1973 Camaro - Autocross / Street Car project

[73CPCAMARO]

Originally Posted by jjarky

Man, that thing will be killer! Giant roller skate. I assume you will have to flare the front fenders and not run inners?

The front fenders will need to be flared more in the up direction. I am going to try to keep the fenders as stock looking as possible. We have not put the fenders on yet to see how big they will need to be. Nothing will be on the inside. The fenders are fiberglass.

[73CPCAMARO]

Here are some updated shots of the front structure.

[rlplive]

Wow, I am completely in awe of this car. Nice work. Man I want to race!

[Lemons]

Brian,

The car is looking absolutely killer. It's gonna look wicked with all that tire underneath it. I like the route you have taken with the suspension. I have thought about doing something similar with my 73.

Good luck, I can't wait to see more.

Chris

[Desert68]

The two pieces of blue tape in the bottom picture. Could you please explain the setup with the steel plate and then the tubing running forward? The plate is attached to the firewall and the tubing is attached to the subframe? I'm having a little trouble picturing it in my mind and my 2nd gen is stored a distance from my home. Incredible build. Things such as the spindle fabrication is just jaw dropping impressive to me.

[73CPCAMARO]

Originally Posted by Desert68

The two pieces of blue tape in the bottom picture. Could you please explain the setup with the steel plate and then the tubing running forward? The plate is attached to the firewall and the tubing is attached to the subframe? I'm having a little trouble picturing it in my mind and my 2nd gen is stored a distance from my home. Incredible build. Things such as the spindle fabrication is just jaw dropping impressive to me.

Thanks for the nice words. Here is a photo from the inside. Hopefully, this will answer your question. Maier is buidling the cage to make the car as rigid as possible. The plate is just covering up the hole in the firewall.

[G-Body]

Oh my now this is a project wow i loveeeeeeeee it awesome fab work
What a balls to the wall build

[byndbad914]

Originally Posted by 73CPCAMARO

The square tubing is used in the rear section for a few reasons. It is more rigid than round tubing for tension and compression. If it does fail, it is at a higher rate than round tubing.

Who on Earth told you that? I am not saying it is bad to use square tubing, but what you just stated is based on something other than engineering... generally speaking a square is one of the worst shapes, hence why you see a lot of round columns for compression members like bridges across the nation and engineers use words like "triangulate" - make sure to make every square a triangle at some point. Not too many square submarines out there

There are certainly reasons to use square tubing and you did state one of them in terms of easy to attach panels to by having a flat surface to rivet into and riveting the panels in and really making them carry shear adds a lot of rigidity. Also people have learned that after you bend a tube it removes the rigidity it so it is better to cut and weld the corner than bend it making sq tubing easier to work with that way as well.

That said, dig the car and am definitely subscribed!

[73CPCAMARO]

I am not a mechanical engineer, so I am not a great source to debate the strength differences. I am going with the knowledge and expertise of my builder.

[WSSix]

In pure tension or pure compression, a square tube should have a higher load capacity than round because there's more metal in the cross sectional area if the diameter and width match. ie 2in square tube has more are than 2in round. Obviously, wall thickness would need to be the same as well.

That's simply sigma = force/area. How is that not right? Are there other forces at play possibly? From my knowledge as that of a mech eng student, round is used primarily because it has the same characteristics regardless of which direction the force is applied ie it's the same on all "sides". A rectangle or square depends on where the force is applied or how the tube is oriented.

Where am I messing up?