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Old 10-24-2005, 11:23 AM
Mean 69 Mean 69 is offline
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Thanks for the feedback, guys. I will have to agree with you all in terms of backseat issues, I pulled the backseat out of Lateral I, there really is no use for it anymore. But, there are folks that would like to have a rear seat for small kids, etc, and we didn't want to exclude them from being interested in our kit. Honestly, the design didn't make that requirement terribly difficult to solve. I will say though, our feeling is that the performance of the cars we are building REALLY speaks to safety, and that means a well executed cage for cars that will be driven (which are the ones we are really interested in). You really just never know what will happen, on the street, auto-cross track, or road course, this hobby is inherently dangerous.

Vince is right, we also have a 65 Mustang project car that has been on hold for quite a while that is likely going to end up as a mule for a Ford development kit, including chassis structure kits, etc. The TCP car is actually already built, and it ran quite a bit with the American Iron race series last year. I have a friend that drove the car in one of the races, and he really liked the car. Our intention, from the suspension side, is to take the performance potential one step (or two, maybe three) higher than their setup, same goes for brand "G." We actually consulted with the guy I mentioned when we were debating early on about which approach we should go with the rear setup (i.e. primarily a non-invasive approach that would leave resulting performance compromises), and the strong feedback we got was to put performance first. That's what we did.

Here's a shot of the rear/side view of the engineering model, as well as a look at the differential. We are really excited, at this time all of the assembly fixtures and techniques have been validated, so all of the prepatory work to gear up for production is basically behind us for this iteration. The approach we have taken for the design and build is a highly modular one, which means we will be able to configure the specifics for various platforms (Mopar, Ford, etc) very efficiently. One of the other things that I feel is important to point out is the technical basis for the design. Everything is done for a reason, load paths are triangulated to make the structures as rigid and light as possible. The software systems we use are so good these days, structural analysis is far, far easier to study as a result. For instance, something as simple as the radii on the bellcrank piece (the pivot you can see in the back shot) had a surprising effect on the strength of the piece: changing it from "x" inches, to "x +1" made a HUGE difference, it was a complete surprise. I don't mean to bore folks with this, but we have spent so much energy in the design of the setup, I just feel it is important to point out. Most of our competitors don't do this type of analysis.

Thanks!
Mark
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