LocostUSA.com

In an act of full disclosure, I will admit to being biased towards early style cars. I prefer Series 1 Lotus 7s with 15" wheels and skinny tyres.
One of the major visual components on an early open wheel car is tyre diameter and width. Most cars of this era had tyres of about 28" diameter, or taller. These play an important part in the visual picture. Going with low profile, small diameter tyres changes that picture. It's the same thing with an Indy roadster on a Locost frame. The Indy roadsters of the '60s used 18" wheels with 31" tall tyres. I love the idea of combining the looks of a '30/'40s racer on a Locost spaceframe, but I worry with modern low profile tyres it won't look right.
Just something to bear in mind.
Cheers,
Stewart.

Thanks, Stewart. I agree. There is a visual balance between the location of the rear axle, the height of the body, and the diameter of the wheels that must be met to make it look like those old racers. I'm trying to strike the right balance but I don't want to run Blockleys ($$$$) and modern tires that approximate the diameter are wider (either truck tires or exotic supercar tires) and both cost a lot and have limited selection.

My chosen sacrifice is that it may not look authentic, but the proportions can be made to give off the same feeling with 225-45-17s.

I'll have new pictures to upload of the current design, which has taken much of the feedback given here to heart.

Check Coker tire. I am using Excelsior comp V tires on my car. They are rated to 149mph, a softer compound and fairly sticky. They come in all sorts of tall sizes. I am using 7.00x15" on the rear of my roadster. They are 28 1/2" tall, with a 4 1/2" wide tread. That mount on a 5"-6" rim. A lot of guys in the hot rod world use modern steel spare wheels. They come in bigger diameters,16" and 17", and come in skinny widths, and most of all, are cheap and plentiful in junk yards. And don't look out of place on an old style car. Just paint them black or silver.
Excelsior also do a radial that looks very similar in appearance. They are more expensive though. Again a lot of traditional styled hot rods run them as they look like old racing tyres, but are modern radial construction.
Cheers,
Stewart.

Alright, here is the most recent model.

Wider, with enough room for a traditional pedal setup and a manual transmission. I'm waffling on T5 or T-10. Internal shift linkage is the draw to T5. Nostalgia and gear spacing that I like better is the draw to the T-10.

Longer and taller: now the engine will have a normal clutch and bellhousing and will sit a bit higher in the car. I'm now at an 88in wheelbase. The front radiator opening is right about the size of a ford model A radiator, which I think will prove convenient.

What do you guys think of my third link? The top straps are welded to the housing, and bolt to the bracket that bolts through the third member to the housing as well. I don't know if this is overkill.

I've got a front suspension design in place leveraging Mustang 2 drop spindles. I have not modeled my custom steering arms that will allow me to rear steer and adjust akerman. I also have not spent time making all the lengths and pickup points correct for good geometry.

My plan with this model is to methodically work through ideas, not to design each component to be exactly accurate. I'm trying to get a feel for how things might work and fit together. That said, if you see something that looks bad or wrong, mention it. Could be ignorance on my part or just laziness with the model

Here is the eye-candy:










Render quality is low for previews, so click on the image to get a bigger sharper version to look at.

Check out this setup:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13200&hilit=porsche+transaxle&start=15

Kennedy makes a Chevy->VW adapter, which could be used to connect to cwhite's VW bus transaxle bellhousing setup.

No, the 924/944 transaxle probably isn't as strong as a T-10. But if you're not sidestepping the clutch on gumballs, I doubt it would be an issue. There are lots of V8 buggies with Beetle transaxles out there... and if you munch it, it looks like 924 transaxles are still relatively cheap.

Upsides: you get a manual trans like you wanted, plus a lot more foot room for the clutch pedal.

ESP, love what you're doing with this design! In reference to your remark on the third link, yes it probably is "overkill". We ran a 3rd link setup on my old dirt tracker. Just welded a pair of ears to the top of the differential housing and cross-bolted the rod end bearing. This was a 3500# race car with BB Chevy power and torque, and until we got our geometry worked out, we were getting a lot of axle tramp, and yet, those two ears stayed the course with no trouble! Granted, we were running dirt, but our design was just copied from a lot of cars from higher end classes than we were running. Cars running both dirt and asphalt, with bigger motors and wider tires.

_________________
Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

Trx maybe he could have the small bellhousing and move the t-10 backwards like Morgan did on some of their cars. Just throwing another option out there.

If you're looking for tall, skinny tires to look period correct, 235/80/17 is a decently available size in pickup tires. There bound to be some pavement style tires available in that size, but probably not much for performance stuff.
Kristian

_________________
V6 in a book frame build. Now registered.
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7587
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=18172

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp ... mpare1=yes is the most vintage tread to my eyes.
Here's the whole search:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/TireSearc ... &zip-code=


if you search the wreckers, to you aren't paying $375ea I wonder how long these would last? http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp ... mpare1=yes

A temporary spare is meant to be used at lower speeds. The specs say 50 mph and I know from personal experience at 75 it's life will be VERY short.

And at 90, so will yours. Those are definitely limp-to-the-gas-station tires, not cruise-down-the-road tires. But the wheels themselves are attractive, size wise, and there are tires around that have The Look and will fit skinny compact spare wheels. I looked into that for a possible steampunk locost (sadly, the commission went nowhere, but imagine a custom car styled by Jules Verne instead of Chip Foose) and found there are 125-15 tires still in production for the Citroén 2CV--Michelins are 23.5 OD, Firestones are 23" OD. And there are lots of tires available for the "classic" VW Bug, also in 15" (the 165/80R15 is 25.5 OD) for 4" wide rims that, well, I dunno about fitting them on a narrower rim but compact spare wheels seem like a reasonable place to start since nobody* makes narrow road wheels any more.

On open wheel cars in particular, wheels and tires are a huge part of the aesthetic.

*"Nobody" = I looked around on google and didn't find any right away.

_________________
Locost builder and adventurer, and founder (but no longer owner) of Kinetic Vehicles

Jack some of those temporary spare wheels are nice looking light and popular the Porsche ones are pretty popular with the 356 outlaw crowd. GM and Ford have had some nice looking aluminum ones too.

Here's a Bugatti replica running narrowed Audi rs4 wheels. Thought you might like.

Narrowed Audi rs4 wheels? How the heck do you do that? Those look faaabulous for that application.

[edit: I know it's not always easy to tell sarcasm in this medium, so let me assure you I'm being very sincere, and those wheels look splendid, and, and...does somebody sell those, or alternatively, is there a commercial wheel narrowing service somewhere?]

_________________
Locost builder and adventurer, and founder (but no longer owner) of Kinetic Vehicles

Jack weldcraftwheels. Com will widen or narrow wheels. Stockton wheels modify wheels I'm sure there are others. Those do look a bit like the Bugatti wheels that had integral drums don't they.