Pocher F40 with Autograph transkit upgrade challenge build

[larchiefeng]

Pascal, 

Thanks for the website. I think that, I had already come across it when I was searching for reference material. I just went back to the website and there doesn't seem to be any link to actually order the DVD. I did go to their contact info and sent an email asking for a cost and availability for the DVD. So, now I guess I will wait and see if I get a response.

Yesterday was an off day but, I'm back on it today. Today, I'm working on the lower control arm mounting plates and building up the surface behind it to square up the mount. After that, I'm going to attempt the brake rotor assembly. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't very exciting mainly, due to the lack of clear reference photos. Rich's engine will probably be more fun to watch as he adds the layers of detail to the engine. At some point, I'm going to start modifying the body just to break up the build and give me a break now and then from the suspension. I plan on opening up the vents on the rear valance and rear bonnet clam shell and doing a repaint on the body. This will be a point of difference between our builds as Rich intends to retain his new body as is. 

Now, back to work

[larchiefeng]

Small update today. I've been alternating between the brake rotors and the control arms. I mounted the lower plates and did some loose mock up to check the spindles to see if they would give me the correct geometry i.e. the wheels sitting at the correct camber. In the following pictures you'll see that the right wheel angle would be at almost correct but, slightly negative camber and the left wheel is a lot more negative. I'm going to have to remove the lower plates and remove some of the shims that, I put in to move the lower control arm mounting in closer to pull the vertical part of the spindles more upright. The red circles show the difference side to side of the position of a section of the arm against the lines on the mat. The green circles show the negative camber where the wheels would be tilted in at the top towards the car.

 

Left side

 

 

Right side

 

 

The right side of the frame which, is on the left side of the picture is off about 1 mm and the left side is off about 2 mm 

 

 

Right side close up

 

 

Left side close up

 

 

A couple of pieces of the outer front rotor hub that needs to be drilled out with 1 mm holes and 1 mm rivets eventually inserted. The piece that looks like a ladder sitting on the brown tile has to soldered in between the two rotor halves to create the vents on the edge of the brake rotor.

 

 

More holes to be drilled

 

 

The rivets also need to have about 3/4 of the shaft cut off to be able to fit.

 

 

It's a good thing that, I used screws to attach the mounting plates so, it shouldn't take too long to make the necessary adjustments on the camber and then I can take it apart again and finish the rest of the PE on the front frame and paint it before re-assembling it with the shocks and brakes. I'm still waiting of the shock parts from Uli so, I can't finish that until those parts arrive. If I get all this done to that point then, I'm going to start doing some body modifications next. I want to finish the front end before moving on the the engine and rear suspension.

[cookiezoom]

Loving the work you're doing. You're teaching new skill to me here which no doubt will come in handy. 

Keep up the good work

[Mpfiend]

Hi Wayne,

This looks like an amazing project, you are really ploughing ahead with it. the transit looks very comprehensive, although I was surprised that you have had issues with it after seeing the cost.

the description of the work you have already carried out is a very interesting and informative read. I'm looking forward to every instalment.

 

Best Regards

 

Keith

[rjfk2002]

The screws came to the rescue on this one! The geometry is pretty close for the first mock up and it seems like you can adjust by adding/subtracting shims.  This is  some good engineering on your part Wayne. 

 

Are you going to build a jig to help with the brake vents? That looks to be a tricky bit of soldering work ahead of you

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Tammy,

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being a little too involved in the minutiae of the details of what I'm doing here and it can get a little boring at times. My reasons are that, builds like these require a lot of problem solving that go way beyond instructions. There's no Paul Koo DVD for this car or transkit so, it's a lot of trial and error. Personally, I like to know how someone goes about the building process and the thinking behind it. So, that's part of the why and I know that a few of you are going to be building Pochers with transkits too and some of the process is similar. The last and most important reason is that, I'm also trying to show Rich what to expect when he gets to the same section and what I did. He will know what to expect and can possibly improve on what I have done.

Keith, 

I learned a lot from my Mercedes build as I'm sure that you are as well. Some of obstacles that you have overcome on it will definitely translate to your next build. If anything that, I'm doing helps spark an idea for a problem that anyone is having then that was the point of sharing what worked and what didn't.

Thanks Rich,

As I told you earlier I'm going a little out of sequence on the rotors and I'm sneaking up on them. I keep rethinking the jig and the best way to hold the rotor parts together and be able to solder the edge vent piece in between the two rotor halves. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a trial and error thing but, since I like to over share, you will get the benefit of what comes out of the hamster wheel.

