Jesse OBrien

Week07 is live!

Some more materials arrived today, so I started building my new subframe mounts.

Production quality is getting better now, but we're still way behind the real-world timeframe. https://youtu.be/jFF3IIU7IA4

I probably mentioned it somewhere way back there, but I'm using 240sx rear suspension. I have a few reasons for really liking the 240sx' rear suspension design. Parts are readily available Several limited slip differential options are affordable Multi-link suspension is very tuneable (at the expense of being more complex than other designs) It has a similar track width compared to the body and front suspension The entire subframe is modular, and can be removed as a single unit. I went with the s13 generation because it was available locally for $100 complete. The s14 generation has some very minor improvements, but not enough to justify additional time or money.

Continuing on that trend, I started welding in the pickups today. The front pickups for the rear subframe: The rear pickup (one of two) for the rear subframe: Every day, it's a little closer to rolling around on its own wheels.

I decided that trying to make the front suspension happen by myself wasn't working, so today I switched to the rear subframe pickups. I'm really glad I did, that little change of focus solved my mental block, and I was glad to be back in the shop.

Progress has been slow this week, as I'm the only one in the shop and most of the work on the todo list requires two sets of hands. On the bright side, that frees me up to edit more video.

I really must've gotten a lot of dust in my eye when I cut all that work out. ... What? No, I wasn't crying. Like I said, dust. Someone must've been sweeping before I got to the shop ... or something. Definitely not crying. After I pulled myself back together, I got everything aligned on all the planes. Then I got to work on the first (and most important) tube: The subframe mount tube.

I got this far before I had another set of hands to see where the hub ends up relative to the fenderwell. The current wheelbase is 90" ... but I have everything set up for 94" as it turns out. Luckily, now that I've established my design, it should be quick to reproduce.

I spent some time on the crossmember and lower control arm pickup points, but it'll take a little bit more refinement before I call it done.

Yeah, welding to the side instead of the top seems really strange. I however, don't have struts or shock towers, so I'm free to triangulate however I want. We have 6 weekends (including this one) before the first possible shakedown event. Assuming ECU/dyno tuning doesn't take too long, and brake/fuel lines show up reasonably quickly, it should be ready to trailer out and drive around an autocross course for a bit.

This weekend, Mike (my co-builder/crewchief) and I attended the rules/awards banquet. Mt Washington changes everything for the season, and because so many more folks will attend our events to shake down their cars, the season schedule has already been announced. That's great for me, because it lets me solidify our schedule for the season. Working around the "start in late May" schedule, there are two autocross events I can attend at NHMS. That should be enough shakedown to be able to trust the car, but Ascutney is known for being the car that will shake out whatever your car's weakest link is. Assuming we want to shakedown in late April, that gives us around 7 weekends left to get the car on its own wheels. It's a tall order, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Once we got back from that banquet, we dove back into the front suspension. After lots of measuring, coping, measuring, adjusting, measuring, and confirming ... we finally have suspension pickups welded in place. I'm super happy with how that upper control arm tube turned out. Now we need one more, then line up the subframe pickups on the bottom. Once that's done, we focus on the (s13 240sx) rear suspension, and the car should be able to roll around on its own after that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

I've done almost all of the filming so far, but a friend who is learning to film joined the team in week04/week05.

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 again. Would anyone be interested in contributing to something like that?

Don't let me discourage you, but even these low-quality videos take a ton of planning to put together. I've been recording stuff like this for nearly a year now, and I'm just starting to get the hang of it (expect quality to jump around week07 or so, since the videos are behind real-world progress a bit). Recording videos is a whole other skillset. It's incredibly rewarding, but it takes at least as long as the work itself does to record, process, organize, and edit into something that starts to resemble a story. Whether you decide to film or not, definitely get back into the shop and get your Z together!

More video! https://youtu.be/rbBYXc9UmkI

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

The build video series finally begins! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIi19y-l5h8

Well, 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!