Pocher F40 with Autograph transkit upgrade challenge build

[Pascal]

Hi Wayne,

 

I think that your collars are to long and the stems of the eyebolts are to short, that's why to look a bit strange.

 

A reference pic :

 

 

Those hoses are not attached to the turbo's, but look at the length of the stems on the eyebolts.

 

This pic shows the "eye-bolt" lines attached to the turbo's, same thing here, the stems of the eyebolts are quite long :

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Codger]

Pascal you have amazing reference pics.

[rjfk2002]

Spectacular photos Pascal! Did you get access to the real car?

[Pascal]

The last 2 photos were found online (build log of the F40 BPR spec). I used to have a very large amount of reference photos (taken by a very kind F40 owner in the US), but lost nearly all of them when my PC crashed a couple of years ago. Sadly the owner has sold his F40, so that source is gone. 

I took a couple hundred photos myself, but those are of the F40 Beurlys.

THE number 1 reference is the "back to life" DVD, made by the german who rebuild a crashed F40.

 

Sincerely 

 

Pascal

[larchiefeng]

I had to go back and read my own thread this morning just to see where I had left off! I think that, I've figured it out. I have been working on a few different things trying to get what I want before posting it. So, consequently I've been jumping around between the turbo lines, turbos, pipes and exhaust system. I figured that, I needed to get the turbos mounted to the headers before I could finish the hoses because of the lengths. I have also made the decision to abandon the muffler completely and make straight pipes like an LM version. This is where it all went sideways the last few weeks. I also needed to fix the the turbo mounting plates to the headers because the screws were not straight, I added texture to the exhaust turbo and repainted them so let's start there with the catch up.

 

Added the texture

 

Repainted 

 

Here is where it started to go wrong for me on the turbo flanges. I couldn't get the holes drilled far enough to the outside of the flange without going through the edge of the plastic.

The PE flange hole pattern was just slightly wider to get all the bolts straight through

 

So, my solution was to just cut off the molded on flanges and make new ones,

 

Nothing fancy just plastic card using the PE as a pattern

 

Much better fit

 

I know the turbo is facing the wrong way but, I'm just mocking them up 

 

One on the right way and one on the wrong way. So at this point things are going OK and would have been a much faster build but, here's where I changed my mind about the muffler!

 

I realized that the turbo pipes were going to need quite a bit of modification to get them going straight back instead of an angle. You can also see that the turbo flange is not lining up with the end of the header.

It was at this point that I had to get the turbos glued onto the end of the headers in order to work out the piping from the turbos all the way out the back of the car

 

Working on some tubing size possibilities to connect from the flanges out the back. I wanted to use the Pocher pipe parts as much as possible from the turbos just because everything fits and it's going to be enough work going from there out. I wanted to use solder for the pipes but, I can't find that size solder, it's just too big of an O.D. I will use solder to make the template for the bends and then transfer it to either plastic or metal tubing

 

Back to the turbo lines for a few minutes. I made a hose and did a mock up before I replaced the flanges and these comments are from a friend that, I had sent this picture to. Everything has been done with the possible exception of shortening the pipe out of the turbo. I have the washers and have reversed the collars. So, I had to go back and prep some of the hoses again but, I won't be finishing any of them until the turbos are mounted and ready for the hoses. You can also see the blow out of the bolt through flange and why I made the new flanges

 

I have some more for next time on the hoses and then the pipe reconfiguration. 

[mirage]

I joined the forum after I saw this topic. Superlative work, sincere congratulations. 

[Pascal]

Nice work Wayne,

 

An alternative for tubing (to replace or modifiy the turbo tubes) is solid alu rod.  It's cheap and much easier to bend then hollow tubing. I order mine from a flowershop, where they are used to decorate pots and plants.

[larchiefeng]

Thanks Pascal, as always you are a great source of knowledge especially when it comes to scratch building! And, speaking of scratch building, that's quite the project that, you have going on Mirage! I've been waiting to comment on your undertaking but, you were firing out updates as fast as I could read them at the beginning. I'm glad that you found some small bit of inspiration from my build and it encouraged you to join the forum and start posting your outstanding scratch built update to the Pocher F-40. That thing has got to be getting pretty heavy by now that, you have joined most all of the main body pieces together. It's probably not something you just pick up and work on in your lap now that it weighs close to 6-7 pounds! I plan on getting over to your thread and spending some time catching up on your progress and posting more there, keep up the good work! 

