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Hey Mikeyjd,
I wish that I could give you a definitive time stamp on the body shell but unfortunately right now I just can't.
What needs to happen first is complete the rolling chassis. You can not build the body first unfortunately. I suppose you could if you were using modern CAD designed plans but right now for the prototypes I will be using old school airplane and boat composite fiberglass techniques. These are the same techniques that they used to use in kit cars also. This is more labor intensive and time consuming than just putting a foam core into a CAD generated machine and having it cut out the buck for you. However this keeps the initial operation in house and costs down for the prototype. This building technique is used in the RQ Riley do it yourself build plans. You can go to his site and he offers a few articles that gives an initial overview of the process. If you purchase his XR3 plan set there is a DVD video that comes with the deluxe version I believe that offers more detail and shows the process in real time.
Anyways what I can say is once you see pics up and videos in this thread of the rolling chassis with the station formers installed you know we are at the composite body shell stage and it will not be much longer until we have our first vehicle to test out!
In this past few days I have made really good progress in getting the rear end design figured out and making contact with the right people who will be able to help me make it possible. So this is very good from a time frame stand point. My vision for the rear differential design is to create a modular unit that can be implemented into the existing Spitfire/GT6 chassis that offers fully independent suspension and that can withstand greater than 400 ft-lbs of torque. This completely does away with the main Triumph Spitfire/GT6 weak links ie. the rear suspension and weak differential. The other side of it is this the Spitfire and GT6 differentials are getting harder and harder to come by and are not cheap! they also really limit you to a max horsepower of 120 and 150 ft-lb of torque which is fine for the stock TDI 1.9 and the 3 and 2 cylinder engine models but for a built 1.9 no can do!
So maybe what I will do is offer the upgraded rear end as an option to people who have the desire to build up there 1.9 engines for race or track runners. The daily driver could save money on just going with the stock Spit/GT6 units we can obtain out of donors. However after I complete the upgraded rear end it may turn out that its cheaper to go this route than even bothering with the Spit/GT6 diffs if we have to go and purchase a rebuilt unit overseas!
GH..
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