Tuned In Dec 17, 2025

153: A High School Project Gone Wild: 1,450HP IndyCar x Firebird

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Car

Pontiac Hammerhead Time Attack car

It’s a special version of a classic Pontiac car that has been changed a lot to go faster on the track.

Part

Cosworth XD

The Cosworth XD is a powerful 3.5‑liter V8 engine made by the British company Cosworth. It’s known for high revs and strong performance in racing cars.

Part

ECU

An ECU is like the brain of a car’s engine, telling it when to add fuel and spark so it runs smoothly.

Term

sparkbox

A sparkbox is a little box that tells the car when to fire its spark plugs. It lets people change how the engine runs, especially if they use a new computer to control it.

Concept

Indie Car

Indie Car is a racing competition where teams can only use parts that the organizers allow, so everyone has to work with the same set of tools.

Part

front wing

It’s a flat piece on the front of a racing car that helps push the car down onto the track so it doesn’t slip when going fast.

Part

rear wing

It’s a flat piece on the back of a racing car that helps keep it stable and glued to the road when turning fast.

Term

drag

Think of drag as wind pushing against a car. The less wind resistance, the faster it can go.

Term

spec series

In a spec series, every racer has the same kind of car, so who wins depends more on how well they drive.

Concept

IndyCar

IndyCar is a racing series in the U.S. where all cars are built to be the same, so drivers have to rely on their driving talent.

Brand

Mercedes

Mercedes is a German car brand that also runs a racing team in Formula One.

Brand

Red Bull

Red Bull is a racing team that competes in Formula One and is named after the energy drink company.

Brand

Ferrari

Ferrari makes high-performance sports cars that are famous for their speed and style.

Term

CAD

CAD is a computer program that helps designers draw and model car parts on the screen so they can see how everything fits together before making it.

Term

fabricator

A fabricator is someone who builds metal parts, like cars or frames, by cutting and welding them together.

Term

welding

Welding is when you heat metal pieces until they melt and then let them cool so they stick together tightly.

Term

laser

A laser is a device that shoots a straight, bright beam of light. Mechanics use it to make sure parts are perfectly level or lined up.

Term

down force

Down force is like a big invisible hand that pushes the car down onto the road, helping it stay on track when going fast around corners.

Term

speedway cars

Speedway cars are special race cars that run on big oval tracks, built to go very fast and stay steady.

Term

suspension components

Suspension parts are the parts that help a car stay on the road, like springs and shock absorbers, keeping it stable over bumps.

Term

racing line

The racing line is the best way to drive around a track so you can go fast and stay on the road, like following the smoothest path.

Term

buckling

Buckling happens when a part that’s under pressure suddenly bends or collapses sideways. It can cause parts to break if not designed properly.

Term

contact patch

The part of the tire that touches the road is called a contact patch. It’s important because it determines how well the car can grip and steer.

Term

turbo

A turbo is a small machine that makes your car’s engine breathe more air, so it can make more power.

Term

dyno

A dyno is a machine that lets mechanics see how much power a car’s engine makes. By putting the car on a special platform, they can measure and adjust its performance safely.

Term

ethanol

Ethanol is a kind of alcohol you can add to gasoline. It helps the engine run cleaner and can give it more power.

Part

intercooling

An intercooler is a device that cools the hot air coming from a turbo or supercharger before it goes into the engine. Cooler air is denser and helps the car run better.

Part

intercooler

Think of an intercooler as a small fridge that cools the hot air coming from the turbo before it goes into the engine, so the engine can run better.

Term

coke bottle shape

Think of a soda bottle that gets narrower in the middle and then flares out at the bottom. Cars with this shape can cut through air more smoothly, which helps them go faster or use less fuel.

Part

fiberglass

Fiberglass is a strong, light material made from tiny glass strands. It’s used in cars to make parts lighter and stronger.

Part

honeycomb

Honeycomb is a light, strong material that looks like a honeycomb. It’s used in cars to keep parts stiff while keeping them light.

Part

Kevlar

Kevlar is a very strong plastic fiber that can stop things from breaking through. It’s used in cars to keep people safe if something hits the car.

LIVE

We weren't going for power at all on this build. The last thing this car needs is power. We were right before the gearbox broke. It was spinning in fourth gear at 130 miles per hour. And when it finally did give out our tuner, thinks it was making 1800 horsepower. Wow, okay. That is some power.

We're joined by Kevin Cameron from Horizon Motorsports in the US. Kevin and his dad came on our radar after our recent trip to World Time Attack where they debuted their Pontiac Hammerhead Time Attack car. And this is no normal Pontiac. It started life as a 1973 Pontiac Firebird. However, really the only Pontiac remaining is the outside skin and that is now, of course, heavily modified.

The interesting part from our perspective, though, is under the skin, it is essentially a Indie car. And it's quite unique because obviously Indie cars are an open-wheel, wings and slicks formula. And all of that Indie car technology has been jammed under the skin of this Pontiac Firebird.

The reason for this, we might be thinking that's an unusual choice, but the reason for this is that in a past life, Kevin's dad actually owned and ran an Indie car team. And of course, as part of this ended up with a huge array of spares just sitting there gathering dust and going to waste.

So this decided that this was the match made in heaven. This is an absolute work of art. And considering Kevin came into this project essentially with zero skills, he's used this as his own education essentially while he's also completing a motorsport engineering degree.

All of the design and development, the welding on the chassis, has been done primarily by Kevin. And we also talk about how he has leveraged some of the technologies we always hear about now, such as 3D scanning, 3D modeling, with more generic techniques from an older earlier time, such as let's say cardboard-aided design.

We talk about where CAD really has its place and where sometimes maybe simpler techniques also absolutely have their place to.

Before we jump into our chat, for those who are new to the Children and Podcast, high performance academy is an online training school. We specialize in teaching people how to build performance engines, how to tune EFI, how to construct wiring harnesses.

We also cover topics on fabrication, 3D modeling and CAD, race driver education and data logging, just to name a few. You can find all of our courses at hpcameri.com forward slash courses.

All of these courses are delivered in a high definition video modules that you can watch from anywhere in the world provided you've got an internet connection. This means you can learn from the comfort of your own place and you can learn at your own pace.

All of our courses also come with a 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee. So if your purchase and for any reason at all decide it wasn't quite what you expected, no problem. Let us know. We'll give you a full refund.

And for podcast listeners, you can also use the coupon code podcast 75 that will get you $75 off the purchase of your very first HPA course. We'll put the coupon code in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you to find.

Lastly, if you like free stuff, then I've got a great deal for you. We are constantly partnering with some of the biggest names in the aftermarket performance industry to give away some great prizes. You can always find our latest prize at hpcameri.com forward slash giveaway. It might be an aftermarket ECU or dash. It could be some engine components or engine building tools or just about anything in between.

They are great prizes and we will ship them free of charge to your door if you're the winner. There's no tricks here, no purchase required to get your name into the drawer.

All right, enough without introduction. Let's get into our interview now. All right, Kevin. Thanks for joining us today. And as always, let's start by diving into your past and learning how you build up a passion for cars and motorsport.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been a long time listener of the show and it's awesome to be here. First time cooler.

Yeah, so the background. Yeah, what happened? What sort of seat you off on this path?

So it's safe to say I've been bitten by the car bug pretty early on. My dad worked in the car in a variety of different positions.

I'm starting off as a mechanic and chief mechanic and eventually up to a team owner for a period of time.

But I've been bitten by the car bug. My dad's been working on cars since he was a little boy.

Like when I was there's photos of me as a baby sitting in the tubs of indie cars.

You didn't really have much option. No, no, not one bit. I mean, I was always around cars and I've always been kind of fascinated by mechanical devices.

My mom would tell me stories about how I would be super excited to go to construction sites and just watch the vehicles work.

So I've just always been bitten by kind of mechanical devices and race cars.

In terms of your dad's involvement with Indie Car from just chatting off camera before

this actually sort of peed it out about the time you were born if I've got my timing right.

So there wasn't really an overlap with that.

No, not really. When my dad retired, it was two weeks after I was born.

It was around when CART was splitting and there was the whole feud between the two different series.

And he decided he kind of wanted to be out and be a father and raise my sister and I and be able to kind of do what he wanted.

And during that time when the series split, he bought up basically all the teams, the stock and spare parts.

And he put together 40 Indie cars, five of them were runners.

One of them being the shell heard a car.

Wow. Okay.

It's kind of, I guess, four shadows.

The direction that your life's gone with the Pontiac that we're obviously here to talk about as well.

Lots of spare parts hanging around from Indie cars.

Yeah. What's funny is there's not enough cars out there for the amount of spare parts,

especially some of those spare parts are not going to be used again because nobody would

necessarily want certain ones or certain ones are good, but they're not being used

because a lot of people are not consuming those parts.

So is it a lack of monococks that's sort of the limiting factor for building up more cars?

It's lack of engines really.

Yeah. When the series ended, at one point in the series there was two chassis mean,

or there's three chassis manufacturers, two tire suppliers and I forget how many engine manufacturers.

Most of those teams that they end up doing is once the series ended or the cars were done running,

they took those engines and just grinded them up.

Yeah. Yeah. So in a lot of the IRL engines did that happen too,

but we happened to get a few of them.

There's a few guys out there who have Indie car, IRL engines, the ones that rev.

I think they're like a 3.5 liter that rev 10,500.

They're naturally aspirated.

A few people have those that were made by Chevy.

The main one that you see is the Cosworth XD.

That's a single turbo Ford Cosworth V8.

Those are pretty wicked.

If you have seen Rob Dom's recent videos, that's the engine I'm talking about.

Yeah. I think he just got that thing running for the first time.

Yeah. He got running on a whole tech, which that's pretty...

I thought that was an interesting choice.

Yeah. I think there's probably easier platforms to get that running with.

I'm not here to knock how tick.

It's just not the first ECU that would come to mind when you think

of 10,000 plus RPM and Indie car V8.

But all power to him.

Yeah. And him transitioning away from the sparkbox.

That was... I was in my head when I was talking to my dad about it.

We were like, we have no idea how he's going to get around using that.

And I guess he just stopped using it.

We've gone down a bit of a tangent here, but it is interesting,

considering I've just come off the back of watching that video.

But obviously a lot of people listening will have no clue what we're talking about.

Could you just elaborate on the sparkbox and why that would cause a problem

with essentially almost any aftermarket ECU?

Yeah. So during that era of cars,

kind of electronic management, even though it was the 90s,

it was still kind of a fairly new technology.

Just as in its infancy, really.

Yeah. For sure. And data logging wasn't really as prevalent as it is today,

where you're looking at every little thing.

I mean, I remember like you weren't allowed to use trash control.

Everything back then was completely controlled by a driver.

It was not sift without lift, or auto rev match downshift,

or TC, or any kind of stability control, or ABS.

Those cars were really drivers cars.

And the ECU and the whole data system was there to either just run the engine

or collect data.

