Finishing up the rear floor

So the last act before setting the suspension up for the VIR test Friday was to fit the rear floor to the car. If you remember my Dad, Bill had made up the floor for me a few weeks ago. We used an old torn up FC diffuser for the basis, and Dad took some basic measurements of the car right before I trucked everything up to Maryland for Eric to do his magic.

So, it was with more than a little trepidation that I carted the floor out of the trailer last night. I hoped it would fit easily, but I had to suspect that it would not be that simple.

Fortunately, if not miraculously, Dad pretty much got it spot on the first time. The only real mod required was to enlarge the flange areas where the floor meets the joining aluminum plates at the side pod bottoms, and reducing the size of the 'tounge" area that slips in on top of the chassis floor under the front of the oil pan.

After a little dremel work I decided that the enlarged flange areas were too week (because I had to remove the outside glass layer. Fortunately I had just replentished my composites suppies from Fiberglast.com. So a little expoxy and some 1" eglass tape were applied to strengthen the area back up and a few mangled old mounting holes were repaired.

I am not a terribly patient person. (In fact I was one of those kids who could never build a good Revell model because I was too impatient to wait for the glue to dry step by step). But I supressed my urge to rush the process, and the result was worth the wait...

To set the floor height I clamped a couple of pieces of square tube to the sidepod floors so that I could gauge the curvature of the undertray and make sure that I did not stray from the 1" deviation rule. (FF rules specify that the bottom of the car must be flat - within 1" from the front of the car to the rear of the rear tires). Wanting to make a bit of extra downforce, I elected to set the back of the floor up a bit, but not close enough to invoke the wrath of the tech inspectors (hopefully).

And here is the final product. Two 8 hour nights of adjusting, making brackets, mounting, fitting the rear 'filler' panels etc...

I am pretty pleased with the result. It is very stiff and pretty light. Hopefully it will work as good as it looks on the car.