Scorpio - why my Cafe Racer's not finished

Garage Rat said:

Ahhh sorry folks - after 40 years I forget to call him by his real name - a bit like my TJ moniker !
That would be Adrian Cocking - long time [ 40 years +] business colleague, collaberatour and very good friend. Since I "retired" in 2000, I have continued to carry out engineering design consultancy [ unpaid ! ] on various projects he / we have come up with. Mostly car orientated - the latest being slotting in a Supercharged V8 Jaguar lump into his "production" C Type replicas. And of course the Scorpio. His money - my brains !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the "Standard" Realm C Type Jaguar chassis - suitably redesigned by BC to accept the additional bulk and power of the supercharged Jag V8. Doesn't seem much, but we had to do away with two structurally important main tubes to get it in, and then redesign to put the strength and rigidy back. Excuse the prototype exhaust - we were playing around to see if that would work so we could have the original style silencers down each side of the car - answer yes.

The caveat to this project was - "If the bonnet [ hood ] closes down and misses everything - we'll do it" ................ and it did, by 1" !!!!

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Everyone claims that the XKE is the most beautiful Jag, but I prefer the C and D types.
 
What was the silver jag james bond drove back in the 60's in the movies?That was the best jag IMHO.Honestly,I'm not real familiar with jags.I drove one of those V12 monsters made in the 80's.I was 19 when I drove it and I thought I was the Shat in that car.LMAO!
 
First off, thanx for moving this over Tim - and the kind words.

Ben - I think you may be referring to the Aston Martin?

4Eyes - yep me too, the C Type is the purest shape. We were lucky to have all the D Type variants replicated and moulds for them all - short nose, long nose, with fin, with cowl, etc., etc., but the C is still the one for me!

As we've missed the show, we're going back to some detail development on the Trike. AC doesn't like the hub uprights we're using - they come from a Ford family car, and he feels they aren't "exotic" enough. Just fine tuning in the main now before the final pre-production version is completed.

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Don't try this at home children - OR how NOT to do it ............. ;)

Here was our first attempt. :eek:

Yep - we know ALL about racing front suspension and we've been playing with bikes for 50 odd years - simples eh?

Throw away the forks and front wheel from the bike and add a suitable car type suspension clip ........................join up the dots and what do you have? A vehicle that will surely kill you sooner rather than later !

Note the very high COG created by the stock rider position - and the rearward bias of the vertical COG and thus yaw. "Looks" as if it should work ... oh dearie me no.

We persevered with this layout for several weeks and improved the handling / feeling, to just about "not very good". For the sake of self preservation we moved onto the Mk2. By this time our own logic was telling us the COG was all bollox, so we bought and modded a 750 Suzuki V twin. Lower seating position. Made a slight improvement so we knew we knew what was wrong - if you get me. 2 weeks of that and some serious head scratching.

I had several Tony Foale motorcycle design books [ mainly chassis ] and did an Internet trawl and found he had contributed to a book written by Robert Q. Riley with the improbably long title - "Alternative Cars in the 21st. Century .............a new personal transportation paradigm" - 2nd. Edition. ! £50 odd pound lighter, I found the answers to the problems we had encountered, and it was obvious we needed a total rethink - blank piece of paper time. After I'd done the preliminary drawings and calculations based on Foale's guidance - it became obvious that the concept of slapping a bike back end on a car type front would never work satisfactorily. ::)

Ironically my 7 year old kneeler design based on the Kay 100 powertrain would have been right on the money - hey,ho.

Bear in mind that this little excercise started out as a purely selfish whim to keep me biking when disability took over - as it eventually must.

By this time AC had invested a shitload of resources - time and his workers - and was looking at the long term commercial possibilities. That's when the decision was made to look at the BMW Oilhead range - 850cc - 1200cc. The rest is history and where we are currently.

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beachcomber said:
First off, thanx for moving this over Tim - and the kind words.

Ben - I think you may be referring to the Aston Martin?