And there wasn't even a ton of data to collect due to restrictions.

But because of its infancy, the systems aren't as refined as they are today.

And instead of just controlling the spark through the ECU,

they ended up having kind of a weird system where the ECU

would communicate to a spark box, which then would go to the coils.

So it was just kind of this tricky system,

and there's not like a lot of technical documents out there

to really understand entirely how it would work,

especially integrating with another piece.

Kind of reading between the lines and watching that video,

it sounds like that spark box was part capacitive discharge ignition system

to give a very high energy spark, which is obviously needed with methanol and

positive boost pressure.

But also possibly did some kind of multiplexing in terms of actually controlling

the spark distribution, almost like an electronic distributor.

So it took that part out of the ECU's control.

Hence, the ECU needed to be able to speak the same language as the spark box.

Otherwise, where the spark was going to go at what time was going to be anyone's guess.

So again, a little bit of a tangent, but we'll pull things back to the to the present.

You obviously, it sounds like, have had a very high level introduction to the world of motorsports,

sort of an introduction that most of us never get to see.

How's that sort of shaped the direction that you want to pursue your career?

So that's a really good question, and that's a good observation.

I've kind of grown up with this in the car mentality of you don't build stuff just so it works.

You build stuff so it not only works, but it's the best it possibly can be.

It has several jobs and it looks good.

The last thing you want to do is have a race car that goes out that looks like crap.

I mean, if you have the time to wipe it down or clean it,

it's probably going to, you're probably going to be inspecting their parts of it,

and at the end day, it's going to look better.

So using kind of a basic indie car mentality of everything needs to be quality and right,

it's gotten me quite far.

I would say, for a career, I really like design.

I'm very interested in the design aspect of stuff.

Being a race engineer or performance engineer would also be interesting.

Being able to look at a car and use driver feedback,

along with other information to try to extract that performance from the car.

But as I've designed parts on this car and worked other companies,

I just love designing stuff and coming up with unique solutions for stuff.

But as cars are going to more of a spec series or more restricted,

it's kind of restricting what you can do from a design perspective.

I like that you brought that up.

I was going to ask a question along exactly those lines.

You're sort of talking about designing parts so that they not only look good,

but perform as best they possibly can.

And I've always been a bit of a fan of that sort of form follows function mentality as well.

When you're coming at this with an indie car mentality, though,

obviously that series is incredibly tightly restricted.

In so much as you can't do whatever you want to do,

you've got to do it within a very tight set of rules.

Now, what you've built for World Time Attack, and obviously we're going to get deeper into this,

but just at a high level at the moment,

yes, there is still a rule book for World Time Attack, but fair to say, it's fairly broad.

Does that sort of, is that a situation where when you've got a blank sheet of paper,

and you can go in absolutely any direction that's almost harder than having a tight little box

that you can work with in a set of rules?

There's too much freedom, almost detrimental.

It's funny, because you're looking at a modern series like Indie Car,

where you're completely restricted, you're only allowed to use parts that were

bought or approved by the Delara manufacturer or the team, or not the team, but the series.

That's super restrictive. You can't really do anything.

You're just looking at ways to take out friction and optimize what's there.

Obviously, what you said with the Time Attack cars or Custom cars, you can do whatever you want.

It does lead to scenarios where you don't sleep at night because you get in bed and you go,

oh, wait, this part that I just spent two days on, what if I do it this way instead?

For me, as an individual, that's what gets me excited.

I'm being able to just sit there and just think and come up with unique solutions or just

solutions to a problem. I definitely think those are two ends of the spectrum.

I think somewhere in the middle, for a bespoke, real racing series is probably good,

kind of like how cart was back in the day where, yes, you had a tub and you had certain things

you couldn't modify like the engine and most likely gearbox. I don't remember the exact

rules for that series, but back then, you could really go through and change a lot of other stuff,

like they were doing serious one tunnel programs where they were making front wings, rear wings,

full arrow kits, under wings, coming up with a different suspension to achieve different

roll centers or using different philosophies. One year, my dad was talking about how at the speed

way, they were trying to figure out how to get a benefit. They were looking at the rules of what

they could possibly do to get a leg up on the competition. What they ended up coming up

from looking at the rules is they wanted to go for the minimum track with possible with the car.

You might be thinking, what is that going to do? Don't you want more track with for more

stability, go through the corner? Well, at the end of the day, Indy's all about drag. You're

trying to minimize drag. By going in to the minimum track with they could, they were able to

increase their speed by three miles per hour compared to the competitor, which lap by lap

is a major benefit, which due to modern series being super restrictive, you can't come up with

something like that. The rulebook's just changed now. Yeah, the rulebook is you have the car you're

going to run and it's really down to driver. I mean, even if you look at the cars now,

I think they're like 12 or 15 years old on that platform. There's no needle in that haystack.

Everybody knows what the setup is. Yeah, I think that's one of the pros and cons, I guess,

with a spec series like IndyCar versus a Constructors series like Formula One. Although I would argue

that Formula One as time goes by is almost moving towards a spec series, the rule set is so tight.

All the cars, if you painted them white, you'd be hard pressed to tell a Ferrari from a Red Bull,

from a Mercedes, for example. But when the series' specifications are so limited, the budgets are

very high, obviously at the point of end, and every iteration and part change has been done,

tested, simulated. As you say, everyone knows exactly what's going to happen. There's no needle

left in the haystack to find. I want to just come back a little bit and we are getting out of

order. We will get this shot on the road soon, but because you mentioned this, you know,

lying in bed awake and you sort of come to this realization that there's a bed away of designing

the part that you've just been in the last two days developing. I just want to jump into mind

set and I'm not a designer. I wouldn't class myself as a creative, so that might be my problem.

But what I find is when I've come up with a solution for a particular problem, I'm sort of almost

laser focused at that point. I've got my blind design and there is nothing that's going to get me

to think about a completely unique approach to that problem. How do you go about coming back from

something you've already designed? You've already got a solution in mind. Why start thinking about

different ways to skin that particular cat, for example? So, at least for me, I'm always looking

for a way to improve. A lot of times when you're building like, let's say you're looking at an

entire project, not just designing one part. You don't necessarily see that one part is just,

I got to get this done. A lot of times when you do a project, you're thinking 20 steps ahead and

only acting on one or two at a time and having a real plan of five steps ahead. So, when you design

a component, especially for something that is going to be motorsports grade and is going to be

cohesive piece, when I'm looking at something, I'm trying to make it do as many jobs as possible.

Like, if you look at Formula One parts, I mean, they're doing like a million things at once. There's

not a single straight line on that part and I'm not saying you have to go to that level of complexity,

but like a mount doesn't have to just be a mount. It can be something to grab onto this part or

grab this part. I'm trying to think of a better example. For example, like an engine, it can be a

stressed member, in some cases, as long as it's been designed that way and it can be part of your

chassis. There's no need to build a chassis around it a lot of times. It can be your structure. So,

if you can kind of look at something and go, hey, there's actually a better way to do it and it's

actually simpler at the end of the day, it's usually good to take that because the last thing you're

going to do is be done with your project, look at it and go, man, I should have done that. I should

have done that idea. So, essentially, a more holistic approach to the design of a part looking at it

and its entirety and its function within the vehicle as opposed to just solely what that particular

part needs to achieve. Yeah, and that doesn't apply to every part. Like, some parts you just

are like, okay, I just need a bracket right here to mount this one tab. You know, you just do that,

you just make a bracket, you put on your wallet and then you get the whole chassis power coated

or something like that. But there's certain, like, the more complex stuff that maybe potentially

will show more weight. You probably want to integrate those components together to minimize

that weight. Okay. All right. Let's dive back a little bit and we'll sort of talk about where

you're headed to at the moment in terms of your formal education. Motorsport engineering degree

is that what you're up to at the moment? Yeah, that is correct. So, when I started college, I'm

actually my senior year now. But when I started college, it was at IUPY in Indianapolis. And that

was a joint effort between IU and Purdue. And at the time, that was the only place where you can get,

and actually, that's still to this day. This is the only place in America where you can get a

certified bachelor's and motorsports engineering. And you can even get it with a dual degree.

I don't know if they're still offering that, but a dual degree between mechanical engineering and

motorsports. So now, it's my senior year and a year and a half ago, there was a split and I'm on

the Purdue side Purdue. It's now under Purdue and West Lafayette, but I'm at the program still in

Indianapolis. So, for the degree, you generally start with general engineering classes. And after

a year or two in the program, you start getting into your motorsports classes where you're starting

with introductory stuff like CAD and more math classes. Eventually, when you get to your UU year,

you're getting into the heavy concepts of vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, design, race engineering.

And you're applying a lot of these classes are sharing the same concepts because it's all interworking.

Like, the person who's designing the arrow is going to be looking at all these specific metrics

and values and coefficients. And that's all going to eventually equate to a balance with a downforce

number, a certain speed. And that information is going to be used by the person who's doing the

vehicle dynamics to design the suspension. And that person who's using the information of the design

of the suspension is eventually going to be needing that to pick materials. And so then you have

someone who's designing or choosing or designing a material that you would need. So,

it's all interrelated and a lot of these classes end up sharing a lot of the same concepts.

So, it sounds broadly like a mechanical engineering degree, but with a very specific slant towards

motorsports, is that fair? Yeah, that's a really good way to, yeah, that's a good way to sum it up.

Which I mean, makes sense. Most of the guests that we have on this podcast,

ultimately, end up going through some kind of mechanical engineering degree. So obviously,

there's a lot of crossover, but yes, there are some specific concepts that are motorsport specific.

Just so I can get a bit of a read on this. How many students go through this degree and graduate each year?

It's really hard to say. I mean, ballpark, maybe we're talking 50 or 1,000.

I think my class is probably going to be anywhere from like 30 to 60 people, but the freshman class

entering in I think is 150, 200 and something people. So, there's a fair bit of attrition over the years?

Yeah, so the program is really picking up, especially under a producer, kind of guidance. Sure.

When you come out of this degree, I guess one of the problems always is this balance between

the technical knowledge and the hands-on experience. The catch 22 when you apply for a job and

they ask for five years experience, how am I going to get five years experience whenever a job I

apply for needs five years experience? Obviously, you're not quite out the other end of that, but if

you got any insight into what that does actually look like out there in the sort of big, bad world?

Yeah, so I'm going to say what the program director said. I'm going to tell you my personal experience.

So the program director, his name is Chris Finch, and when you won the first classes that I took

with him was called Intro to Motor Sports, and it was a class to help you decide, is this the right

degree for me? Which is kind of funny because most time you don't have that for a major. You pick the

major you're going to do, you go through four years, and then you're done. That you got it right.

Yeah, but because this degree is so specialized and because it's a big decision, he has this class

to help you go over the general concepts of the entire thing, meet people in the industry.

