Devo's Adventures/Mötörshed - Scratch-building a car (pg 5)

[Devolution]

welp, it's august, and it looks like i'm buying a former rally car.

....it's in pieces and 300$ though, so it's just like every other sh!tbox i've ever bought, except this one already has a rollcage lol

picture to come next weekend, if i can get up there to take them.

[Devolution]

ALRIGHT! here's what i'm working with
this is as i'm getting it.





i've been told by the owner that it comes with everything to reassemble except the steering wheel, so according to the info i found it should come with:

-Hot Bits Suspension
-Custom front/rear upper suspension mounts
-Front upper strut brace (recently been reinforced)
-1/4" aluminum skid plate
-Steel skid plate for gas tank
-Lexan cover for fuel lines
-Precision performance racing seats
-Oil pressure/Water temp/Voltage gauge cluster
-Terraphone Pro Intercom
-Polyeurethane Engine mounts
-Custom in-car brake lines
-Exhaust converted from flexpipe to elbow joint
-High-flow Cat, 2.25" exhaust system
-K&N drop-in filter
-Megasquirt
and a massive pile of spares

i don't think the seats come with it, but they might, i know they're not in the pictures.
the car is also fully caged, done by Motorsport Distributing/Hot Bits Performance.
i see the car in person this weekend, I AM VERY EXCITED

[sciclone]

Ahh the paseo. A coupe version of the EP92 starlet, so lots of parts carry over (which I'm sure you already know)

[Devolution]

Aug 30, 2018 22:31:22 GMT sciclone said:

Ahh the paseo. A coupe version of the EP92 starlet, so lots of parts carry over (which I'm sure you already know)

Paseo/Tercel/Starlet! all the same, from like... 92-00, and thankfully, Starlets are still supported by a lot of aftermarket performance companies, so i've got lots of stuff that'll fit great on my little Paseo. if you can't tell, i have been doing A LOT of research lol like, days upon days of it. i know more about Tercel/Paseo/Starlets than i ever thought i would

[jpsmit]

glad to see you are picking up and moving forward again!

[Devolution]

Long time no see! while i've been gone, i learned that i need to stop talking about the random cars i try and buy, until i have the ownership in hand, because i swear EVERY TIME i talk about a car i'm trying to buy, the rug gets pulled out from under me and i don't get it, no matter how much money i have on hand or how cheap the car is.

so yeah. if you didn't realize it from the paragraph above... i did NOT get to buy a cheap rally car. the person selling it to me dropped off the face of the planet, and i never managed to get ahold of them again. and yes, i was quite upset. but easy come easy go, off to find another weird automobile to try and buy...

i just missed out on a Renault 30TS auction, and now i've got PRV on the brain, so i'm hunting for one of those weird Renault-25-based boxes they sold here in North America... an Eagle Premier or Dodge Monaco. wish me luck!

[Devolution]

At the risk of talking about it and thus ruining it as i mentioned in the last post, i'm gonna talk about my new project.

i'm building a single seater from scratch, styled in a 1920s/1930s Cyclecar meets Mad Max meets Rat Rod kind of kit.

i have the front suspension and shocks from a TR2, the transmission, driveshaft and rear end from a TR4, and a DAF 44 flat-twin engine, with centrifugal clutch still mounted on it.

the idea is to couple the DAF motor to the input of the transmission, which SHOULD let me shift clutchless at least up the gears.

i'm digging around for the grill and cowl from an old 1940s or 1950s tractor, to use as the nose of the car, and i'm buying a bunch of 3"x2"x0.125" square tubing for the chassis.

i'll post pictures as it comes together, thanks for reading!

[Devolution]

Alright, got a chance to hit the shop and got some stuff done.

I grabbed all the drivetrain parts and laid them out on the ground to see how long the chassis needs to be.

with everything there, it seems the chassis will be 11-12ft long, which was around what i guessed to begin with.  the body itself will be around 2ft, maybe 2.5ft wide.

here's the DAF 44 843cc flat-twin in all it's beat-to-curse word glory...

i got this for free from a friend that bought it at auction for a whopping 25$.  the stock clutch on this beast is what made the project a lot simpler than originally, since it's a centrifugal clutch.  so i pulled the clutch bell and output shaft to take a peek, and unfortunately, that clutch decided that 2 pads weren't attached anymore and all the other pads were heavily worn.  so i did some searching and emailing and i'll be sending that to a nice company here in Ontario called Phoenix Friction Products to have them all re-lined.