For any of you that, I haven't mentioned, it's not intentional and thanks for checking in now and then. 

[PROPELLER]

It's an hard way larchiefeng, but you are in the good way, congrats!

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the kind words.

Today, I decided that I needed to remove all the shims that I had put in and start over. After I had removed those, I discovered that, I needed to cut out all the small obstructions behind the plate and if any shims were needed i could build up from there. There was a lot of off and on throughout this 3 hour process to get the plates to sit flat. Before I removed anything this morning I decided that I needed the spindles actually snapped down in place to be sure of the position. It dawned on me that I could just remove both the upper and lower arms with the spindle as an assembly. Here are a couple of pictures of the frame pieces with the shims removed and some of what I cut out and what needed to be removed.

 

 

Here we have the spindles attached with the wheels and tires on the them. You can see how off the they are; in fact it's so far off that the angles of the control arms are way different. The left one which is on the right side of the picture shows both arms point up but the ones on the left side of the picture are a little more level on the lower arm.

 

 

Here we are after all the modifications and everything is pretty straight. There might be a couple of small tweaks but, I'm going to have to do measurements on each side in order to dial it in. I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

 

 

In keeping with the before and after photos, here is the right side which wasn't as bad as the left to begin with.

Before:

 

After:

 

Here is the left side which was the worst side.

Before:

 

 

After:

 

The left still needs a tiny tweak to get to vertical; it's barely off and I think that there's still enough room to pull the plate in and get it perfect but, if not the weight of the car would pull it down. Plus, I still need the brake rotors, calipers and shocks attached to the spindles.

 

 

Now, it's a matter of cleaning it up some and adding a couple more pieces of PE to the frame section and I can paint all the brackets and move on. Are we having fun yet? 

 

 

[Pouln]

The answer is yes. Hope you are having fun too, Wayne. 

Nice that you made this adjustable, such that you can get it to be perfect

[silver911]

Some nice work and problem solving going on here Wayne.....not sure it should have to be quite like this for such an outlay....a great learning curve though.

Oh....and not the least bit boring....onward and upward mate.

 

Ron

[larchiefeng]

Thanks guys. I had to completely re position the left lower plate and I finally got it straight. I added some more brass plates on the upper section as well.

 

 

Now, I can move on to doing some more frame modifications. The first thing here is to cut off the front bonnet pivot points and replace with the PE parts. Cutting off the plastic pieces; I'm not sure that this is such a good idea but, I guess we'll see.

 

 

The PE parts seem a little flimsy when compared to the heavy plastic 

 

 

Both side are just placed on. They don't line up in the same place as the molded on parts so, I'm not sure how this is going to line up with the front bonnet. I have a couple more small brass plates to add down in front of each lower control arm bracket. They will need to be painted but, I need to figure out how to mount them and still be able to get the bolts out of the arm and put them back in. The control arms all need to come and everything on the frame needs to be painted. There's still a couple of bolts to be installed in the lower arms as well. I'm still waiting on the front shock parts and other than assembling the front brakes I think that, I'm almost done up here. Once this is painted and assembled, I'm going to jump ahead and start doing some body work. I have a quart of single stage acrylic urethane that I plan on shooting the body with and I figure that, by the time I get the body stripped and prepped the weather should be warm enough to paint.

[silver911]

Pure delight Wayne....some great tips for Rich to follow....and good progress on that puzzle of a transkit

 

 

Ron

[larchiefeng]

Today was busy with a lot of other things but, I did get some time to do a little research on these PE brackets on the front of the frame and discovered they are the front radiator mounting brackets. The PE radiator are circled in green and the actual bonnet pivot points are circled in red. I found that one of the bonnet pivots was broken off so, I think that I'm going to replace both of them with brass rod; I might as well upgrade while I'm in there. Most of this area is as finished as it can be until I get the shock parts. I checked with Uli about the parts and he told me that they are on the way. While I was at it, I asked him to clarify a part number for me with regard to the brake rotors and I found out that, what I was looking was old info and that somehow there are two different sets of instructions back to back without clarification, on the brake rotor and hub assembly. Talk about confusing! Anyway, I'm clear on what needs to happen now and I'll be assembling them tomorrow.

 

 

 

When I decided to get the bonnet out and check it against the brackets and wheels, I started looking at the paint and realized just how bad it is. I had already planned on re-painting the car but, this just reinforced my decision. I disassembled the bonnet and started stripping the paint. 

 

 

Lots of orange peel, bubbles and general paint defects. Just really poor paint in general.

