Okrasa Special

[911hillclimber]

A little cracker!

Work a lot faster please as we are all impatient!

Can't wait to see the English Wheel getting polished.

[steve wright]

[steve wright]

Okay, lots of progress but appreciate it's been a bit quiet on the thread, so here's where things are at. Macauley has spent a lot of time getting drawings done, I've spent ages being a pain changing things and Barry has kept us both from doing stupid stuff that's going to be expensive. I have to take my hat of to Macauley - he has doggedly refined and refined and refined. then we realised the photoshop mock ups weren't to scale when we tried to put measurements to everything so we had to start again with ghosting the drawing over the chassis to get the proportions right - looks like the wheels were over-sized in one of the original photoshop designs which threw everything. So we're getting there now with a correctly scaled set of drawings which Macauley is refining.

Barry costed up the wire today (£150, about $200) and the licence plates arrived too "LOW 617" so things are moving along. enjoy and as you flick over these bear in mind there's probably 30 hours of drawings and 25 emails between us to get us to this stage....

photoshop to drawing
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full drawings
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[911hillclimber]

Great details, and very interesting overall stance.

The shark nose front is a nice feature and love the doors following the inner shell straight angle.

Noticed the steering wheel angle needs a good change. Driver comfort is so important.

Guess you are using lights off some donor?

Obviously good collaboration in the planning stage!

Keep going, best thread on DDK!

[vwretrosteve]

t34 rear lights ?

a bit on the heavy side though ... some nice 911R style units wouldnt look out of place.

[Lightweight_911]

Haven't looked at this thread for a couple of weeks - love the latest shape !

Really looking forward to following it's metamorphosis.

It reminds me a bit of the Matra D'jet & Alpine A108 of the early '60's ...

[Macaulay]

Hello!

About time I became a member of this sweet site,
been checking it from time to time.

Short recap: I was surfing looking at KG's, 356's and beetles when I
randomly found Steve's story on the samba, and fell in love (not with Steve).
I really wanted to see this project become a real car so I chipped inn with a few designs.
All of a sudden I was a car designer (it can happen to you to).
Steve liked a design "madfish" made but wanted a few changes,
and "madfish" let me take it from there.
We've been all over the place with the design, which I think is good,
it's good to know what you don't want and also I guess that's the way things has to be when working online,
some things are hard to put in writing but has to be seen before a decision can be made.

So that's where we are atm, and here's the latest work with overlay of the Photoshop image that Steve settled on.
Nothing is final yet I think but we are getting there.
(Comments on the design are appreciated.)

[roy mawbey]

Wow, its looking very nice indeed. Just how difficult will it be though to form the attachments inside the body to attach to the existing tub? I imagine its not an easy job to do that.

Also a friend of mine who has spent the last 2 years trying to produce his own special similar to a Lotus 7 now is faced with all these new rules introduced for kit car manufactures. These are quite complex to get the car registered for the road.

I guess you are aware of these rules do they apply for your project also?

Very interesting and well done!!

Roy

[sladey]

Looks lovely - I'm getting flavours of 904 GTS, Alfa, Karmann Gia, and when you had the camm tail on a touch of ferrari - but it all blends well together and will be a cracking little car - looks great

[KS]

My only comment, as someone who first met its creator 45 years ago and knew of the car for 30 years or more, is that it's important not to make it into something it isn't, or wasn't. A large part of the appeal of it for me was always that its was David Small's personal project back in 1961/2 and I always wanted to simply finish it the way it was intended, rather than turn it into something more 'polished'. I think we mustn't run away with too many ideas of creating a 'mini-904' when, at the end of the day, it is actually simply a one-off VW-based 'special' – and a mighty fine one at that. I would like to see it preserved in time. But that's just me and it's not my car any longer. However it turns out, it will be a blast to drive.

[Macaulay]

I agree it's vital not to loose track of what it is and what it would have been
if finished back then but I also think this is a part of it's life.
It's being finished in 2010-11 or there a bouts so it's only natural that it will
be affected by that and that the new owner will influence the look towards what he likes also.
Just my thoughts.

But yeah got to keep our heads straight.

[steve wright]

Hey Macauley, welcome to DDK! It will be great to have your contribution on DDK now rather than my feeble ramblings on your design!

Guys I have to say Macauley has been dedicated to the cause as I've changed my mind so many times on details that it would drive most to distraction. 10 out of 10 for persevering! And he's talented too! I've no idea how he does what he does, but it's been a god-send to be able to go "oh, can we change blah and short such and such, and tweak this, and the next morning, there you go!

Great idea to overlay the final (unscaled) photoshop design some of the drawings Macauley, and to number them I have a cunning plan on solving the over-sized wheel issue. Could you ghost drawing #1 over the chassis like you did for the earlier versions (see below)? thanks.

Hi Roy, Keith had the foresight to register the vehicle when he bought it, so it's registered as a 1953 VW Beetle, so we're not building a new car and therefore aren't subject to the dreaded SVA (or whatever they are called now) rules. I dropped into my local MOT station last week, who do all my cars, and they know the Special. I asked them how it would be treated when we bring it in for it's first MOT and was assured it would assessed as a vehicle from 1953, so happy days!

earlier version ghosted:
[img][img]http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/ac13 ... assis1.jpg[/img][/img]

[steve wright]

sorry Roy, missed your other point about attaching the body to the tub. I've no idea but Barry has said nothing I have ranted about or anything Macauley has designed is technically that difficult although this is coming from a man who can master something from nothing when it comes to restoring 911 bodyshells, so I'm not sure his perspective is balanced

Happily Barry & I are both going to Classic Le Mans so we're planning to spend a fair amount of time on problems exactly like this, and seeing how others have solved issues, got around problems, etc, as well as taking LOTS of photos and measurements of stuff we like.

[Barry]

With the clamshell design, there's actually not going to be a huge amount of body-frame attachment. Clearly each clamshell will ultimately require some sort of framework, and these will lead to a hinge-point on the chassis. Also, we'll have to come up with inner wings of some sort, to seal of the innards from the outtards (new word ).

The Doors will hang from A-posts, so these will need to be made and fitted (allowing for the steel / aluminium interface), and these will give a starting point for the rear of the front arch area (where the clamshell will butt to), and lend support to the front of the sills.

B-post approach will roughly mirror the A-posts in principle I guess, with the same benefits of support towards the rear of the sills.

Essentially though, other than some CLM research, I'm not worrying about inner structure at this very early stage. Certainly if we discover / come up with any great ideas, they'll be filed for future contemplation. The main point though is that we could get a long way down the road of thinking about body mounting, only to find that the final shape / panel joins / available fixtures and fittings / clamshell geometry conspire to relegate such plans into the bin .

Frankly, I'm going to be firmly in 'big project mode': keep a weather eye on future issues, but concentrate on the task immediately at hand. Otherwise it would be very easy to either get overwhelmed by lots and lots of issues that are flying around (most of which would probably not be relevant by time you arrive at them due to the above inevitable changes). Being a simple soul, I find this approach works very well .

Overall, I'm thinking that we'll basically establish our shape with the wire form, and probably some plywood stations here and there. Once we get beyond that point we'll probably head for skinning, but I'm sure it'll be appropriate to do some inner structure 'as we go', and then more still once the outer skin is established.

[Macaulay]

I can do Steve.