So, Pascal, what ever happened to your F-40 Barchetta in 1/8 scale, did you ever finish it?

I'm not posting any updates tonight but, I thought that I should respond to you guys and thank everyone who has popped in to view my last post. I should be posting an update with pictures etc either tomorrow or Friday. And, I intend to work on it quite a bit this weekend since last weekend was mostly taken up with getting ready for winter. Everything is as good as it's going to get on that score so, it's model time and F1 for me this weekend!

[terrible4130]

What do you use to add the texture on the turbos?

 

Edited November 14, 2019 by terrible4130

[Pascal]

29 minutes ago, larchiefeng said:

...

So, Pascal, what ever happened to your F-40 Barchetta in 1/8 scale, did you ever finish it?

...

Sadly no. It's safely packed in a couple of plastic boxes. During the build, I ran into a big problem : I thought that the engine, gearbox and rear suspension were attached to a tubular chassis like on a normal F-40. But the F-40 Beurlys doesn't have a chassis at all, it's basically a carbon fibre bathtub (with some steel frame inside I suspect, but that's not visible) to which the front and rear suspension, engine and gearbox are attached. I found that out while I was building the model (the real car had a major overhaul and that gave me some very nice reference pics) , but had no idea how to make the construction strong enough to carry all that weight. So I paused the build and it's been like that for a couple of years. But I will pick it up again one day, have had a number of ideas how to solve weight problem. First I have to get the whole silicone / rubber / resin thing sorted out (with my cute Porsche project), then I have to learn how to vacuform parts. When that is done I can finish the 1/18 scale Ferrari builds that I have going on, and then finally it's back to the 1/8 scale F-40's.

[larchiefeng]

I used some model spray interior texture paint and then painted Alclad exhaust manifold color over it to get just the right amount of texture on the turbos.

[larchiefeng]

Thanks again Pascal, I did order some 6063 aluminum rod to use on my exhaust pipes. I did a bunch of work on the turbo pipes getting them ready for the aluminum rod which, won't be here until Monday, I think. I also ordered some brass hex rod to experiment with on the lathe to try and make some Aeroquip fittings and they broke my order into 3 different shipments so, I don't know for sure what is coming tomorrow. Anyway, I still have some pictures of the hose/eye bolt fabrications.

 

As usual, I made a few mistakes and tried some different approaches to fabricating them using the eye bolts as the end fittings. The way and materials the Autograph transkit give you are just some wire and brass collars. Basically, you strip the plastic/rubber off the wire and expose the stainless sheath like on coax cable which is what passes for the stainless steel hose. You get 2-3 different sizes to use for various hoses on the car and they also supply some brass collars that have a ridge in the middle and you are supposed to cut them in half. That's it and, you are supposed to slip some solder inside the mesh sleeve and the brass collars on each end and then slip the collar over the end of various white metal fittings. I kinda wanted something a little better on six of the turbo fittings and what follows are my attempts to get more detail and also get the hoses assembled to hold it altogether without looking like a mess.

First idea and not so good

 

OK, but it wasn't going to work

 

Better but, I had too much eye bolt inside the collar and no way to really hold the braided hose with solder inside to the collar.

Too much stress on the connection and glue wasn't going to hold it. Back to the drawing board

 

I realized that, I needed a mechanical connection between the eye bolt and the hose. So I cut off some thread from the eye bolt and drilled holes in the bottom

 

I figured that I could solder some brass rod on the bottom and put it inside the hose. So far so good

 

 

Not the cleanest soldering work but it can be bent straight and it's inside the hose

 

Moving right along

 

Now, I needed the bolt and washers. I bought some 2mm washers from MMC but, the OD was way bigger than the OD of the eye bolt. So, here's the solution.

Kind of hard to see but, if you look closely you can see a stack of washers chucked into the drill press.

 

Better view

 

Here's how they came and what they looked like when I got done filing them down

 

Eye bolt with washers and bolt inside the sleeve

 

That replaces this which is supposed to represent the eye bolt with the bolt through it. It's OK as far as it goes but, the connection end at the bottom is what the braided hose is supposed to connect to.

That connection point is about 2mm long and isn't strong enough to hold the braided line on for too long. I guess that it remains to be seen if my option will look any better.

