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Old 06-10-2018, 09:31 PM
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heinke heinke is offline
MetalShaper of the Month Jan 2018
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Prescott, AZ
Posts: 487
Post What chassis to use?

When I first started thinking about building a Miura, I hadn’t seen any chassis used for home builds of the Miura except the Fiero. The Miura build using the Fiero required lengthening the wheelbase and ended up using very little of the Fiero in the end. No offense meant to those who’ve used a Fiero as the basis of their car projects but this felt like a very hacky way to go about building a Miura so I eliminated that chassis option right away.

The next alternative I looked at was to build it myself. Hey, I’ve designed and built a tube chassis for the C5 GTO and already have all the tools, including a chassis jig, needed to do it. Alternatively, I could build a chassis from sheet steel like they did at the Lamborghini factory if I got myself a power shear and a big box/pan brake. Hey, I’m always up for learning some new things.

Then I was poking around on the Mad Mechanics forum and came across a car called a Chupacabra. I’d never heard of that car before so I didn’t pay it any attention at first. Then I kept seeing mentions in the recent posts section and words like “aluminum” and “chassis” caught my eye. So being the curious person I am, I clicked into the thread which mostly announced new videos in a series of videos posted on YouTube. What the heck, I took a look at a video, then another, then another…

It turns out the Chupacabra is a car being produced by Charley Strickland of Strickland Racing in Fort Worth, TX. Charley has been building Countach and Diablo replicas for some time and decided to build a similar car but of his own design, the Chupacabra. What really caught my eye was the all aluminum monocoque chassis that he’d designed and was preparing to manufacture for this car. It’s largely made from ¼ inch 5052 aluminum sheet cut on a 3 axis CNC router with indexing tabs/slots then fitted and glued together on a chassis table. I was impressed by all the thought that had been put into the thousands of details that go into a chassis for a car of this complexity.

I reached out to Charley and filled him in on my Miura project. I then asked if his chassis could be made to work for a Miura. Charley was already very familiar with the Miura as he’d owned and driven one in his younger days. Both the Chupacabra and Miura are mid-engined but the key difference is longitudinal engine versus transverse.

Charley and I have been iterating through some bulkhead/firewall placement options based on rim/tire sizing, engine/transaxle mockup progress and finally settled on a chassis sized for a 105.5% Miura. The planned wheel base is 104 inches where the regular Miura is 98.5 inches. This should result in a Miura with comfortable legroom fit for me and the space to mount a Coyote V8 transverse. So the answer on what chassis will be used is that I plan to use a Strickland Racing chassis for the Miura project. I plan to post some CAD renderings and pictures for the chassis and Charley plans to post videos as it goes through build process.

So plan in summary for the Miura project is:
  • Plus sized Miura at 105.5% resulting in 104 inch wheel base
  • All aluminum car; monocoque chassis, engine, transaxle, and body all done in aluminum
  • Transverse mounted 5.0L Coyote DOHC 32 valve engine, 8 stack EFI, and 5 speed transaxle
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Joel Heinke
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Last edited by heinke; 06-10-2018 at 09:34 PM.
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