Projects Introducing the Roofus Special

You sure about leaving it out in the open? If you like the look of it, you could try and form a plexi piece. They used to do real cool stuff with firewalls and plexi. It could look pretty cool, give it a quater inch gap from the trans.

Past that, raise the body off the table a little, and let the engine and trans sit a bit lower and build some mounts that sink it down 2 or 3 inches.

 

I posted on your other thread on the topic, but today I've been thinking about this again. I think you have two problems: Firstly, you have a large-diameter annular space to seal. You'll need the seal to be flexible in order to accommodate a little bit of vertical, lateral, and longitudinal vibration and a fairly large amount of rotary vibration about the crank axis. Rigging up some sort of flexible boot would be difficult if it is to last any length of time.

Secondly, that large annular space intersects the plane of the floor somewhere, so whatever you do around the bellhousing has to continue under the gearbox and/or terminate somewhere. That is likely to be bulky or cumbersome especially where it goes under the bellhousing.

As I said on the other thread, "divorcing" the gearbox from the clutch would make the arrangement a lot simpler (besides opening up endless gearbox possibilities, shifting the CG rearward a bit, and either improving or complicating the shifter position). Then you can have a bulge over the bellhousing with a relatively small hole where the CV joint or whatever emerges, small enough for the entire hole to sit above the level of the floor. That means the gearbox simply sits over a recess in the floor, and you don't have to seal along its edges or anything like that. And, because the gearbox may be rigidly mounted it won't be subjected to the same rotational motions as the engine, so the seal only has to deal with simple vertical/lateral/longitudinal vibration.

That said, "divorcing" the gearbox is probably more than you had envisaged. I've never done it, but it's what I've got in mind for the '31. I'd imagine that an extra Jag gearbox first motion (input) shaft should be a good place to start, along with something to hold it in a bearing on the back of the bellhousing. Try a fwd front wheel bearing. The gear at the back of it can be machined to form a flange for a UJ or CV joint. Then a short shaft - basically two joints coupled together. Trickiest would probably be to rig a splined sleeve to receive the gearbox input shaft. You've got the right spline right there in the middle of a clutch plate; you just need to attach it to the rear joint somehow.

This way it's probably not all that difficult to shift the gearbox back 10-14", i.e. as long as there is room for all the joints and things. It's probably extremely difficult to shift it back 4"

 

amazing! subscribed.

 

I'm seriously thinking about leaving the trans exposed.

The tailshaft/driveshaft will disappear under the bulkhead that will be the front of the seat. The seat itself will be a bench seat of sorts (think two buckets and a center hump all fused together) and will be part of the structure of the car.

Air cooled VWs used some sort of rubber lip to seal the engine tin to the body sheetmetal. I think I will take a closer look at how they did that.

 

i always like this idea, but after a short time that seal becomes worthless. unless i suppose you make it a wider piece of plyable rubber, maybe??

i'd try to seal off the "cabin" as much as possible, because it seems that either hot air off the engine or hot ambient air will cook ya!

*disclaimer
i'm no genius metal bender like you, i just have opinions.

 

Flipper, How about a tongue and groove affair. You have a "c" shaped sheetmetal plate bolted to the perimeter of the bellhousing that is sandwiched between two other pieces of sheetmetal which are part of the firewall. In the diagrams, the red plate is fastened to the bellhousing (blue), and slides between the front and back sheaths which are part of the firewall (green). I doubt that there would be any forward-back movement, but if you were concerned about it, you could "cushion" mount the sheath with some rubber instead of the sheath being welded directly as part of the firewall. for simplicity, you could make the red plate and just cut a lengthwise slot in a piece of tubing bent roughly to the shape of the bellhousing for the red part to slide into. You could even stuff the tube with fiberglass insulation or steel wool for a vapor-proof seal......

 

Found a pic of the VW seal. It has two flaps that straddle what it seals.

Could it be as simple as glueing this seal to the bellhousing and letting the flaps straddle the firewall sheetmetal?

 

it could be, but it better be some strong glue! i couldnt ever get those seals to stay on my bugs.

i suppose if you made a u type of channel or something like a steel or brass line split down the middle, then slide the seal in place and stratigically pinch it tight to hold the seal in place it would work.

 

You could try making a seal like an old style camera bellows, it would certainly look period.

 

In the twenties there was a fad of equipping cars like yours with a single big copper exhaust pipe down the side - no muffler. They say the copper gave a really cool sound to the exhaust.

You can bend copper pipe by filling it with dry sand heating and bending.

Have seen pictures of old sports cars with exposed transmission. They did not seem to care if the join was sealed or not. In an open car I doubt it makes much difference. Unless it is to keep small objects from falling out.

They had engines mounted solid to the frame, no rubber motor mounts. I think they just had a strip of felt or nothing at all.

 

I redid the seals on a Cessna for the ram air cooling between the baffling and the inside of the cowl.

The factory used large staples, the material had deteriorated so much that the staples had worn most of the way through the tin, so I made a doubler strip out of similar thickness material and riveted that on, with the new seal material sandwiched in between.

Just a thought if you are having a hard time retaining a rubberized seal material, screws could work instead of rivets, the clamp strip holds it down, the screws pass through the seal material so it can't squeeze out.

That seal repair is still holding, 17 years later.

 

Very cool project! keep the info coming....

 

I'm making another long weekend to go work on this thing. This one will be a 5 day weekend.

Hopefully, I can get something done that won't have to be undone.

 

Logging in on Dad's dial-up internet connection ....so no pics for now, but I am making really good progress.

