Lightweight Sva

[peter_m7uk]

Well, Trevor's site is the best, although

my site has pics but needs

a bit of updating. Maybe you'll get the gist from there? I can understand why Trev doesn't want

to meet the Southampton tester's criteria, though, as it may end up spoiling the beauty of the

existing construction, which is up to the job anyway, in my opinion. As stated, anyone who wants

to look at the chassis is welcome to have a look in my garage near Brighton.

 

Pete

[Guest Stevebn2]

which is up to the job anyway, in my opinion. Pete

 

One way round this would be for RHSC to commision a pull test on the seatbelt anchorage points.

Unfortunately, having spoke to "STATUS" who are one of the organistions authorised to perform this test, it is a destructive test normally costing £2400.00, however they would be willing to perform the test for a reduced price of £1900.00 as it is a kit-car.

 

Or we(existing & potential lightweight builders) could all club together and pay for the test, but we would need RHSC to donate a suitable chassis, complet with seats.

[Guest zoomzoom]

This is the seat belt mounting points on my car, this is the n/s seat lower inner point (i have'nt yet drilled the holes yet, but the screw driver handle is in the approx position)

 

This shows the tunnel next to the lower inner mountings for the seat belts

 

this is the o/s seat position this is where the lower outer belt bolt will go.

As you can see at best the bolts go through only two layers of panel, and the panels are fixed with blind rivets.

[Guest DRC7]

it will all come good

[Guest zoomzoom]

I agree(see previous posts), just wanted to show the seat belt areas and how the rivets are next to it. I was going to fit plates just like trev has done, but according to his fail as i understand it it would need a complete chassis arrangement to bolt the belt bolts to.

 

As i said before RHSC should be taking the lead on this and proving their design as fit for use.

 

Marcus

[Guest DRC7]

mines coming on a treat

[Jon Bradbury]

I don't like the look of that. If I were building one I would want to significantly strengthen the floorpan, or at least mount the seatbelts with thick plates to spread the load.

 

I had the same issue with the recessed s/steel floorpan in my 2B. I fabricated a steel subchassis for that which has a brace going to the top centre rails. The Recaro seats are attached to the subchassis through the original floorpan, and my seatbelt attaches to the seats' mount points.

 

It's only aluminium alloy for heaven's sake, and soft at that. Look how thin the panels are! Do we know what grade it is? I bet it's cheap. A seatbelt bolted to that floor panel would be ripped out in a serious impact if a spreading plate wasn't used.

 

Frankly I'm surprised no one has noticed this apart from the SVA inspector. It's no wonder he questions the overall strength of the design. He's probably wondering what other weak spots there are that he can't see.

[peter_m7uk]

I don't like the look of that. If I were building one I would want to significantly strengthen the floorpan, or at least mount the seatbelts with thick plates to spread the load.

 

I had the same issue with the recessed s/steel floorpan in my 2B. I fabricated a steel subchassis for that which has a brace going to the top centre rails. The Recaro seats are attached to the subchassis through the original floorpan, and my seatbelt attaches to the seats' mount points.

 

It's only aluminium alloy for heaven's sake, and soft at that. Look how thin the panels are! Do we know what grade it is? I bet it's cheap. A seatbelt bolted to that floor panel would be ripped out in a serious impact if a spreading plate wasn't used.

 

Frankly I'm surprised no one has noticed this apart from the SVA inspector. It's no wonder he questions the overall strength of the design. He's probably wondering what other weak spots there are that he can't see.

 

Hi John,

 

If you look at Trevor's seatbelt mounting you will see that he has placed significant reinforcement around

the relevant area. I will do the same and I would imagine that other LW builders will.

 

As for seat mounting, RH supply some meaty steel angle with the LW kit to strengthen the floor up and

slot the seat bolts through.

 

Why not drive 10 miles in your 2B to my garage in Southwick and we can compare cars??