 

Here's a few pictures with one unfinished hose just mocked up on the turbo while I'm working on the exhaust pipe mod

 

Each turbo has three of these type of connections and I still have to dial in the eye bolt lengths etc. I put this part aside while I worked on changing the exhaust. I needed the turbos on the headers so, I can work on the exhaust pipe positions etc. 

I didn't want any of the hoses on the the turbos to get in my way or possibly break off. You will see what I mean on the next couple of posts. The engine goes in and out of the frame and rear body panel has to go on to shape the exhaust pipes out the back and so on. More next time.

 

 

[Dr. Fiat]

Incredible work!!!!

 

[Pascal]

You're getting there Wayne. Have you tried a smaller diameter sleeve / collar ? Judging from your photos I think you have some mm's to spare at the moment.

[larchiefeng]

Thanks guys! Unfortunately, no, there’s no room to spare inside the collars. The OD of the braided hose is almost too big to fit inside the ID of the collar. What makes it look like room to spare is the OD of the eye bolt shaft inside the collar. I am going to add a little something inside that end to fill the gap between the collar and eye bolt shaft. There’s a lot of stuff stuffed inside the collar! There’s the eye bolt with brass wire soldered on, another piece of tubing, and the braided hose all inside the collar. This is what took me so long to figure out; how to get the eye bolt with a mechanical connection and glue all packed into the collar without it looking like a mess.

It’s all figured out and ready for assembly but, I have to finish up the LM straight exhaust pipes first. I mentioned a while back that I’m eliminating the muffler and building the pipes right out the rear. So, once again, I just can’t leave well enough alone and build it from the kit; even if it’s a transkit! 😎

Edited November 18, 2019 by larchiefeng

[Pascal]

The pipes will make a nice difference. Are you going full naked pipes ? :

 

 

This site has some very nice photos : https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/pa19/paris/lots/r0085-1987-ferrari-f40-lm/740406

 

Or more a tubi style exhaust ? :

 

[larchiefeng]

Naked baby! And even with weld seams! I just wish that I had good pictures from the turbos all the way back without the air box , waste gate and plates in the way. I’m trying to use the plastic Pocher pipes and cut them and reposition them to go straight back. In that first picture it almost looks like that there’s an equalizer pipe between the two turbo pipes. It’s hard to tell and, it appears that even the waste gate pipe is connected in the whole group of pipes. That can’t be correct, is it? Do you have or do you know where there’s any pictures that show all that better? Thanks 😊 

[Pascal]

This is an original Ferrari F40 LM exhaust system. Upside down to show you the front end of the pipes :

 

 

This photo gives you an idea how the pipes bend towards the turbo's :

 

For reference only

 

And of course Michael Sheehan's website has great pics like this one :

 

From Ferraris-online.com, for reference only

[larchiefeng]

The first picture shows what I suspected about the brackets attached to the pipes that attach to the rear muffler bracket. The pipes out of the turbos are going to be problematic for me now. I’m going to have to remake them because I came out of the turbos and went straight back instead of making the big bend to the center and back outside and straight back like the bottom picture. Good thing that I have an extra set of pipes. At least I know how they are supposed to be routed, thanks Pascal. You really are a fountain of F40 knowledge! 

[Urshimato]

This rebuild will probably show all you are looking for 

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/f40-lm-restoration.396915/page-5 

Kind regards

Wayne

[larchiefeng]

As usual, I got a little sidetracked, only this time it was a pretty big snow storm. We got 4 feet of snow starting the night before Thanksgiving for 48 hours straight. That, put a real crimp in my style and it really wore me out. The weather has been pretty dark, wet and gloomy every weekend since so, not conducive to doing too much. Anyway, I have been working on and off on the pipes from the turbos and exhaust. Since I made the decision to eliminate the muffler and go with the straight LM exhaust it's been a bit of a challenge to get them right. So, what follows is a lot of cutting and reassembly to try and get something that resembles the picture that Pascal supplied above.

 

First things first. I had to cut the turbo pipes to get the pipes to go straight back as opposed to angling outward towards each side of the muffler. So, the first thing was a cut to get the new angle.

 

Things are going in the right direction 

 

Added a weld seam to cover the cuts in the pipes

 

Both sides looking generally correct.

 

Playing around with some tubing pieces to see if I can get the shape of the pipe bends but, the tubing is too big

 

The turbo pipes are too far to the right

 

Painted the pipes with the weld seams

 

I was pretty happy with the way the seams look

 

Here is where things started getting weird. Notice the direction the pipes are going.

