This is definitely behind the information you folks have been getting (video editing takes a lot longer than writing a post), but I'm still really excited to announce the video series of this build.

 

cool video

 

Glad you liked it. There's plenty more where that came from, but we're still getting the first few episodes edited, so it won't be until the beginning of the new year.

 

Subscribed to the youtube channel

 

Great video and even better build Keep it up!!!!

 

After test fitting the seat, I decided to move the floor up significantly. With my original floor location, a 6'2" person would have to struggle to see over the dashboard. The higher the floor is, the more ground clearance I can add or the lower I can place the center of gravity. I like both of those things, and I'm only 5'6" so if I'm going to go to any extreme, it'll be the "build for short people" rather than "built for tall people" extreme.

Unfortunately, that was not a trivial change to make. I had to chop out the sill bars and door bars, then I had to cut out the X brace in the main hoop. Having the X brace terminate below the floor would defeat the purpose of moving the floor up, so it HAD to go.



I made new sill bars and X braces, and am just starting to catch back up to where I was a couple weeks ago.

We went from this:


to this:


It looks like such a simple change, but was a pretty massive effort. On the positive side, I'm getting quite good at coping with an angle grinder now!

 

Finally, the video series is ready to go live!

 

great video

 

Thanks mate, I'm probably going to update this thread a little less frequently and just try to catch the video series up to real-time going forward.

 

One last alignment of all the 'core components' this weekend, then turned tack welds into 'for keeps' welds.

 

nice vid how much does that body weigh being like that? seems lightweight

 

Two people can carry it around, but it's a lot more convenient with three people. I'd say somewhere between 200-300lbs as it sits. It's still too heavy, though.

 

More video!

 

100-130kg is pretty light in my opinion like a longblock 13b
any ways to get it more lighter?

 

Make some molds, get rid of the steel, and break out the carbon or kevlar. That's probably not "rookie year" prep for this car though, maybe for 2018.

 

Week 3

 

nice videos keep them coming

 

You beat me to it! This one's pretty short. Filming and building the car is pretty expensive, in terms of hours and dollars. Especially in the beginning (before we had a solid process established), that meant that we didn't get a lot of footage for some of these episodes.

Maybe at some point, we'll open up some fund-raising opportunities to help fund the video series. Would anyone be interested in contributing to something like that?

 

I love these videos. I'm just a broke dude with his own RE project but if you had some sort of gofundme I'd be willing to pitch.

 

Much appreciated. Once we get a little further along with the build we'll put together a Patreon for this kind of stuff.

The Mt Washington Selection Committee is going through the arduous task of selecting who they accept to race in 2017, and I'm absolutely on the edge of my seat with anticipation. With 99 entries and only ~45 slots, our chances are fair of being selected. If Driven Daily is on the honored list, we have to double down and focus even harder on that deadline. If not, we'll have 3 years to shake the car down before the next event.

Week04's episode is a bit behind schedule, but that's because we've been rushing to get the project caught back up. We just mocked up the cockpit to make sure we have sufficient room for everything with the cage in its current state, and I'm very very happy. The 'foundation' of the cage is complete, and we can move on to more exciting parts of the car.



This weekend: Front suspension (finally!)

 

Still working on getting the next video ready to publish, but in the meantime here's a real-world update.

The doors have a good tooling gelcoat on them, and are ready to pull molds. Once that's done, these doors go from 75lbs to around 5lbs.


I have a couple sets of front suspension to test out. I don't know the springrates, but have re-valving kits galore.


I'm still on the waitlist for Climb to the Clouds, so I don't know if I'll need to have the body finished this season or not. If I'm only racing the standard hillclimb events, I just need cabin protection. If I'm racing Mt Washington, I'll need to finish up the bodywork and make it look presentable. To prepare for that, I've started building out the fender plugs for the body molds.

 

I finished up the molds for the doors today (2.5 layers of 10oz chop mat).


While that was curing, I finally trained myself on the vinyl cutter that Roland donated to the Makerspace a couple of months ago. Sometimes I'm surprised by the little changes that really get me excited to make big progress. Making a silly sticker is one of those little inspiring things.

 

Now comes some more hard math. Finishing the jig for the front suspension was quite an ordeal, if I'm honest. The g35/350z front clip that I had purchased wasn't exactly straight, so I decided to pick a side and build a jig that could be used on both sides of the car. This is the result of around 20 hours of 'braining' and a half hour of cutting, drilling, and welding.



It allows me to place the subframe on the chassis table and establish my suspension pickup points in thin air. Then it's just 'connect the dots' between the pickup points and the roll cage structure I've already built.

In other news, I'm getting closer to finished on the profile for the rear quarters. They're coming along pretty nicely, I'd say.

 

The first door mold didn't come out perfectly, it was a bit too cold during curing, and we didn't use enough MEKP in a few spots.



However, this weekend was a massive success. We added leveling feet to the base of the chassis, chopped out a bunch of parts, and now suspension is ready to weld in! This is a major milestone, and we could even see this car rolling around next weekend.

 

Today, I lit myself on fire.



I was removing the mounting pins (studs? bolts?) from the g35 front suspension so I could align the pickup points in the Datsun, and that meant a lot of cutting and grinding. I should really have fired up the lathe and just made some from scratch ... but I chose to do it the hard way.



In the end though, I have all 6 pins necessary to locate the front suspension. Hopefully this week I can weld the pickup points in place.