Mr M's Hill Climber

[TALON]

Hi All

This section of the forum doesnt see much action, but I thought I may have some stuff which may interest some of you guys. I have been doing some work for a friend who is building a new hill climb car. He has his sights firmly set on the Aus Hill Climb Champs next year held in Queensland. He is a seasoned campaigner and has decided his old car is a bit big and heavy as the mc powered open wheelers dominate out here so he bit the bullet and his new car is well on the way.

He favours the aluminium twin skin monoque construction method and I think it is an interesting approach. I recently folded the tub and bulkhead sections for him and though I would follow his progress. If anyone is interested I will follow this and post updates - let me know

The powered plant is a super charged Busa running on methanol, the projected weight of the car is around 690 lb. The tub is all 2024 alloy sheet with chrome molly subframe - all of his own design. I picked the tub and subframe up the other day and it feels like a paper jet. It should be a rocketship . As they say less is more .

[MongooseGSXR750]

Looks like some nice work.

If i remember rightly, there was a member on here building an offroad car along similar lines. I think he called it Alley Cat, however I never did see it finished.

Come to think of it, might have been on the Pilot Oddyssey board. It was a while ago.

[willysp]

Updates? SURE!!!

[MC@ Performance Fab]

Sweet build!!

Long time ago I built aluminum sheet and honeycomb monocoque chassis for high end pavement racing. Much stronger and lighter then any steel tube space frame. How thick are the panels? Keep the updates coming.

[TALON]

Goose
Thanks for the info i might have a bit of a look for that build.

Willy
Shall do then ,although its gonna be slow

Monte
The skins are 1.6 mm or .063" 2024 and i know what you mean about how stiff they are . I have had a bit to do with this guys builds over the years and it staggers me how stiff they end up being,considering how light the material is and how little of it he uses. To achieve a 90 deg bend in the pressbrake it was around 15 deg over bend .

[avtech]

Very nice work! Looks like some good old aerospace design, keep the up dates coming!

[Reflex]

Really nice work, and good to see a different concept than the tube frame. RoosterBooster who is/was? a member here did a build thread on GD in '08 on a car using a similar construction. Here Viper "bad Venom" Project Log

I am wondering if this type of chassis will benefit from having some structure pressed into the aluminum panels; ie. bead rolled ridges and dimple die's. I've seen it done on body panels on various buggies and sand rails, supposed to make the panel stiffer and minimise vibration noises.

What surface will this car be racing on? Please keep updating!

[MC@ Performance Fab]

A few pics of chassis builds. This is a Nissan IMSA GTP chassis.

[MC@ Performance Fab]

First time I have tried to scan pics and post. First I scaned to jpeg but the picture here was to small so I tried going to Documents and the picture is great but you have to open the doc. Any suggestions?

[CARLRIDDLE]

I opened and it looks good, more pics please.

I saw a twin busa 4x4 buggy run those Aussi highclimbs years ago. Nothing could touch him. Wish I could find that vid again.