4Eyes - yep me too, the C Type is the purest shape. We were lucky to have all the D Type variants replicated and moulds for them all - short nose, long nose, with fin, with cowl, etc., etc., but the C is still the one for me!

As we've missed the show, we're going back to some detail development on the Trike. AC doesn't like the hub uprights we're using - they come from a Ford family car, and he feels they aren't "exotic" enough. Just fine tuning in the main now before the final pre-production version is completed.

220px-DB5-2.jpg

Yep that's the one.I don't know why I was thinking it was a Jag.
 
Here's the Taurus .....

Notice how high and short it is and the riding position. They have fitted FIFTY Kilograms of weight to the very front of the machine - that tells me something.

You can see it's quad heritage. I IS a fantastic piece of engineering though.

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And the good news is that the bodywork has been salvaged and resurfaced and the Buck is being painted this week. In turn that means we should have the panels back at the workshop next week ready for the King Moulds and production moulds to be taken.

We also have some natty alloy uprights arriving from Germany [ courtesy of my old customer ] and then it's a case of prototyping up the relevant axles, steering and braking systems. We're currently looking at the BMW Oilhead disc and 4 pot Brembos, but that could well change when the uprights arrive !

We are anxious to get the new suspension system road trialled before making a final commitment to that design.
 
Beach, I was thinkin....


If you want to keep your C of G somewhere under ground, why dont you copy the F1 cars but upside down?

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Shouldent to toooo hard ;)


You could even use/ make a HD Softail style pull shock if thats an issue.

Just sayin ;D
 
yes we looked at a system simliar to this, but we needed the space for our fuel tank ! In the end the only way we could package them and get the ratios we wanted was what we ended up with !
 
One minute I'm eating my Easter eggs and the next it's fargin Christmas !!!!! WHO stole 2011 ???? :eek:

I should know better after 50 years of giving myself deadlines for projects.......ah well.

The buck WAS salvaged and Adrian decided to make the moulds himself - after 40 years in the trade, who better.

The new body was being moulded when I went down to the workshops last weekend, and there was a whole pile of newly made parts ready for assembly. The production wishbones are a thing of beauty and far too nice to be covered up ! The production front and rear clips have been made, with nicely bent round tubing taking the place of the cut and shut prototype.

That only leaves us with a few items to sort out - a hand brake [ parking / emergency ] which is required under UK regs. And for the future - a decent reverser. Much head scratching and off the wall ideas coming up here ! We've also got a big pile of light units - and keep changing our mind which one to use.
 
Body moulds now completed [ product ], they'll now be fettled and given the final once over prior to the King [ safety ] moulds being taken. Then it's 2-3 body sets out of them ready for the big push next year.

Mechanically all is good, just need to put a few 1000 miles on the rolling chassis to fine tune the suspension and iron out the inevitable gremlins.

That just leaves the reverser [ thanx for the headsup Rat ] and the parking brake.
 
Just a little bit of work today. The pre-production chassis design has been cpmpleted and once the new wishbones are trial fitted the new production jigs will be made.

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Back on it guys .........................the first body set came out of the moulds without too much drama - involved two large mallets !!

AC's busy fettling the "production moulds" and when I went down to check my new workspace we went over some design aspects of the rolling chassis. There's a whole bunch of "productionised" parts turned up - brackets, foot controls, steering components, etc. Also to my deepjoy - I noted two of the latest chassis clips sitting on the workshop floor. I'm thinking TWO demonstrators ??? We already have enough parts for 4 Scorpios, ranging from 850cc - 1150cc. Lighting still causing some design headaches - but at least we are now getting down to detailing.

Next job [ mine ;D] is to ride the hell out of the pre-production chassis to prove [ or otherwise !! ] the rear suspension arrangement. Also where we've attached it to the back of the "Stressed" powerplant [ shades of TR1 debates ], we've used our own support structure. That will need a good workout in the real World.
 
Interesting thread!

Quaife do an inline reverse 'box. Might be of interest to you:

http://www.quaife.co.uk/shop/products/qbe35g
 
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