The design can be broken into three major sections - Mechanical layout (including suspension), Chassis Design and Styling.
I will add some more discussion of my proposed mechanical layout over the next week or two.
Chassis Design - here are a pair of images of my proposed chassis design - click on the thumbnails for larger pics. These are finally updated from the old ones that were here. These still aren't a finalised design but I think they're a lot closer. The area around the front suspension is still not as good as I'd like so a further update should be expected.
The translucent blue blob is a represenative outline of the engine and transmission. With the next update I'll add an image with the other ancillaries (fuel tank, radiator etc) in the same way. Also missing at present is the chassis panelling - both welded steel (firewall and side intrusion) and riveted aluminium (everything else :).
To give some sense of scale, the height of the engine cover, behind the seats, is 800mm or about 32". I have a dimensioned profile drawing which shows the windscreen and rollbar - if I can get it to scan OK I'll add it here.
The Design-Layout which has an interactive layout drawing. Feedback welcome - email dominic @ diysportscar.org.
Styling design - see the Inspirations page for some of my sources.
Here are two pics of my 1/12th scale styling model. This was made over
the Xmas break when I got frustrated with trying to visualise the shape.
I'm not an artist but I can build things. I sat down with some medium
weight card and cut and folded a pretty fair representation of what I want.
This picture shows it before I made the wheelarches.
The wheels are slices of 49mm PVC pipe with cardboard caps.
Here it is a few days later, with wheel arches added.
The next step is to fill the various gaps and edges, prime the model, then sand smooth and colour spray. Then I can add a winscreen and roll bar and maybe mock up a dashboard and seats.
Update - 30 October 2001
Frustrated with trying to work on a 1:12 cardboard model I decided to go
up a size. Given that I have a 300mm tall artists dummy, 1:6 scale
made sense. I have built a skeleton or "buck" of 3mm (1/8") MDF which
is shown here, with the dummy (no, not me!) in the drivers seat for scale.
This will now get "clad" in poly foam - actually green, florists "Oasis" foam, which the local craft shop sells for 99c a block about the size of a house brick. This stuff cuts and sands very well and holds surpisingly fine detail too. Once finished, the foam clad shape will be sprayed with acrylic paint to seal it, then with a layer of high-buildup primer (spray putty basically). This will let me tidy up any fine detail lines etc and smooth for a finish coat. Then I can pull molds from this master and make a body shell in fibreglass.
Another update with photos of the foam body will go up soon.
Update - 15 September 2002 (!)
Long, long time with no updates.
The foam was a great modelling material but very easy to damage and then
hard to repair well without chopping out huge sections and starting again.
So, I switched to a polymer modelling 'clay' and tried that for awhile.
It was great to use - very easy to add a bit here or there, took a
pretty good surface etc. However, it hated the Australian summer and
sweated some sort of oil everywhere and was continually tacky - yuck! Frustrated,
I gave up for a while and then bought a bag of plaster, mixed up a thivk
batch and slathered it all over the wooden buck. Success! A material
that models well, is permanent, robust and easily painted.
Here are some stages in the development of the plaster model.
