Projects School Project

Hello all,

My name is Kevin. I am posting a build thread of a project I am working on with two school buddies Greg and Justin. We are students at Arizona State University. We are studying mechanical engineering, and are in our final semester. To finish, we are required to work on a large project for two semesters. The first semester is the design phase, and the second and last semester of college is the build phase. Naturally I thought of building a hot rod. Our instructor had been a senior designer at Ford for 8 years, so we knew he would help us stay off of dangerous roads, so to speak. He enthusiastically embraced the idea of having this as our project with the stipulation that he gets to drive it when we are done. The car must be safe and drivable, and have all safety equipment expected on a road going car. Otherwise we had a clean slate.


We chose a 27 T bucket for cost considerations. We are college students, and fiberglass bodies are cheap. We looked for something else in the budget, but were not successful. Besides, if we screw this up, we don’t damage any nice bodies.

We would be doing to work at my dad’s house and tools. He has a machine shop, and as such we have access to some great stuff. He has also built custom cars in the past, and his knowledge and experience are much appreciated. He is also our “advisor on tradition” and keeps us away from things that will wrinkle too many noses here. We figure that if we can satisfy both him and our instructor we will have skirted an interesting line.
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I won’t bore you with all of the details, but in a nutshell we wanted to use straight axles front and back, but incorporate Watts links instead of panhard bars for better handling. We also decided to use quarter elliptical springs up front to keep things interesting. And last, our goal is to eliminate the tie rod bar by using a push pull system. In other words, we are going to directly drive both spindles rather than tie one to the other.
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Here is a CAD rendering of our concept. It’s a bit rough, but you get the idea.



My dad had a great idea for improving the looks on the standard bucket frame. If we welded it up like normal but then filled the inside corners and cut and filled the outside corners it would round off the corners and it would look really nice. We did an FEA*****ysis to make sure it was structurally sound and then built it. Here are some pics.




The spring perches for the front were done next.



Thanks again to patriarchal support, we were able to procure a Lincoln 460 (’71 Continental), C-6 trans, and 9 inch Ford rear end. We did not rebuild any of it, just resealed the engine to make sure it would not mark its territory too badly.



The front springs are from a Suzuki Samurai. They perfectly fit, and are cheap. We cut them, used a center cut end mill to drill new holes for the centering bolt, and made new plates to attach to the frame. All grade 8 bolts need apply.

The rear Watts link, radius rods, and spring mounts were fabbed and installed. The rear is now done.

The engine was next. Motor mounts were made, and a cross member was bent to accommodate the engine. They were put in next. The drive line angles were then measured to make sure they were the same, and it was time to burn them in. the transmission was done in a similar manner.








How do you like our engine hoist?
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BTW, the jack stand is to keep the rear end up while I take out a spring for a few days. I found a pair of coilovers good and cheap and thought they would be big enough, but when we dropped the engine in they bottomed out. That’s what I get for pulling my wallet out before my calculator. Le oops.
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That’s all for now. We are hoping to have a great weekend building the front end up and mounting the body.

 

your front end looks to be preeettty far out there in front

 

we could have made it shorter, but we like the look of a long 'T. besides, it makes the center of gravity about the center of the car, which is nice.

 

Super cool that you get to do this as a school project.

 

Dad here yes they have been raiding my hoard but it figure it is going for a worthy project. I didn't mind the Lincoln 460 but I drew the line at one of my Maserati engines. The next thing to start is controls. The boys have been working at my house about three to four days a week and I help them out mostly with welding and some machining skills or show them how so they can do it them selves. Currently we are looking for a pair of rear rims that fit the Mickey Thompsons I have, or a pair of rims and tires that fit the Ford truck pattern that fit the rear end we have.