 

Time for more surgery to try and correct the angle

 

Sorta OK but, not quite right, especially the right one

 

Really not happy with this and this was done before the storm so, I had time to sit on it and think about it

 

I dug out the rear frame and body panel so that, I could put the engine in there and see how it all looked in relationship to the exhaust opening in the rear panel

 

Kinda going in the right direction

 

I thought that I could make these pipes work so, I started filling the seams

 

The left one is iffy but, the right one is too far to the right but, like I said this was all before the storm and Pascal's pictures and I was going to probably settle

 

It didn't look tooo bad but....

 

I could almost settle for it, almost but...

 

It even started to look OK from a distance , LOL

 

Needless to say, after thinking about this and looking at the crooked misaligned pipes for a few weeks, I knew that, I had to fix this. My next post will be the fix and a lot more surgery on the turbo muffler pipes. Good thing that I had two mufflers and two sets of pipes to make most of the exhaust system. I really could have used one more muffler to make it all out of the same size plastic but, the part from the back of the transaxle out the rear will have to be made from aluminum rod and brass tubing. 

[JeroenS]

Good thing you're fixing it, it would have nagged at you forever. Btw four feet of snow would put a damper on my spirits as well, I'm not a winter person at all🙂 ... Luckily we usually only get a little bit of it down here. 

[larchiefeng]

Sorry for the long interval between posts again but, you could say that Christmas was a rinse and repeat of Thanksgiving around here. Pretty much everything that happened then also happened the day after Christmas except it was only 24" of snow. Anyway, after my last post, I did continue down the road of trying to correct the Pocher kit turbo pipes that, I was trying to modify. I was lamenting the lack of one more muffler to give me enough of the same size pipe to make them the way I wanted them. I also mentioned that I was going to start looking into the use of other types of materials that were the same diameter as what I was working with. I started with the white pipes shown earlier but, they were a little larger in diameter than the Pocher pipes. I tried to turn down some aluminum rod and looked at brass tubing and even the plastic engine intake pipes etc. etc.  Here are some pictures of the various materials.

 

 

I turned down the white plastic tubing to the diameter of the Pocher pipes but, I could only get so far. I would also need the various pieces with 90 degree and 45 degree bends for this to work and I was only working on the straight pieces here.

 

So, here are some pictures of me trying to get those pipes to look more like the picture that Pascal sent of how those pipes look in real life off of the turbos.

Changing the length that the pipes come out of the turbo to go more to the middle of the transaxle with the intention of putting another bend back in

 

Got the right side more to the center. The reference point for the mid point on these pipes are the two brass rod bracket on the transaxle.

 

So far so good and here's a little mock up going to the rear

 

Looks good but, still no "S" bend between the turbos and brass rod bracket

 

Working on the rearward pipes and making lots of cuts to try and get the right shape. Also back to other materials.

 

Looks good but, too straight

 

Trying it to see how it looks with the waste gate pipe. 

 

Working on the mid pipe section

 

Once again, it looks good but, just too straight

 

This is what I'm talking about in case you forgot. Notice the pretty dramatic S bend out of the turbos. The other thing that, is very noticeable is the larger size of the pipes 

 

So, after trying to obtain and make more pipe the same size as what I've been working with here and failing, I have decided to try a different tack. I am going a different route and I have realized that, I won't be able to make as sharp of an S bend as I want. Every attempt has only resulted in broken plastic or kinked tubing and frankly this has gone on far too long! So, with that in mind my next post will show what I have settled on as an acceptable solution. It's definitely not perfect but, I think that it looks better than the straight pipes. The next post will be representing approximately two weeks worth of work and tonight I'll be painting them so I can post more of a finished product (the pipes).

 

 

[larchiefeng]

Before I start showing you guys my new direction on the pipes, I thought I would show you something that, I picked up before Christmas. The transkit that I got was not one of the original run of Autograph transkits and and it had the turned aluminum outer wheels with the cast stock Ferrari inner wheels. In any other circumstance I would probably have been very happy to have real metal wheels to go with the MMC real rubber tires that, I picked up over a year ago. But, I've always wanted the OZ wheels mainly because they were more of a racing version type wheel. I've been on the look out for a set of OZ wheels for years and recently I stumbled across some sets of aluminum OZ wheels and some resin OZ wheels. Looking at the aluminum ones they didn't look quite right. It said that they were from a transkit but, I had some doubts. There was just something about the way spokes finished into the outer wheel that didn't look right that, and the price was around $500 for the set. At the same time I found the resin wheels and the ones I bought had two types of rear wheels. One type was just a normal depth of wheel and the other set of rear wheels had deeper set inners. I bought that set and got two types of rear wheels along with the front rims. I've only gotten around to getting a coat of primer on them and I decided to just set them under the body parts to see what they would look like. 