And for me, that made me go, oh man, I really want to do this. For other people, they went, no,

I'm dropping out or I'm going to Emmy. So what he said is you need to go out and basically just

give people your time. Racing is racing. You're going to learn something no matter what level it is,

whether it's a go-car GT4, like a Le Mans car. That's silly to think of, but no matter what

experience you have, it's going to translate. I mean, back in the 60s, when they were first

putting air foils on cars, they were dealing with people who either learned stuff from the war

or people who learned stuff from working on planes. So the big thing is you want to learn from

other areas of your life and apply them to racing or to some other projects you're working on.

But in terms of what you need to do is you need to go out and kind of volunteer your time

because a lot of racing teams, they're running on tight budgets and they don't have the time

or the money to employ someone. But a lot of people are willing to share the knowledge that they've

learned especially at lower levels. So it's going out and kind of don't be afraid to get your

hands dirty, just because you're an engineer doesn't mean that you can't turn a wrench. A lot of

times, as a fresh engineering grad, a lot of mechanics don't really like the stuff that you put out

because it's not realistic. Like, let's say you're drawing a really neat machine part,

they go, hey, because of the tooling, I can't get a bit in there.

Yeah, I think that's always a bit of a disconnect when people start learning how to use CAD

because it is so powerful. And I mean, you can draw anything your mind could come up with. But when

you don't understand the manufacturing steps, the processes, you don't have that sort of design

for manufacture in mind. You can very, very easily design parts that are just simply impossible

or way too expensive to actually machine and make. Yeah, so one of the big things is people want

experience because experience helps you help them. So one of the things that I learned to do is

learn how to physically make parts. Don't necessarily go out and design them. Just learn how to

make the part. I was started learning how to machine on a bridge port. And that's a lot of

singular straight line movements, but it's still three-dimensional. And you learn that eventually,

like, hey, every time I move this part, I can't find the zero again. So that would, now you understand

why every time you move a part, it adds cost. I'm kind of getting a strange from the question. But

at the end of the day, you need to go out and either volunteer time or find jobs or experiences that

surround the job your goal is. So don't go into school with no goal just saying I get my degree

and work in engineering. It's like, okay, what kind of engineering are you going to do? So what I would

say is form a goal, figure out what steps you need to do to find that goal. And then once you've

figured out those steps, figure out if there's anything you need to do further than that,

and execute those steps. And don't say no to opportunities. I mean, a lot of the reason why

Hammerhead became what it was is because we ended up saying yes or we'll think about it.

And we, through forming relationships, you can get to better and better places. So the big thing is,

don't say no to big opportunities, have a plan and be okay to get your hands dirty and learn

things surrounding the job that you're going to do. Yeah, no, that'll make sense.

And you've got a very nice rolling CV that is going to be probably a powerful play card for when

you actually do sort of look for work. And on that note, sort of what does that look like for you?

So everything goes perfectly five years time. You've already mentioned that designers kind of your

passion, that's the angle of this degree that you've enjoyed the most. Where do you see yourself

working? Is this going to be IndyCar, Formula One, sports car teams? Are we manufacturer? None of the

above? You know, that's a really good question. When I entered school, I was talking about you

got to have a goal for yourself. So my goal was to become a lead race engineer for an IndyCar team.

And I still think that would be a really good job. It would be really good to do. But I want to

design components, at least in the beginning. Eventually, I could transform into that role. I know

a lot of people who start off as design engineers or they start off designing stuff. And after about

10 years or five years, they're saying, okay, I've had enough of this. I'm going to start doing race

engineering. And that long, long term, I think that is kind of my goal is to become a design engineer,

do that for five, 10, 15 years, then potentially do race engineering. It's hard to say, I don't really

have an exact plan at the moment. I could see my, due to the design stuff, I would have to work in

kind of like the surrounding industries. So I have to either work for Delora or Extract or

not the actual teams themselves because the teams can't make parts for these cars.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, okay. Now that makes sense. If you're a fan of the podcast and you're interested

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to check out the full VIP package and everything it contains. All right, let's get back to the

episode. All right, I think it's probably time to sort of stop teasing around the edges with

this hammerhead build and dive into it head first and find out what it is. So on that very note,

what is the hammerhead and how did this project even come about?

Yeah, so Hammerhead is a 1973 Pontiac Firebird and it's got the shassing kind of framework

of a 1997 to 2002 cart or Indie car. But over time it started getting more

arrow and it really started off as like kind of a fun street car that we could take

auto crossing. That escalated quickly. Yeah, it escalated super quickly and budget creep also escalated

even faster. So what we ended up doing is we found a car in eBay and Detroit, Michigan

and it was an old rusted out drag car. Literally halfway down the car was rusted out.

It was unusable. We had to cut it away. So we ended up with basically a top half of a firebird

and a bunch of spare parts from Indie cars that were developed basically by F1 engineers and we

were like, well, if we could build a tube chassis and we spent six months, we could build a pretty

fun fast car. So we bought a junk RLS and got the Corvette torque tube and we had a spare

extract gearbox and we ended up mounting that all together and we started placing suspension

where it could go and seats and we're like, hey, I think with this arrangement we could make

this work. So was this from the ground up always going to be this amalgamation of Pontiac?

Firebird plus Indie car component tree that didn't just evolve as it went along?

Yeah, yeah. From the very beginning we decided we're going to do a tube chassis with Indie car

parts with a junk RLS and using not necessarily as many Indie car components as possible but components

that would be important to the build. Now, just for technical correctness as we talked about this

when we caught up at World Time Attack, technically it is the car series that you're taking parts from

but we're sort of incorrectly using the term Indie car interchangeably and people can just accept

that or not as they want that that's correct. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, we're kind of mixing

Indie car and car technically it's car but I'll respond to Indie car and all that. I'm not

I just find Indie car just rolls off the tongue a little easier than car so now that we've

got that out of the way we'll carry on. Yeah, car't car doesn't really roll off the tongue

like in the car. Nah, it's a bit weird. Yeah, so we took all these Indie car components and

we're like it's too nice to just leave on the shelf and it would take forever to build and

manufacture some of these parts so we put it all together and the build did not take six months.

The first time we finished V1 it took about two and a half, three years and then from there we

learned a lot about the car, changed a few things and I mean I don't even know what version we're on

now but it's just a wild vehicle. It's gone through a lot of air development and we're going to go

through even more to get just better results you know it's just going to be crazy but in general

hammerhead is a Pontiac with the skeleton of an Indie car underneath and it just kind of evolved

over time to get some kind of time tax or shell climb arrow on top of it. Okay, I have literally

so many questions. When you're diving into a project that's this complicated, it's sort of a

case of taking your time and planning properly rather than sort of jumping in, bending up some

tubes and taking them together can pay dividends because you don't end up finding out six months

into the project that you've put a component somewhere where it interferes with something else.

This sort of begs the question on face value would seem to be the perfect project for a full

development of the whole car in CAD before we start making anything. Did that happen? And if not, why not?

So that did not happen. It would have been nice to do that. At the time I didn't even know how to

weld fabricate really build cars as much at all but alone how to use CAD. I didn't really learn how to

use CAD until the end of my freshman year. And once I start learning how to use CAD, I was like,

hey, this is a lot easier. So we were making stuff in the garage and doing sketches and I go, hey,

Dad, give me like 15 minutes and I'll be right back. And he goes, okay, so I draw the entire piece I

want on CAD and I show him and he goes, when did you do this? I go 15 minutes ago and he goes, you

can do it that fast using this software. And I go, yeah, he's like, oh man, maybe we need to make more

components with this. This kind of build has started off as my dad teaching me how to do stuff and

now it's kind of becoming. You're teaching it, Dad. Yeah. So we're really good pairing because he's

bringing old school philosophies and older school build techniques while I'm also bringing in new

school technology and new school build techniques. Yeah. I think a lot of people, I'm glad

that you went down this path because I think a lot of people these days, younger enthusiasts

growing up kind of think that if they don't have access to a 3D scanner, 3D modelling and CAD

software, various 3D printers that they're dead in the water and there's no point even starting.

So obviously we didn't have access to all of this equipment decades ago and people were always

building cars. So it's totally possible. So just to appreciate the fact that you've managed to

build this work of art without necessarily leveraging all of that right from the get-go.

The other thing, I'm just interested to get your perspective on this. You just mentioned

modelling apart in 15 minutes and that's great. Obviously there is a time commitment if you did

want to go to the extent of developing this whole car in the virtual world before you start

manufacturing anything. How do you trade off the time spent doing that before you start building

versus just getting stuck in building and maybe finding that you've gone down some dead ends

that you have to sort of come back from and wasting a bit of time that way. Which one do you think

sort of comes out more time efficient? I love that question because a lot of people think that you

have to design everything in CAD and that's going to make your life easy. Sometimes it really doesn't

make your life easy. Sometimes you just wasted half your day drawing stuff on CAD when you really could

just gone over and made the part. I think there's extremes to this where if the part is extremely simple

where you could really just sketch it and draw it or sketch it and make it and under the time

you would take free to draw it and then use that to make something it's not worth using. Like a

really simple tab or bracket, not going to be worth your time unless you're making a hundred of

them. The flip side of that though is if you are designing a bracket that you know can be multi-purpose

and you know use the sheet metal modelling functions and the likes of fusion maybe send it off to

send cut send and a week later you get a pack of a hundred of these little tabs and you can use

them on projects down the road as well. There's some value in there so I don't think there's a black and

white answer is there. No not really. I would say it really depends on your purpose and your production

capabilities. If you're going to spend the time I mean there's really not a black and white answer.