 

 

I hope that, Rich's car has better paint than this one. It's really disappointing the quality of the paint but, when this car first came out it was selling for $199.95.

[larchiefeng]

First thing this morning I started removing all the assembled parts off of the body parts.

 

 

Everything is removed down to the bare body pieces.

 

 

Into the soup with the chemical paint stripper because it was the easiest method for removing all this paint.

 

 

Whatever is still on after a day or two will get blasted off in the sandblasting cabinet; seen behind on the bench. You can also see two new spray guns between the cabinet and paper towel roll. I ordered one and for some reason they sent me two; go figure.

 

 

A better shot of the stripper at work. The two pieces in the foreground were actually started last night as was the bonnet so, that's why they have more paint bubbling up.

 

 

Meanwhile, back inside the house. Here are all the pieces that go into making just one brake rotor for the front. Notice the piece in the background; it wraps around the edge of the assembled rotor halves and gets soldered to the edges to create the rotor venting. This is what I've been spending a bit of time thinking about how best to clamp the whole thing together and still have two hands free to solder. The more that, I thought about the more I'm thinking a low tech approach might work best; tape and a vise. A vise to hold the halves together and a piece of tape to hold one small section of the vent on the edges and do a quick solder joint.

 

 

Some assembly required and started!

 

 

More later when I get one done.

 

 

 

[Pascal]

Nice work. Did the "manual" of the transkit come with the F-40 parts drawings ? If not, you can find them here : eurospares.co.uk

 

Years ago, a friend of mine build the Pocher F-40 with the Autograph transkit, I can give you the link to his wip, it has tons of pictures, but the language is dutch. 

 

Did a lot of work on Pocher F-40's myself (my barchetta wip is on this forum) and did a lot of research on the F-40. If I can help you with this project, please let me know.

 

To open the cooling vents, I thinned the zamac from the inside with my dremel. Then used a cutting disc to make small cuts. These cuts were then widened and shaped with juwelers files.

 

When the paint is completely removed from the engine lid, look for the nasty mould line that's on the front and inside of the pillars for the rear wing. 

 

OOB the F-40 doors will close nicely. With the modifications of the transkit, the kit locking mechanism will be completely gone. If you want the doors to close properly, glue some magnets inside the door and inside the frame of the body.

 

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Pascal,

 I have read his build on that website more than once and it's probably a better reference than the Autograph instructions. The package from Autograph did come with all the exploded Ferrari parts diagrams. As I've been making note of the transkit instructions are not very clear and leave a lot of details out. This requires a lot of extra research just to find the right picture with the correct angle for me to see how things are actually supposed to be installed. In reading the section on the front suspension, I see that he also had a problem with getting the front control arms and getting the spindle vertical. Oddly enough it was the same side that, I had trouble with, the left side.

I'm assuming that you are the same Pascal, moderator, on that website that was so helpful to Ton on his build? I only hope that I can get something close to the same results that, he was able to achieve. Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated. 

I was looking at the heavy die cast of the rear clam shell and I was thinking about thinning out from the underneath and then working on the actual vent openings from the top with the Dremel to get most of the material removed and as you said, finish them up with a file. My only issue with coming from underneath is the exact location of the vents so, I was thinking about drilling a couple of holes from the top to act as locators and then thin from below in between the two holes.

 I also read about using the magnets in the bottom of the doors and on the door sill too. I have used rare earth magnets before and I know how powerful they can be so, any advice on the size and if there is anything else to be aware of on them would be helpful. 

Lastly, I don't recall having seen the link to your Barchetta sip on Ton's build but, I'd really like to see it so, if you could post it or send it to me in a PM that, would be great.

Thanks

 

Edited April 7, 2017 by larchiefeng

[Pascal]

Yes, I am the same Pascal.

 

For the vents on top of the engine lid, I cut these from the outside. Did the same with the vents on the rear spoiler.

The vents that are on both sides of the engine lid have extra zamac on the inside, this is the material that I thinned from the inside.

 

I'm very glad to help you with this project. Will send you the links to my barchetta wip and also the wip with my own version of the front suspension (that one has extra details that are not in the transkit).

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Pascal, your experience and references will be invaluable to Rich and I  on this project. 

As you know, there's not one but, two of these builds going on in this thread.

 I'm a little farther along than Rich at this point due to his wanting to finish the big Pocher Volvo truck build. With that beast on his bench, there's no room for anything else but, a few engine pieces.

