T H E   C Y C L E C A R   P R O J E C T
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   F E B R U A R Y   2 0 0 5
    What the hell am I doing? I am still building a plane and trying to learn to fly, and I am already brewing another project... I can unfortunately not control my brain impulses!
    I got on E-Bay those two great looking Harley Fat Boy 16" aluminum wheels to use on my plane. They are heavy though, and that may not be possible, so I started thinking about using them to make a trailor for the plane... Then started thinking they would look great on a small old fashion sports/race car. Somehow, I don't like the spoke wheels so much....
    Anyhow, I started surfing the net looking at old race cars, and ran across this absolutely wonderful drawing  of a Bugatti Type 35 by  an artist named Richard Morris. I hope he won't mind me reproducing it here as my header picture, but it really was a cathalist in making this new idea start germing... Great drawing. Thanks, Richard .

  This blue Type 51 looks great, doesn't it? And I now have that overwhelming desire to build a sports car with that Bugatti look . I would love to own a real one, but that is obviously out of the question, since they go for up to a million dollars... Plus, I am a builder of things anyway, not a collector, and definitely not a purist... If this things gets going, the idea will be to figure out how to build on a limited budget something that looks like a race car of that era. It may be a one seater ora two seater, I may use a donor car, or start from scratch, I don't know yet.

   So I started doing searches in Google trying to find out all I could about Bugattis and other race cars of the 20's and early 30's. Past that, they look too modern, and somehow don't fire my juices. I found a lot of pretty good pictures of Bugattis, Alf Romeos, etc..., but surprisingly very little technical information: a few sketches with measurements , but no detailed drawings and blue prints. They may well be out there , but not readily accessible so far.
   I also started looking for parts to use, and ordered a few Hot Rod How to manuals to read up. I would want a long straight engine to keep it narrow, and the 6 cylinder Datsun made for the 240 z seems a good candidate. There are plenty of those still around, and I have been looking at the New 350Z for some time already. The car was a unibody design, so I would have to build a frame from scratch.
    In the process, I ran across some fantastic Models, particularly highly detailed kits like those made by Pocher in Italy in the 70's, and ended up buying on E-Bay a 1/24 scale white metal kit of a Bugatti Type 59, made in England by South Eastern Finecast. I somehow did not have a good idea of scale, and was surprised when I received it by how small this thing is. But the detail is amazing , and the assembly drawings quite detailed. It is unfortunately not mechanically fonctionnal as I had hoped. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a good source of dimentional information. I scanned all the key components , and blew them up on paper, so I can now convert those into a basic scale blue print of the Type 59.
   I Guess I will eventually put the kit back on E-Bay for auction .
    The Type 59 was the ultimate log nosed, most powerful 3.3 liter racing Bugatti, and few were made. It has the look of a pretty big car, so I was surprised when I ran across this picture . Even assuming a long lens was used to shoot it, either the car was not that big, or this guy is a giant! I didn't want to build a big car anyway, but I may not even have to scale it down after all...
   I really like all of them really, at least up to the 59 . Even the smaller 35's or the black 37 above look great . And they seem to be basically the same design.
  MAY   2 0 0 6

  More than a year has gone by since I started this page, and I am finally in the finishing stages of the biplane. It will fly sometime early summer I hope, and I have lately been thinking of the Bugatti project again. I ran across an interesting site of some California guys that came up with the "Cyclekart" concept, a very basic scaled down go kart version of the old racing cars and Cyclecars of the 30's, using 17" Honda motorcycle wheels . They are a little too basic for my taste, and the plywood box stinks, but they look good, and there is something there for me to elaborate on. Actually, some guys on the METALMEET.COM forum have picked up on it after an article in a car magazine, and one in particular has already pushed the concept a long way the way I want to go: all metal car, suspension in the back, brakes, etc... I want to add a differential, better wheels, a bigger engine, 4 brakes, and scale the whole thing up almost to a Bugatti 35 size. I love the aluminum Harley wheels, and have been brainstorming about a way to build a more geometrically correct front end using them. The problem with bike wheels on the front of a car is that the hubs are wide and symetrical, and the spindle is much too far from the center of the wheel. Ideally, the extension of the axis of the spindle should hit the ground slightly out side the point of contact between the tire and the road, as illustrated below:

     Using standard bike wheels as on the Cyclekart, it is almost impossible to achieve this without extreme camber. My solution is to cut out one side of the hub of the Harley wheel, and modify it as shown on the preliminary sketches below:
 
   I have used my 2 Harley wheels from e-bay on the trailer for the plane, now I have to get my hands on 4 more! The question is : front or back. The front wheels have a 2" bore, the rear a 3/4" bore.
   I found a better Comet disk brake caliper to use instead of the small one in the drawings above, and revised the design as below. The reversed spindle is a lot stronger that way, the brake disk is attached to the hub, and the rims can be removed to change a tire. The center of the Harley disk could be cut out and the second row of holes used to bolt it on.
     
   I believe it is now time to attempt to define what it is I am going to build . I am not good at reproducing or copying, so even though I love the Bugattis, I probably should design something of my own, no doubt inspired by them, but different. I spent a good deal of time over the week end researching the Cyclecar movement, and collecting images and drawings. I ran across a very interesting looking car built by Panhard in 1926 to break speed records: "The Razor Blade" . Very little information is available , only a couple were built and none exist today. It is a little long, but certainly inspiring. The best info came from this 1953 article :
 
    I also ran across a very nice site devoted to "OLD WOODIES" , and that got me thinking about mixing materials, wood and aluminum body, with some copper and brass thrown in... I am back in my familiar sculpture style... They had some marvelous pictures:
     
     
     
     So, I started sketching "The Blade". This is still very rough:
   I went ahead and cut one hub out of a front Harley wheel to prove my theory , which worked, but proved hard, and burned up my 4 1/2" grinder... I finished with the heavy duty 9". I also drilled the bore at 2" all the way through with a carbide tipped hole saw. The inside is rough from casting, and will have to be planed perfectly parrallel to the outside of the remaining hub.
 
    I started refining the front end and the back end using the correct dimensions for the rim. I am not sure whether to use the same modified rims on all 4 wheels, or just the whole rim in the back. Do I really need a spare wheel to fit all fours?
 

   I also started looking for parts on the Internet and e-bay.

   The differential will probably be a COMET 94 Series heavy duty model . A 72 teeth sprocket will be attached to the differential, and connected to a 9 teeth mounted on the driven pulley of the torque converter by a #41 chain.

    As much as I would like to put a 23HP V-Twin on, I will probably make do with a cheap Chinese copy of the Honda 13HP engine on e-bay, at least to start with.

    I will use the 2 ply buggy seat springs in the 1/4" thickness #14-504 on the front, and the 30 inch 3 ply buggy springs #14-965 from Horse and Buggy Days of Texas in the back. Each spring is actually 2 single springs.
     I sketched the layout of the chassis , made of welded sections of 1.5" x 3" rectangular tubing, tapered at the front. The upper and lower wall of the tubing will be replaced with a curved 1 x 1/8" flat steel strip rolled around a 1" tubing cross tie at the very front. The same will be done at the rear end to tie the 3 pieces of rectangular tubing together.
   The rails are slightly tapered towards the front. There will be an X re-enforcement to stiffen the ladder frame:
   
 

   I received the buggy springs today, and they are very stiff. I will probably use the seat springs in the rear instead of the 3 leaf 30" spring, and order the weaker seat springs with 3/16" leaves for the front. 

    The axles are going to be inside 2" tubes with ball bearings. The engine, torque converter and transmission assembly are all going to be mounted on a swing frame .

 
      The half axles for the differential are only available in a few standard lengths , and I am looking at 2 ways to do the rear axle. One would use the same modified rim as on the front end with identical 24.58" splined half axles, and the differential would be centered.
 

    The other would use a whole rear rim with a 1.75" bore, and different half axles of 24.58" and 15.27" lengths, with the differential to one side. The engine would then be more in the middle of the frame.

    
    
      A third possibility is to use 2 short splined axles on each side of the differential and to weld to them sections of a 1" go kart axle cut to length, using tubing re enforcement . This would be more flexible as far as placement of the differential and choice of rim.
     
    Here are front and top views of the front end, suspension, and steering geometry.