Fury Front Anti-Roll Bar

I have my front ARB in place and I must say, I am exceedingly happy with it. I didn’t make it myself but comissioned Cornering Force to make it for me. It’s part of a matched pair (one for the rear as well) which was bespoke manufactured for my layout, corner weights and aspirations for the car. I can’t recommend these guys enough. Simon is a leader in the field and has his suspension on cars on pole in the BTCC.

So, to the pictures.

This is a view of the completed, powder coated rocker arm, showing the drop link going down to the blade, set in ‘fully priapic’ mode. There are a couply of other positive observations here – you can see how neatly it’s tucked under the rocker, as well as getting a nice view of the locking pin. The pin is spring loaded, and you just pull it out, turn the blade and it clicks home.

My car is only going to weight 650KG with me in it, so we only need one blade. Both sides are coupled of course so one blade does the work for both sides. The blade itself goes through 10 different metallurgical processes according to Simon so it will last the distance. It’s the single most expensive component in the arrangement.

Here’s a good view going into the adjustor, showing the nylon bearing block as well. As you may have noticed, I’ve decided to make all parts that bolt on to the chassis blue, and the chassis will be yellow again. There are small stops welded onto the ARB to secure it to the nylon bearings.

 

Here’s the final view, on the fixed link side. Nice and simple. What should also be evident (and is also clear in the top picture) is the line of sight between the chassis force node (top rail where the vertical meets it) and the far corner node where the suspension mounts. If you look at this and the top picture, you will see where the next set of cross-bracing is due to go in. I will make this cross bracing demountable otherwise it won’t be possible to get the right angle of pitch when extracting the engine.

I am proud of my dipstick

So, just about the last job to do on the sump is to get the dipstick path routed up the side of the engine. As per flak’s instructions, I bought some 15mmOD stainless tubing to match the hole machined in the side of the sump. My original plan was to route the pipe vertically up the side of the engine and emerge between the throttle bodies. As you can see from the pic below, this isn’t a great route, and runs far too close to many things, including the engine mount bolts, and one of the water pump housing take-offs.

 

So, I needed to either go for a simple route up, hoping i could get the angles so precise that it missed everything, or find a better way. Digging through the heap of stuff I’d taken off the original engine, I extracted the dipstick tube (just pulls out of the sump – held in with an o-ring) and took a look at the convoluted routing it takes – i found it to be good.
Now that I had a plan to take a route, i needed to plan the take-off from the block. Wrapping some paper around the pipe and using duck tape to make it rigid, i now had a template of the pipe that could be cut with scissors until I had the angle right without risking multiple chops into the steel.

 

Note that it comes off the sump at a slight angle away from the sump to move the dipstick into the void space there. I’ve kept the template in case i make a sump for anyone else (Furyous is getting one if he likes this design).
 

 

 

Next came the plan to fit the dipstick tube onto the sump take-off pipe. When measured, the tube is about 0.3mm short of half an inch, and the ID of the pipe is about 11.5mm, and i happen to have had my trusty 1/2 inch reamer ready. In order to make the dipstick pipe fit the sump, I reamed out the end of the take-off pipe to 1/2 inch. This was a little tricky, needing to position and clamp the pipe in the drill-vice, and then gently ream down and back (lots of cutting spray) in order to take it out. The end result is that the dipstick tube fits nicely into the end and has a little swivel room.

look at the shiny end of my tubeI also cleaned the end up ready for welding. However, I decided not to weld it straight away for a couple of reasons: firstly, there’s no going back after putting that tack in, especially if it’s routed wrongly, and secondly I’d also be welding stainless to mild. In the end, I decided that the better solution by far would be to fit it all back to the car, make a support bracket for the tube so it hugs the engine nicely, and then epoxy it in. It will be a very strong solution, easier than a weld, and will give me a couple of minutes wriggle time before it goes off.

Here’s the final run up through the void. In the background middle-right you can see the starter motor bolts, and i’m going to fabricate a bracket to go onto this bolt as well – job done – dipstick now properly secure.
 

 

Here’s another picture from a slightly different angle showing the take-off from the pipe, because I’m so pleased with it. It’s a good thing when something runs neatly and without fuss – generally simple is always best, and not necessarily the easiest to achieve. Occam’s Razor.

 

 

I originally made this post here on the loccost builders sitebut it’s my post, so I’m following my policy of echoing the content to the blog, just as I push most of the blog content to the forum, only fair to share. I think the only copies I have of these photos are on that site, hence being tagged with their logo. I don’t mind.

 

 

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while – this is the collection of books from my car based technical library. They get opened and used (well, some of them do) but it’s a good book list to share.

What Author Why I like It
Porche 956/962 The Enduring Champtions Peter Morgan A great book that goes into long term racing strategy at the same time as having a great photo archive. The archive has some great pictures on how problems are solved as well as covering the history and evolution of the cars.
Automotive Handbook Bosch It’s a well indexed reference book. I don’t really read it much; it’s like learning C++ from the reference guide.
Race and Rally Car Source Book Allan Staniforth It’s a detailed book, covering Allan’s speciality (suspension and chassis) as well as having lots to say about aerodynamics.
Competition Car Suspension Allan Staniforth It’s the bible. It has all the hard sums in, but lots of pictures of how they’re applied to cars. All hail Allan.
Drive to Win Carroll Smith One of the three of his essential books I own. Studies show that 80% of learning is experential, and 20% is from training. This is the 20% you need to know if you want to improve your technique and have groundwork over and above instinct to get you started.
Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Carroll Smith A brilliant book that covers everything from ensuring your holes don’t have a sharp edge, metallurgy, how to arrange rivets so they don’t fail, how to radius a transfer, etc. If you’re building a high performance car, this book shows you just how not to cock it up and squish yourself for the sake of a bad bolt choice.
engineer to win Carroll Smith How to build your car so it survives the race, and you survive it. Way more of the same above. Don’t forget Carroll Smith has build many championship winning racing cars and seen many drivers come and go.
Competition Car Composites Simon McBeath This is a great book that takes you through simple moulding techniques all the way through to carbon fibre. However, that’s not the good bit. The good bit is that it’s aimed at us, making this stuff in our sheds, enjoying too much solvent and seeing the devil erupt from our kneecaps.
Race Car Chassis Design and Construction Forbes Arid Terrific amounts of design information from first principles. It’s backed up with lots of excellent photographs from paddock that clearly show just what to do. I loved this book and often refer to it.
Fibreglass Composite Materials Forbes Arid Another great book on the subject. This one includes techniques we can use, and also takes you into some of the professional tooling and techniques. A great read in a day.
Race Car Aerodynamics Joseph Katz If you want to know how it’s done and how the pros do it, this is the book. It’s a good primer if you intend to design anything based on what the composite books above may have to offer.
How to Make Your Car Handle Fred Puhn There’s a lot of what’s in this book in the books above, but Fred shows how to do it with two bits of hairy string and a dangly weight.
Automotive Fuel Injection – A technical guide Jan P Norbye This book is potentially dated now, bearing in mind on the kit car community this is now considered a commodity where before it was considered witchcraft. However, it’s a great book to get you up to speed with the principles and gives a great summary of the evolution of fuel injection.

crap – have i buggered my bearing surface?

I went to get my drive-shafts and found the bearing mating surface has started to rust.

Shall I just get some polishing compound and sort them out, or can i get them reconditioned? They’re modified sierra cosworth driveshafts rated for well beyond 200bhp so i don’t want to just scrap them.

crapnuggets.