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The Sealsit washers do an excellent job of keeping the the rod end working surfaces clean. I think most of the dirt track guys use these with good results. I just did my 10,000 mile maintenance check this spring and all of the rod ends are still in good condition. I would guess that I will probably get about 20,000 road miles on a rod end set, using the sealsit washers. Dave W

Thanks for posting the link. They have some other pretty cool stuff too.

again, my work is keeping me busy...

however.. just as I was about to find some free time this summer..... this happens..





My Evo 9 ate it's gearbox and broke the rear diff all at once .. so after some time waiting for parts to arrive (two good used boxes, diff and transfer box just in case) I am now spending some time I do not have on rebuilding that... oh well... It also ate my BEC shock and steering rack budget...

On a positive note... A firend was cleaning his basement, and found some unused Toyo R888's in 205/60 R13. Now this is a bit larger than I planned (185/50 R13) and they are not the freshest set at acouple of years old, but they will do for start.. especially as I got them for FREE..

Ouch! Grats on the free tires, sorry to hear about your Evo. I have a 5 speed with a bad housing but good internals stashed away against that kind of unfortunate event. Do I get points for creating my own spares? Wait .. brain just kicked in .. PM me if you end up with a good spare 5-speed housing; the one that the rear mount attaches to.

huh, work is killing me.. however, I haven't stopped, did some minor work on the project, ordered the steering rack from titan.. and got some stuff from my machinist..

these are the housings for the outer lower A arm sphericals... I had some 75 mm dia 4130 round blank and wanted to create some strong housings.. this is what I came up with..





The idea is for the tubes to have a larger area to weld to, + for the fronts I will add vertical plates directly to these housings, to attach the pushrod.. so I should have very little bending force on the A arms. The sphericals will be pressed in + secured with a C clip on the underneath.. I had to learn some press fit theory on tolerances when describing what exact measurements I wanted form the machinist..


also, it is time to make engine mounts.. so I had to mount the Riltech racing sump...

this is the original oil pickup


this is the Riltech one... it is moved forward, because for this engine orientation (just like on the bike) they noticed in car apliccations the oil pressure gets lower under braking..

Rilltech did not provide bolts for the oil pickup, and originals did not fit being too long, so I had to buy some..

To keep the baffle in place during mounting (since it would have sealant smeared on the backside..) I cut off some original bolts,..




The original oil presusre relief valve is retained... bit of a tight fit in the sump...


et, voila!

Great your still at it! Do you think those spherical mounts will need to be machined after welding? Let us know, I want to do that also. They look nice, that's the right way to do this...

I had my machinist make me a "dummy" insert, to be pressed in the mount for welding.. after welding I will press it out and it should keep it round.. The insert also has a pilot hole to attach everything to the jig.. You might also find the inner rod end mounting a bit controversial, but more about that later..


I am also toying with the idea about changing the rear diff solution.. I have three possible diffs to be used as a base for LSD chain diff, (two will be interesting for USA readers)...
I will weigh the diffs and put some ideas on this diary..

The uprights are in the final design stage, if I get some aluminium locally, I'll have the sample made.. I need to import the reall strong alu from abroad, and that is a pain.. I also gave my discs to be finished...

So, lots of things going on in paralel, but I like to make comprehensive updates, so bear with me..

what a year... no time for anything, spending all free time running my business in a very difficult climate..

Had a few days off, and with family on vacation decided to spend some tim in the workshop..

but, first I spent two days helping University of Rijeka FSAE team map their car... did a rush job to make the car driveble, as the original map they used was just unusable... first, one day at the rollers, and then one day doing logs on the track in real conditions... I will have to spend some more time and change their setup, as running pure AlphaN (throttle position vs. RPM) map doesn't work well at low RPM and low load..

Some interesting things on the car... guys made their own diff, which is some sort of torsen/plate diff combo + the car doesnt use CV joints but has driveshafts with end splines cut like barrel, so they provide the articulation..

While testing, we noticed this..


Looks like hub bending, and / or wheel bearing not seating propperly in the upright... This made me think again about using smallish bearings in an aluminium upright on my car...