I'm thinking like a million different ways this could be a yes or no because there's the philosophy

of I'm going to design every little bit of this car and CAD and then I'm going to work on producing

those parts. Okay. If you design every little bit in CAD or you using or you're going to manually

bend all the tubing or you're going to send it out to a laser CNC bender you know or like are you

going to have everything machined by five axis or three axis it's all about really what your

building capabilities are and then because you have to design around around what your building

capabilities are if you can five axis CNC everything that's really nice you can almost make

any shape you want with a machine part as long as the tool can get there. But if you only have a

bridge port you're going to have to kind of stick the simple designs and understand that you can't

go super complicated. So I would say if you're going to design CAD you need to know what you're

designing around and then sometimes it's an all or nothing situation sometimes it's just a quick

tab sometimes it's more complicated. It's it's a really good question it's one that's very hard

to answer though. I do appreciate that it's definitely not something where I was expecting a black

and white answer. It's obviously going to depend on the specific application what you're trying

to achieve and as you mentioned there which is a good point you know understanding the production

methodology that you have available to you as well. I would go out on a limb and I guess that one

of the advantages you've got using all of these IndyCar components is the likes of your suspension

kinematics are really locked into what was developed for IndyCar so it's not a case of going

through permutations of developing the suspension kinematics in a CAD package either that's kind

of already defined and you kind of know I'm guessing that it's going to be no sort of interference

between these components that sort of takes a big portion out of the benefit of CAD again I'm purely

guessing here. I'm interested in how you developed your skills because you sort of said when you

started this project you didn't really know anything about fabrication I mean I've crawled over

this car fairly extensively at world time attack and I couldn't really see anything that suggests

you're you're new to all of this so give us a rundown on how you became a fabricator. So I'm not

exactly much of a fabricator I'm really good at welding and I can do some level fabrication

my dad's a lot better fabricated than I am I can I can fabricate really basic stuff as it gets

more complicated I just need more time than what my dad would need but the big thing is is that

there's more than one benefit to having a stockpile of IndyCar parts I'm a major perfection

ist I look at something and I think I can do it to the same level or ability someone else can

whether or not I can and I'm pretty determined so when I was learning how to weld a fabricator

from IndyCar or the Aaron McLaren IndyCar team came over and he welded a few critical things at

the very beginning and then he showed me the ropes and had me try a few welds and he goes hey man

these welds are all good you could weld the rest of the car like this and my welds are not as

nice as they are now so to answer your question three things made me a lot better at anything

it was having something the reference off of so that's that goal so I would go back look at

IndyCar components and say oh that's how they welded it that's how they got around this and oh

that's you can weld it that way or this is how their welds looked I need to copy that and

understanding that you need time to get good at something you're not going no matter how much I

believe I'm going to be good at something my first try it it's going to take time that car I don't

know how many hours of welding it has but it's got to be more than like two or three thousand hours

of welding in it it's hard to tell but that chassis has so much tubing in it it was a lot of joints

to weld and there were none of them were really easy to reach and then also on top that challenge

yourself like yeah like a lot of stuff is hard to do and it takes a lot of time to learn but just

because you don't do well one day doesn't mean you're not going to do well the next day I think

as a perfectionist that is always a bit of a pull to swallow though you can understand all of the

technical settings on a tick welder you understand intimately how you need to set that welder up for

a particular material and thickness but then nothing can replace hours on the end of that torch

once that actually comes down to laying a weld you've just got to put in the hours 100 percent

like I would not be good at anything like it's ridiculous to say I'm going to go

win a gold medal at this event and have done it two times before it's like those people

what are they doing they wake up at five in the morning they're working out and they're doing

everything it takes to be the best at it so I'm not saying you have to do that to be good at

something it's just small dedicated efforts every day or some consistent manner will make you

better at any task so because we're working on the car literally every single day for years

it allowed me an opportunity to get better at many different things this this an obvious question

that comes up with this and I think this is typical of any large scale project where you're

learning skills be it fabrication be it motorsport wiring or you know anything in between you're not

going to be graded at the first time you lay down a weld so I'm guessing here that a year two

years into the project when your skill set on the turkeys is far surpassed where it was at the start

you're probably starting to look back at some of your earlier welds and maybe shake your head a little

but how do you weigh up getting the project finished so basically what I'm saying here is not

redoing the whole thing from scratch but also putting out a product that is high quality that

you can be proud of because you know a car at this level is going to be scrutinized by the internet

yeah man I'm so glad you said that because the internet is not your friend when it comes to that

stuff they will if you screwed up they will tell you and most of the people are kind of band wagons

like they don't really know they're just grabbing on to what the first comment said but occasionally

one console slip through or two consoles slip through that are actual genuine advice that are there

to help you and a few of those comments I reach out to those people like hey can you explain this to

me a little bit and then those end up helping me a lot so I'm going to jump back a little bit but

when I wouldn't do something the way I wanted I would research and look at what are other people

doing to achieve the results they're getting so as the project went on I end up finding out like

hey this this helps me a lot I can get away with this and this kind of radius I can get away with

this or I can do this or hey this is a cup they're using like I end up changing cups to one of those

ones with the diffusers in it which helped the gas coverage a lot and and then I could move the

tungsten out further and see welds a lot better so what I would say is none of the welds on the car

were bad none of them were gonna fail or were not structurally sound some of them just didn't look

like the rest or were super pretty so the ones that were the absolute worst because I didn't want

to spend all my time grinding and re-wailing stuff is at the end of the day like when I'd grind back

the weld it was completely fine there was no pits there was no corrosion there is there is no

contamination so it was an aesthetic problem on a mechanical strength issue yes 100 percent so

I just took the ones that were in the most plain sight that I thought were the ugliest and I ground

them back and re-weld it and they look perfect so yeah just chose the worst ones in the most plain

view okay material choice for the tube frame chassis what did you choose what did you go with

steel dlm okay so nothing exotic that's an easy to weld yeah so for people who don't know what dlm

is is drawn over mandrel and it's super high strength and it's an easy metal to weld you're not getting

into the exotics like chromoly where you have to be much more careful about the amount of heat

input into the weld yeah so the big thing about chromoly or like a material like doke haul they

have I believe chromium in them so you have to be super careful about temperature with those metals

they can most time welds don't fail it's like right next to the weld because when you weld something

you're obviously turning it to liquid and then that cools down and it hardens so that's why

like a suspension member when you weld it you're you're using a person who really knows how to

weld to do that because they're it's thinner metal a more intricate exotic metal but they end up

with stress points and you have to heat treat it to normalize it or anneal it or deal with getting

rid of those non-uniform stresses in that metal so the reason why I mentioned the chromium is because

if you use too high of a temp you can burn certain materials out of it or change the characteristics

and those welds are not that chromoly anymore it's some other form of metal that isn't as high

strength as what you initially used or specked out so the reason why we use DOM is because I wasn't

experienced this car was we did this project to help me get experience and learn so I could go and

make mistakes not that I made like a ton of mistakes and learn a lot now with my level of skill

I probably would go to a chromoly or a more exotic metal because it's got higher strength which

means you can use thinner wall or thinner or smaller diameter tubing to get the same strength

as with like a DOM DOM is still a very good material a tie strength but it's just going to be a

little bit heavier than like a chromoly could you could you give me an idea across the full tube

chassis what would that difference in weight between just mild steel DOM and the lights of

chromoly tube will we be talking you know a 10% weight reduction more less um it's really

hard to say I completely forget I think we could probably realistically even take like 50 pounds

or 40 pounds out our chassis right now in terms of the tubing but if we put more arrow on it I

probably wouldn't want to take that out yeah yeah that's always a bit of a balancing act the weighing

up strength versus weight so yeah no I'll probably take a little bit of additional weight for a

little additional strength any day of the week as well yeah it's in like a safety thing like one

of things that we did is we built up around the foot box a lot because the last thing we want to do

is have like a a corner or side impact where your feet get stuck and you can't get out of the car

so I think we switched to like if the holding is built using chromoly you could probably use a thinner

wall tubing I probably wouldn't have changed the diameter of the tubing I think you could probably lose

yeah about 10 15% off the weight of the car okay so it's not an insignificant weight saving

yeah it's like at the end they like 10% on something that weighs roughly four five hundred pounds

that's not actually what our chassis weighs but that could help a lot yeah yeah absolutely I'm just

interested a little outside of my personal experience but doko which you mentioned which kind of

as I understand it is the next rang up the ladder from chromoly kind of the the strength advantage of

chromoly but without the intricacies of welding sort of a little bit more like welding mild steel is

that correct not so sensitive to to the amount of heat yeah you're completely right the way you

describe it is the way I would describe it it's it's a mix between well I mean my head it's a mix

between chromoly and uh DOM where it's that DOM is being a more mild steel from my experience of

welding dokole stuff some people love it some people hate it I don't know I feel like it's a stepping

stone if your welding is 100% there and you're still trying to get weight off of a vehicle in my

head I would just completely commit to the chromoly I just don't really like the way dokole welds

with the way I weld like I can weld stainless steel steel aluminum I can switch between those

like I can weld for an hour with one metal on an hour with another and switch back and forth like

no problem it's a really weird metal the weld okay so with steels when you're you're under the hood

and you're heating up the metal you'll see a puddle form and you have a sharp tungsten you can start

to see the heat generate then you see the puddle form and then you kind of change the size of it

with dokole I don't feel like I can predict it as well probably partially due to not being having a

ton experience with it but in my head when I have welded chromoly it melts like really quick and

you can't blast it with temperature you have to keep the tempo low the whole time and run fast

dokole I feel like the puddle doesn't do what I want right so a little least predictable yeah and

that's my case someone might come along and say hey you're you're full of it and I'm like it's my

kind of thing I would rather just you can tell it to mix because the front half melts a certain

way in the back half melt a certain way so that's that's my experience but someone can tell me

otherwise all right let's move on just in terms of layout of the chassis sort of jiggling at

fixtures however you know he'll be very easy if you don't get this right to sort of have a beautiful

looking chassis that's twisted like pretzel and essentially useless so how did you go about

making sure everything was in exactly the right position laid out correctly square true etc

yeah that's a really good question scale is a super important thing when you're thinking about this

if you have something that's pretty small your tolerances are a lot smaller if something gets a

lot bigger your tolerances are generally larger but you want to try to keep them potentially around

the same especially if you're using a highly developed suspension that if you you can change stuff

by such a small amount and it actually matters so for us I was talking about our shop isn't really

the most top tier most technologically advanced place ever it's really the car was built in one

bay and it went up like 300 times up and down on a lift and we didn't even have a laser at the

bay near the project like a lot of people I think we're using client tools we got one of those

lasers recently and man that thing is a ton of help like you can set it somewhere and we're

use it to level set up pads yeah it's this so helpful aren't they yeah it's awesome so a lot of

people what they do is they use like a chassis table or a flat plate something that's super heavy

machined and you can fix you can build a fixture around it or you can hold different parts of

the chassis down as you weld it and then you before you let it go you heat up those joints and

destress the metal so then it will stay in position because as you weld you're not it's pulling and

shrinking and because you can't weld all the joints at once it's not and cool at all at once it's

going to pull in different places unevenly which will even if you build everything perfectly

respect it could move so one of the things that I did to make sure that it wouldn't pull and shrink a

lot is if I did a weld on one side I would do the weld on the other side so hate hate management

essentially yeah and then when I weld I wouldn't use the maximum amount of heat I could for that

while I use the minimum and I'd go as fast as I could across the joint I'm just to keep the heat

down and because like I guess time is money so I didn't want to spend all day trying to make my

welds look perfect I was like I got it I've seen people weld faster than what I can do and their

welds look a lot better so I'm going to try to improve that aspect as well one of the things we did

is the first part of the chassis we built was kind of the front section and we had a miniature jig

that we built off of a rainard tub so we could get the suspension points right and we had little

pieces built for that and we put them bolted them in and then built the rest of the chassis or

rest of the front of the chassis there then attach that to what we call the power unit which is the

engine torque tube and gearbox and once we had that all kind of properly in line with each other

and positioned we started building the rest of the chassis back just in terms of sort of some of

the key geometrical constraints like wheelbase and track how closely does that match the Indy car

was adapted to suit the Pontiac chassis so what's funny is the later Indy cars ended up really long

like 120 plus inch wheel bases which when you stand up next to one of those cars they're not like

