Okrasa Special

[Pandora]

can't work out how to post pics, but I have been having a look at the rear of a Lotus Elite - very much of the same period, and actually quite similar to the Lusso above, albeit closer in scale to the car you are working on.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/exfordy/2369294391/

Al

[Barry]

Thanks Andy and Al: both very interesting. Funnily enough, my personal view is that the Lotus looks a little light in the bottom department as well.

Went up there earlier, and I think with a combination of what has been contributed here, Steve's thoughts and my own views, we're pretty close on having a plan to move forwards.

Steve has got the car tied back down to the floor again (until we can rig something a bit more mobile), which does make a huge difference. Also in the 'flesh' (paper?), the car actually does look miles better than the photos at the rear, which was a nice surprise (having spent the week convincing myself that it looked appalling).

Don't let the above put anyone off from venturing further ideas / opinions though, as I don't suppose we'll take the mock-up any further forwards until next weekend.

Thanks once again for al of the input, Steve and I very much appreciate it. After all, if it wasn't for Nige, we would have ended up building the thing with no doors. Which would be silly. Looks like that's another credit to go on the build plate .

[BAHumbug]

Barry
Here's a link to Adam Wright's blog with photos and interesting story about a 904. Since the body in the photos is unencumbered by the distracting shiny bits, I thought it might be helpful to the process of deciding about the rump on the Okrasa special.

http://unobtaniuminc.wordpress.com/

[Macaulay]

Guys, this is looking rock hard!
I see your point on the rear, but honestly it's just a bit of a quirky rear
which a lot of the cars (if not all) of that era had.

I agre though, making it just a few inches longer and higher would
probably tighten it up a bit, but don't loose that downwards sloap.

I will have a go at the old PS and do a paintover, if nothing else, just to
convince myself that it is quite good as it is.

Good job!

[Barry]

Barry
Here's a link to Adam Wright's blog with photos and interesting story about a 904. Since the body in the photos is unencumbered by the distracting shiny bits, I thought it might be helpful to the process of deciding about the rump on the Okrasa special.

http://unobtaniuminc.wordpress.com/

Managed to miss this when you posted: thank you very much, a rare sight indeed!

[Barry]

Guys, this is looking rock hard!
I see your point on the rear, but honestly it's just a bit of a quirky rear
which a lot of the cars (if not all) of that era had.

I agree though, making it just a few inches longer and higher would
probably tighten it up a bit, but don't loose that downwards sloap.

I will have a go at the old PS and do a paintover, if nothing else, just to
convince myself that it is quite good as it is.

Good job!

I think that actually, you're right, and a lot is down to that damn paper .

Steve has put some hours in trying to progress things, and has removed most of the rear valance area again, but added curved valencette's which have improved things greatly. Even better, he's found a method for dropping the rear ride height for the purposes of this exercise, which has made a huge difference.

I went up there on (Good) friday, and sat and stared. And stared and sat. Went to the shops, came back and looked some more.

In the end I wheeled the car to a decent spot under the mezzanine, and looked from above. I think the below shots illustrate that the overall proportions are (more than) fine:





That rather suggested that Steve's gut feel that we are nearly there was indeed spot on. With some thought, and the need to do something I thought it might pay to thump some metal around.

I didn't go up that day the idea of doing any sheet metal work, so was woefully under-equipped. The rear hammerform was there though, as were two G-clamps, a claw hammer and a piece of tile batten. As it happens I did have some snips there, and had already dropped up a sheet of half-hard aluminium sheet.

Anyway, three hours later, the most dog-rough lower rear wing and kamm tail you ever did see. Well worth it though, as all of a sudden the shape is beginning to work. I'll knock up a rough 'bootlid' next time, plus some rear valance corners. The idea is then we'll have a kit of parts that can be lifted, tweaked, drawn on and generally suffer the sort of abuse that panels should never be asked to take. Hopefully though, it'll give us another route to visualising where we're heading.

My personal instinct at this stage is that we might lift the whole tail by a tiny amount, increase the crown (curve) over the top of the kamm, as possibily (as suggested above) add some curve to the outside edges of the kamm as well.





As you can imagine, using a claw hammer, a bit of tile batten and two G-cramps is never going to produce the very finest quality of work, especially as the oxy-acetylene was in the wrong workshop, so couldn't even soften the ally. Given that, I think the rear hammerform produced quite encouraging results, which bodes well for the 'real' parts.

What do you think Macaulay? Be good to get your views .

[Barry]

One thing I forgot to say, and that's that it's very useful having something of a 'dry-run' at these panels, as it gives a very good idea of how the real ones will form up, and where the weld lines might go.

The ally sheet isn't very expensive, and to get the shapes within 95% is no great bother (the rear 'wing' is actually fitting the wire form quite tightly as it happens), so this might prove to be quite a good way of testing a shape or forming method, rather than spending ages worrying about something when in wire-n-paper.

One thing's for sure though, it'll be wonderful to lay the first piece of skin on the buck, which will represent the first bit of work that will actually form part of the car, rather than simply a part of the mock-up or jig .

[Pandora]

yup, it's been 90%+ the paper tricking the eye. seeing it in the metal shows what a pretty shape you have produced

Overhead shot is fantastic, and the proportions are spot on.

I'd taper the bottom of the Kamm tail panel in ever so slightly at the bottom, but not by much, and put a touch of crown in the sides, just to give it a bit of 'character' and to tune it in to the other shapes it's working with.

It's amazing what a tiny little tweak can do at this stage. It's basically like adding the 'seasoning'!

weld 'em up and get it fired up!



Al

[BAHumbug]

My humble 2 pence:
Beware the Opel GT of Chevrolet Corvair (ish) straight up and down rear. Seems like Ferry and friends had concavity or convexity in mind. None of my business of course, just my humble opinion.

[911hillclimber]

I certainly would raise the whole upper edge of the Kamm tail and by about 20mm.
To me it looks just too low to the flow of line coming back right from the front of the car. . Having said that the depth of the tail 'upright' panel i think is right.

The plan view is very nice and especially the slight curve of the door top which will separate this body from a mere one off. Those slight curves make all the difference.

Is it worth dusting the paper over with a silver paint from a rattle-can to kill the distraction of the newsprint?

I do not know how you are both resisting rolling and makin' the parts!

There comes a time you have to shoot the designer and make the thing!

Graham.

[Bruce M]

ooohh! nice metal

To be blunt, it still doesn't quite work for me. The rest of the body has a nice flow and the tail jars a little, not quite in harmony with the rest.

It's hard to put my finger on the exact discord but the rear view photo above does have one feature that I can identify. The flow of the side edge of the tail and the uniform radius of the corner really doesn't work with the roof shape in the background (to me anyway!).

since noone laughed last time, I clicked on MS Paint again and knocked out this shoddy effort to illustrate my humble point.



and a commented version to explain my thinking.

[Gary71]

To build on the comments and Bruce's picture how about this:



Slightly rounded sides, about 30mm longer, about 20mm higher (scaled from masking tape!)

[Nige]

Bazza's first draft works for me Comments are good and fair but don't let it cloud your mind with too many options.

[Bruce M]

Continued.....

from the rear 3/4, it would be something like this (except not wonky!)

I've tried to give the rear panel a softer treatment and tapered the side lip, although I've maybe overdone the amount of vertical narrowing of the flat surface. The left side is probably come out slightly better than the right but again this is just a rough "sketch" rather than a blueprint

[Barry]

Thanks chaps, very helpful indeed

We'll have to see what Steve thinks, and go from there. In the meantime I'll dummy some sort of 'bootlid' up, just to get a better overall view of the rear.