- 6
- bu_butters
I'm new here, long time lover of GT series, cars in general, and motorsport. I'm a senior in mechanical engineering at Villanova University, and co-captain of our Formula SAE team (competitive international series, build a small formula racecar from scratch every year w/600cc bike engine). I was searching for months for a used G27, as I can't really afford or justify $300 for a wheel, and I got very lucky on craigslist and picked up a barely used w/box G27 for under $200. With my experience around steel spaceframes, I couldn't resist whipping up a small cockpit to make out of some extra 4130 chrome-moly steel tubes.
I originally wanted to use a car seat, but I stumbled upon a plastic shell racing seat in my school garage with some Villanova themed upholstery, so I set to work designing around that. I used 1.25" OD / 1.2" ID tubes for the most part. In the solidworks image the seat is what I found as a downloadable seat model. Today I was able to cut and grind all the bars, and tacked everything but the shifter mount together. My welding coach and teammate is in the picture, I'm going to finish up the welds on Sunday to get more practice with TIG welds.
Some of the bars laid out, paper is the printed drawing of each tube with proper end profile for grinding purposes:
Tacked together:
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Manufacturing wasn't too precise but everything fits together well enough. The frame isn't too heavy either, but is more than stiff enough for the purposes of the g27. I'll likely add to the seat bracket to give it a boost, the wheel came out a bit higher than I imagined. I'll be using it on carpet so I don't need to fix the pedals to the frame (adds adjustability). I'll post pics once everything is all finished.
I originally wanted to use a car seat, but I stumbled upon a plastic shell racing seat in my school garage with some Villanova themed upholstery, so I set to work designing around that. I used 1.25" OD / 1.2" ID tubes for the most part. In the solidworks image the seat is what I found as a downloadable seat model. Today I was able to cut and grind all the bars, and tacked everything but the shifter mount together. My welding coach and teammate is in the picture, I'm going to finish up the welds on Sunday to get more practice with TIG welds.
Some of the bars laid out, paper is the printed drawing of each tube with proper end profile for grinding purposes:
Tacked together:
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Manufacturing wasn't too precise but everything fits together well enough. The frame isn't too heavy either, but is more than stiff enough for the purposes of the g27. I'll likely add to the seat bracket to give it a boost, the wheel came out a bit higher than I imagined. I'll be using it on carpet so I don't need to fix the pedals to the frame (adds adjustability). I'll post pics once everything is all finished.
