Crap catcher

Well my welder got wacked with a 2 tonne piece of steel today, so he is out of action till Saturday! Hopefully we can get everything welded Saturday bar the gearbox tunnel, cause I haven't finished thinking about that yet!! Also need more materials...and the bulkhead to be fixed in place properly.

As such, I was never 100% happy with my radiator mounting system...

So I remade it, or some of it, the plate shown above needs final cutting and shaping, but its 2.5mm alloy, this doubles as a base shroud for the rad, but also has a section lip- bend up at the back which has 6 holes drilled through it. These holes relate to holes in the radiator base plate, so the rad is mounted to this plate on 6x M4 bolts, its rock solid. Also remade the stilts that hold the radiator up, image shows a new one from alloy tube with an M8 stud screwed into the bottom, which bolts through the chassis...The system before relied on the kenlowe fan poles serving two jobs, 1 holding the kenlowe and 2 holding the rad. No kenlowe this time, so new system needed...I can reuse the old top shroud. I need to fasteners to finish the job.

I also made a crap catcher or deflection plate, basically sheeted the front section of the chassis, to keep rocks, stones and crap out of my timing belts and engine bay.....Also this will force air under the car, gently, rather than it hitting the front cross member and it acting like an airbrake, forcing air up and down in the engine bay...
Needs a few final bends and fastening properly..

I did have this bizarre idea of making the whole bottom of the car flat, like a Lotus Elise. Copying the Elise front spoiler...Flat paneling the entire bottom of the car from one sheet of alloy with just recesses for the wheels, so the undertray and diffuser can be dropped off in one unit in a few minutes.. (no exhaust no problem - chassis and sill edges are same level, making an undertray would be easy) , then buildling an exact replica of the Elise diffuser under the boot, so generating downforce...If the chassis angle can be replicated, no reason it won't work if I make an exact replica...Just needs about £80's worth of alloy sheet...Increase top-end speed also..errr....it'll have enough! Bit of weight increase but... Thats not on my list of prep before the 10CR though :) Maybe next winter when I fit a Subaru Diff and new suspension.

Engine in and out again tonite!

Actually being held up by the welding now! Which is good. Shows I am getting close cause I ran out jobs hense the radiator work, which wasn't essential.

Oh and best not forget to cut a closely fitting hole that the oil filter will poke through :) I did check first I can get a filter remover tool on it :)

Also the engine is VERY solid on the engine mounts, Caterham use these also E-type Jag, they are nearly rock solid, you can't move the engine at all really without waggling the car, so they might even stiffen up the shock towers a tiny little bit? Not as much as the strut brace I will be making though ;)

Oh and I can now mount the remote filter off the plate I added behind the radiator, cause thats 2.5mm alloy also, for this very reason! I love a good plan! I can then hack off those stock radiator mount lugs from the chassis, cause they weight as much as one of my plate sections. Plus mounting the filter off those lugs was a bit messy and I needed to make a bracket anyway, due to the angles involved with mounting the remote filter head on that bracket for the stock rad the bracket would need to be overly complex.