T340 Frame Mods

[340parts]

Does anybody know what type of modification are needed to make an original Lola T340 frame pass tech as a Club Ford or Vintage racing?

[LolaT440]

None that I know of. As long as you have the orig log book or can trace it back to a region.

[340parts]

So none of the modifications done to most T340 are required?

[Jonathan Hirst]

The Frame changes may be required for Club racing but not Vintage Events.

The changes that you might look into are:
- the addition of a front roll hoop
- Adding or updating fore or aft roll hoop braces
- adding side intrusion bars (could also be done with aluminum panels)
- enclosing the inside of front lower rod end pick ups on the chassis (to capture A arms in an accident reducing the likelihood of them entering the cockpit space).

I am going through this right now with a "no logbook" CF in order to get it homologated for Regional Racing. If your car has a logbook from before 1986, some of the requirements for regional racing are different than they would be for a newer chassis. It does not however, preclude the need for the basic safety items though.

Jonathan

[Brian]

I'm going through my Lola T440, which is pretty similar to the T340

I just changed the roll hoop on my T440, I measured the wall thickness of the original and it was .080". Pretty sure that's too thin. You need to think of the fuel cell container rule, since the aluminium sides on the Lola are fairly thin and the stock fuel cell is in the side pod. Add the front roll hoop and the forward braces for both hoops as good ideas but not required under the pre-1986 chassis rules, ditto front crush structure and side intrusion protection. The stock firewall on the Lola doesn't meet GCR's as it is full of holes, isn't wide enough or tall enough. The stock seatbelt mounts on the Lola are pretty weak and should be upgraded, and the shoulder belt mounts are in the wrong position for current thinking on safety.

On my car I have changed the roll hoop (mostly for height reasons, I didn't find the wall thickness thing till I cut it off), it has a front hoop and forward braces, I changed to a wedge fuel cell (off the shelf ATL fit), I added a chassis tube in the cockpit area to brace the lap belt mount area and provide added side protection, installed a new firewall, adding a front crush box.

Brian

[Mike Jones]

Any pictures of your updates?

Mike

[Brian]

AS it happens I took some pictures last weekend, but I don't know how to post them. I can email them to you directly if you like.

Brian

I guess it worked!
If you look at the picture of the cockpit area, there are vertical 3/4" 16 Ga tubes added that run just behind the front line of the seat, from the intersection of the two diagonal tubes that meet at the upper frame rail down to the lower frame rail. This adds support to the long lower frame rail section that the lap belts mount to, and kind of fills in the side from a side impact protection point of view.

The whole idea here was to move the engine back 8", use a normal adaptor ring, move the fuel cell behind the seat, raise the roll bar and have it fit inside of the (brand new) stock bodywork (which wraps the roll bar). You can see the oil tank I made behind the new firewall, which has far fewer big holes in it and comes up level with the top of the carb, per the GCR. You can also see the new shoulder belt mount for use with HANS device, which is 1.25" square .120" wall mild steel. The new roll bar follows the line of the bodywork perfectly and is probably 3" taller than the stock bar ,is sand-bent 1.5" .120 wall DOM mild steel, and the new rear braces are 1" .120" wall DOM mild steel. There are bolt in front braces that run from the mounts on the bar up to just behind the front hoop. I am now finishing up a SAAB type clutch slave cylinder, cutting a flywheel down to 15.5 lbs and putting a race clutch on it, then it's bolt it all together and start finishing the NTM's BMW engine...

Cheers, brian

[LolaT440]

Pretty good. Maybe someone can correct me, but you also need to install the side panels if this is an SCCA car. You need T6061 aluminum panels from the rear to front bulkhead. I don't think those side pods are considered a substitute. At least that is what the tech guy I called on the east coast said.

I think the GCR says the cell must be fully enclosed, so you need these panels for this.

[Brian]

The question is side panels, basically.

If you look at page FCS-57, you find section D-13 f the 2006 SCCA GCR. That covers Formula Ford rules for cars built prior to 1986. There is no requirement for side intrusion panels for our cars, so that's part of the story. That also covers requriements for front hoops, crushable footboxes, etc. I don't race with SCCA nor am I an SCCA tech inspector, but the GCR seems pretty clear to me. The "stock" Lola panels are legal under this section of the GCR, as far as I'm concerned.

That's part of the answer.

The other part of the answer is the fuel cell rules. These are in section 19.2, page GCR-121 of the 2006 GCR. They require .059" aluminium or equivalent steel to be used as a container for any fuel cell. As far as I can tell, this rule applies fully to pre-1986 Formula Fords. For Lola 340 - 440, this will require a can to be fabricated if you want to retain the fuel cell in the stock location in the side pod. The stock side panels are about .040 thick so you would need to either replace them or line them with appropriate material. You could decide to line them with .019" material and have a heart to heart with every tech inspector you ever see about the intent of the rule, I guess. Or you could have new side panels built, and build an inner panel for the inside of the cockpit area.

That's the other part of the story, and that's why my car now has a center fuel cell rather than in the stock location. The new cell for the side pod was twice as expensive, and the effort to fabricate a box for a center wedge cell was half the effort.

Note that the requirement for side intrusion, if your local tech guy decides that the pre-1986 rules don't apply to your car, is for .060" 6061-T6. The rule for fuel cells is .059" any grade aluminium.

Brian

Edit: Just as an aside, here's a link to standard gauge thickness for Aluminium sheet. .059" AND .060 are non-standards. The nearest standard is 15 Ga., which is .057" and 14 Ga, which is .064". I find this really irritating for some reason, so I thought I'd share it.

http://ww2.ksu.edu/classes/reference/gauge/htm

Brian