WESSEX R74SP

Winter is approaching and I have decided to do a sequel car to my first effort ...

By the mid-70s slick tyres were available for sports prototypes. The chassis had evolved for a wider track and there is more downforce.

The R74's engine bore increases taking it to 3.0 litres and it revs higher and so is now producing 446bhp @ 10238rpm.

I've chosen to model the car form scratch to my own design in LFS Editor (I'm still too lazy to learn Blender!). Here are some early shots ...

I started by deleting most of the old car and creating "channel sections" over the wheels (all I have to do is fill the gap between them right?!).



With the splitter added and a basic dashboard shape.



Finished wheel design (probably).



Front nearly done. I'm happy with the way it is evolving!



Chassis development is mostly done - it is great to drive and lap times are only slightly slower than the Formula V8. I will keep at it and post again as I continue to get more of this thing out of my head and onto the screen.

Cheers,
T

Nearly a month and I've managed to do quite a bit. It has been rewarding completely designing the car from scratch but it means that many of the design elements rely on each other so it kind-of evolves.

I wanted to do longer side intakes and tried some large NACA ducts but didn't like it. Ended-up with this version which re-uses the side cowls from the R69 - they were my least favorite part of that car but I like them here. I also started doing some shut-lines but they need some more work:-



Created some 70's-ish rear lights which look good on track:-



Overall I'm happy! I've tried to put myself in the place of a mid-1970s designer but maybe the car is more like late 70s - early 80's Anyway I will keep going.

progress looks good so far, i'm just not sure i understand the functional aspect of the front intake+vent thing

also from my personal pov the rea would look nice with thinner bevel around the rear face.

either way, looks good, looking fwd to this

Quote from johneysvk :

... i'm just not sure i understand the functional aspect of the front intake+vent thing ...

Thanks for the comments ...

Most of these cars had a front-mounted oil cooler and the additional cooling helped reduce the size of the rear-mounted radiators. Some examples are this Matra that won the World Championship in 1974 or this Alfa Romeo that won it in '75 - both have mid-mounted water cooled 12-cylinder engines. Also this arrangement was still used on some F1 cars in period, for example this Shadow that was on the podium in Monaco in '74.

That was my thinking

really cool project

Quote from teeembo :

Thanks for the comments ...

Most of these cars had a front-mounted oil cooler and the additional cooling helped reduce the size of the rear-mounted radiators. Some examples are this Matra that won the World Championship in 1974 or this Alfa Romeo that won it in '75 - both have mid-mounted water cooled 12-cylinder engines. Also this arrangement was still used on some F1 cars in period, for example this Shadow that was on the podium in Monaco in '74.

That was my thinking

i see thanks for the explanation!

Despite there still being many things to do I have the car in a good state and am happy for public release!

The car drives well and (IMHO) looks cool

Please vote it up and I'll see you on the track!!



Cheers,
T