I mean they're wide they're they're I think 82 inches wide but you're kind of like I mean this

thing looks longer than it is it's very long for how wide it is our car we're 111 inch wheelbase

three inches longer than stock so it still is a pretty long car but not nearly as long as a

champ car I guess as soon as you get the carbon monocoque out of the equation you can essentially do

whatever you want though yeah we can pretty much change the wheelbase as long as it's not by

too significant of a margin because if you this is kind of getting off track but the roll center

like you got to be careful changing stuff because the roll centers can get screwed up okay can you

with roll centers are a difficult topic to talk about without the benefit of some drawings but

at a higher level could you maybe explain how changing the roll center will adjust the way

that the car handles so to really understand what a roll center is doing you have to understand

kind of the basic concept of a moment so a moment and everybody understands what this is because

you've used a wrench before so you're not going to be able to if you're trying to loosen a nut

you're not going to put your hand on the middle of the wrench you're going to put on the very end

that is force times distance the roll center is doing the same thing as you get it closer

and further away from the center mass of the vehicle it's going to do different things

to the suspension and at the end of the day it's changing potentially how much the car will roll

of roll side to side front to back is going to change a little bit probably I'll just interrupt

for a moment and explain that we've got the roll center essentially is a point in space and

imagine a point in space around which the front of the car will rotate as it rolls and we've got

a separate roll center for the rear and then as you mentioned you've got this moment arm between

the center of gravity height and the roll center height so then by adjusting the roll center

heights individually front and rear up and down then we can change the way the car balance

is affected correct yeah 100% like a road course car is going to be to set up totally different

in terms of roll center to a speedway car other elements with this is well once we start learning

about concepts like roll center it seems nice and clear car until you actually start tracking

how the roll center moves as the car moves around the race track as it turns as it breaks as it

accelerates and you start realizing that the roll center is just a constantly moving point and

that's when different suspension geometries and different kinematics come in to make the roll

center more stable or less stable basically the the amount the roll center will move around can

can vary quite dramatically correct yeah 100% well the way you do it in in terms of VD or the

math you choose a static position of the roll center usually down the center of the vehicle not

when it's yard or turning but 100% it's shifting side to side up and down and it can be quite

dramatic sometimes the roll center can be in the ground sometimes it can be in the sky it just

depends on the suspension setup and how much our articulates and what the designer wanted to do

just as a really quick anecdotal point I'll bring up here a lot of people with modified road cars

think that you know by lowering the car we're going to get an improvement in performance and

yes that will lower the center of gravity and we look at race cars and they're all nice and low

so we're getting that cool race car look but the people don't often understand though is if we

just simply lower let's say I'm at first and start suspension setup and we make no changes to

correct the roll center height the center of gravity is going to drop but the roll center height

will generally drop by more so what we're actually doing as a result is increasing that that moment

that lever a charm and we're actually going to end up increasing the body roll which seems

totally counter intuitive but that again if you don't understand the roll center and how it's

being affected by what seems like a subtle change that can go completely unnoticed I think we're

probably a little down in the weeds with this now so I'll bring us back up to the surface and I

wanted to continue sort of talking around some of these sort of challenges I guess you'd have

with incorporating Indycar componentry into your Pontiac and one of the things immediately jump

to mind while I was sort of crawling all around this car in Sydney is just the minuscule size of

the likes of the fasteners that are used for you know the rocker arm suspension physically mounting

the wishbones etc obviously these components are all designed around an Indycar which I don't

know what the spec was I'm assuming well under a thousand pounds you're not I surround a 2000

pounds not quite nowhere we were I say that because it converts relatively nicely to a thousand

kilograms you're significantly heavier than that so is this a consideration is there any concern

here around the strength of these fasteners and are they fit for purpose so talking about the

fasteners explicitly they are they are pretty small a lot of people look at us and they go they're

are immediately going to shear off they're going to get damaged or they're not built for this car

and two things are happening most people are using lower quality bolts and hardware

and on top of that they completely overspec their stuff and a lot of people are coming from truck

world or the off-road world where that stuff needs to endure punishment for a long time and that

stuff is huge we're using NAS grade bolts and if you look at the shear strength on one of those

they could withstand the weight of a semi a fully loaded semi truck just suspended from one bolt

so in terms of hardware we're not concerned at all about the strength of it even back in the day

with the Indy cars what they were doing is sometimes they want to reduce weight from the cars they

had a smoother track they didn't want to deal with weight so they're drilling the center of the bolts

out yeah so that's an old dirt trick dirt track thing most designers will look at that and they're

kind of their hand is in their face kind of like why are you doing that it's better just kind of

spec the right size bolt from the beginning but it is an old trick that can be used and if you

think drilling out the center of a bolt is not going to reduce much weight some of those guys they

were doing anything it took to reduce weight like a lot of Indy cars after about anywhere from two

to three paint jobs they were stripping the tub down and reducing the weight and if that would

be a pound or two right there yeah wow that's starting to really get extreme for weight savings

yeah 100% all right so the fasteners not an issue how about the component tree such as the

uprights the wishbones themselves again I'm guessing the Indy car designers weren't designing these

with I can't remember you said the weight of the car was is it three and a half thousand pounds

yeah I was with driver wet it's about 3400 pounds which is a bit more than our original weight

goal which our original weight goal was 2800 pounds which hopefully if we can make it back to

world time attack challenge again next year the car will be that weight so ultimately yeah the question

remains the Indy car designers didn't have a 3400 pounds car in mind when they're designing

the uprights and the wishbones I mean it hasn't fallen apart so obviously you're on the right track

but again I guess what I want to know is how do you sort of look at these component trees and have

confidence that they are going to be fit for purpose is there any sort of FEA going on in the background

to sort of validate this or is it a gut feel originally it was a gut feel so right now those cars

at sea level at peak down like a high down force package they were even though they were 2000 pounds

they were making anywhere from five to six thousand pounds of down force on top of that which is

obviously if you look at each corner that that's a lot of weight to experience and on top of that

for speedway cars even though they don't have a lot of like a high down force package they are

experiencing a lot of down force back in the era a lot of load and the highest amount of load

those suspension components would see is actually at a speedway if they'd hit the wall so a lot of

times those cars they're really they're literally running fractions of inches away from the wall at

times to get the optimal racing line and sometimes they'll hit and the worst hit that you'll see

is one that you go from low to high not necessarily one where you're against the wall it's actually

safer to be against the wall you can understand the same concept if you get a hammer when you use a

hammer are you swinging it from an inch away are you swinging it from back behind your head not

saying you want to do that but you get more power from going from a greater distance so a lot of

those suspension components are built to take pretty large impacts because as soon as they

bend or buckle it's failed it will continue to bend and it's not in the right geometry so the

components they're built to withstand some pretty high loads and not fail but from the initial

perspective what our thought was is hey our car's not making as much down force as a indie car

but it does weigh more but overall evens out to the same amount but now that we're going back and

going for more down force to make the car more competitive and everything we're going to start

looking at validating that stuff and potentially remaking like push rods just because for those of

you who don't know how these push rods are constructed is it's not just an arrow foil

tube if you look at a lot of our suspension or indie car suspension it's not just round tubing

it's actually imagine just a round tube that's been crushed to an oval profile it's an arrow foil

profile and if you look at certain parts of suspension you'll notice these dots on top of it

it's because there's actually another tube on the inside of it that has been rose at welded

so it's really two tubes put together and stuff that is going to experience a high

load where it might be prone to buckling ends up with those rose at welded inner round tubes

and on top of that the suspension's heat treated and it's coated yeah okay that makes sense

so it sounds like at the moment you're sort of working on the the basis of the safety factor

built into those original components and I guess watch the space if you do develop more down for

some of these components will also need to be potentially redeveloped yeah and I know how to

do the math behind all that stuff to pick the right size wishbone like a lot a lot of stuff back

then they're doing tons of development to make that tubing as small as possible to reduce the

arrow impact it's technically for the front suspension it flows and it might be important but at the

other day the suspension not breaking which I don't think it will at the moment is more important

and we have more than enough power to punch through the air and the air in our fenders is already

somewhat turbulent it's not like an open wheel wings and slick car where literally everything's

hanging out in the breeze so the aerodynamics of the wishbones is super critical that's not quite

the case with your car yeah not the case with our car we can find bigger gains other places in terms

of jagged reduction at the end day just going to a larger diameter or thicker wall tubing or

both will be a major benefit okay just with again developing parts from a 2000 pound car into a

3400 pound car I'm assuming here that the likes of the damper spec and the spring rates would totally

need to be rethought is that the case and if so how did you go about that yeah 100%

the car was kind of under dampened and under sprung initially and we already knew that so we had

the damper's revalved I think double to what they were because the car was basically double

the weight so we figured it probably needed double the dampening just to kind of as a baseline it was

still under dampened and still under sprung so we just kind of the general philosophy to get this

car set up is starting really soft and incrementally going stiffer and stiffer and as you go stiffer

the springs you need to go stiffer with the dampening and with the Olens the nice thing about these

is compared to like a Penske they have a very wide range of tunability without even having to

revalve the damper we're running an Olens TT44 Gen 2 damper and it's an older one obviously it was

run on the Indie cars back 20 25 years ago but in terms of the technology it's better than

what a lot of stuff you can get today so we're still in the progress of kind of getting it set up

we really feel like it's about 80 90% of the way there right now but now that we're going to go with

more arrow down force that that's going to be changing again everything starts again

yeah it all starts over you know and when you say the the philosophy is to start soft and then

add stiffness as sort of it's always a bit of a challenge with an euro car because obviously

the down force increases dramatically the faster you go so you sort of either end up on one

end of the spectrum or the car that's so so stiff that it's got no mechanical grip at low speed

where the euro is not functional or not really effective or the flip side of that is you end up

with a softer car that has good mechanical grip in low speed corners but then just gets driven

into the ground down you know the long straights you've got a reasonably interesting way of

dealing with that I mean again nothing particularly unique with wings and slicks car but the heave

spring arrangement can you just give us a high level view of what a heave spring is how that

functions and how it helps you yeah so you were talking about how you want that low speed

compliancy where you don't necessarily have that arrow grip but you need to keep the car from

hitting the ground or going too low at higher speeds where you do have that down force

and that relationship increases with velocity squared so it's not a linear relationship it's an

exponential one so one of the things you really targeting the reason why we start soft is because

you really want that compliancy at the end of the day so if you completely ignore the fact that

we have a heave spring you have to tune for the car not to squash down at the end of the straight

because you're you're having to tune around what's your highest down force event usually in a

straight line right before your fastest turn in but then that would sacrifice your low speed corners

so if you can add some kind of arrangement that can move with your dampers it will allow you to have

a stiffer arrangement without sacrificing that low speed compliancy and in this case we're running

something called a third slider or what other people call a heave spring what that allows you to do

is you don't have so on on the main springs on the dampers the springs are when the car is on

the ground the springs are touching which means that they're being dealt with all the time but with

the third usually you have something called the third gap so you don't have that spring that third

