Okrasa Special

[Steve Wright]

Hmm, so a long and frustrating winter regarding the Special. Barry hadn't been happy with the finish of the door and ended up re-making it five times! There were a lot of tweaks that needed to happen to make the bodywork flow from one area to another. Barry has now started welding each of the panels together so it's all starting to look like a car finally! We've also decided to paint the car because I wasn't happy with any of the combinations given the roof is steel and the body is ally. And finally we've agreed we're not going to do clamshell front (just rear) as it's an awfully big panel to have tilted in the air! enjoy....

[Lee.C]

Awesome 

[empicolector]

awesome work

[RobtheManx]

Very nice work .

I thought I recognised you , you have the Razor with the 46IDAs on it right ? We talked at bug in last year , I was the guy with Ned Bug , remember ?

Rob

[GASBNR]

Nice work Steve,

Oliver Fulljames

[beatnik beetle]

Wow..it's coming on great Steve,,keep up the good work..

[Steve Wright]

hi rob, hope you're well. hoping to have the special at the next Bug-In?!

[Nico86]

Great!

[Zündfunke]

Looks perfect Steve!

As I said to you on sunday in Esher!
"We need an update at least once a week!"
 
Cheers
Matthias

[Steve Wright]

Not sure we have enough to justify an update every week, but I did buy these babies at the Volksworld Show, which we'll bolt on once the bodywork is complete. Large enough to lose small children down the velocity stacks...! 

[speedwell]

are those manifold were reworked to work on an okrasa heads or sell like this rare?

[richie]

are those manifold were reworked to work on an okrasa heads or sell like this rare?

Fabs
They look like the manifolds Ray shubert has had made,he was selling them at the volksworld show,heres his add on the samba

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1226387

cheers richie

[speedwell]

are those manifold were reworked to work on an okrasa heads or sell like this rare?

Fabs
They look like the manifolds Ray shubert has had made,he was selling them at the volksworld show,heres his add on the samba

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1226387

cheers richie

thx richie

[Steve Wright]

yes, they are the ones Ray is producing. Really good quality piece of kit, comprehensive (all the studs, gaskets, etc) and very reasonably priced I thought. He also had repro Denzel pulleys (bought one of those!), 1.5 ratio rockers for the 30hp case (ditto..), pulleys for the Pepco blower, etc etc. completely blew the "won't buy anything at the show" promise I made to myself!

[mymedusa]

yes, they are the ones Ray is producing. Really good quality piece of kit, comprehensive (all the studs, gaskets, etc) and very reasonably priced I thought. He also had repro Denzel pulleys (bought one of those!), 1.5 ratio rockers for the 30hp case (ditto..), pulleys for the Pepco blower, etc etc. completely blew the "won't buy anything at the show" promise I made to myself!

1,5 ratio rockers. are you sure? i only know he has about 1,25:1

[HERB]

Well, bringing this one back. Any updates??

[air-t25]

Great looking car, SUPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Good-Old-Ragtop60]

Hi Steve,

are there any updates?
I'm really curious `bout what`s happening with this historical car 

[Steve Wright]

Sorry it's been a while since I last reported on progress but at least it's meant I have something to say! A lot of mucking about trying to get the rear end design of the car right proved to be frustrating and unproductive in equal measure.

Looking really, really ugly:


Gaffer tape is a beautiful thing, but it still looked all wrong:


Still looks baaaaad:


And this is where Al stepped in. Retired automotive designer pointed out we were breaking a few fundamental design principles, which is okay if you know you've broken them and are innovating, but in our case we were just stumbling blindly about. So we took a deep breath and hacked off 18 months of wireframe buck and started again:


We then spent a day building a wooden buck that would allow us to play with different designs...






But it's still a long-winded way of designing the car...

[Steve Wright]

Cheered myself up by buying a set of genuine BRM's for the car. Oh my God these wheels look good in the flesh, especially with Dunlop Racing tyres 



So Barry comes up with a stroke of genius, a one fifth scale model of the chassis, roof and front of the car, basically the parts that are fixed and that we're happy with. From here we'll make various rear end treatments in modelling foam. It's easy enough to write an explanation but the work involved in build this accurately is immense. Barry basically took 400 measurements across three dimensions, divided them by 1/5th and the replicated them in ply, making each segment of the model with 17mm ply, making up the three dimensions as you would a loaf of bread, slice by slice. Al's advice was to build just one half of it and then put it up against a mirror, so we didn't have to worry about the accuracy side to side. A stroke of genius all this frankly.


before we then start literally carving shapes out of the foam...

[Steve Wright]

Okay this is more like it. A rear end designed in two hours:




And the beauty is you can just swap out bits you don't like. So I tried a variety of rear ends:










More progress shortly.

[Steve Wright]

And then it's into paint to give it a more cohesive look...

[stretch]

Amazing work.      

Please keep us updated as often as possible.

[Jesus]

Cool to see where your upto Steve Hope to catch up next year, Le mans if no where else. Cheers Alex 

[Steve Wright]

hey Alex. drop by sometime, would be good to see you.

Okay, more progress.... tail looks too short, even as a hillclimb special, but it looks better without the flattened off rear arch. So I made up a section to lengthen the tail

this one is too long...


But cutting it down a bit and the proportions are really starting to work:






Then it's out with the bondi to blend in the rear valance and scuttle, as well as get a better curvature to some of the panels....


And hey presto she's got an arse that works and all the rest of the proportions really work. Result.

[Steve Wright]

And then its into paint, and I can't resist putting door gaps, shut lines, lights and grills in:
















And then it's time to box it up and send it to Al:


I've no doubt Al will make my attempts look like a three year-olds, but at least I can say I've had a hand in designing a period race car 

[Lee.C]

Just wow 

[vwcab]

F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C ........       

[beatnik beetle]

It's going to look SO good...keep it up Steve...

[Good-Old-Ragtop60]

Awesome!!!
Great work for this race car!I like the progress your`re making.
Thanks a lot for all the pics