BTW, see trough intake manifold tubes are great at night, they light up on backfires..


on the home front... I finalized the design of the rear end...

complex as usuall...


the two tubes under the engine are removable so that I can get the engine out..
made some tight fitting buckets for this purpose..




it was either this or the twin tubes that will support the roll hoop were to be removable.. in the interest of safety I went this way... I am not real happy with the solution, but what the hell..

What kind of wheels are they running? Reason I ask is that teams have been going to all kinds of custom wheels recently and many of them have the stiffness of a paper plate.

well, they are using OZ 13 inch wheels, probably intended for some small formula car.. so the wheels are not the problem..

however, they did machine away most of the rear hub, and the wheel is resting only on wheel studs, so I think that is the problem..

love helping FSAE teams, usually a great bunch of guys and you quickly see what not to do..

I hope you are going to throw away the bike engine and make an electric Supercar out of it.

naaah, but I hear there is a guy in England that has some fancy new gearbox that F1 teams are fighting about..

wanted to weld the rear of the frame togeather but nedeed to get some more argon.... so, took the bottles to the fill up place and, surprise, both bottles need to be certified again (every 5 years over here..) so, almost two weeks with no argon...

that gave me some time to finalize the upright design and send the files to my machinist to give his opinion... if only it was that simple..

let's start from te begining...

when I finalized the suspension geometry, at the begining of the year, I foolishly ordered a steering rack from Titan Motorsport UK... Custom rack, with a centre pinion, wiht eccentric mount so that I can change the pinion later...



very nice unit I must say, ordered it with their compact rack end joints... and got it complete with dust boots.. All in all, it was 80 UK pounds extra for the custom rack, which meant the choice of rack ratio, length and body end diameter...

However... I was foolish to order the rack before finalizing the upright design. At first, I positioned the outboard tie rod to be at about the spindle height, which gave me the longest possible steering arm length. Idea was to have the front brakes behind the spindle, and steering arm in front of the spindle. As it was to be a track car, I wanted to be able to move the rack fore and aft later on to choose the ackerman ratio, from zero to - something, to run anti ackerman on the track.
Also, the lower ball joint for the front A arms was positioned as low as possible, to get the best leverage and optimise the suspension geometry. This meant that if I wanted to use Allen bolt to hold the heim joints (actually the lower joint is a pure spherical joint mounted in a special holder which is welded onto the A arm), and because of the small 13 inch wheels, there was no space to have the lower joint mounted in double shear on the upright. The bolt would just scratch on the wheel..


so the first upright design was a simple one..


just a centre body holding the bearing, with 4 holes on the sides so that I could bolt on the caliper on one side (with a spacer) and steering arm on the other. The bolt holes are wide apart because that is the spacing on the caliper.

Top and bottom 12 mm bolts holding the upper and lower A arm would be in single shear...



but, I really did not like it... forst because of the single shear, then because I really dislike the complexity of various spacers for calipers and separate steering arms... this just adds weight and complexity...

I immedeately toyed with the idea of making the caliper spacer an integral part of the upright, and maybe using it to connect the tie rods.. but the outer tie rod bearing location was in conflict with the caliper position...

so came the redesign...

First, I lowered the caliper as much as I could, giving me lower COG and some space which I could maybe use for the tie rod...


By refining the steering geometry, still using the same rack length as I bought (although 11 mm longer or much shorter rack would have made life much simpler) I managed to attach the outer tie rod heim joint to more or less the same location as one of the caliper bolts, with enough space for both..
Instead of using allen head bolts I went for normal hex bolts, which have much lower heads and this gave me some space to squeeze in double shear arrangement for the bolts, which will not thread into the upright, but use a nut on the inside.....

Also, this caliper / tie rod holder on the side of the uprigh made the design into a sort of "bridge truss" and this side structure actually carries quite a large part of the forces, especially resisting torque under braking, but carrying vertical forces in bump also. What makes me most happy, is that all there forces are not fed trough the upright (because the part of the structure is missing) but the caliper itself is used as a apart of the upright structure, once you bolt it to the upright..







and with everything on..




FEA is looking good, just need to see what the machinist will say...
The two 10 mm threads in the upright, which hold the caliper, will use steel inserts...