 I'm building mine more from front to back and trying to tackle some of the more difficult sections like the front suspension. Rich is starting on the engine and is going to be working on this first. I'm assuming that, at some point we will overlap but, since I'm going to paint mine, I started the paint removal now while I'm waiting on the front shock parts to arrive. 

I did spend time last night with the drill press and drilled out some holes on one of the rotors and I have most of it assembled and ready to solder the PE vent on the edge. When I have the one together I'm just going to continue on and do the other and possibly both rear rotors.

 

[Pascal]

This is one of the sites that I use for reference material  : https://www.ferraris-online.com/pages/sold.php?pg=10

 

Looking forward to see the progress on both F-40's.

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2017 by Pascal

[Pascal]

I've found my wip that I started in 2008 : https://modelbrouwers.nl/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=15958

 

That was my very first time that I showed my work on the internet. The wip shows how I made the springs from scratch and has pics like this one that show the scratchbuild front of the the F40 :

 

 

And the opening of the vents :

 

 

 

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Pascal, I have been looking at your Barchetta build today as well and it's giving me some ideas for doing an LM version but, I haveto give that some serious thought. 

 

This afternoon I managed to finish the vent on one rotor and I made a few mistakes but, I know what I did and after a little clean up on this one it will be fine and the next three should be much easier. It's always the first one where you have a learning curve and by the time you're done with the lot, you think that, was easy. Anyway, I also played around with the drill press and by using it at speed I didn't break as many bits. lol. Here we are starting and I'm waiting for my new sliding compound table to replace this funky vise set up here.

 

 

A little wider shot of the messy and crowded bench.

 

 

Rotor halves glued up 

 

 

Finally assembled but still needs a little cleaning up.

 

 

Meanwhile back out in the garage things are getting really crinkly now!

 

 

 

That was the overnight result with the stripper being for 8-10 hours. I scrapped off quite a bit and reapplied more stripper and will let it sit overnight again and then I'll wash it all off tomorrow use the blaster and wire brush to get the surface clean. I may have to use more stripper on the underneath areas that will possibly show. I would rather have everything down to bare metal and start with the same surface for all the primer and paint when I get to that point.

 

 

Messy and hard to hold on to when scraping the paint off but, much easier in the long run.

 

 

Well, now I need to do a little reading on Pascal's build threads and see if I can pick up some tricks. I had mentioned in my Testarossa thread that, I was sure that I would pick up some ideas from this build that, I could apply to that build. I think from the first few pages of Pascal's F40 thread on how he scratch built the front suspension pieces from plastic card, I know how I can upgrade the Testarossa's suspension. it's always one thing that leads to something else and we all learn from each other. This is getting fun now!

 

 

 

[larchiefeng]

I just finished going through your F40 build Pascal and if I decide to go with the LM version, your front frame and suspension is a great blueprint. I'm assuming that the reason you didn't finish the build on the thread is because you switched over to the Barchetta build? I'm only about 17 pages in on that one and I see some similar things between the two. You have given me a lot to think about here; great scratch building on the two. I'm curious about the shocks that you made especially, the eyebolt top and bottom pieces; did you scratch build them or did you find them somewhere? Anyway, lots of good reference material there!

[Pouln]

Some nice progress, Wayne. Don't look too much at Pascals Barchetta build. I remember thar Pascal is one of those fearless people that dare to cut up a die cast model completely.

Before you know it you're going down the same route.

 

All kidding aside. Great stuff, here. Keep it coming.

Edited April 8, 2017 by Pouln

[rjfk2002]

Pascal thanks for the joining the conversation. Your build as well as Ton's have been fascinating reads. Thank goodness for Google chrome translator!

 

I am still drilling out bolts on my engine. I will post some pics when I have made some more progress. I am struggling to come close to the pace of Andretti Wayne over there 

[larchiefeng]

Thanks guys but, remember, I'm not building a monster truck either. Here's a short update on the paint removal from the stripper sitting overnight again. It's pretty clean, some more than others but, it's looking good. My plan for cutting out the vents and so on are to do it in the garage where the big tools are but, it's really cold today and not where I want to be at the moment. So, here's a couple of pictures of the chemical stripper process., The next thing to do will be to turn everything over and apply the stripper to the underneath as well. There's a few pieces that will get carbon fiber decals and I want to clean up the raised casting and sink marks before a primer coat and a finish coat of paint. I want everything completely stripped so I can paint the entire car the new color.

 

 

Having read about half of Pascal's Barchetta build, I think that you may be correct Poul. He is pretty fearless when it comes to cutting up the F40. If I do anything other than the vents it will be somewhat minor, I want to finish this build in my lifetime!