The Green Hornet

[Shmed]

Yes Mike, it's from Ben at Carben Fibre. It's a pretty good fit actually. Need some spacer rubbers as it's only held in the middle by the catch. It also sits a little proud in the corners where it meets the roofline, but nothing major.

Ash, you're welcome to come and check it out. I'm off work now until Jan. Tomorrow afternoon works well though may be short notice.

[ashley]

Next week would be better for me, I can bring the welder if you like?

[Shmed]

I've done the passenger side and going to do driver tomorrow, but cheers for the offer. Decided to be brave as the fillets aren't structural...

First one turned out OK, but my tip got blocked so the wire wasn't feeding smoothly. Got some new tips and the second turned out better.

Tuesday or Wednesday is best next week.

[J-1]

Any updates?

[Martin F]

Any updates?

Good Bump, had almost forgotten about this build

[Shmed]

Things have been happening, very slowly, and not very planned.I do the bits that interest me most when I find spare time. I do have some updates, but I need to write them up properly. Watch this space

[Shmed]

So it's been a while, but with the sunny weather, I have decided to re-focus on getting this finished.

As a holistic refresher, here is where I'm at (pic heavy, sorry for any duplication).

Having decided to try and enter the TSS, I needed a roll cage due to my car spec so, I set about stripping the interior ready for the bolt in cage.

This began with the bare minimum needed to fit the cage, but soon snowballed:











So having ripped out pretty much everything except for the ignition loom, it was off to Ashley's house to fit the Rogue cage. I haven't got any pictures of this, but you can see on the next pics that there is now a cage.






Then I decided I'd hit a wall. I'd stripped out the last of the wiring and, having had the cage fitted, needed to think about putting things back together. Always the harder part.
Anyway, not wanting to do things by halves, I decided to bring the MR2 'into the 21st century'. The Syvecs provides a CANBus output, and I wanted to use that. Orignially I was just going to feed the data into the data logger, but then I got researching and bought these:


An Arduino and a bench supply (I now have about 6 Arduinos and 3 bench supplies....False first steps...).

I laid out all of the electronics I wanted to integrate into the car, and wrote my first sketch. It was a 10 button switch that used a resistor ladder to differentiate between which buttons had been pressed. I coded it so that each button could be a toggle, flasher or timed event, and it worked pretty well.



The reason for the resistor ladder was that my F1 style steering wheel (more on that later) needed multiple buttons, and I only had the two horn wires to use.

I also made a loom for the GoPro as that will be hard-wired into the car and controlled by the Arduino.



Having spent some time on the electronics and working out what needed to be done, I decided to start fabricating my own aluminium dashboard. Time for some metal bashing (or folding).





I was reasonably happy with my progress until I realised that the two parts weren't going to meet in the middle. Bit of bashing now..






That simply wasn't good enough.

So, that lot came out, back to the metal shop, and this is Gen 2:



I decided to use DZU fasteners to hold it down, which meant making some brackets:




Then made the cowl for the instrumentation:










Then the centre console part - at this point I decided to add a second cowl for what will be my data logger interface (AKA an ANdroid tablet).




A lick of black truckbed liner paint (because it's matte and rugged):









And finally, I made my instrument cluster:





Now the instrument cluster is a set of three 4D Systems Arduino display modules and will, one day, be used to present all the aforementioned CANBus data to the driver. I also plan to add extra trick bits to this, but can't say what they are yet because I haven't got that far.

I already have the CAN code written, but as the engine isn't wired up, I can't get any decent data to test with gauges yet, plus I have enough other stuff to get done first.

Now, quickly back to the 'F1 Style Wheel'; since starting all of this, I have decided that the two horn wires would not cut it, so I bought a Krontec snap-off boss with a 22-pin connector. I thought that was that, problem solved. I was wrong. Once I connected 22 wires, I pushed the loom through the boss and then realised that the whole loom actually needs to move as the wheel turns (I probably should've already known this...)
As my heart is now set on a steering wheel with lots of buttons (as I have permanently removed the stalk controls), and I also plan to fit a touch screen display into the wheel too, my next action is to create a bespoke 22-pin 'clock-spring' connector. I have all the bits I need, and I hope to take some pics as I do it.

Anyway, that's all from me for probably the next 6 months

[Shmed]

and the irony of the whole thing.....

TSS NO LONGER REQUIRE A ROLL CAGE FOR A1-STREET!!!

[Ben]

Time to enter Pro then

[Shmed]

My hand might be forced on that one as it happens. I planned for the car to be road legal but suspect that, due ti the wholesale changes tio the dash, I might need an SVM?? test as well as an MOT. Can't see it passing due to the radii used on the dash

[ashley]

Fek....talk about going down the rabbit hole mate!!

[Shmed]

I know; and I'm holding you partially responsible

This is why it's taking soooo long.

Plus I bought a drift car to keep me amused in the meantime...

[Magic Beans]

Yikes!

As Ben said, time to go Pro

[shane34]

hey what happened with this in the end, did the drift car get in the way?