Okrasa Special

[911hillclimber]

Believe me I know how big a stripped-down hillclimb cars gets in a double garage esp with a running 911 in there too..

As to the fix we all need, projects flow like the tide, just not so regularly.....

It will accelerate soon I can tell.
And we will all still be watching!!

[Barry]

Just in case you were thinking that I'd wandered off this project never to return, I haven't.

As Steve has said, all of us have various diversions around at the moment, and I've pretty much reached my limit (time and skill) as far as design-by-trail-and-error is concerned. My role was / is really to build the car to a worked-up design, although I've been happy to 'have a go' as best I can up to now.

I'm missing my coachbuilding fix though, so may well pop up to visit my 'wheel and get some formal wheeling practice in. There are some 'proper' test pieces that I've been meaning to work through for some time now. As I've said to Steve, I'm happy to drop in at the workshop to weld some wire-form wires together, or wheel some trial parts in order to assist with the next design phase, and really looking forward to being there when Al visits . Essentially though, I'm hoping that between Steve and Al they can work something up that can flesh out Macaulay's fabulous orginal design renderings*, and can give me some (more or less) definites to work to.

Actually it's worked out well, and the 911's have been bonkers-mad recently, so to focus on those has been very helpful. I'm sure that once there's a refreshed design waiting, I'll be itching to get stuck in (am now actually ).

I'm still amazed that people like Macaulay can come up with virtual designs like this: I literally can't draw anything that even looks vaguely like a car, let alone come up with a design. I'd be fasinated to see the process, either pencil 'n paper, or on the screen. As a non-drawing, un-artistic sort, it seems utterly impossible to me. Good job we're all different I guess .

[Pandora]

Thought you guys would appreciate a festive update.......

I'm just going back through the thread looking at the various photos of the car as it has developed, as I have just sat down with a clean sheet of paper - Not, I hasten to add, 'cause Steve has said 'sod it, lets start again', but because I am due to fly down early in the new year with to meet with Barry and Steve to go over the car with a view to getting the rear body shape resolved, so I am drawing up some profiles to give me a head start for the day.

It does feel a bit odd when we are hoping to get the final details resolved, yet I'm looking at a blank sheet of paper, but it is just that there have been so many changes as work has progressed, that I'm trying to get some key datum points down on paper to pull together where Steve /Barry have got up to so far.

I am working in 1/10 scale with a view to knocking up a couple of skech models when I get back, assuming we don't just fire into it on the day and come up with one half of the car which Steve is happy with...... that would be ideal, but realistically, it's a long shot (but we'll try anyway!)

So watch this space!

Season's greetings to you all!
Al

[Pandora]

Not sure why I haven't thougt to mention it before, but........

If anyone has a copy of C&SC Nov 2010, have a look at the article on the Turner Sportscars Alexander GT - a very interesting comparison to the Okrasa special as it is an alloy bodied one off GT car from 1962.

Here is a link to details and photos:
http://www.turnersportscars.co.uk/t_photos429.html

What I think it's important to note from it is that it is a nice lookign car, though the rear 3/4 is all a bit out of proportion. I think Steve and Barry's efforts are at least the equal of the Alexander (better actually, in my eyes) so I think it's worth metioning that had the special been completed in period, it's unlikely so much effort would be being put into getting it just right - more likely getting it 'just finished' in time for a race meeting!

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that the rear styling is something I'd propose we emulate, but it has a similar transition between rear window and boot lid, so given it's date It's a very interesting car to consider.

Al

[steve wright]

Fascinating Al. great to see the period photos too, especially the one at Oulton Park with the car all out of shape. I was surprised at how plush the interior was and it would be interesting to see how tall the roof is in comparison to the bodywork - I think looking at the pictures that the Okrasa Special roof is lower, but it's difficult to tell without putting the cars side by side.

I have to say that it's wonderful to have Al providing input on this project as I've found enthusiasm for it again. I had pushed it into the corner of the workshop and pretty much left it there for the latter half of the year. Here's to a productive day on Jan 12.

Cheers,
Steve

[911hillclimber]

Oddly, Turners were made just 3 miles from me here.

Great to read the car is still 'humming' and that all involved are still: <involved> in it's creation.

Rolling aluminium sheet must be rather different than those awkward rusty 911 shells!

We all wait for news and more importantly the Home Run.

