-balloons.  That works well and sands decently.  There are some other fillers available - maybe try several and see what works for you?

In reply to TVR Scott :

Thanks for showing all of that. I plan to learn from my own mistakes too and will share them as they happen. I'm not nervous about any of this work, especially since we'll be making some new parts this winter before the paintwork. I figure we're learning some basic techniques right now and will learn more before the final parts. Plus, they are racecar parts that might get damaged, not show car parts, so it's crazy to worry too much about them.

I guess I'll share the paint plan and see what the hive thinks.  I like to paint race car chassis with 2 thin coats of light grey epoxy primer and 1 coat clear. The light grey makes it easy to see things, the clear makes it smooth and easy to clean, and the thin paint makes it easy to see cracks and flaws. I'm not a fan of powdercoating on anything structural as it's so thick and can cover those cracks and flaws. The inside of the body will also stay grey, again so its easy to see things, plus grey is cooler than black on a sunny day.

For the outside of the body, I'll share what we're thinking about by first showing the influences.

This is one of my favorite race cars and paint schemes of all times.

I've been a PBR guy since long before it was cool (stupid hipsters).

My favorite hot-day treat.

See the theme?  The plan is to paint the nose red, the middle section white (driver stays cool), and the back blue using PBR colors. I've always wanted to do a fade paint job, so the red will fade into the white and then the white into the blue, unlike the clearly defined lines on the Pierson Coupe.  Bomb pops sort-of fade. I'll have to be careful with the red fade to white that it doesn't go pink, but I've tried samples and I think I can get it.

I also want to be able to pick the car out from the others on the track, and I think this will work.  I'll admit I'm a little worried given the political climate that some people may think I'm making a statement by waving a flag (I'm not). I just love those colors, especially on the Pierson coupe.

Jack is wondering if we should paint the chassis and suspension white given this body paint plan. I'm still thinking grey for the chassis and either grey or black for the suspension bits.

We'd appreciate opinions and ideas! Oh, and the car and gear is packed in the trailer. We're heading to Road America tomorrow.

If you fad the red, it might turn pink, might try a sample piece before doing the car.  Saw that happen on some car show,

Keep the chassis light gray. I particularly like the clear coated primer idea. Anything that needs routine crack inspection needs to be light colored with a good contrast against iron oxide in particular. Body color idea is pretty cool, and don't worry if a little area might be called pink. 

Hah. My rally co-driver's D13 rocks this scheme, and I think it looks fantastic.

His is painted white and the color is vinyl.

My front beam is painted with what appears to be rustoleum hammered silver.  It's hard to keep it both clean and greased because the beam likes to leak grease.  The black beams always seem to look nicer.  You're probably more fastidious than me, though...

Rustoleum gray works pretty well on the chassis and suspension.  Light enough to see cracks during between race or end of season inspections.  I've learned on Zinks (Citations?) to check the cross piece under the gauge cluster at least semi-annually.  They can develop cracks on the underside.    Berck is right that the front end can get grimy with grease (or a competitors oil mist) but a little simple green wipes it right off.  I doubt anyone will give you gruff on the colors (at least politically), most of us vintage guys are just here to have fun.  I will say that according to my wife, white is hard to photograph and isn't as eye catching.

The Zink is ready for the first practice session. 

One of the pit bikes is not

So they combined race groups today with the theory that there would be 40 minutes per session with double groups. But it seems to be turning out that 75 cars on track cause a lot of incidents and the sessions get black flagged. Jack got three laps before his first session got black flagged and they didn't clean it fast enough to send the cars back out. 

Hopefully the afternoon session will be better. Tomorrow the Vees run by themselves. 

Afternoon session was a little better. Another black flag but they were back out after about 7-8 minutes so it was a 30+ minute practice. 

We used to use Rustoleum in black for our chassis. Easy to touch up between races if needed. If I did it again, I'd go with gray or white for the same reasons others gave, easy to see cracks. Also, your color scheme idea reminds me of the AMC Javelins except opposite. Very cool look

We're done with a great weekend. Jack and his friends camped while my wife and I stayed at Siebkens. 

We had great weather and great racing. 

And now we're truck drivers again for the trip home. 

How'd the car run?   How did you place?   Any good battles??

In reply to jfryjfry :

We're just humble Midwesterners, so I didn't say anything.  But since you asked, I'll tell.

Yesterday, during qualifying, Jack was away from the pack and didn't have anyone to draft, so he qualified 6th for the first race. He didn't get a very good start and fell to 8th, but then worked his way back into the top six. The leader pulled away from the next few cars and Jack swapped around 2nd through 5th or so. Since the pack Jack was in swapped a lot, the leader ended up 6-8 seconds ahead of everyone. It probably would have been a closer race at the front if they would have drafted up to him, but they duked it out instead and it was a great race, ending in a drag race up the hill to the finish where Jack took 3rd. I think there was about .03 between 2nd and 3rd and about the same between 3rd and 4th.  Great race.

Today, Jack started 3rd as yesterday's finish determined today's order. He and yesterday's leader drafted each other and pulled away from the next pack of four. Jack passed and led one lap, but the leader got him back. They ended up about 22 seconds ahead of the third car, so the draft really helped them both.  Jack was 2nd but got the fastest lap. Big fun.

