Well, another week and more great progress at the coach builders :
All the work this time has been focused on the front of the car. First up is the finished headlamp, complete with tabs to hold the Plexiglas in place as per the Porsche RSK. Ignore the washers, they're just holding the tab in place 3mm off the recessed lip...
Next up was the tricky job of deciding on the oil cooler shape, size and location. This is one of those jobs like headlamps, that if you screw up messes up the entire car. No pressure then. We made up a multitude of paper cutouts, none of which looked right, before realising that your eye is drawn down by the shut line of the bonnet to the nose of the car. We ran two lines of tape down the nose...
And hey presto, a oil cooler aperture that looks right to the eye...
It's smaller than intended but looks right. There's a separate solution for the brake ducts which I think is both ingenious, simple and elegant, so the aperture for the front is dedicated only to the oil cooler itself. Speaking of which, we got the positioning of the cooler sorted today...
The oil lines will run through the centre tunnel to the middle of the car, avoiding the need to run them underneath along a sill - a much neater solution that doesn't seem so much of an after thought.
There's only one concession to the modern world with this car and that's the battery (if you overlook the roll cage and fire extinguisher!). The car originally ran a six volt battery, but there's no way we wanted to risk the chunter of a slow winding, high compression motor in the pits when you're trying to fire up a hot motor and wanting to get back onto the circuit. So we've plumbed for an Optima25 in the front left corner of the car...
And here's design as it happens! a brief discussion, a few ideas, a drawing and hey presto, the boys from M&Y just magic it up from there!
Speaking of magic, we deliberated for quite some time on the need for a towing eye. It obviously needs one, but there's no way I'm putting something horrible and modern on the car, and we decided after much discussion to do away with the original sub-frame to put it right in the nose. Instead we plumbed for something more in period and likely as it would've been; an after thought! Again drawn out on cardboard after a few minutes discussion, to be mounted under the car to the front of the main subframe...
Next up wipers. Or more correctly, the trailing edge of the bodywork. The challenge with a steel roof and scuttle, and an aluminium body was always how to join them. Again we decided to make the problem a design feature, with the aluminium sitting slightly proud (about an inch) to vent hot air from the oil cooler out over the windscreen instead of under the car (creating lift) and leaving a neat gap that could be flared, to also create a slight air screen for the wipers much like the Porsche Abarth GTL. The 10mm return will be used to wire roll the edge of the ally, so we'll end up with about a 1 inch gap all the way along the bonnet edge...
Finally a major design flaw with the owner of the car: at six foot four inches (191cm) I'm no dwarf, so goodness knows why I love racing small cars. Anyway, we had already put the seat base almost as close to the floor as we dare, without putting it directly on the floor. If we had done that a steel insert would've been prudent in the event of an accident. With a helmet on I needed another 3/4 of an inch in roof height - bugger! So we have opted for a Gurney Bubble, named after Dan Gurney who needed a bubble put into all his closed cars. Here we're measuring up...
Before decided on the profile for the bubble itself, which will be a teardrop. I've been told not to turn up when they do this job as the roof needs to be heated up and bashed with a very big hammer...
And finally the big news of the week. The car (at least the bodywork) will be finished next month. M&Y need the space for the next car so the pace will be upped for the final push in March. More updates next time...
Cheers, Steve
) and blizzards preventing travel to work. Despite this tremendous progress has been made over the past fortnight, so much so that I fear I'm going to be the bottleneck, unable to get down to them in time to provide input on design and problem solving. 
