Maluch JBeam rebuild

Progress for today:

• Added optional lights to P4 rear bumper, not sure if it was a factory or aftermarket thing but was on some pictures, if someone knows please tell me.
  
• Added optional bumper guards to ST bumpers, based on Piccolina ones. They were from factory on the Lux trim but also sold separately.
  
• Added extra rally lights because the OBR rally Maluch had them on most rallys, the halogens are fog lights while these are extra high beams, accurate to what I've read about it.
  

Weight fixing either later today or tomorrow, depends how much time I have after working on another mod.

 

In Poland, they were first introduced in "ST series 2" along with the 650cc engine and all the other trim extras, it was in 1977. Previously there were literally no options for this car, you could only buy 1 version, with the 600cc engine, and additionally the militia had their own one, it looked like the one in the mod now except it had an antenna instead of loudspeakers and had what looks like siren emiters under the front bumper. The 650E trim introduced in 1982 also used the P4 bumpers, contrary to the config in the mod. In Italy, the bumpers appeared in the "series 2" in 1976, but only on the highest trim called Personal 4P (the lower ones were called Economica and Personal 2P, a funny thing is that they didn't have the rear bench seat). It was never mandatory in Italy, and they didn't have the lights. In Italy the car was discontinued before the change you are talking about took place, in 1982.

 

So now we know where they got the idea for that lol

 

Roughly 60kg for the interior seems good enough for me. Extra 40kg was added to the main chassis because that's the most uncertain thing in terms of weight, the suspension and fuel tank already had roughly accurate weight compared to what we know about them. This small increase was enough to make most things stable, after fixing the inconsistencies in the weight of the body panels. In terms of Jbeam even 0.1kg can make a difference, so 40 was more than enough to fix stuff, what didn't fix itself I fixed manually (such as the hood, it's way different than the Autobello one that it's based on, after all the weight mess it turned out too stiff). I still have a lot of beam values to fix though. I haven't even touched any deformation or strength values, will do it when I compare it to real life crash testing, which will be after I add the interior. And still the engine mounts are left to fix, they are so hard to get right because it's basically just 1 spring that needs to behave like a spring should, I need to simulate it using multiple beams instead of 1 beam like it's normally done for springs because beams don't have any volume, the force from them goes to 1 point, which would make a really unstable spring if it was like this irl, only the very middle of the engine would be held without any area around it, it needs at least a few cm to be stable. If anyone has any info about how exactly the engine is secured in this car to avoid tilting to the sides, please tell me, I need to solve this.

 

This looks WAY more solid than I expected. They made sure the engine doesn't move at all in that point, and meanwhile my mounts allow some movement, so this is my issue. Thanks for pointing it out, now I know that I need to make my transmission mounts way stiffer and stronger, and attach to more points.

 

I used to keep some failed designs for this mod as beater variants, like the old leaf spring, but it makes it way harder to keep up with stuff, like every time I needed to fix the normal version I had to do the same for beater version too and it was harder because I couldn't just base it on working design because it's against the point of the beater part. So I don't keep the old stuff anymore. But beater engine mounts are a good idea, I've heard that the mounting spring could get worn out fast, many people had to replace them, so I'll keep this in mind. But I'll only add it after I'm satisfied with the working version.

 

You are helping very much with the mod so using "we" is justified in your case, I could make you a beta tester after it's more finished so you can find stuff that has to be improved, and you could make your own config with existing parts to be included in the mod in return. In case of this car there's never enough custom configs, other cars are commonly tuned while this one is rather visually customized instead.

 

That's the optimistic scenario, we can't have a good car without good suspension and so far only 1 person attempted making one and then gave up, I'm not sure what to do with it, if it ends up with me having to make the suspension then it definitely won't be perfect even if I try my hardest.
And also, the details you are giving are not small, they are the key things that need to be known when making a mod, and doing research like you is also work, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of stuff in the mod without your help. My knowledge about this car is limited and doesn't include technical data which is more important in modding than what I know.

 

It's ok, I see why you gave up, the model is just a big mess and back then we had no idea yet how the suspension is really physically constructed (weird mounting points and unequally sized shocks and springs), it's absurdly hard to get it to work with current conditions.