spring being used all the time you only want at the top end so as the rockers go back and as the

springs get compressed eventually that third slider squashes down enough to where it goes into contact

with the third and that's what you call third engagement where you start to engage the third

hopefully a planned location because if you have this arrangement on the front and rear it's

incredibly crucial how you tune those arrangements to work together because the last thing you want

to happen in this kind of arrangement is for it to happen at the same time or have yeah have

them happen at the same time because if you think about the way a stool is built most stools have

how many legs three legs so cars are weird because they have four four corners but in a day you

don't need four corners to be stable and actually it makes a bigger problem at the day but race cars

have four wheels so we work with it but the big thing is is that you need at minimum three contact

patches to remain stable and the problem is is when you have that arrangement touch on the third

it's almost like it goes down to one so if you have both you go from if you have both touching it

feels like you're almost on a line or on a bicycle okay so you need to purposely separate the engagement

points of the front and rear heav springs otherwise the car feels completely uncontrollable is that

is that sort of what you're telling me yeah yeah 100% it's it's not something I would say most people

should probably have on their car unless you're censored out and you really understand what's

going on like we these these are high end component tree and it's not just a case of adding the

heav spring you need to then as we're talking about understand how to set it up get the best out of

it and like you were just saying a sense of some instrumentation to actually figure out what it's

doing and when it's doing so there's a lot where this is a complex topic that we're simply scratching

the surface off here yeah 100% there's a lot that's happening behind the scenes to really understand

that's engagement how it's being used how much you need what you're doing with the setup especially

per the course but honestly if you guys are listening I'd really recommend you Google either the

front-end suspension arrangement on an open wheel car or an LMPH car or even R-car and there's

probably tons of photos of the engine bay because it's kind of when you describe it it's kind of

hard to understand but if you can kind of look at it it makes a lot more sense it's definitely a

very foreign concept to get and again unfortunately the podcast medium without the benefit of some

nice illustrations doesn't make this any easier but as you say I mean people are going to be able to

do their own research if this is picked their interest and they want to learn more I think again

we're probably about as far down in the weeds with this topic as we want to go this one one

other point with this so essentially that he springs there to I guess essentially decouple

role from heave movement in other words trying to again help stabilize the platform and not drive

it into the ground when the the downforce really comes on yeah at the simplest it's really a device

to just increase your overall stiffness at a certain point over a certain speed that's the simplest

way to think about it with cars that don't benefit from having a heave spring arrangement the

usual technique is a compromise between spring racks which we've already talked about yeah if you

go to stuff at low speed it's not going to be helpful but then also purposely using packers and

bump stops to control the platform height at high speed when you're incorporating a heave spring

are you still relying on the bump stops on the individual corners of the car is that become unnecessary

so on our setup we don't really have a bump stops but we do we could use bump rubbers on our third

if we wanted the big thing is that when like if you're driving the car and you feel it hit the

bump rubbers it's quite a hard engagement it's not very smooth and because we're using this at a

lower engagement point a spring is probably better because it's more additive it once it hits it's

like okay you've increased the front total heave stiffness by what that front that front spring

rate is for the third and with bump rubbers you can get softer ones and have a smoother progression

and you can stack them and have a different spring rate and the math for that to figure out the

toll spring rate once it's compressed is not hard but we prefer springs just and there is a kind of

weight penalty when you use springs just because it gets heavier but in just terms of smoothness of

engagement and where we're engaging we we're we're going to use springs yeah okay let's come back

up for a breath here and talk about something maybe maybe a little bit simpler and that's the

engine configuration so we sort of talked earlier about what cart we're running back in this time

when you were deciding on an engine configuration was something like a Cosworth XD ever

in a consideration I mean that would be cool to do we've been really neat but for us it probably

would have not been a good thing to do because we wanted something that was easy to get parts for

like when we were helping herda with just a few components so obviously we don't deal with the

engine stuff so we couldn't really help with the engines but they were having a really hard time

finding valve springs for those Cosworth engines the valve springs are kind of a wear use item

after you run for especially with like a red tag motor if those of you don't know that there's

a difference between a red tag and a black tag motor for those Cosworths back in the day they

would actually do engine changes between qualifying and the race day and the qualifying engines could

go 500 500 miles and literally 501 502 they'd probably blow up or they'd like they were literally they

had lighter they had a lighter valve train which allowed them to rev I think 250 or 300 more

RPM 400 RPM but they're not built to last a race distance so the black tag motors are really the

ones that if you're going to vintage race it or use it you probably want those because it's got

some chance of holding together yeah 100% yeah it's gonna last longer so the big thing is getting

parts and to be honest it would be like at the time we just kind of we didn't we had like a

$30,000 budget we weren't gonna spend a lot of money on it and the only reason why the car is

what it is today is because a lot of sponsors came on and they they're like hey do you want to use

this product or hey do you want help with this or and because of the money they put in we put

some more of our own money in but we saw off with LS because the parts are easily available

and they're not super expensive yeah that's that's generally why we went with it fair I mean it is

a well understood platform at this point and given your power aspirations from jumping to

in a minute you're not aiming to break any world records on the LS platform or go where no man's

gone before so as a fairly well-trodden path there are some considerations around this though

in terms of torque which is why I was wondering about the XD yeah you've got a is it a X-track

and the car trans axle was that was that the manufacturer X-track yeah that is that's true extract

they're out of England but they're the gearboxes that were being used back in the day so obviously

that is designed around the torque that the the Cosworth engine for example produces which is

relatively low torque but low torque at very high RPM hence they're still able to make crazy power

when we look at a typical twin turbo LS we've got huge amounts of torque at much lower RPM

and it's the gearbox doesn't really care about the horsepower it's torque that that needs to

manage so yeah how did you sort of weigh this up when you were going through the design criteria

in terms of making sure that you weren't going to put too much torque through that trans axle and

I guess spoiler alert you kind of you kind of did yeah yeah those of you who don't know at world

time-tech challenge we on the first practice day second session the car broke something called an

angle drive which we'll get into that later once I answer your question because this is quite a

unique trans axle it's not like a normal one but yeah because of the LS like back in the day those

those Cosworth engines or a lot of those engines were making 500 foot pounds of torque and it was at

higher end and they're pretty gutless below a few thousand RPM the LS is completely different it's

not only way bigger but it's got a lot of torque like we weren't going for power at all on this

build the last thing this car needs this power we were right before the gearbox broke it was

spinning in fourth gear at 130 miles per hour and when it finally did give out our tuner

thinks it was making 1800 horsepower wow okay that's that is some power yeah so that I mean that's a

whole another thing we're still trying to diagnose it it's kind of hard to diagnose the issue

when you don't have the car on hand because it's currently being shipped over from Australia

as I understand from chatting to you at world time attack it was put down to potentially an

over boost issue is that still sort of what you're leaning towards yeah so one of the things that

we were looking at is it kept going over the boost target it was like just vertical so there's

nothing wrong with the the waste gates themselves that we're using we don't think they're improperly

sized and it wasn't like they were going to be restricted we think potentially our boost solenoid

failed or it's plumbed backwards or maybe there's some other issue that we need to investigate

further to be honest from tuning cars for a living I would say that in four out of every five

turbocharged cars that I'd shown where a boost control solenoid had been plumbed in by someone

other than our workshop it was inevitably wrong and there's no disrespect to you the guys who

installed it either it's just such a common problem well in our case we're actually using one from

a cause worth XD funny enough but it's not like a regular three port that you buy today it's a

four port and also you don't have a ton of instruction manuals off this stuff and so what ended up

happening is right before the event we noticed that we were looking at some data from a Utah test as

well and we noticed the turbos were over speeding they're running at 130,000 rpm and they're in the

wrong portion of the compressor range so the last and we were we actually ended up melting our

diffuser on the car because we have a we're mounted turbos setup due to weight distribution so what

we ended up doing is we upgraded to from a G35 900 turbo to I forget the exact one I think it's a G35

1200 or a G40 something but we upgraded to a different saw a larger compressor size Garrett

and I said in one of the recent social media videos I'm pretty sure so we we're in a way better

compressor range and what we ended up finding is it's kind of hard to tell when you're just tuning

on a dyno you think you'd be able to find all the stuff but it's completely different tuning on a

dyno tuning in the real world like with with the car actually moving and because of the turbos being

maxed out this whole time we didn't really realize that we weren't able to properly adjust

it's a torque-based sensor so we we have it all configured in the car to adjust the torque

using a steering wheel just because the turbos are being restricted we couldn't really tell whether

we were adjusting the power and once we went up to a bigger turbo we realized that we might not

be able to control the boost as well as we wanted so now we're trying to deal we're now we're

trying to figure out and diagnose the stuff it's it's also kind of teething pains of a vehicle

especially teething pains developing this quick totally understandable I think I'm a big advocate

and I have been my whole career of wherever possible once I've been on a dyno I will take the

car out if it's a road car it's road legal I will test and confirm the tune out on the road

if it's a race car we'll take it to the track and do some testing and shake down and make sure

everything we saw on the dyno matches what we're seeing at the track but one of the big factors that

does often dramatically change is the boost control it's really easy on a dyno to to do a ramp run

and get a boost curve that you can lay a ruler across just it doesn't fluctuate more than you

want one to two kpa and that's great but then often you'll take that same vehicle out on the

racetrack and find that the boosters are either significantly above or below what you were seeing

on the dyno and then the bigger issue as well is quite often transient so yeah the car might

respond perfectly when you're wide open throttle down a straight but often we roll into the throttle

coming off a turn that is where it will actually you're over boost significantly so these are all

the things that really need to be factored in so the dyno is just one tool and you know we don't

race the car on the dyno so really what it does out on the racetrack is the important part anyway

yeah 100% I would also just say a little note on the four port solenoids are you know there's

those that love them there's those that hate them and I'm purely assuming here that this

cause where four port solenoid works how I expect a four port solenoid to work these typically give

us a wider boost range between what we'd call out our minimum or wastegate spring pressure let's say

we we put a 10 PSI spring in the wastegate we kind of get around about 10 PSI as our minimum boost

with a conventional three port solenoid we might be able to get from let's say 10 PSI I don't know

maybe maybe 20 maybe 22 there's so many factors that all limit it and that's that's our range of boost

and often that's not going to be enough so one way of getting a wider boost range is

test at four port solenoid the problem with that though is we tend to trade a little bit of

resolution or granularity with with our boost control for that extra range meaning that for every

extra percent of duty cycle we add instead of let's say getting a one PSI increase in boost we

now might get a two PSI increase so that actually can really play into the boost control strategy

as well I've tended to sort of move back away from four ports solenoid to myself but I think

there are only also necessary or useful when you need that wide range and if you can get away

without that then I don't really see they serve a purpose necessarily so I guess I have a question

for you would you step away from a four port and go to like a three port I personally would

but I am speaking a little out of turn having had no involvement or understanding in the setup

of the car so I mean I'm definitely I don't know enough about the setup to be able to definitively

say you've got the wrong solenoid on there but you know again if you don't need a dramatic range

in your boost control then the four port really doesn't give you any advantage and so simply

makes your life more complicated at least in my experience yeah one of the things we were trying to

do is the car can make up 25 PSI boost which we don't really need when we were on the dyno last time

we made around 1400 1500 horsepower on the dyno with like 14 15 PSI boost that sounds pretty

spicy yeah it's our PM helps a lot and and just a really high quality engine build and it's also

got 850 lift it's plenty yeah so it it's also got the biggest valves and LS I've ever seen

so the engine is completely built to rev and breathe and also fuel helps a lot we're running

