This winter's project...

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Ok, I know it's not 4x4 related, but I hope to present some good fabwork/tech and who doesn't like a 440HP LS1 in a 1700lbs car?

The patient awaits(hood and nosecone already removed)


Sideview


Existing interior


The rear


Cowl & Firewall area


And, gutted


More


The plan is to redo the entire dash area, moving it forward 6-8". In addition to that is refabricating the entire transmission tunnel to narrow it up a bit. On top of all that I will be revamping the existing rollbar and turning it into at least a 4-point if not 6-point cage.

[Stinson]

looks like a fun car. When do you anticipate this being done? Do you have a deadline? Is this in WV as well? Is he going to be racing this beast?

[Billet Benny]

Haha, damn those things are so fruity and ugly!! Who originally put it together and where did you find it??? It'll be a good change of pace.. Get it? Get it. Is it running, driveable, etc.?

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I guess I should have mentioned that this is my uncle's "toy."

It is a "Rotus" and was originally designed and built to replicate a Lotus 7, but using Toyota components of the late 70s - early 80s. My uncle picked it up 2 or 3 years ago with an Olds/Buick small block in it and a Toyota 7.5" rear end from the estate of the founder/owner of Rotus. It was one of their primary R&D cars. It went off to one of the original builders of the car for the LS1 swap rather quickly.

Last season saw the expedient revamping of the front suspension from an inboard CO setup to a simpler outboard setup. The fab work is "interesting" and although the design will remain, the actual suspension pieces will be replaced this winter as well. The uprights/brakes have been adapted from a C5 corvette and allow the car to be hauled down to 0mph in a hurry

The car in its current state(well, before I began dismantling it) was 100% driveable and reliable. The purpose of the mods this winter are to make the car more ergnomical(is that a word?) and race legal(cage).

Some other details on the car. My uncle runs a complete onboard PC utilizing HPtuners to control and monitor the LS1. His gauges come in the form of a 10" high visibility LCD screen adapted from a Police car. The car does 0-60 in 3.8 seconds and is severly traction limited. Application of full-throttle in 2nd gear results in a loss of traction at ~40mph That's with the R-compound tires sized for a C5 (my uncle's other toy is a lightly modded '99 C5, hence the common parts). He has not yet taken it to the track, but the simulated 1/4 mile time from his dyno runs suggest it is a 9-10 second car. The engine is an LS1 from a Camaro I believe with AFR heads mated to a T56 which runs back to a Camaro 10-bolt (I know, I know).

The car has been autocrossed several times and will likely see road course racing of some variety once the safety measures have been put in place.

The car is in WV, and I'm *hoping* to complete these mods by the end of winter break. It is paying work, so hopefully that will keep me motivated

Feel free to hit me with more questions.

[hssss]

Tell Mazda the 12" lift has been completed and the 44s will fit afyter you remove the tear fenders.
________
SMOKING KILLS

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Alrighty! Gotten a decent bit of work done so far. After stripping the car, we moved on to gutting it. We have now completely removed the trans tunnel, the bulkhead behind the seats, the dash area and the rollbar.

I started on the tubes that will run behind the seats at the top of the car to support the coilover mounts and the seatbelts. I think it's gonna turn out pretty nice. There will be two tubes, one directly behind the seat and one running inside the rollbar. They are pictured together in the pic, but are going to end up about 4" apart when all is said and done.


From there I moved onto the trans tunnel as I wanted to get that idea roughed out to see if it was going to work. I bent the two tubes that will run the length of the car and they turned out better than I could have imagine(sorry for the crappy webcam pics).


After that I moved on to making room in the back of the chassis for the seats. The biggest offender were the UCA brackets, so they got a nice little shave.

Before:


After


Now that I could move the seat back to where I needed it, I set to work on the rollbar. We decided to take the rollbar down into the chassis as far as reasonably possible. This meant the removal of a couple chassis members.

Before


After


Once that was done, it was time to address where the rollbar will intersect the existing chassis. Following the basic rules of chassis fabrication we intersected it at a node (juncture of several chassis members) for ultimate stress distribution. The problem was landing a 1.75" round tube on the corner of 1" square tubes left a bit to be desired. Therefore I cut out a few gussets and welded them in.

Before


After


Now the rollbar has a nice place to tie into





And here's a nice overall shot of the "basket handle" as Mazda (my uncle, yes, that's his real name) calls it :d



I got a bit more done last night, but don't have pics yet.

Let me know if you guys appreciate seeing this type of stuff or if I should just stick to fabricating :d

Ary

[BlueDodgeRam]

definitely interesting to see something different man! keep us posted on the progress for sure. and be sure to get some videos of it once you finish.

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Here are some updated pics. What you're seeing is the new crossmember that supports the motor mounts. The idea was to create a "cradle" that is removable from the car that attaches to the frame rails and the motor mounts tieing everything together and bracing the frame rails.

The crossmember is 1.75" DOM and has two bends in it to clear in front of the oil pan without taking up precious ground clearance. We may at a later time add a skid plate under the oil pan since it's cast aluminum, but that's not a priority right now. The entire assembly mounts from the bottom as it would be impossible to have it mount from the top. The way it is setup there will be 2 bolts running vertically and 2 bolts running horizontally per side for a total of 8 bolts holding the cradle in.

I still have to complete the passenger side motor mount, but you can see how it will look as it will be a mirror image of the driver's side.

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I still have a bit of gusseting to do to the piece that the motor mount bolt runs through. I'm planning to tie it back to the slanted tube with some 16ga and I'd also like to brace the slanted tube down to the crossmember.

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Roll bar starting to take shape. Also notice the first tube of new trunk.


Back braces in place


Say goodbye to the old trunk


Say hello to the new trunk

[Arya Ebrahimi]

After we got all that done we lost our heads a bit and the sawzall busted out of its case (AGAIN) My uncle posing with the weapon of choice


This is how we left the car this weekend.


These are the tubes that we ended up reworking/replacing(in red)


And this pile of tube is the culmination of two days of work


The roll cage and new trunk structure will simply be reattached as we did not alter the geometry of that portion of the frame, simply replaced old tubes that had too many holes in them to be safe.

[BadnewsCJ]

hey ary, got some updates on this? im living with a guy who races at VIR in his bmw and it reminded me of your uncles car. how goes it?

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Wow, guess I kinda fell off on updating this thing.

The car has been back together and running for a while now. First track event is this weekend at Cumberland.

At this point we're in the process of really fine tuning everything. The latest project has involved making some steering arms to correct some bumpsteer and ackerman issues we were having.

I should have the car over tomorrow and I'll snap some current pics for ya.