Here's the finished product.  What thinks ye?

We're painting it to match the Lotus F1 cars of the '60's.  We thinks it will look nice, but we don't know yet!  We'll find out tomorrow!

John Kajowski, our Volvo guru, goes to work on the SU carbs.  We haven't had them looked at since we got the valve job done.  Oh yeah, these are a new pair of carbs, as well.  They are rebuilt and in great shape and make the motor sing.

It's difficult to see, but we re-routed one of the lower structural tubes of the chassis.  We replaced a square tube with a round tube that has a bend in it.  We did this because we noticed that there were several places where the motor was touching the chassis.  In this case, the stay that holds the clutch cable, and the clutch lever itself, were rubbing against a tube.  Now they're not.  Click on the picture to see a full sized image and you'll be able to see the round tube a little better.  It's just to the left of the black steering column.  Also, you can see our tremendous new master cylinder.  It's a Wilwood and it's got lots of stopping power.  More importantly, it's aluminum, which means it won't rust and leak like our last two did. 

The end of the night: Aaron and Dano. 

Our new, professionally made drive shaft.  This one has been balanced and will not fail.

Here's our F1 radiator.  The fan is from some other car.  Ignore that part.  Isn't this a beautiful radiator?  The story goes like this:  Dano has a friend who is an engineer for Renault Formula1.  He went to visit this friend at his home outside of Oxford, and the friend gave him a quick tour of the factory.  There was a bin of used radiators.  Dan asked if he could have one, and his friend gave it to him.  The radiator was from a 2006 car, the R26, driven by either Giancarlo Fisichella or Fernando Alonso (who won the championship that year!).  It was definitely used, as there were tyre marbles embedded in the cooling fins.  We don't know
when it was used (for testing, practice, in a race, etc...) but there is the chance that this radiator was in the car when Alonso won the championship.  Can you say that about your radiator?  I didn't think so. 

We did have to make some modifications.  The radiator was a little big, so we cut off about 30% of it.  This is about our 5th or 6th generation cooling system.  Our nose cone has really been limiting the radiators we can use - it's terribly small, so we've tried several car and motorcycle radiators, with no luck (it keeps overheating).  But now we've got it squared away: if in doubt, go with F1 technology and it should work.  We have the radiator mounted 90° from it's orientation in the F1 car.  The radiator is probably worth more than, uh, anything else I own, but we picked it up for free! 

A view from behind.  We've installed a proper coolant filling valve.  In this view you can also see some of the work we've done cleaning up the wiring harness (where is it?  Exactly!).

Top view of our radiator etc. from the front.  Lookin' pretty, no?

Just a pretty picture of the rear wheel in some nice evening lighting.

Dano driving my car, me driving the Votus.

Me driving the Votus, again.  That's the Meisner 122 on the left.

We took the top of the motor off to get it machined.  We could never get the front cylinder to fire, so we figured it probably needed a valve job. 

Here's the freshly decked and re-valved head.  I anthropomorphise, and I imagine the motor must feel the same as I do after I've just taken my first shower in a week.

A different angle...

A view of a clean, fresh valve.

We got ourselves some shiny new front rotors, and some thick brake pads to go with them. 

The new head, in place.  No intake, header, or valve cover yet. 

More shredded bodywork - this is the top of the tranny tunnel.





This is the right side of the tranny tunnel - you can see what the explosive power of the failed transmission did to the aluminum.  And don't forget - this aluminum is on the outside of a steel cage.  See below...

Here's the inside of the tranny tunnel.  This is pretty steel.  I must say I'm happy to see that the welding didn't fail, but rather the steel bent.  Yikes!  You can see the end of the shift linkage.

Here's the shift linkage cover - it was completely torn off by the failing drive shaft.

A wider-angle view of the same vantage.

The shifter and various other shrapnel.

Part of the shredded drive shaft...

More of the same.

Aaron and Dan on October 13, 2004, in Aaron's basement, the birthplace of the Votus. Dan and Aaron custom-made this tabletop to be super-flat, and they precisely marked the tabletop with the layout of the spaceframe.

A side view of the Votus in it's early stages, October 13, 2004. The frame is just being tack-welded until all the parts are in place.

The frame moves to my shop in Washington, DC, where we are seam welding all the joints. It's difficult to see with the dark background, but you can see we added the transmission tunnel and more to the back end of the chassis. Hundreds of welds, but the frame now feels super-strong and roadworthy. Next weekend 12/18/04 we will finish the welding, and the easy part will be done! We have already begun serious work on the rear axle, and the front end work will begin soon as well. Engine fittings have started - see below. The spaceframe currently fits easily in the back of Dan's van for the 1 hr. voyage which will be made a few more times while we finish welding mounting brackets on. Right now it weighs about 100 lbs., completed weight will probably be about 1100 lbs.

The front end of the spaceframe. The engine sits behind, and the radiator and fan mount on the front right here. No suspension brackets or radiator mounts have been fitted yet - that's coming soon.