Dai Yoshihara’s 2018 Formula Drift Rebuild

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The rear of the car contains the fuel cell, dry sump tank, battery mount, and radiator.

Our car is designed to have this weight to the rear but in front of the rear wheels. We believe in keeping the polar moment of inertia low while stiff having as much weight as possible in the rear of the car. Our car has a decent 51% front, 49% rear weight distribution.

We are not changing too much other than simplifying and cleaning up the water and oil routing for the cooling and drysump systems and making sure we comply with the 2018 FD rules changes regarding fluid line routings.

 

Previously, we had modified the trans tunnel to enlarge it to the maximum extent of the FD rules. This helps make things easier to work on. No changes here. Look how nice and clean things are here.

Eimer Engineering gusseted the front of the cage to the unibody. This greatly improves overall stiffness, and it was a thing that somehow got skipped when the car first got built that had been bugging us.

Chris Eimer used a phosphor bronze welding rot to tig braze the gusset to the chassis.  This is a low-temperature tig welding method that works well to weld a thick tubing section to the thin sheetmetal of the unibody.

 

The cage main hoop was also tig brazed to the unibody to tie the cage completely in. We may have to fiddle with our suspension tuning, as this stuff typically makes a big difference in stiffness and stiffness distribution.

Chris Eimer had drilled some holes in the cage to let any solution that might have leaked into the cage out and let the phosphating solution in.

Once everything drys out, the holes will be welded up with phosphor bronze and ground smooth.

 

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