Thanks guys for the kind words, it's a very tough road to produce these cars in the current economic environment and it all helps...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenrocca
...if they had an option of an original style Steel tube chassis...
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You guys are diehards wanting an original style tube chassis.
We could not believe the amount of design advantages we were able to achieve with our alloy monocoque approach. In the end we found that running an original style chassis has lots and lots of compromises in terms of performance, comfort, safety, form and function:
- We would lose close to 4" in cockpit/seating height if we ran an original tube chassis.
- We would lose a significant amount of our footwell space particularly width.
- It would limit our drivetrain options and also result in a less optimised weight balance.
- Would lose significant amount of chassis stiffness, as in the tube chassis will be a fraction as stiff as our monocoque, would also lose substantial amount of strength and rigidity where suspension transmits load through and lose strength and rigidity where drivetrain torque is applied.
- Would also lose the stance we have, wheel arch gap between tyre and body would need to increase by at least 50mm or more as we would need to support underbody system as a lot of our sales are with underbody system.
- We would lose the pushrod suspension, can't fit it in with a traditional tube chassis. We can just fit it in with a monocoque chassis.
- We would need to run a more compromise suspension geometry
- We would have a less safe cockpit as we would not have that cockpit safety cell with up to 8mm wall to protect occupants in particular from side impact.
- Not as much safety and strength for door anti-intrusion bars to transmit impact force through.
- Not as strong mounting structure for rollbar/s.
- Cockpit footwells will not be structual aluminium plate, would need to be fibreglass or do we start to hybrid the chassis with structural aluminium footboxes.
- Cockpit transmission tunnel would not be as safe as it would be thin aluminium sheet.
- Seatbelt and Race Harness Mounts would not be as strong.
- Less room for wheels/tyres. We currently support 270mm+ front tyres, 350mm+ rear tyres, you can't do that with an original chassis.
- Etc, Etc...
There are just so many compromises with an original tube chassis design.
And we have already proved there is a far larger market for an aluminium monocoque in Australia. Since we have had the alloy monocoque chassis, no one has been interested in purchasing an original steel tube one. We have had products selling side by side that offered either to our customers and our customers chose the alloy monocoque.
But if anyone wants an original style tube chassis we are happy to do them, we even have the original style chassis in CAD as that is where we started from when designing the PACE 427. The PACE 427 actually retains some of the really cool design features from the original cars.
Definitely shop around and compare the different brands if you are looking to buy, unfortunately the economic environment has not been kind to this industry, so not as many players around now and most of the remaining players are what I would describe as virtually inactive unfortunately. Please contact us for our packing lists as we have a much more comprehensive offering than FFR, etc.
Craig White
Owner of Absolute Pace