An Alpine URQ in Utah - Knee deep in Swarf

[Quattro v1.0]

<insert project update here>...

:stupid:

Yea, it'll help the healing process.

[Wheeljack]

I don't have any formal updates, but I can assure you that good things are taking place. I needed to do a shop 'reset' to clean up a bit and that has caused a break in the action on this project. I'm also now three cars lighter than I was last week, so I should be moving forward with heightened dedication and laser sharp focus.

[Audilard]

Is it done yet?

[Wheeljack]

I defer to my previous answer..

http://www.motorgeek.com/viewtopic.php?p=583347#p583347

[Audilard]

[pkw]

interesting. any special plans for the coolant holes in the MLS gasket?

[Wheeljack]

interesting. any special plans for the coolant holes in the MLS gasket?

No...the reduced size coolant holes are on the gasket to purposely restrict the flow and keep better temperature uniformity from front to back. There have been many instances of people opening them up, thinking they were helping, when in reality you make the engine run too hot in the back, as the path of least resistance causes a flow short circuit.

[nsimps]

Good to hear the shop got some attention, addition and subtraction Is your shop heated?

[chaloux]

dang! glad I clicked. I think we'll do the head/block work on dad's car

[Wheeljack]

Onward and upward. With the long block engine plans mostly sorted out and test runs done on both the block and head, it was time to move onto some other things…namely getting a chassis ready to put said engine into. Progress has been a bit slow due to other commitments and somewhat related projects, but I’ve been able to get a few things taken care of with regard to the subframes, control arms, strut uprights, and bearing housings.

My never-ending dilemma is not wanting to ever put dirty parts back on a car, so as with many of my projects, much time spent cleaning and refurbishing components to acceptable condition. This started a while back when I got the front subframe all cleaned up and resprayed.



With that done, I moved to getting the updated forged control arms cleaned up and painted. This allowed me to get the poly control arm bushings lubed up and pressed in place.



Then I assembled the subframe and got it all ready to put back on the car.



Then I made a couple sets of subframe bushings. I realize you can buy these for pretty cheap, but I can make them for pretty cheap too. I had a bunch of these made up and then I anodized them.

Facing and turning the OD on the lathe…



I’m by no means a machinist by trade, but I like to practice and try to get my surface finishes as smooth as possible. Not always easy with rinky dink hobby machines, but that is going to change soon.

Pretty nice to see the reflection of the tool…



Slowly turning my pile of blanks into something useful…



So now with the subframe mostly ready to go, it was time to turn my attention to the uprights and bearing housings. Up front, I’m using some refurbished and modified UrS hubs…



I’ve picked up a few sets of bearing housings from B320V cars with the 82mm bearing up front. I spent a couple hours pressing out the old 4 lug hubs and old bearings and was left with a pile of rusty metal…



This little press and the assortment of dies makes short work of this, once you figure out how to mount the knuckles appropriately, lol



As I don’t have access to blasting equipment here, I opted to go with electrolysis rust removal on these parts by putting them in a 5gal bucket and hooking them up to my DC power supply. Add some baking soda and wait a day or two, and most of the rust flakes off. A little wire brushing and they’re ready for primer. I then painted them and pressed in some fresh bearings and clean hubs.



And we all hate using lug BOLTS, so I switched everything over to studs.



Next, I needed to figure out what to do with the front brakes. I had all of the parts, except for the caliper brackets, and figured I had better mock things up and get a solution worked out before I got too far ahead of myself. The recipe is nothing new…I’m using the B320V bearing housings, Boxster S calipers, D2A8 323X30 rotors, and UrS hubs.

This recipe requires some custom caliper brackets to work without having to add shims here and there, which I did not want to do. With this setup, the ball joint is VERY close to the inside of the rotor, but clears well enough. And I figure you can’t get any better spoke clearance than this setup.

So I mocked things up and made some measurements to get to a bracket that would put things right where I want them. I did the setup with the pins still at full length (these are typically ground down to clear the 30mm rotors as they were designed for 28mm rotors) to help center things better. I’ll likely still grind them down a bit, but they are equally clear all around…



Once that was all measured and sorted out, I designed a custom bracket and generated some NC code to make the perimeter cuts…



After a minor setback from a blown power supply on the motor drivers, I was able to make these cuts. I chose to do these in STEEL for several reasons and I have a nice source of material to use for them.

Just finished the finishing pass on the housing side…



Sending some smoking chips flying while cutting the caliper side perimeter…



And after the profiling was all finished…



After spot facing the surface for the bracket mounting bolt, and nearly finished with the machining…



So, let’s see how they fit now…



And another view…



Then I got the strut upright temporarily hanging in place to make sure the color coordination was OK and nothing was clashing…



And speaking of color coordination…remember the interior of the URQ is chocolate brown, so what better choice for wheels…than flat brown…



Depending on the light, the color can look a bit different…



I'm guessing people will either love it or hate it...Right now, I think I love it...but we'll see once they're on the car.

So, I’m currently waiting on some 400 lb springs to put on the fronts and I’ll stick with the 450 lb springs in the rear. I’ve got some work to do to get the rear assemblies together, so that will be taking place over the next month or two. I also replaced my 4 player arcade cabinet with a 600 cfm flow bench and am in the process of upgrading to a larger vertical machining center (30X20X20 travels) to more easily work on larger items and not have to constantly be manually changing tools and babysitting the process to manage chip evacuation and tool temperature. I’m having to re-layout the shop to accommodate it, so that is causing a bit of a delay. I really need to expand out the back to support all of the machining and test equipment without taking away parking from the bays up front…

[Dave]

Nice update! i'm diggin' it!