 

 

This is the deeper rear wheel; I hope they will fit under the body when all the suspension gets installed

 

Back to the pipes. Like I mentioned yesterday I tried a variety of methods to bend the plastic to get the "S" bend in the pipes. Here, I went back to the hot water method that, I used on the Mercedes to repair the warp in the hood panels. I took this picture before it got up to the 197 degrees that I used to heat up the plastic before bending it.

Even heating it up that much, when I started bending it, it got only so far and I could see the plastic starting to stress fracture. I did break one of the smaller pipes off of one of the pipes and at that point I realized that I was not going to be able to bend them enough to get what I was after so, I stopped.

I had been going down this road for a few months trying to get a satisfactory LM exhaust system after I had made the decision to eliminate the muffler and go with more or less straight pipes. Actually, I was going for straight pipes and I had that accomplished until Pascal showed the picture of what a real LM exhaust system looked like. That image really stuck in my head and I knew that, unless I could get something closer to it, I wouldn't be satisfied. Such a stupid little thing like that, just sent me down another rabbit hole. Probably no one else would notice or care but, it bugs me and if I didn't at least try it would forever bug me. If I tried and failed that's one thing but, to just let it go wasn't going to happen.

 

So, here we are, welcome to the rabbit hole! 🐰

 

As you can see I am going with the white tubing that has all the various 90's and 45's as well as straight tubes. Even with all that, it still took a lot of surgery to get what I wanted

 

I still had to use the smaller rod from the original pipes to go through both turbo section. This was the first piece that broke off when trying to make the bends.

 

Both pipes getting fabricated

 

Test fit with the old and new pipes. The new ones are fractionally larger and they look better; remember what I said yesterday about the size in the picture of the real ones? 

 

Closer

 

Obviously some work yet to be done but, the it's a work in progress. The right side pipe is too short coming out of the turbo here

 

Looking at still trying to use a section of the original pipes with the flanges. Also, I added a piece to make the right side longer out of the turbo on this pipe

 

Got the right pipe going more in the right direction towards the rear. Even though I don't have the pronounced "S" right out of the turbos I am able to get the pipes more to the center and then bring them back around the brass rod bracket.

 

Because I was cutting so many sections and they had different orientations, I started marking them to try and keep everything going in the right direction 

 

Things are starting to come together and the pipes aren't so straight anymore. Lots of cut sections and plastic and copper rod inside. Here, I'm still thinking that I can use the rear section from the original pipes

 Just trying to hold the parts in place to see how it looks

 

Time to start sanding and filling the gaps

 

Here's a tool that, I haven't used in a few years but, it was perfect for this job, the handy Flexifile

 

Turned out that the green putty was too dried out to work well 

 

Had to go to the heavy artillery- Bondo!

 

To look at them now you wouldn't know there were so many pieces just to make this little pipe! Still have some gaps to fill but, that's what primer is for, to see what still needs work.

 

Still clinging to hope that I will be able to use these sections?

 

Almost done with the sanding and filling

 

Added some weld seams

 

Painted black prior to shooting the air frame aluminum substitute for polished stainless steel

 

I just can't seem to let go of those rear sections of pipe

 

We'll see what happens tomorrow, actually this was a couple days ago and I know what happens and, you will too tomorrow after I get some more pictures resized and upload to my blog hosting site. I don't trust any of these free picture hosting sites so, all I do is resize my pictures there and load them all to my blog site and link from there to here. Anyway, more tomorrow. I actually have been working on this, I just wanted to get to a point where I had something to show you guys. Once we get past these pipes we can go back and finish up the turbo lines with the eye bolts and other things that, I was working before I tripped and fell down the rabbit hole.

 

 

 

[JeroenS]

A cliffhanger yet again! 🙂 Superb effort on those pipes, like you said you wouldn't know there are so many pieces.