VP X98 it's 98% ethanol and I'm sure they put something else in it because when it burns it

smells like a methanol it also probably helps cool the exhaust a little bit it's interesting you

say that as well with something we haven't mentioned so far as you're actually not running any

intercooling on this engine are you no not one bit and early on in the project I used a program

and some basic kind of math to figure out what is the maximum PSI we can go to before we start seeing

high inlet temperatures because obviously high inlet temperatures can lead to a predat

nation and overall just high inlet temperatures is just not good and I found that the number was

this was a long time ago around 15 16 PSI so at lower PSI it would just increase very slowly from

80 90 100 PSI and all of a sudden as soon as you hit from like 15.9 to 16 PSI it also

shot to 200 200 degrees Fahrenheit it's quite a substantial jump yes and it's a completely

non-linear relationship and it's kind of that's why I'd use a program to kind of model it a little

bit so my philosophy was like there's no we don't need the power it's insane like 1200 horsepower

or is it almost impossible to put down let alone 15 or 1800 horsepower we just need an engine that

revved a lot and we just want to put the turbos in the right compressor range I guess with no

intercooling as well the the compressor efficiency really becomes even more critical naturally when

you compress air it's going to be heated up but then the other factor that comes into that is

whereabouts you're operating and the compressor compressor efficiency so if you you know let's say

in the low 70% range you're going to be adding less heat than if you're operating at 55% for

example so you really want to try and make sure you're you're in the meat of that efficiency range

yeah that and that's why we were looking at the compressor efficiency like you said so much when

we're working with Garrett on trying to properly size the turbos it's been the labor of love it's

been a lot of work to figure out what's going on at the car at this point and uh yes it's been kind

of a crazy build I think it's fair to say that if it was easy everyone would be doing it so these

things do come with their challenges and you know it's frustrating at the time I'm sure no one was

really excited to see the transmission break at world time attack but these are the challenges

that a car like this is going to lay down yeah and we not that we need to go over a certain PSI

range but if we need to cool the air charge back in the day they used a PCI pre compressor injection

we've kind of stayed away from it at this point just because blasting fuel pre compressor

actually can hurt the turbine blades also having it if you've looked at the interior of our car

the charge tubes are run right next to your arm so that's also not good and then due to the intake

the front be as our intake backwards the front two cylinders probably wouldn't get enough fuel

they'd be leaner compared to that compared to the back cylinders so we've kind of stayed away

from that we would be willing to spray water um that that might work but honestly as long as we

stay below a certain PSI range our inlet temperatures are fine I mean it ultimately sounds like

you're making more power than than you need within a range that doesn't require any additional

thought on cooling so to me it would make sense to just focus on keeping the boost there

and everything else should fall into place I completely agree that's been our strategy the whole time

and and also on top of that intercooler is our weight yeah well I think the bigger the bigger issue

obviously for your installation is a packaging problem because you've got mid-reamounted turbo

charges getting air flow to a air into cooler is therefore going to be difficult water to air

would be achievable but that brings its own packaging problems and as you mentioned wait so

it's just a whole bunch of weighing up which compromise you want to go down yeah we've looked

through all those and I think a PCI would be the best route of action it's something I've never had

the opportunity to play around with but yeah I'd be very keen to give it a crack I know exactly

what you mean though everything I've read about it if you don't achieve correct atomisation then

you can end up doing damage to the compressor wheel my understanding as well though when set up

correct clear it actually gives you an efficiency boost on the compressor wheel as well so

there's sort of two advantages to it yeah this I mean I keep coming back to this but the whole

point is project is to learn and use it as kind of a laboratory slash test bed why do something

everybody else is doing probably because it's simple and it's a lot easier but you don't learn

anything from that you just you learn hey a front sputter is going to work for this because the

pressure builds on top and the air flows underneath it's like okay but like what if you try to put a

wing up there what challenges you get trying to make that flow now you have to deal with a tire now

you deal with the border seat trying to go depending on where that inflate ends you deal with the

border seat going inside the wheel well or outside the wheel well what challenges do you have to

deal with the flow after that so this whole car has been a project test bed to kind of just learn

and try weird things but not so weird that the car is not going to work yeah yeah seeing as you

just started to mention some of the aerodynamic effects there let's dive into that you can't go

to a world time attack without some fairly advanced euro and the hammerhead sort of fits the

bill nicely how did you develop what's on the car at the moment you kind of alluded to earlier

that you are about to go through a complete redesign of this yeah so we work with various

engineering they've done the arrow for the Hunapigus and if you know who car less motor sport is I

think if you had him on the show recently he's got like a DTM style BMW and that actually has the

most downforce out of any other car they've designed before and we kind of came to them halfway

through the project saying hey like now that we've put more power on the car and looking at the

gear speed calculations and looking at all this other stuff we're kind of thinking arrows needed

because something that goes 204 miles per hour like this car probably needs to glue to the ground

especially if it's a road course car so we really like working with them they're a really good

bunch of guys they work extremely hard they're constantly developing products I mean I think

Eric and Matt don't stop or don't sleep they're really neat guys so what's the process of

working with virus to come up with what you've got on the car at the moment so what ended up

happening is we at the very beginning of the project we kind of came through showed them the car

told them what we were thinking on certain things that we had built and they went okay and started

scanning the car the first thing they need to do is because we didn't have a cadmol the car

and we were just kind of building it freehand they needed to scan the car and use that data that

scan data solidify it and then use the solidification to make a solid model or a surface model for

a CFD testing we had some certain things on there that probably didn't make sense error wise

that they could immediately tell and they're they're being extremely kind we said hey just be honest

you're not gonna hurt our feelings or anything we like just looking at it do you see anything that

just doesn't make sense or doesn't work and they go and they listed off like five or six things

that we need to change and within a week we had changed those things and added them and they were

like holy crap so they ended up having to actually come back and rescan the entire front

front end of the car and based off those improvements I'm sure it was a massive change but obviously

that was just kind of a general spitball of things to change but that's kind of been our base that

we've we've worked from from there and once they've started doing testing they gave us a preliminary

result and it was like okay well we got some work to do so we've been kind of restricting because

we've been just kind of quickly developing the car which is part of the reason why we're going

and saying hey like it's time to it's time to put a real kid on this car because we just kind of

wanted to get kind of see how far we get with just kind of using parts from the scrap bin in a way

but at some point you really need to come up with an integrated solution that's going to be

perfected for the car yeah like we don't make a bad amount of downforce I think we make slightly

less down or I think we make a little bit less downforce than the Hunapigus does but also if you

think about it the Hunapigus is a smaller vehicle and we have a lot more surface area play with

so we're kind of to that stage now to where it's time to develop a proper kit we we got to a

pretty significant number in our book but in order to make the car truly competitive

and function it's time to put some more on there so what they would end up doing is because

this is all about learning and they're it's great that they're working with us on that so

I would send them a part that I modeled and say hey is it possible to integrate this into your

model and they go we'll give it a shot and they were able to get it integrated so now I send them

components that either that we're going to put on with the car and I 3D scan and modeled it in

senate to them or something I designed and then they put it on there like the main thing that

I designed on the car that we actually integrated for an arrow piece was the diffuser so I

sent them a model for it and then they integrated and said hey it's a big gain we think it'd be worth

making so I ended up using that design and we ended up building that diffuser and if you

look at videos of it I mean it completely cleans off runways. How do you go about turning a virtual

part and a computer CAD model into a physical component that you can bolt to the car is there

something you guys are doing in house? Yeah so we're starting to do a bit more of that now like

initially it was kind of build something then I reverse engineer it and send it to them

and that was kind of the old school way of thinking with my dad and now I'm kind of like hey it's

time to do the modern process where it's like design something in CAD instead of trying to optimize

where it goes you use optimize it bespoke for that location and then you take that part and you design

it so in that case what we ended up doing is I had the part file so I ended up making a few drawings

and then because it's so large and because of the way we're building it we built it out of a huge

amount of like wood and MDF board and fiberglass paint just mold mold it's a carbon piece so mold

making it just crap on top of crap on top of crap with a really nice surface that you can

draw them old too. Attencraft 101? Yeah yeah it's really it's really just expensive arts and crafts

at the end of the day. So what I end up doing for the diffuser is I sliced in a bunch of sections

to get the main profile of it and drew out a bunch of templates to not only use for honeycomb

cutting but the carbon layers and then using those templates and the general shape of the diffuser

at certain sections because the first two thirds of it is pretty linear it doesn't really change a

lot in terms of looking from the side but if you look at the top it's kind of like a coke bottle

shape it's white at the front and then it kind of narrows up and then goes wider at the back and

then there's the kind of flat pieces that come out of the side that had a shaped profile to it

so I just made a bunch of templates out of paper like a thick cardboard type paper and placed it

around and measured from certain points from my model and built it from there. Luckily with carbon

stuff you can you lay bigger than the piece that you're gonna make and the really main stuff that

needs to be properly sized is like the honeycomb and hard points and then you can trim it afterwards.

Well without sort of trying to derail this whole conversation and go down the complete new

rabbit hole just in terms of the construction of that what was the method you're using there is

this a wet layup that can bag in resin infusion. So just like everything else in this project we do

something way too complicated for our own abilities. Jump out of the plane and then

build the parachute on your way down. Yeah yeah basically. We'd done a lot of metal fabrication

on the car and some design stuff and machining but I really wanted to learn more about composites

so this diffuser is kind of a way to do that. Oh man this thing was way too complicated. It had to be

the way it had to be laid up especially the time schedule we had it was laid up in actually three

pieces and kind of bonded together so there was a top and then the sides. So the way that we

ended up doing is it was all wet layup and we would there were certain parts of it that we had

pre-wet out the fabric and lay it down and certain parts that we had wet out later on. Just

depending on how we wanted to whether we want stuff that here a certain way or how hard it would

be to move an entire piece of fabric because it was so large it required two or three people

pieces at a time. Just put this in perspective or I don't remember how long our car is but if

you've seen it in person or generally know what the scale of it about a third of the length of the

car has a diffuser underneath it. So it's about as wide as it is long and it comes up. The tapers

from no height practically to almost like two feet. So it's quite a massive piece. It has tons

of honeycomb and it actually got replaced with kind of a foam like material recently. It's got

hard points in it. It's got a bunch of pre-cured carbon. It's such a complicated layup.