[Pandora]

Through the power of photoshop (badly - I'm afraid had to get my wife to help me flip the image and stitch them together as I am still trying to find the carburetor on my laptop) here is a sneaky peaky of my initial tape drawing for the rear eevation of the special prior to Saturday........



Ignore the twin steering wheels, I forgot to edit them out!

The middle of the 3 lines at the top of the Kamm tail where they are all 3 close together is actually showing a hidden detail, and so shouldn't be visible in this view, but hey-ho, it was the best place to record it

We shall see if it all works on Saturday.........

[steve wright]

I just want to acknowledge Al doing this - it takes a lot of courage to put up for public scrutiny a set of designs and ideas for something, not least the new design for a complete car. It's also complicated by virtue of the fact that Al has done all this without seeing the car in the flesh yet: he's done it entirely from a set of 20 measurements I took a couple of weekends ago and emailed to him, plus obviously the photos that are contained on this forum. Thanks again for your help in concluding the design of the Okrasa Special Al.

[Pandora]

Progress!
Just back home from a productive day with Barry and Steve. The special looked like a car when I arrived, and less like one when I left, but it really wa sprogress!

I however have been up since 4am, so pictures of the design process and the work we did today will follow.

Al

[Pandora]

Steve and I discussed that many of you might find the background process to the design interesting, so I'll do my best to explain the rationale I followed in getting to the stage we reached yesterday.

I should say that we didn't actually do much 'design' yesterday, it was largely building up to the design I had completed in advance, In effect we built the foundations of the body designs on which the design will be built up. Sounds easy, but takes a lot of planning and I think is the bit that Steve and Barry have been lacking to date.

Anyway, In our conversations, Steve has often mentioned breaking and following design rules. This made me think "crikey! maybe I should know about these 'rules'......" So I set about trying to work out why what I thought would work did so, rather than just drawing a pretty line again and again until I got one that looked 'right'.

establishing such things would, I thought, help to explain to Barry and Steve the thought process in developing a design in a more structured way. So, I found a website which has hundreds (thousands maybe) of car 'blueprints' of plan, elevations and profiles of classic and modern cars (for madelmakers) and selected a range of the types of car I thought David Small would see in Autosport and motorsport magazine or in the paddock at race meetings in the early '60s when he'd have been building the body, and would likely have influenced his design. I have also looked at a few slightly later ones to see how well these 'rules' stand up.

It is actually quite interesting (if you don't get out much). I was looking primarilly at the relationship between the door top height and the height of the trailing edge of the bootlid; the relationship of the hump of the wheel arch to the rear wheel centre line and the relationship between the width of the rear panel (and width of rear lights) in relation to the rear wheel centre lines.

A selection of the cars I looked at are available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44645707@N ... 510825514/

I did scribble "911's are all WRONG" on the original paper copies I took down, such is the obvious missmatch between the design of DDK's beloved icon and all the others! Just shows rules are OK as a guide, but can indeed be broken! Steve's lovely 911S didn't appear to be an ugly car....... (though it's first outing in 5 months involved being pushed out into the sleet so we could work, the poor thing)

Based on the proportions common to many of these cars and a long list of datum points Steve emailed me, I started to map out fixed points in 3D that I knew we had to 'hit' and others that I knew I was 'aiming at'. From that I could start to sketch out the design.

The main thing here is to show that I started by breaking the 3D design into a series of 2D shapes to start from. This is a tricky process and does involve a lot of head scratching (and swearing and scrunched up balls of paper in the area around the bin etc), so it is no bad reflection on Steve and Barry that I think they would both admit they hadn't known to build this foundation to work to.

More to follow later

[Pandora]

So, with the idea from Goodwood that Steve wanted something akin to the rear of the Ferrari 275 GTB for the car, and the basic premis from the above 'rules' that the centre line of the top of the Kamm tail / spoiler should be about level with the top of the doors and that the outer edge of the rear lights should be approximately in line with the centre line of the rear tyre tread, I had somewhere to start.

I got hold of a set of plans / elevations etc for a Karmann Ghia to get the roof and glass profiles and asked Steve to take a long list of measurements off the car to help me position the roof in relation to the wheels and to draw the basic shape that had been decided upon for the front. From this, I drew up these 1:10 scale plans.