I made a trans mount...and figured out how to finish the front half of the spring boxes (driverside mostly done, cutting pieces for the passenger side) and also figured out the frame for the seat bottoms (driverside is already welded in, passenger side is formed). I must say, that I am REALLY proud of what I came up with. The drivers side seat feels great...even without seat foam. ....And looks like it belongs in a vintage racer.

Oh yeah, I think I figured out how to seal the exposed trans too....rubber hose. I am going to form a half round chanel (split tubing) that goes around the flange of the bellhousing. the hose will fill th gap. I just need to make some motor mounts that hold everything in place really well.

 

OK, here's the picture post.

I started the weekend with a simple transmission mount

What Jag gave me to work with


Donor steel


One of the holes is chevy made


Second part


Welded and bolted in place on the trans with rubber pucks mocked up. There will be a body side mounting surface where the silver washer is.

 

Last time I tried a square crossmember and hated it. I tried round this time and didn't really like it much either.



A plain bench seat just doesn't feel right. It needed to be bucket-like.

Time to break out the Horrible Fright pipe bender








Better. ...but I didn't like the tube just going over and tieing in to the frame on the outside







I didn't really know what to do with it back in the corner, so I just bent it down..it will disappear under the seat cushion

 

I realized that I really couldn't finish the seat frame without doing the front half of the spring boxes. They had to be there before the seat gets welded in.

The U-shaped section is where the front of the leaf spring sits.





I doubled up on the spring holder




I went ahead and gusseted the tube that this piece welds to at the front...because I have no idea what kind of loads this suspension places on the frame.









I melted the rubber pad under the spring...oops!

 

Now I could put the seat frame in place.







Time to make a second one. ...that is a little skinnier (I offset the engine and the trans to the passenger side so that I have plenty of foot room).







For the heck of it, I propped up a 36 ford truck grill to see what it looked like.



I did more, but don't have pics ...my camera bit the dust at the Turkey Drags on Saturday.

 

Oh yeah, I replaced the melted rubber pads under the front of the leaf spring with a 3/4 eurothane pad (jeep body mount). I put a jack under the rear axle and jacked up the back of the car. The rear rim was about 3 inches below the frame rail without engine weight, gas tank or people. I'm probably gonna have to tweak something to raise the rear enough to be driveable.

 

At the front of the seat, there will be a verticle sheetmetal piece. The sheetmetal will wrap around the corners and tie into a verticle support on the frame on the outside and be the lower part of the driveshaft tunnel on the inside.

 

Hello Flipper,
From the photos it seems that your leaf springs are simply bolted down via a flex button mount to the "Spring box" you have made, It seems that by packing this up a little you could increase ride height as required, pretty much add a 1/2" here and the car rides 1/2" higher, but if you change the mounting position of the centre of the spring you get double the benefit, so 1/2" gives a 1" ride height change. This could bne done a heap of different ways, but I was just looking a the photos again and i thought what about making it adjustable, by slotting the four mounting bolt holes and adding a reinforcing plate with the original four holes and a jacking screw to adjust the height, this modification would mean infinite adjustability in terms of rear suspension height, I have been thinking about using a rear suspension system like this since seeing the "Napier Railton" record holder at the Brooklands museum near London in the UK, this is one of the most significant old racing cars in the world and well worth a look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier-Railton
Best Regards
Rick

 

What a great idea! I had already played with the front end of the spring to adjust the height. I had just planned on bolting shims under the front of the spring to fine tune the suspension. I jack bolt above the center pivot could offer far more adjustability. Thanks for the idea!!!

 

As long as the jack bolt itself isn't locating that point of the spring. Keep in mind the leaves are what is holding the axle in place, so that jack bolt would see a lot of side load during cornering.

 

I went to the Nashville Auto Show (new cars) today and was amazed at how big the consoles are in modern cars. Darn near everything there had a bigger console than what I was building for a tunnel. Maybe I should accept the bigness and try a tunnel again.


Cadillac CTS

 

I test drove one of those 2012 Cads, and boy you DO sit balls deep in those things. Of course there is no headroom, so I had the seat bottomed out, too...

OK, back to your far out build... Keep in mind the closer you get the tunnel to the trans, the hotter the tunnel will be while driving. Might be a good reason to open it up a little...

 

OK, what sounds best:
1) big awkward trans tunnel,
2) even bigger, stylized, smoothed over trans tunnel,
3) no trans tunnel?

 

The biggest tunnel that will still leave you enough room for the seats.

 

I'm not sure if smoothed over and stylized will fit the style of your build. No tunnel is still first prize, I'd say; but if it comes to a tunnel I think it should be functional and workmanlike. Think rivets?

 

Hey Flipper,
I say take a leaf out of the old school boys book, real boat tails rarely had tunnels, you are using a stick shift, so not a lot of heat from the box, you are not likely to go drag racing so the limited benefit you'd get in the case of clutch explosion is irrelevant,

Worst case throw a fibreglass tunnel in later if you need to , make the mould by draping carpet over the box, then cover the carpet in a layer of plastic sheet and masking tape and glass it up, when it has hardened, lift the whole thing off and pull the carpet out, leave the plastic sheet glued to the tunnel as it won't come off anyway. and trim the edges, Job done, we used to do a lot of these for the sports car racers back in the early nineties, it gives you 5/8"ths clearance all around the box and the fibre glass stops more heat and noise than steel.

But I still say no tunnel.

Incidentally the jacking screw on the centre of the leaf spring doesn't replace the four bolts they slide up and down in the slots to get the right height, when the height is right tighten them up and they do all the holding just as they do now, the jacking screw just allows you to adjust the height while the car's weight is on the wheels,

Best regards
Rick

 

I'm seriously considering no tunnel!