Now I think when I was talking to you at World Time Attack we're talking about the bodywork

in general and obviously this notwithstanding maybe a complete redo of the euro anyway. At the

moment all the bodywork, the external bodywork is steel as I say is a fire call correctly.

Yeah that's complete. The front fenders, the doors, the roof, the rear quarter panels, the trunk

is actually carbon. The hood is fiberglass, the nose is fiberglass. The entire floor of the car is

a honeycomb. It's kind of like aeroplane floor where it's aeroplane floor is fiberglass,

aluminum honeycomb, fiberglass, carbon, aluminum carbon and it's also got, I don't know I'm

blinking the name, oh Kevlar. It's also got Kevlar in it for anti intrusion. We just didn't want

anything to come up and poke anybody. That'd be nice. I mean this would seem to be a relatively

low hanging fruit in terms of getting a bunch of weight out of the car, just redeveloping that

steel bodywork into a compressor is that something that's on your mind as well or you've got too much

PTSD from the diffuser. Yeah the diffuser was a really good thing to do because at the end of the day

it turned out pretty well. It ended up working. It was an improvement and it showed me just about how

large you should make things. That's about the limit. So something like a door would honestly be

so easy, especially our doors. They're like big but they're not diffuser big. So I would just do it

in two skins. I would have an outer skin and inner skin and if I really wanted to make it stiff,

I'd probably do some honeycomb. Just because we're taking away the thickness of the door,

I'd probably sandwich an inner layer with Kevlar in it. I'd do a Kevlar layup. I mean because

we're not wheel wheel racing, it probably doesn't matter but just if you have a crashed event,

you never know what you're going to hit or run into. Yeah I mean at the end of the day we don't want

anybody to get hurt and it's not worth the weight savings if someone gets hurt from something.

Not at all. So the car is not quite made up backstage side yet. I guess from here other than

again notwithstanding the the arrow development, what's left to sort out, wins the car likely to

be seen on track and at least in the US water vents is this car likely to be competing at.

One of the first things we want to do when we get it back is it's going to be in California

where we pick it up. Some guy really likes the car and he wants us to run it and help so he's

going to let us use his garage space at Thermal Club and he said his track is available 24-7

whenever you want and there would be no rush so we're going to probably take development pretty

slow and just work out any teething pains in terms of power unit and drive it and just deal with

whatever we've got and get it to the point to where all it's going to take is really just build

the arrow components and put them on the car. So it just hasn't had a lot of track time and this is

probably a good three-day opportunity to get a lot of track time, a lot of miles and yeah so we got

some slicks that we can use because we didn't up using them at World Time Attack Challenge so we

were still wanting to track the car and use it. It's hard to say what events will be at. It's quite

expensive to run a car like this and it was kind of crazy to do that across the world for its first

time ever so as long as we can kind of get support for an event we'll do whatever it takes to get

there. The thing is that World Time Attack Challenge is really the main event or really only event

that is big enough that we can make work. Otherwise it's kind of private testing and like grid life

is an awesome event. It's a it's a really neat event. I've seen hyper-fest. I know people really

like that and then Global Time Attack puts on some good events but the big thing is for our sponsors

a lot of our reaches through social media and obviously anywhere we go the car's got a crowd around

it three people deep at times but in order to actually bring it to events we usually have help

from sponsors with that. Yeah, I guess as well it's easy to forget from the side of the world just

help big the US's so if you want to be carting that car all around the United States to attend

different events it's a fairly big commitment both financially and time-wise. Yeah like not only

driving there but you're dealing with usage of your vehicles and usage of the car which at the

end of day that's what you're there to do but you're talking about tires you're talking about fuel

if you have a driver or you're talking about staff potentially and luckily a lot of the people

help they're volunteering their time we just make sure it doesn't cost them anything to help us

but yeah I mean a lot it's just it's awesome because the only reason why this car is happening is

because of so much support from other people. Yeah yeah no I mean it's it's become a bit of a

fan favorite so I can understand why that's the case. Well look Kevin we're getting on towards

the 2L mark and we could probably go on for another 2Ls but I do want to respect you time so

I think we'll sort of move towards wrapping this thing up. We've got the same three questions of

course we ask all of our guests at the end and the first of those is what's next in the future for

you. I guess we're probably touched on a little bit of this as we've gone but maybe you could

tie a nice little bow around it and sum it up for us. Yeah so a quick answer to this is I'm going

to be finishing my degree in the next year and I'm going to continue to be working on hammerhead

to develop it. Hopefully take it to more events and keep people entertained with that and continue

to learn. I have the car bug so bad I mean I always have a build idea that I want to do. I mean I

have five build ideas I want to do but they're just to put this out in the world. I do have an S14

shell and do everything that I've learned on the car. I think I could build a car that would put

I don't want to say hammerhead the shame because there's nothing wrong with hammerhead. I mean

that I'm super proud of the car. The amount of work that we've put in is insane but you know you

always look at something and I'm such a perfectionist. I feel like with the lessons I've learned

on this car I could build something even crazier. And I don't doubt that but I mean that does come

down to that sort of where you put the line in the sand in terms of not letting perfection be the

enemy of good enough I guess. At some point you've got to get the car out there on the track

on the road whatever it might be and actually use it so you can learn what worked what didn't work

which is obviously exactly where you're at at the moment. For sure and at the end day we just want

to keep developing hammerhead and keep running that and I'm going to keep learning and eventually

I mean a lot of things in my life have happened at the right time so I'm just going to keep doing what

we do. Okay. As the next question I'm just going to struggle to ask this one with a straight face

given your age but let's see how you handle this. Is there any advice you give to a younger

vision of yourself to help reach where you are to date in your career faster? I don't know how

you fast track what you've done but let's hear it. More stimulants now is getting so to be honest

it's such a funny question because I think about all the stuff that I've been doing the past few

years. The only way I could get through what I've done faster is if I didn't competitively swim

in high school. Okay we skipped this but I'm good to know. Computer swimming. Yeah. That took a ton

of time. I was waking up any, well for swimming so I'd be waking up at 3, 4, 5 in the morning

and for swim practices that I've do that two times a day and if I wasn't swimming second time

that day it was a weight room and so that could take anywhere from four to five hours of my day

right there. To be honest it's all starting to fall into place now that dedication to swim

competitively or do any competitive sport for that matter I feel like you've just segwayed all of

that in energy and dedication just into a different area of your life now. Yeah all that energy

and all the craziness is going other places and to be honest even now that I'm saying this I don't

think I would skip out on the swimming part because it taught me a lot. Like I can wake up any time

now or work late and it taught me a lot so I think it's an important stepping stone but if I was

mimaxing everything I guess I would remove that part and work on the car sooner. I think you're

doing just fine. All right our last question for today. If people want to follow and see what

you're up to and how they best to do so what's your social media. Yeah so the thing that I'm most

frequently on is Instagram it's horizon underscore motor sports underscore LC we're also on YouTube

but it's not very big and mainly Instagram is the main source of content for us. Oh as always

we'll put links to those accounts in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. Look

haven't it's been a great to catch up again really enjoyed chatting with you at World Time Attack

and letting more about the car obviously diving in even deeper in the podcast today so thank you

for your time. The car is an absolute credit to both you and your dad. We wish you all the best

of success with it for the next year and with any luck we'll get to see it again at World Time

Attack next year. Yeah for sure well thank you so much for having me on the show I've been

a long time follower and I've really enjoyed your content and yeah thank you. All right thank you.

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About this episode

A high school project has transformed into an extraordinary automotive endeavor with the Pontiac Hammerhead, a 1973 Firebird reimagined with IndyCar technology. Kevin Cameron, alongside his father, discusses the challenges and triumphs of building this 1,450HP beast, including the integration of advanced aerodynamics and suspension systems. They share insights on the learning curve of fabrication, the importance of using CAD, and the unique engineering decisions made throughout the process. The episode dives deep into the technical aspects of the build, from the choice of materials to the intricacies of tuning and performance testing.

buckling CAD Coke bottle shape contact patch Cosworth XD downforce drag dyno ECU ethanol

Original notes

What would happen if you took an IndyCar inspired chassis, dropped a 1973 Pontiac Firebird body over the top of it, and then added a 1,450hp twin-turbo LS? That’s essentially what Cavan Cameron and his father, Russell Cameron, of Horizon Motorsport have built.

The project began as Cavan’s high school engineering project but has since evolved into one of the coolest and most ambitious builds we’ve seen in a while.

👉 Use the code ‘PODCAST500’ to get $500 OFF HPA's VIP Package: https://hpcdmy.co/podvip

In this episode of Tuned In, Cavan shares his journey from a childhood passion for cars to pursuing a career in motorsports engineering, sparked by his father’s involvement in IndyCar.

We dive into the “Hammerhead” build that Cavan and his dad have been developing, exploring the challenges of integrating genuine IndyCar components into a bespoke project. He breaks down the technical aspects of the tube-frame chassis, from fabrication and material choices to the complexities of suspension dynamics.

We cover the finer details of designing and developing a competitive race car, with a focus on suspension, engine configuration, and aerodynamics. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced during its first outing at World Time Attack Challenge, including managing torque through the transaxle and tuning the car for optimal performance.

This build is truly something special, and what Cavan has achieved is seriously impressive. We can’t wait to see how the car evolves as they continue to refine and dial it in.

👉 Use the code ‘PODCAST500’ to get $500 OFF HPA's VIP Package: https://hpcdmy.co/podvip

Follow Cavan here:

Instagram: horizon_motorsports_llc
Youtube: horizon_motorsports_llc

Timestamps:

0:00 A High School Project Gone Wild: 1,450HP IndyCar x Firebird
4:12 How did you become interested in cars?
5:21 What was your Dads involvement in Indy Car?
10:26 How’s the exposure to high level motorsport at a young age shaped your career?
11:53 Is it easier or harder to design parts with a tight set of rules?
16:10 Designing fit for purpose parts
18:58 Tell us about your motorsport degree
29:54 What is the Hammerhead and how did this project come about?
33:33 Did you design the car fully in CAD before starting?
39:27 How did you learn your fabrication skills?
42:56 How do you juggle getting the car done and completing it to a standard you’re proud of?
45:15 What material is the chassis made from?
50:58 How did you weld the chassis and get it square and straight?
55:11 How does changing the roll centre affect the car's handling?
59:01 Are the IndyCar spec’d fasteners adequate for the extra weight of your build?
1:01:30 How about the components like uprights and wishbones?
1:06:39 Spring rates and dampers, how did you spec these?
1:15:29 Did you ever consider putting a Cosworth XD engine in the car?
1:18:07 Was it ever a concern that the LS was going to have too much torque for the trans axel?
1:27:27 You’re not running any intercooler on this car?
1:32:54 How did you develop the aero package?
1:43:38 What’s left to develop on the car and when will we see it back on track?
1:46:41 Final 3 questions

Tuned In

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