DSCF5134

using this as a guide I could use the famous 'rules' to pin point a few parameters to constrain the design. (note that Steve plans wider wheels, so I allowed for this, but with the current wheels the body might appear rather under-tyred - not unlike an E-Type)

I sketched out the designs using styling tape as it allows me to play with shapes and profiles to produce a nice flowing line, and it can be lifted and reshaped quickly and easily. Many, many shapes were tried and re-tried, I can tell you!

Here is just one such 'work in progress - albeit I have traced the line in pen and removed the tape.


DSCF5138

Clearly it's too dumpy at the rear, which over emphasises the 'Coke bottle' profile in the plan view, so I set a parameter that the rear should be about a tyre diameter behind the rear axle centre line (another 'rule based on study of cars which 'work')

So onto another version


DSCF5139

you'll see I've bee idly scribling alternatives to the hole in the wing air inlet, but I'll let Steve tell you our current thinking on that one in due course.

Having got an idea of a scale which works in plan and in profile, the elephant in the room must be faced - the rear end view which has caused all the trouble.....

I started by going up to 1:5 drawings to allow more detail. Work photocopier takes another bashing, and I work up to this


DSCF5140

This was the main working drawing we used on Saturday, so it has lots of scribbles, notes and annotations from planning the buck, but previously it's main purpose was to enable me to get vertical heights for the 2 main lengthways sections shown through the car, the Centre line from the rear window to the centre of the flat rear panel onto which the rear lights will mount (the upper of the 2 lines), and the high point through the wing top (700mm from the centre line of the car) from the door top through to the same tail panel. The edge of this tail panel is shown as the vertical thin red line 600mm behind the datum (the rear wheel centre)

I'll scuplt the kamm tail spoiler seperately and then fix it to this flat rear panel.

The lined on this drawing gave me the height of the top and bottom of the rear pane from the floor, and also, of course, it's depth.

This enabled me, along with my plan view, to draw up a rear view (shown flipped to provide a full view as just half the rear view is actually drawn, but looked at on its own is hard to visualise)


DSCF5141

This then gets additional cross sections drawn in to plan additional sections through the buck to build up the shape - again, each of these lines have to compliment each other and work together. This means lots of wee balls of scrunched up black tape on the floor of the dining room..... each demonstrating another dead end explored!


DSCF5143

The photo above shows the flexibility of the tape (3mm wide here) ans also that you can 'record' a line before you remove it if you aren't sure. It also shows how a fairlty small change in the line can caompletely shange the character of the shape - one shape can just seem boring, a few mm here and there, a tighter radius or whatever, and you just know it's better. That's the bit that takes time. Getting your eye down on the surface and looking along it often helps. Imagine designing a decent driving road........

So that is where I got up to before heading south. all in all I'd estimate 15-18 hours work over a few late nights, and I had 3 or 4 usefull A3 sheets of paper to show for it!

Saying that though, the fact that the lines all tied up in 3D meant that we could pretty much crack on on the day, and bar a couple of minor lapses of concentration, it all acme together as planned, and our buck was 1mm out across a 1400mm length at the rear. I can linve with that as a tolerance!

Oh, and the grid lines is a scale version of 100mm x 100mm squares the buck is built to, and this photo of the tail panel shows 2 things: 1. how I scalled up from the 1:5 drawing using the grids like a kid copies a drawing onto a grid, and also just how much wider the new tail panel is than the hammerform for the old versions.

DSCF5109

Design, Eh? Nothin' to it!

I'll let Steve post up a few photos to show what we managed to do to his poor wee car on the day.

[smallspeed]

Awesome work! Look forward to the next batch of photos!

[steve wright]

Thanks for outlining the process you went through prior to Saturday Al. When he laid out the renderings and images I knew there had been a bit of pre-work done!

Just as a reminder, here's what we had prior to Saturday:


Taking a deeeeep breath and removing a years work...


The end result discarded on the floor:


And you can see the evolution in the Kamm tail as Barry and I searched for a solution to the "no hips" issue, widening the rear Kamm tail again and again...

[steve wright]

Al renderings and images strewn across the bench as we discuss ideas:



In depth discussions on the build process:



Beginning the lengthy process of drawing out the images on the MDF:

[steve wright]

And then the build process on the actual car begins:






We soon ended up in a great routine: Al doing the drawing, Barry doing the construction, and me making the tea! I ended up finding myself as chief cutter, spending most of the day vibrating to the rhythm of a jigsaw, so I at least didn't feel like a spare part in the process: