Effectively Bracing The Body In My Ke70

[Ella]

Hey guys,

 

As some of you know i have some pretty crazy plans for my little Ke70, and while the body is stripped back to nothing i plan to make it as strong as possible!.

 

I Have been carefully studying the corollas frame work as i have been stripping it out and i have come to the conclusion i can likely build a certain amount of extra strength just by adding some material in as bracing in key points of the car.

 

Does anyone have any opinions reagurding this? ill post some pics of some of the points i have been studying if anyone has any input into the matter id really appreciate it!

 

Cheers.

Luke.

[altezzaclub]

What sort of work do you plan for it? Rallying will be different to racing.

 

Are you going to have a cage? They add a lot of strength.

[Ella]

I'm building it to drive, but only on the hard stuff, rallying is outta the question lol.

I'm trying to avoid a cage if i can help it.

Edited December 24, 2012 by Ella

[altezzaclub]

Can we still buy sills for them?? Even if you cut a pair of sills off a wreck and welded them over yours, having stronger rails under the doors will strengthen the whole shell.

 

Cross-strut bar under the bonnet for sure, in the boot if you're keen. I like adjustable ones that you can screw out to put the strut towers under tension, but other people get fixed ones that include a triangular bar back to the firewall. You could also put a bar across under the dash if you can find a spot for it, we've doe that before.

 

Any other bars will be noticeable inside, but really its a large hollow box that will twist under load. A couple of diagonal bars would make a difference to that.

 

I haven't heard of weak points in the body that need reinforcing for racing use.

 

Those pics will be interesting.

[Ella]

yeah i have a wreck here at work i was planning on chopping up a bit haha.

[altezzaclub]

Ah.. if you have a spare car to hit with the 1mm grinding discs then you could look at a few areas.

 

Strip out the interior of the spares car and see how feasable it is to slice out the inside panels of the B and C pillars. The A pillar is usually well-supported by the windscreen, but the middle of the box up the B pillars and across the roof and floor would be more likely to flex. Is there a strut across the roof above the B pillar to double the thickness of, and a piece across the floor between the B pillars??

 

The C pillar suffers from the vent holes in both inside and outside panels, and I know they flexed in the old Datsuns enough for the back window to pop out. The springs mount just below the C pillar, so the stress concentrates there.

 

You can buy or make the cross-strut bars shown in red here, and make the reinforcing panels shown in green. Just imagine picking a toy car up like that and twisting it front and back.

 

It will be interesting to see what other guys reckon-

[Ella]

the picture you drew highlights a lot of the areas i was looking at for where i can make improvements

[B.L.Z.BUB]

Put put a 2mm or so steel sheet over the hole between the boot and the cabin, X brace it as well and tie it in to the rear shock mounts. It'd be almost invisible.

[It's_AUDM_Yo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi81kOMef0w

 

Go to ~5:50 for the relevant stuff

This covers pretty much the whole car.

[ke70dave]

VERY cool mate.

 

Do subtitles exist for these hot version videos?

[It's_AUDM_Yo]

I have yet to find them, I wish there was!

I understand a tiny bit of japanese so I understand tiny bits of it haha.

[altezzaclub]

Brilliant find! Amazing what the application of time and money can do!

 

A translation would be great! He was obviously impressed with the difference.

 

Did they change anything else apart from the body rigidity? I assume they didn't.

[InSaNiTy]

Had to stop myself at 23 mins... amazing video... just need to learn Japanese :P