Project '82 Volvo 242

[67goatman455]

Talented doesn't even begin to cover both of your ability's, i hope you guys realize how good you are!

[Karl Buchka]

I keep forgetting to update this thread. Sorry guys.

Originally Posted by MSTSFabbed

Whats the latest from the mad engineering brothers?

My guesses:
a) You built a space ship in your "free time" and have just been having too much fun in 0g
b) You accidentally created a time machine while working on a modification for a car or shop equipment and haven't figure out how to get back to this century

Option A is actually somewhat ironic. Alex currently spends his days building actual space ships at SpaceX in Los Angeles. I'm going out there for an internship this summer as well.

Originally Posted by 67goatman455

Talented doesn't even begin to cover both of your ability's, i hope you guys realize how good you are!

Thank you!

We haven't made a ton of progress lately, as Alex has been in LA and I spent about 8 months in Boston building killer robots at Boston Dynamics/Google.

During that time we also decided we wanted a simpler project that could actually be driven before this century is over, so that took up most of the latter half of 2013. It's still a Volvo 240 (big surprise, right?), but more quick and dirty than anything else.

'83 242DL. Two doors, skinny bumpers, 5-panel tailights, no sunroof, and the older style front end sheetmetal make this the best 240 to have. This is a roller we've had sitting around for a while that finally got an engine.



The longblock is pretty straight forward. It's basically a freshened up DOHC "redblock" out of a 1990 740GLE with h-beam rods and upgraded valve springs.







Shortened intake manifold, 800cc injectors, 3" throttle body from a Volvo 960.



Flywheel got some love in the CNC in the form of a 60-2 trigger pattern.



The turbo is a Holset HX35 out of some 6L Cummins something or other.



Transmission is a T5 World Class.



Rattle-canned the engine bay.



3" aluminum charge pipes with a home made blow off valve built from repurposed single barrel Stromberg float bowl covers.



4" downpipe to a 3" side exit.



A VEMS ECU does the engine management.

[Karl Buchka]

I probably spent the most time on the harness. It's mostly Teflon coated 20AWG wire with Raychem DR25 heatshrink over all the wire bundles. Every split and termination is covered with heatshrink boots and glued using high shear epoxy.



The terminations are labeled using printed heat shrink.



The harness comes through the firewall with a 32 pin MIL-DTL-26482-II bayonet lug connector.



Here's everything in place. There's also a baffled catch can on the left that we built.



The car also got a different headlight/turn signal/grill/hood combo off an early 70s 240 and some new wheels on custom spacers.



By christmas 2013 it was even running and driving.





It still needs quite a bit of tuning, especially in higher boost. In its current state it should be able to make about 400hp reliably.

[Karl Buchka]

Anyway, on to the actual update!

Finally scraped a set of dampers together. I think the grand total for these four has been about $400 shipped. Double adjustable Öhlins reservoir deals.



Alex made a nice write-up about the chassis progress, so I'll hand over to him:

Assembled the starter and mounted it to the bellhousing with the correct lash:


Lately both Karl and I have become disenchanted with the idea of keeping the stock "frame rails" on the car and patching up the half cut-out floor. Mostly because it will be more or less impossible to quantify the chassis stiffness until the frame is completely done and can be tested. Also, the more I looked at the cruddy floor pan and firewall sections, the more I saw nothing but a piss-poor compromise that wasn't going to work well or look good.

I drafted up a proof of concept for a tube chassis, re-using most of the existing cage tubes until I was reasonably happy with load paths, triangulation, room for the driveline and driver/passenger.

The floor of the chassis is all straight mitered 2x2x0.065" and 2x3x0.083" ERW to make fixturing easy. The "drivers cell" is 1.75x0.095" DOM and the rest of the chassis is a mix of 1.5x0.065" DOM, 1x0.049" DOM, and .75x.75x0.065" square.

I'm going to break my own personal rule of not posting CAD screenshots. Here's one of the draft quality versions that started homing in on the final layout:


Making a stiff enough chassis that's also light is a bit of a brain buster, especially when you have to work around silly nuisances like an engine, transmission, and people.

I ran a really simple first cut beam analysis in Solidworks so I could iterate fast and get a rough idea of the stiffness:


These results gave us enough confidence to start building the chassis. At the same time, I'm now working on a much more comprehensive analysis model in different software that doesn't suck.

Chopping up some tube and laying it out:






Both halves tack welded and roughly positioned:


Dropped the body and driveline on the table just to see how it would look:

So that's where we're currently at. Sorry for the slow progress. **** happens I guess.

[MSTSFabbed]

Option A is actually somewhat ironic. Alex currently spends his days building actual space ships at SpaceX in Los Angeles. I'm going out there for an internship this summer as well.


You have got to be kidding me... That is freaking awesome!

So this is what rocket scientists do for fun. Interesting.
I love yall, but you make me feel a little insecure as an engineer haha!

Thanks for sharing and keep us posted on your craziness as you can, its a hoot to watch!

[frojoe]

As a fellow enginerd (I'm mech.. you?) it's great to see 1) such awesome attention to detail, and 2) such insane fabrication skill, backed up by legit computer calcs. Not enough engineers out there getting their hands dirty, be it for work or for play.

Again.. keep up the impressive work and updates.

[Bowtieracing]

You guys are the Chuck Norris in fabrication times two!

[groovyjay]

This is EPIC!

[Karl Buchka]

Originally Posted by MSTSFabbed

You have got to be kidding me... That is freaking awesome!

So this is what rocket scientists do for fun. Interesting.
I love yall, but you make me feel a little insecure as an engineer haha!

Thanks for sharing and keep us posted on your craziness as you can, its a hoot to watch!

Originally Posted by frojoe

As a fellow enginerd (I'm mech.. you?) it's great to see 1) such awesome attention to detail, and 2) such insane fabrication skill, backed up by legit computer calcs. Not enough engineers out there getting their hands dirty, be it for work or for play.

Again.. keep up the impressive work and updates.

Originally Posted by Bowtieracing

You guys are the Chuck Norris in fabrication times two!

Originally Posted by groovyjay

This is EPIC!

Thanks guys! I'll do my best to keep you updated.

frojoe, Alex is a mech-e and I'm an EE.

[classic_volvo]

WOW...I'm impressed....no limits....you really are skilled !!! :-)