in my research i'd also heard tell that the distributor was just a VW 1600 distributor with 4 plugs on the cap instead of 2.  sure enough, i pulled it and checked the numbers(look how clean that plate is!), and yes, it's similar enough to the VW unit that i should be able to buy a VW replacement and just use that instead, so i can get away from the current points system.

that's all for now folks!  i have emails sent out to try and buy some rear lever shocks from an MG Midget, and the parts to convert the TR2 front suspension to discs instead of drums.
i'll be tearing down the engine a bit next to try and free up the rings on the stock pistons.  if i can't manage that i'll be buying some pistons from Summit Racing that are the same diameter, but shorter compression height, and measuring the stock rods to find some with close-enough small and big end sizes but longer, to adapt to the shorter compression height pistons.  that'll net me a little more displacement, and much easier to find replacements in the future.

...and maybe, eventually, Megasquirt and a tea-cup turbo.

thanks for reading!  please let me know if the images aren't loading

[Devolution]

welp, in a predictable twist, i can't use the DAF motor for my project my wacky plans would have resulted in a tramnsmission locked in gear at random because of the synchros.

so that plan went out the window.

started looking for a TR2/3/4/6 motor that would bolt right up, ended up not finding anything under 1000$, which is way more than i want to spend(i'm cheap, VERY cheap).

so today, after a random search for Continental aircraft engines on behalf of a friend, i randomly found a man parting out a Ferguson TEA20 tractor... with a Standard wet-liner engine, sitting pretty in the engine bay. he'd incorrectly identified the engine as the Continental Z120, but some googling and forum searching showed me that it was DEFINITELY the Standard engine.

So... 250$ later, i pick it up a week or two from today! yes it's going to need a new cam(2000rpm limit stock and all), and probably some pistons, but both of those are far cheaper than the 1000$ i'd spend on the TR motor. also it's weird and kind of silly, which is very much the theme of this car lol

i might just put a cam and a tiny turbo on it. 5.77:1 stock compression ratio means i can feed it some boost and not make it too upset

we'll see! thanks for reading!

[Devolution]

Well, it's been awhile again.  hit hard times, so things went on hold.

i still have all the parts i collected.  didn't get the Standard engine yet, because things got busy, and then winter hit, and i didn't want to pull an engine out of a tractor in the cold.  i still have the number for the guy, so maybe i'll drop him a line in the next few weeks, see if it's still there.

thankfully, if it isn't, i've gotten an alternative engine and gearbox for the car.

a friend is buying a BD5 aircraft project and it comes with 2 spare Suzuki G10 Turbos, the little 1.0L engines that came in Suzuki Swifts and Geo Metros.  already sourced a Suzuki Samurai/Jimny transmission too, so i can set one up in a RWD configuration.

i've already started designing a remote cable shifter to move the location of the shifter, and i'm pricing out some cheap chinese billet shifters to use.  the reason i need a remote shifter is because i reeeeeally don't want to have to reach to the centre of the car to shift, i'd rather have it on my right, between me and the body shell.

i figure that engine with around 12-18lbs of boost will make for a fun little car.  and if i can still get the Standard engine, well... it's not like i only wanted to build one of these things.  i've even been poking folks with old cars with odd engines to build more of these, even if i haven't finished the first one.

for instance, i found a guy selling a ruined 1956 DKW 1000 Sonderklasse for 200$, and i think that 1.0L 3 cylinder 2 stroke mounted midships would be even more fun.  like driving around with a swarm of angry bees mounted behind me.

this is finally the path i think i want to take with the rest of my life, building little single-seat speeders and maybe selling them.  chances are i'll drive the doors off them for a while first, and then selling them.  i'll keep the coolest ones for myself though.  obviously

thanks for reading folks!  i'll try to be a little more active in this thread even if it's just small updates.

[Devolution]

Engines are on their way from Alberta! should be here next week

i even got a Mk1 cylinder head on one, which is a legit hemi head design, which(in theory) should flow more than the mk2 head. to make sure, i'm going to build a DIY flowbench and test them both to see which is the better head to use for high boost applications.

also, apparently these engines are bulletproof. i talked to a gentleman that has driven a Geo Metro Turbo pushing 35lbs of boost and making 240hp, all on stock internals. obviously i don't want THAT much boost, but i was also told that making above 120-140hp lands in the realm of diminishing returns because the mk2 head just can't flow that much air. i'm hoping the Mk1 hemi head will fix that issue, but like i said, i need to test both to make sure.

thanks for reading!