My 'new longer-term project' ...

[stretch]

Nice one Andy, what a suprise

Looking forward to this. Colour please ?

Dave

[Peter]

Andy,

Glad you are finally coming out of the closet. Looking forward to seeing details of the build...and hearing more at the Christmas dinner!

[Lightweight_911]

I have built/owned a number of replicas in the past (including C & D-Type Jaguars, Lancia Stratos, etc) &, in my opinion, the whole point of a replica is to make it visually as close as possible to the original - & to attempt to capture the original driving experience.

One of the giveaways of a replica when compared to an original is usually the fact that everything looks too 'perfect' so one of my challenges was going to be to avoid having everything looking too good/new ...

In the past I have owned lots of original 904 parts - including many from my 'wanted' list but my view is that these rare/unique parts deserve to be on the original cars.

Nowadays, with the internet, it's much easier to identify/research/source parts - but it's still taken me many months & hundreds of hours to find some of the relevant parts that I needed !

While all this was going on Barrie was cracking on with the body. As I mentioned earlier M&W's 904 bodies are dimensionally correct & visually accurate (both inside & out), the moulds having been taken off a genuine original car by Barrie himself.

The (many) individual body parts don't make very interesting viewing on their own so here are a few shots showing some of the sub-assemblies coming together:

First the inner (cockpit) area & roof 'frame' are trial fitted :





- next the chassis is turned upside down & the assembly of the complex lower front underbody & inner sill structure begins:







- once the outer body panels get added it starts to take on a recognisable shape :







- resulting eventually in a complete body/chassis assembly - notice. even at this early stage, the fit of the doors (I'm sure many of you familiar with grp panels will appreciate just how many hours it takes Barrie to get this level of panel fit):





For those that are interested, a more detailed step-by-step account of how the body/chassis gets built up (not mine) can be seen here:

http://www.technic-motorsport.com/M&W%2 ... /index.htm

In my next post I'l talk a little about the drive train ...

[dragonfly]

Wow... just wow.
Stunning cars and what a great project. I look forward to further updates

[Darren65]

As I mentioned earlier M&W's 904 bodies are dimensionally correct & visually accurate (both inside & out)

Will the weight of the car also be comparable?

Really looking forward to following this thread - very cool

Darren

[defianty]

Fantastic Andy. I've been waiting for this thread for some time.

[sanjay]

If you need someone to pass spanners make tea etc ..

I'm your man

sanjay

[haasad]

Fantastic Andy, the 904 ( alongside an A110) has always nbeen one of my favourite cars. Barrie really is a master with GRP , I spent a happy few hours at Thruxton and was only picking up a pair of Recaro shells. You are so right about some cars looking too new a little bit of age makes a recreation or whatever you want to call it look so much better. Really looking forward to seeing this come together.

andy too


pickin

[Lightweight_911]

.

Thanks for all the positive comments.

Will the weight of the car also be comparable?

Darren

In the interests of longevity, the chassis is constructed from slightly thicker gauge steel & is painted both inside & out so ends up slightly heavier (at ~ 62kg) than the original - other than that the overall weight of the complete car is very close ... approx 680 kg/1500 lbs.

Here's a shot of a completed chassis:



- an early 'photoshop' attempt by the Factory to illustrate the lightness of the new 904 chassis (in 1965) :




& Barrie's amusing 2009 version ! :




The M&W 904 was regarded as sufficiently authentic to be allowed to participate in the gruelling 2000/2002/2003 Carrera PanAmerican events - not only finishing all 3 years but coming a very creditable 25th & 13th overall in 2002 & 2003 respectively.

A few images:









- that's Barrie in the blue overalls.


.

[Darren65]

Truly awesome - God I want one!!!

I think it's only people like you Andy with the knowledge, passion, dedication, and pure enthusiasm that can pull off this sort of project properly.

Brilliant effort - can't wait for the next post

Darren

[yoda]

As others have said, what an amazing project .... looking forward to seeing this one coming together!

Good effort

[saxon]

Fantastic Andy looking forward to see the end result .

[Lightweight_911]

Many (most ?) of M&W's previous 904 customers (I don't know the exact number but I think less than 20 have been built in the past 15 years) have opted for 3 litre engines (probably due to relative ease of availablility & cost) but, to my mind, these would give totally the wrong driving characteristics - the car needs a smaller/more highly-tuned engine.

The relatively few 6-cylinder 904's that the Factory built were equipped with the Type 901/20 engine - 2.0 litre twin-plug on 46 IDA Webers producing 210 bhp @ 8000rpm so I wanted something that had similar specs ...

... now it just so happened that I had a twin-plug engine sitting at the back of my garage !

This engine was removed from my 911R-inspired car before I sold it (I already had this project in mind at that stage) & has the following spec:

7R crankcases which have been shuffle-pinned & time-serted
Custom-made JE 90mm pistons (c/r 10.5:1)
Rebuilt/modified 40IDA Webers (36 mm venturis) on 'tall' manifolds
Ported cylinder heads with stainless steel valves and hi-performance springs
High-lift custom hand-ground cams
Lightened/balanced 2.2 crank with cross-drilled & grooved centre bearing
3.0 SC oil pump
etc

In it's original configuration with crank-fire ignition this 2.5 litre engine produced 220 bhp @ 7800rpm but I have since swapped in a period-looking Marelli-style twin-plug distributor operating through twin MSD boxes (which will be hidden from view) - 2 (dummy) Bosch CDI boxes & twin Bosch black coils will be visible within the engine compartment - so I am hoping for a little more ...

As I mentioned previously, I don't want everything to look 'too new' so I avoided any polishing/replating etc on the engine - opting instead for just a 'clean' look:

[Lightweight_911]

To get the most out of this high-revving engine I decided to go for a 906-style lightened flywheel & 906 lightweight clutch so I tracked down a suitable early std flywheel :



& got Mike Bainbridge to turn it into the 906-style :







Std gearbox ratios wouldn't really suit this engine's power characteristics so I consulted various experts &, with the help of a gear ratio calculator/spreadsheet, I came up with a range of optimum ratios.

After putting out some 'feelers' I located a suitable transmission in Phoenix, Arizona - it was a totally rebuilt side-shift 914 box with all the best upgrades (904 mainshaft, billet aluminium intermediate plate, etc) & an ideal set of ratios (A,E.J.Q,X) to keep the engine 'on the boil' ...... another one ticked off the list !



(not much to look at ) ...

[Darren65]

And the hits just keep on coming!.........

How much better can this thread get