Citation F1000 Update

[Brandon Dixon]

Work is progressing here at "Citation South" or whatever I should call this place. The first batch of parts are back from the annodizer and off to Rob Laverty and Tom Schweitz along with putting a set aside for myself.

I've been mostly working on the rear drive assembly. As you can see in the photos below, this is the structure of the car aft of the engine, containing the diff, oil tank, suspension pickups, wing mount, etc. The machined up pieces will all be inside aluminum sheet as the included solid model shows.

The sheets are being water-jetted right now, so we should be able to assemble one completely fairly soon.

More when I have it....

Brandon

[RussMcB]

Holy smokes. That looks awesome. Nice work.

Once the aluminum skin is in place, how will the diff be R&R'd (out the back?) and how will the chain be adjusted?

[Brandon Dixon]

The diff will come out the back as you suggest. Much of the structure will be bonded and screwed together, but that back bulkhead will stay removable.

The two yellow colored hex shapes in the solid model are the adjusters. They are essentially barrel nuts screwed onto male rodends. The rodends are attached to the bearing carriers for the diff. This picture will help:

Brandon

[Brandon Dixon]

Also thanks for the compliment Russ. This thing is a lot of work... There are 18 parts sitting on the floor in those photos. The rear drive assembly in the Solidworks shots above have more like 40 parts to be machined, not counting the diff. God knows how many parts will be in the diff, but I ain't making those . Richard Pare is probably hard at work on those as I type. Thanks Richard.

Brandon

[RobLav]

Looking forward to receiving this part of the car soon.

Somehow, I have to fit a dry sump oil tank in there...

My car is progressing again - now that I received some parts from Brandon. My steering shaft will be adjustable with two bushings and a very small included angle at the Apex joint. And I fabricated the wood dash already.

The front billet uprights are the nicest and lightest I've seen.

[Wren]

[leraplastics]

Nice work Brandon, maybe you are ready for that "real CNC" !!!

Kurt

[Brandon Dixon]

I should call you again...

Since I talked to you last, I went ahead and bought the Sharp VMC. It's a stout little 40 taper machine... Metal removal rate is not an issue at the moment.

There is a photo of the machine in this thread:
http://www.apexspeed.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22262

The rear drive assembly is now up at ICP for Lathrop to mess with...more photos soon, I hope.

I'm off to work on the million other little detail parts that it takes to make a whole car!

Brandon

[Brandon Dixon]

So Lathrop has the whole rear drive assembly at his shop now. He sent me the two photos below showing things starting to come together.

The next item on the horizon is an interesting part, and I think a first for an F1000 car. We are going to build an oil pan for the Suzuki engine that is an integral part of the chassis. The pan will extend from the base of the roll hoop all the way to the rear drive housing.

The solid model of the pan is shown below. The pan will come out of a 10" x 20" x 1.5" thick aluminum plate. There is still some design work to be done on the pan internals regarding baffling, plumbing, and there will be a scavenge pump mounted in there...

[Wren]

hmm, that pan looks like it would be really hard to pick up and saw a blank out of a bigger piece of aluminum plate.

[R. Pare]

The first pan(s) will be water-jetted out of 1.5" plate, and then finish machined. After that, IF sales warrant, Steve will have it cast from 201 or 206 alloy. Quite possibly the top, and maybe the bottom, of the "spar" will be cast as one piece structures also.

[Billy Wight]

The pan will come out of a 10" x 20" x 1.5" thick aluminum plate.

Hmmm, 10*20*1.5 = 300in^3*.0975lbs/in^3 = 29.25lbs = either a lot of chips or really heavy...

[Wren]

Hmmm, 10*20*1.5 = 300in^3*.0975lbs/in^3 = 29.25lbs = either a lot of chips or really heavy...

lots and lots of chips, it will be very light when it is done, especially when you consider it is a combination of several parts. It is well hollowed out.

However, cutting the blanks out of 26x57x1.5" plate aluminum rates very higly on Wren's giant list-o-things that suck.

[R. Pare]

Hmmm, 10*20*1.5 = 300in^3*.0975lbs/in^3 = 29.25lbs = either a lot of chips or really heavy...

LOTS of chips for sure! Making the first of anything is always a pain in the ass - and takes WAY more time than anyone would like. BUT, it really is the only safe way to make absolutely sure that all is right. Once everything is proved out, castings for subsequent parts cut the chip-making time by a bunch.

I've always joked that this is one of the few professions where the better you do your job, the more you throw away.

The benefit is that for some reason, customers seem to readily accept paying more for being handed less!

As a side note, there is one big upside to having so many guys build up new cars from kits like this one or by modifying old ones : they're getting a real-life lesson as to why these things cost so much!

[Brandon Dixon]

Solidworks says that the oilpan is right at 7lbs, so it is indeed lots of chips. This is probably the single heaviest Aluminum part on the car, and it's probably way overbuilt. If weight is an issue, then we can take some more weight out of this part once we have some experience with these cars. If overall weight is not a big issue then this is a pretty good place to be carrying an extra pound.

In my experience on this project, it's not the amount of material that needs to be removed that is the determining factor in the time to make the part, it's the overall complexity and especially the time to create any fixtures etc. Making prototypes is slow going. On the oil pan, for instance, I'm adding some threaded holes to use for fixturing. My plan is to leave those permanently (rather than have them be machined away late in the machining process) because I'd like to be able to re-jig one and make changes to it down the road.

Brandon