Very nice, its good to know i'm not the only one who thinks an underslung frame is a good idea. Whats your steering setup, any problems with bumpsteer??
That's Inkorect's (sp?) car. You're defintely not the ony one; there are several underslung cars on the HAMB, my T Coupe included.
Had a frantic few weeks of work on the car over the holidays and it had is first run at the dustup yesterday, great day out but i got a bit carried away towards the end of the day and went into a bend with tooooo much speed and nudged the bank, so its back in the shed while i find another beam axle and spindle. Heres a few pics of the dustup and damage.
The corner above is where i clipped the bank, seemed like a soft hit at the time but bent a few things
There were four "hits" during the day, no one hurt, but there was a bit of bent steel. If you lookk at the skid marks you can see where the 34 went in to the wall Tyre wall/concrete Same wall as the 34 about 10' further on
A few pictures of the things made over the xmas period to get it ready for the dustup. Steering column, whihch i made from 50mm OD 42mm ID pipe fitted with a 20mm shaft inside. Found some bearings that are a nice interference fit in the pipe which are secured by a 3mm grub screw on one side, which i staked with a punch, and held by a circlip on the shaft on the other. Works real nice. Had the top end spined and tapered to fit a standard wheel, and ground the bottom end to suit a double D universal.
I had to make a new steering arm as the slingshot arm was too short and the rod from the steering bow to the slingshot arm would rub the tire. Also the ratios were all wrong so a longer arm was needed. I had a slab of 1" plate lying around for years so i gas cut out an arm and made it to suit.
Made rear spring hanger mounts, at the front i fitted them through the chassis. and rear shock mounts
Made up the fuel lines, brake lines etc and fitted them. These are all run through the body and retained/clipped in the rails of the body.
Finished off the exhaust, with a single 3" out the back, real quiet for cruising or i can drop the caps off the headers for noise if i want Also made the battery box, battery hold down, handbrake (E-brake??) cable mounts, linkages etc to get that working too
Then i was on to the "little things" like making a floor from some 1" marine ply i had left over from another project. Used aToyoya van accelerator pedal setup and cable which bolted in real nice, the travel is just right for the Qjet carb too which is a plus. I already had some door skins made before the body was lengthened so to get it going for the dustup i just added some 1" ply filler panels and screwed some old licence plates on the outside to hide the ply. I know the oil pressue was OK so only hooked up a temp gauge for the race day. Finally got it all going 9pm, the next morning it was on the trailer (no lights, plates, registration etc would have made it a cop magnet) Trailered it close then drove it the last mile or so to get a feel for it prior to hitting the track! Fitted a drive shaft loop, mounted the radiator which fitted nice, not so the thermo fan to keep it all cool, The fins on the back fo the fan had to be filed down to clear the waterpump pulley bolts and the fan motor sits inside the crank pulley. All a bit too close really but thats the space i had allowed myself to work with when i laid it all out originally so i made it work! As it turned out the fan was not needed, starting each run at 60 degrees C and finishing the 4-5 laps at 75-80 degrees. Got to love the Toyota landcruiser radiators, designed for a 4 litre 6L and cools a 454 no problems without a fan.
Love this shot with my buddy Rod at the wheel, check out the cornering load on the right front tire!!
Thanks man, i hope a few folk on here would enjoy seeing a few pic's. Was a big day out and a great way to shake down a new car and see how it would handle.
This was all the cars on the day, was limited to 30 cars but a few cars too cool to turn away were finshed at the last minute and ended up with just under 40 cars,
The Jalopy Dustup thread on the NZ Hotrod magazine website is worth a look, Some damn fine looking cars were racing there, link below starts with the good photos http://www.nz-hotrod.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=4836&page=18&pp=10
The thickness of the tank cradle plus about 1/4" so about 1 1/2" or so underneath the tank reducing to about 1" at the back of the tank where i kicked it up a bit so it wouldn't drag on things. It looks worse in the photo than what it really is.
OK so its been a really long time since i posted anything on the T, basicaly since we moved house i've spent the best part of two years refurbing the house, so there has been little time and no money for the T. Anyhow a few weeks ago the annual jalopy dustup was held at the waihi beach dirt track so i decided to dig the T out form under the tarp and get it going again. It had been two years since it was mobile and i needed to fix a few things but got it sorted and went out for a play, which has got me motivated to get a bit more work done to get it "finished" and maybe one day legal for the road. So heres a few pic's from the dustup this year!
Did a few minor things prior to the dustup. The exhaust was not effective the way it was setup with a single pipe out the back so rehashed that, not the prettiest but it now works a heap better
The steering was also way too slow so i cut up a new pitman arm and the splined section from a standard one weld in. Old arm was 140mm (5 1/2")centre to centre, new is 210mm (8 1/2") so it has sped the steering up heaps! I had some old Lucas "king of the road" headlights that i got at a swapmeet years ago and fitted them on to how they they looked, Pretty good i thought so they will be staying!
After the fun at the dustup i'm now looking towards the Nostalgia drags in April, but as my T is not road legal it needs to be tech inspected for racing, so i need to tidy up a few areas, such as lack of firewall or trans tunnel! I had some 1.6mm panel in the back of the shed so i've hand shaped that for the tunnel and then worked up from there up the firewall.
Once the tunnel was made with nothing hitting anywhere it was screwed into place, then it was body off and complete the firewall and weld the tunnel into place from underneath. Trickest part was around the end of the steering column so i had a bit of exhaust tube stretched so that it was a "loose interference fit" over the end of the column and built the rest of the firewall from there. I'll admit now i am not the worlds best welder, i use gas as it's what i have, and the welds may not be the prettiest BUT they are damn strong! I had access to a Mig and played with it but prefered the gas so used that
If yu are wondering why the tunnel is so high its because the chassis is set really low with big kickup. As a result the running gear sits high with the driveshaft running at hip & leg level as you can see here
The Jalopy Journal
