Thread: The Roofus Special

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Originally Posted by florida

I enjoy following this thread. Great project, huge project. Building and designing as you go is tough. This requires alot of time. How do you do it?

I have a lot of downtime between work sessions (the project is 250 miles or so away from where I live). I have plenty of time to think out the next step.

Occasionally, what I have been thinking and planning doesn't really match up with what I remebered the car/car parts to be.

All projects evolve though, as you do something you think how that affects other pieces and you tweak something else to match....or you see where somebody else did something better and you copy their idea.

Even though this is a scratch build, I don't think it is any more ambitious than of the complete builds documented on this board where somebody started out with an actual car. In fact, mine might be easier since nobody knows waht it SHOULD look like.

No pictures to post, but I spent the weekend playing with front end parts. Mostly taking the jag front end apart amd cleaning everything up. Looks like I need to replace lower ball joints on both sides. I also picked up a manual rack and pinion from a Toyota Tercel from Pull-A-Part this morning.

Still sorting out what I want the A-arms to look like.

Anybody have toughts on exhaust pipes?

The stock manifolds are already split and are very header-ish, but they point down. Exhaust pipes would go underneath the steering shaft and then exit the body. If I use the stock manifolds, I think I have 3 basic options:
1) merge into one pipe under the hood and exit through a hole in the famerail and run a single pipe down low on the body.
2) don't merge, run one through the frame, one above the frame like harley drag pipes
3) don't merge, run one through the frame, one above the frame and merge into a single pipe outside of the body

The other option is to ditch the factory manifolds and build headers.

This thing only will have a 210 cubic inch or so inline six in it so it doesn't NEED really big pipes.

Stock manifolds. FYI the tubing scraps between the framerails at the firewall are just spacers for mock-up.


This car is close enough to use as an example for photoshops if anybody is so inclined.

Got my frame rails mostly welded on and the center frame rails cut to length. There will be a round tube spreader bar installed at the very front. Still have to encase them in heavy sheetmetal.

And started on my front suspension.

I found a pretty cool raw material in the junk pile....Uni-strut. I like the factory punched, ebenly spaced oval lightening holes. I cut it down to 1 1/2 x 3/4 channel.

The round tubes that hold the bushings are tractor link bushings from TSC.

The tapered hole for the lower ball joint is from the jaguar parts car.

Way more work than I thought it would be. with all of the trial and error, it took two days for me to figure the first one out.

First I-beam


donor tapered hole


With tapered hole installed


Turning it into an a-arm

I didn't get nearly as much done over Christmas shutdown as I had planned. Having a chest cold for about a week put a big dent in my plans. This made matters worse. ...the temp is 30 degrees in the shop.



I did manage to get the passenger side i-beam welded up. I quit before it made it to A-arm status.

Looks good; I was wondering how the roofus was coming.

flipper I don't know what front end you have but I have a 66 xke and the ball joints are adjustable you remove the 4 bolts that hold them to the a arm and the top comes off and has a stack of shims just remove enough shims to adj. for wear Hope this might help......ted

Originally Posted by ted dehaan

flipper I don't know what front end you have but I have a 66 xke and the ball joints are adjustable you remove the 4 bolts that hold them to the a arm and the top comes off and has a stack of shims just remove enough shims to adj. for wear Hope this might help......ted

Mine are make the same way. It looks like dirt and water got in there many years ago...the bottom of the ball is chewed up and worn and so is the cap. These need to be replaced to be made right.

The Miller design for the control arms aligned the arms with the center of the wheels due to the fact that the Miller arms encased the drive axles. Top arm dipped down, the bottom arm dipped up and hid under the top arm.

Since I don't have to work around front drive axles, I am thinking about "dropping" the control arms....lowering the attachment point on the car and the upper control arm would come out flat like miller's design and then bend up the outside end to attach to the spindle. The inside end of the upper arm would also be raised up (inside the bodywork) so that arm geometry would be closer to parallel.

Anybody see a real problem with this idea? ...other than the fact that the upper arm will need to be beefy?


Miller's beautiful engineering.

Here's a few Miller pictures .One is a rear wheel drive. There may be an idea here you could incorporate. Also a torsion bar set up.

Tom

Originally Posted by 39Deluxe

Here's a few Miller pictures .One is a rear wheel drive. There may be an idea here you could incorporate. Also a torsion bar set up.

Tom

Thanks for all of the pics.

I haven't had much chance to put any quality time in on this one recently...hope to this month.

A straight axle would probably be a lot easier to do, but I want to use the jaguar hubs so I can keep the knock-off wire wheels. I also want to use the jag front disc brakes.

I think I will HAVE to go IFS to keep those parts.

This a cool project! It's looking pretty darn good!

You need some heat out there, bro! It's a lot more fun when you're not freezing to death.

Originally Posted by falconvan

You need some heat out there, bro! It's a lot more fun when you're not freezing to death.

That is the downside of dad having such a big shop. It is not practical to heat a 70x70 with 32 foot tall ceiling