Thread: The Roofus Special

Tweet

I came to the realization that I need to work out some of the function details before I get too much farther with the form. I need to figure out the mechanics of the front half of the car.

I slid the back end of the car back a couple of feet so that I would have room on the table for the motor. I ended up making a saw horse out of a suzuki samurai roll bar.

Turns out the XK transmission won't work with the bellhousing that I have, front bearing retainer and seal are way different. I pissed away a good bit of time trying to figure out if I could swap input shafts....I finally accepted defeat and decided to use the OD trans.

Good news is that I found a new clutch and pressure plate when I pulled the trans.

Bad news is that the engine needs to move rearward a couple of inches to make everything fit in a 100" wheelbase.

Break out the sawsall!





I laid the stock jag front suspension on the table to see what 100" looked like. Don't worry, only spindles, hubs and brakes will be used.

Right now there is a tube that goes under the sump in the oil pan, I am going to re-arrange the framework so that I have a hole for the sump/belhousing to fit in and lower the motor a little more. That jag motor is a tall son of a bitch for a little car.

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

Originally Posted by falconvan

That one would be my vote; what's the handle on the drivers side?

Its the brake.

Rather than completely trashing the car to try and get the motor to fit under a track nose, I amgoing to stick to the original idea for the car and copy the little blue/gray 1930 RALLY that was pictured earlier.

Here is a front view of a similar car.

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?

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.

Flipper,

I'm more of a lurker, but I have enjoyed your build thread.

As everybody knows, Jay Leno is a huge car guy. He has a website http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/index.shtml where he does a new video segment every week on one of his cars. This week's segment is all about cars in the same style as the Roofus Special so I thought you might enjoy it.

Mark

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.

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

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