The begining

This blog is to show the development of my car, White Nova.

The car I have now decided is going to have the wheelbase of a mini, and powered by a hayabusa motorbike engine. It will have around 700bhp/tonne and use a space frame chassis.

To help me design my car I am using other kit cars/ self built cars and other blogs to give me inspiration and ideas. I will also use the books "The Race Car Chassis" by Forbes Aird, "How to Build Motorcycle-engined Racing Cars" by Tony Pashley and i will also use, "Chassis Engineering" by Herb Adams.

The first book mentioned i think will be most useful to me initially as it goes into the history and into depth about purely the frame of the car. Chassis engineering will be for the more general suspension geometry and steering and the motorcycle-engine racing cars book will be for the engine, gearbox, transition etc.

I plan on taking 2 years to design and make the car, first year to fully design it, second year to make it. During this year however I am restoring a mini, and another small project, so I won’t have a lot of time.

Here are some drawings I came up with a while ago, and more recent ones, they are in order from oldest to newest.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them)

None of these pictures are representatives of what the final car will look like; they were purely a technical exercise.

the final car will be a lot different although it will use the same engine, as none of these cars have the wheelbase of a mini, and one of a formula 750 car, they will not be used.

I chose to use the mini wheelbase for a good reason; the company Z cars design parts so you can fit motorbike engines in original minis. Just recently they designed their own track/race car based on the mini, I plan on using the front and rear arms off the Z cars kit car to save me time and money.

I emailed them a few days ago about dimensions on their front and rear arms, i got the reply today saying that they don't use CAD to design them, and they used jigs and "work with them in the flesh". They did offer me time to see the workshop, but as i live in London, and there in Yorkshire, it’s too much of a treck for me.

Thanks for reading/looking
Chris