You want it when...?

Building a car is actually quite a complex process, especially if you don't want it to try and kill you as soon as you put it on the road. Building one from scratch in less than 3 months is an even taller order. Just was well Craig is a tall fellow.

Luckily Craig had already built around 8 Type 5's so most of the school fees had been paid. That said, there always seems to be those couple of extra murals you forgot about when you paid the fees the first time around.

The idea was to make use of as much of the Type 5 design as possible, notably the body parts, as these fibre glass bits are made from moulds and we did not want to have to create new mounds if at all possible. 

The chassis was obviously going to change quite a bit. There was now going to be a fairly large engine and gearbox lying longitudinally behind the driver and a radiator up front instead of at the rear. The rear suspension would need to be redesigned as well as fuel tank, which would move to the front al la Muira style.

Of course, before anything could happen the engine and gearbox needed to be fitted to the chassis. Craig did a fine job of CAD'ing up the mounts and in no time the motive force was firmly attached to its new home.

Safety, something the Lotus was not all that big on, was always a concern for us so we opted for a very high tech fuel cell to hold the go-go juice. That must have cost a bomb you say? Well, not really, since this kind of thing is done in the aircraft industry all the time. We contacted a fellow named Buck Rogers (I kid you not!) and he made a aircraft style bladder tank filled with special non slosh foam. Sounds really cool, but in reality looks like a small square jumping castle stuffed with dish washing sponges. 

Here's Craig hard at work. You can see the fuel tank behind him.

Another big concern when building a car is around the cooling. Many folks have had grand ideas of stuffing large engines into little cars, but neglected to sort out the cooling. This generally leads to the words "unfinished project" on the Gumtree ad.

We were taking no chances and opted for the largest radiator we could find. The BMW 750 radiator looks almost like it was designed to fit the Type 6. 

So, with engine, gearbox, cooling system and fuel supply sorted we were well on the way. Craig now set about ordering the new suspension components he had designed on his CAD system and while they were being laser cut the body work was started.