You didn't ask about this one, but since I'm mentioning results, at Grattan, Jack took 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in the those races. On the race he won, he got passed just after the start/finish and we thought he took 2nd until someone told us he won. 

So yea, there have been some good battles and the car's running well. Five podiums in five races feels really good after going home with a broken crank in June.  

It's been a great learning experience, with more ups than downs. The community has been so helpful and supportive and the comradery is impressive. We're thankful and looking forward to more next season.

Update time: The plan for the winter is to make a few tweaks and improvements, paint the chassis and get some details cleaned up, make some body panels, and maybe put down the new paint scheme if we have time (otherwise it will stay black next season).

Around Thanksgiving, Jack cut the oversized forward tubes out of the chassis.

Nasty work, but it saved about 10 lbs and will make entry/egress easier. We want to put something similar, but less bulky in for next season so that if he gets under another car, he'll have some protection in the front. So we won't save all that weight. If anyone has good ideas, we're listening.

I'm working on the bodywork. We mocked up the Daytona tail and like the look. We're also hoping it will give us 1-2 MPH on the long straights. 

The piece we have is a mess with multiple bad repairs, so I'm cleaning it up to build a mold for a new one.

It was warped so badly that I bonded a piece of 2x4 into it to keep it flatter for less body filler.

I filled some of the overly large cutouts so that we can trim the final part closer to our car.

At Eclectic, I've pulled a lot of newspaper stuffing out of sills and doglegs from past repairs. I was surprised to find newspaper used in a past repair for this piece. Just like when it's used under bondo, it didn't work here either. This part was swelled to an nearly inch thick and very weak where the newspaper was.

Wow, March 9 already. We haven't exactly back-burnered the FV, but we have been working on other stuff primarily. We're a little concerned we may not have time to paint the body before racing starts back in early May. But we like the black so maybe another year with this livery will be okay as the car continues to be developed. We're still planning to add some more ingress/egress friendly front bars to the roll hoop, change to a 4-2-1 exhaust, some other minor changes, and paint the chassis etc.. 

Before Jack changes the exhaust and we blow the car apart for chassis paint, we want to fit the Daytona tail to be sure the next exhaust clears it.  Jack finished the filler work on the old tail and prepped it for a mold. It took a lot of filler to get it somewhat symmetrical and we finally decided that since we are new to composites and mold making, we'd make practice mold, make a practice tail, then use some filler on the practice tail to get the shape a little better, then make a final mold from that. We're big believers in fail fast and iterate methodology. So that's our excuse for doing it this way.

Here's the old tail in primer, almost ready to splash a mold.

Here's the interim mold. Whew, Jack got the old tail out from the mold.

Here's another picture of the interim mold. Wish us luck and offer tips, please!

A two part mold is easier than you think, and helps with part removal. It is much harder to damage your new part if you can pry mold parts apart against each other and not apply much force to the (hopefully) very light weight part. A strong mold is more expensive to make, but has at least some potential return from parts sales. A fragile one never gives good enough repeatability for any commerce. 

No tips, just following along avidly!  Love seeing your work.

Composite work we always did in FSAE was either a one-off mold we'd melt out with acetone, or waaaaaaayyyyy too high end, like a wing mold made out of two 6x20x60" chunks of billet.

Some of the older stuff was two-part, like Turner suggests.  They worked well for many years, prep along the seam was always interesting.

Molds?  New pieces?  Even more molds?  The beauty of fiberglass is that you can never have to start from scratch if you don't want to:)

I'm reminded that you asked for some details about my repair.  (Not trying to hijack your thread, but you asked, and it didn't seem worth starting a separate thread for this.) I ordered some some west systems epoxy, medium hardener, a bunch of different weights of fiber, some glass bubbles and some flock from Aircraft Spruce.  I handed the box to my wife and convinced her it's an art project.  She watched some youtube videos, mucked about the epoxy and eventually succeeded!  Unfortunately because she did it, and not me, there's not a whole lot of photos.

Basically, she cut the broken stuff out and replaced it with new fiber, then filled with flock and then the glass bubbles.  My first attempt at shooting automotive paint.  I didn't have any reducer, so I didn't bother trying for a soft edge, just masked it off and sprayed up to the mask.  So there's a nice line between old/new paint.  There's a weird hair-like bit that the paint didn't stick to, not sure what that is.  And there were some places that didn't get filled so there's some pinholes.  I was going to put on a layer of the sprayable filler, but the end, I didn't.  I'm sure that we'll do much better next time--and given that it's a race car, there's bound to be a next time.  But my standards are not yours, and I'm sure this'll pass tech:)

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Thanks for the tips. We were thinking two part, too. A friend who makes Viper and other specialty fiberglass parts (Autoform Development) has been giving us tips and advice so we asked him and he said one part would be fine.  Regarding selling parts, the market is probably for less than 10 parts including the 3 we'd keep for ourselves...

In reply to Berck :

Nice! Thanks for posting the update. I think your approach makes good sense. Race cars only need to look good at a distance, going fast.

Plus the other racers won't see it because you'll be in front of them, right?

In reply to Carl Heideman :

Exactly!  And if I keep them behind me, they'll have a harder time spinning in front of me:)