[Audilard]

Looks like you need to learn to weld and we can start calling you Hank! Nice work!

[EDIGREG]

Nice work!!

[ralleyquattro]

Wow, very nice, what wheels are those? I like them.

[Hank]

Nice. Can't wait for your new machines to arrive.

[audifreakjim]

Chris, great work! I am pretty envious of your shop and talent, this picture is so clean it looks like an animation. I like the wheels too BTW.

[Wheeljack]

Thanks guys. Darin, I can weld...I just can't weld like Hank can weld...yet. And Jim, we're even as I'm just a bit envious of the ride and build quality of the Comet. It is a good target for me to shoot for.

Martin, these are just cheap 17" ASA wheels that I picked off of the local classifieds a few years ago. They are actually the same wheels as are on this urq that was down in BBQ this year.



The stance is a bit off from what I'll be running (bagged and hellaflush, of course), but similar nonetheless. I liked them because the spoke style is similar to the Volk TE37, which I'm very fond of, but without the crazy price tag while just giving up a spoke as the TE37 are 6 vs 5 for the ASA. And you know it is hard to find wheels that look correct on the urq when not running 15" Ronals. I wanted a 17" wheel to clear brakes, but still have a classic look to them. I figure they'll work for now.

[Audilard]

Sweet, you are forbidden to move to Vegas.

[audifreakjim]

I vote for SoCal.

[RSCoupe]

Very nice work on this! Impressive skills.

[85oceanic]

WOW, nice work here man! I really wish I could do machine work like that.

[nsimps]

Looking great Chris! I was about to post here yesterday and saw your update.

If you have anything else in need of blasting let me know, my brother works at Asphalt Zipper in PG and they have a full blast booth using a metal media. He also can do zinc coating for pretty cheap as the guys will do odd stuff at lunch.

And as Darin said before, it is forbidden to move to Vegas.

[chaloux]

Updates? We're getting some blocks/heads to the machinist to have the coolant passage done...

[Wheeljack]

Updates? We're getting some blocks/heads to the machinist to have the coolant passage done...

I do have a few updates, but this winter has been pretty slow going. No heat in the shop coupled with the coldest winter in 75 years (average HIGH temp. of -6C this January) has kept me in the confines of the office working on paid jobs. Double edged sword, I suppose...

But prior to the start of the winter, I made some good progress on things. I have the block and head all machined up. And then I started getting into the running gear some more. I negotiated a parts trade with Mr. Italy (and not Dave) and now have some 400lb springs on the front. The color is much more suitable as well. Some of this may look familiar...

The uprights sans calipers/wheel:



The uprights sans wheel:



The suspended front corner nearly ready to roll...literally:



Along with the geeking out a bit on the heat transfer optimization with the cooling channels, I've been playing around with some head porting optimizations which I will be CNC'ing to some degree. It's a slow process, though with just a few hours here and there, and on a shoestring budget. So I've done port molds and then have cut, sliced, and measured them to get the geometry pretty close to the real thing. My simulations are within about 15% of the flow bench data, so can't be too displeased with that. Not bad for a $13K add-on package, lol. It was also a good exercise in some complex surface modeling to get the port geometry close. Not necessarily a forte' of SW modeling. I still need to make some adjustments to things (such as removing some percentage of the flow from the injector areas of the intake flange), but it's a start. Maybe one day I'll CNC some heads and blocks...

Port molds:



I have the ports, valves, and combustion chambers pretty accurately represented, but the head is pretty incomplete otherwise:



To simplify the model for the simulations, I truncated it to a single cylinder:



Those astute followers will recognize that there are actually two different exhaust port configurations (1&2 is biased opposite from 3,4,&5), so I actually need to do two different setups.

And of course some pretty pictures:



But in the real world, we need to move some real air to really know what's going on. So I embarked on building a 600cfm digital flow bench that can put Big Blue to shame. Of course, then I needed to install a separate 240V/50A circuit to support the 8 vacuum motors. That circuit will also support the CNC with a phase converter, so I won't be using both at the same time while in this shop.

I started building this at the end of the summer, and it took quite a while to acquire parts and build it:

















And then after you build it, you then need to buy ($$$) or build the fixtures and tooling to use it. That took some more design and machining time...

Head adapter:





Valve adjusters:



In usable form:



And then, if that wasn't enough self-diagnosed adult ADD to feast on, I decided at some point I needed a bigger CNC and sold mine to John Iroz. I heard its being held captive by his son, receiving daily torture. But my shop layout wasn't conducive to the size machine I wanted, so I had to do some demolition.

First, lets tear down some walls:



Almost there. Let's clear it out:



I really wanted 30" of x travel to easily machine heads and blocks with plenty of room on the end. So, after a year or two of debating and searching, I settled in on a low hour '98 Kitamura MC 3X.



I really wanted a Mori Seiki of the same vintage, but had to stay within my budget, so I opted for another of the high quality Japanese machines. They really are great, quality machines and with box way construction, 10K rpm oil cooled spindle, and 20 tool auto changer, I think it will work for just about anything I throw at it. But I still need to move it from storage, which should happen this week or next, if the weather would cooperate. I hope to have it up and running by the time it starts to warm up a little bit to the point I can get back out there and start working again. I've got an October deadline!

[Quattro v1.0]

Dang Chris, you ain't messin around up there!