Buggy Pics from the weekend.

[Rippthrough]

Onwards....after fitting the supercharger on some temporary brackets, and tack welding the silencer up for it's final position, it quickly became obvious that our oversized 165 amp alternator wasn't going to fit in the stock location.
In fact, it wasn't going to fit anywhere we could get the belt drive on it, short of putting a gear on it and running it off the flywheel teeth...which resulted in a slightly poor solution of driving the alternator on a seperate belt that's also driven from the supercharger pulley, this might result in too much belt slip/wear, but it was the easiest way around it.
Well, the easiest way around it would be to fit one of the new starter/alternator all-in-one units, but the aftermarket versions of those at the minute bring a tear to the eye and a squeak to the voice when the invoice appears, so that was a no-go.
Try it and see method
Did a couple of beer-mat sketches after mounting everything of the old bodywork vs roughly where the new will need to sit:





I, err, well, everyone knows big wing = racecar, and it kinda works:




Old rear with Mazda:



Possible new rear end:



And 2 minutes of sketching later....



But everyone knows, if some is good, more is better:




One problem with moving the engine and gearbox so far forward, is it didn't leave much room around the radiator/fan setup, so we ended up chopping those brackets off and moving the radiator up and forwards, not ideal, but cooling takes priority over CoG here:





You can also see how much ground clearance/departure angle we've gained, as that's the old engine cage, which used to have the topmost bar horizontal.

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Okay, another update before you all get bored of seeing it

Bit more of the plumbing and mountings were finished, yes, I know, the outlet on the charger and the inlet to the plenum aren't great, but it's a case of make something quickly that will work well enough for those pieces, as they can be easily upgraded later on when we have more time spare:



You can also see the fun we're having with the alternator...



It was starting to look a bit tight in there even with the old cage on, so we cracked on with making a new one (again, out of T45 tube - you never know if someone is going to give you a love tap up the rear...)
As the dry sump has lots of clearance in the middle between the fittings, we went a little more substantial with the under-engine guards this time, as we were forever beating the old ally sump plates back straight after events, it's only thin-wall tube so it weighs very little and gives a lot more stiffness behind the sump guards:



Oh yes, we mocked up the silencer there too, just about fits

And the new engine cage from the side:



It shows pretty well how much extra clearance we've gained from moving the transaxle/engine/shortening the bellhousing and tilting the transmission slightly (now there's no torsion housing tube in the way).
Unfortunate side effect is the centre of gravity is going to be higher at the rear of course, but needs must.