 

Pete

[Guest DRC7]

MMMMMMMMMMM That goes without saying when we built a sliding pillock a few years ago i had to reinforce a lot of areas and big spreader plates was one of them but not only that i also had to apply silicone sealent around these spreader plates to get around the sharpe edge problem ie if you run over somebody yea i laughed at that one but with the seat belt mounts 2 L shaped plate made from 3mm steel bolted together and the floor would be more than enough

[Guest ScotMac]

A the car should not have to be modded by us it is supposed to be fit for the purpose if it is not fit for the purpose then the liabilty is with RHSC I mean what is the point of modding the cars with extra bits of alloy and steel we might as well have just got a 2B because it is hardly going to be lightweight any more

 

The point is that RH may have made a mistake (or two), and despite those mistakes, Trev (et al) may still want to get their cars past SVA....but, yes, they shouldn't HAVE to do the extra work!!

 

Note, also, that aluminum is nice and light for it's strength...well the 6061-T6 aluminum that i used for the reinforcements i detailed is. For example, i used 1/4" (!!) thick flat panels for the entire length of the engine bay and the engine bay front box, and the three (one on each side of engine bay and one in the front box) flat panels combined added less than 20lbs to the weight of the car!!!

 

-sm

[Guest ReadingTrev]

Hi All,

 

here are some pictures of my seatbelt mountings, the first picture shows the inside of every mounting, I used a large 2.5mm spreader plate, secured with six 10mm 8.8 grade bolts, then I used a 50mm square spreader plate (2mm thick) EACH side of the panel to secure the seatbelt bolt through.

 

The other picture shows the seatbelt side of things with the other square spreader plate.

 

When Jon made his comments I'm sure he wasn't aware of the reinforcements I had made for SVA.

 

 

 

 

Trevor.

[Guest yosamite sam]

you know if this was my car or any other lightweight - i would be giving it back to RHSC and telling them to put it through the sva for me if it will pass according to them. They sold a kit as being 'fit for purpose' but is it? Is it really? is the tester right as suggested? I havnt seen the car and would hate to blindly say he is - but after all these guys are very clued up people who know their stuff. If god forbid you dont get any joy - how hard is it to actually put right? would RHSC pay the bill if you had to do it or would they mod it back at the factory? I would think they are not going to do much owing to the costs of others sold but may have to!!

 

Remember the words 'fit for purpose' is it.. can RHSC prove it with a document or a copy you can give to the tester?

[Guest ady]

There seems to be alot of slating RHSC on this tread, I carn't see they have nessaserily done anything wrong in this case. They designed a car, this proccess will have involved a certain amount of calculation to ensure that the car would not fall apart. When they built the first one they say they dit torsional tests on it, there is no reason to not believe them on this, it is cheaper than building the complete car and finding it is floppy on the road.

No company would make the details of any of this information public, they have invested alot of mony in it and would not want any competitors to get hold of it.

 

RHSC took a completed car to there local SVA station and it passed, that is the system that VOSA have put in place. Unfortunatly for Trev there is alot of difference between SVA test stations and his car did not pass, this then set alarm bells rining at VOSA (who have never seen the car). The propper action here would be for RHSC to present all there calculations and tests to VOSA and do any extra ones needed. At that point VOSA would be able to tell RHSC where the car needs modification from the original design. It seems strange to me that this proccess isn't gone through with all new kits before they go on sale.

 

As far as we know this proccess has started. For legal reasons VOSA, RHSC or any other company involved would not be able to comment on the proccess untill it was over.

 

If there are neccasery changes to the design it would be nice is RHSC supplied the parts needed for the change to all customers that have already bought a kit, but i don't think they would be legally obliged to.

Whatever the outcome it would look good on RHSC if they made a good will gesture to Trev, like say giving him the kit for his next project.

[Guest stu205]

I dont think people are slating RHSC Ady more critasising there handling of this matter so far, I spoke to our accountant about this the other day (used to be a solisitor) and he said that theres a good case to be had under missrepresentation of goods, the fact theres has passed an SVA is fairly irrelevent as another has failed, it would be down to RHSC to prove that the one which failed was built to a different standard to theres but since its the same kit they cant, Im not saying that all light weight builders should start leagal action but you would have thought that RHSC would, by now, have issued a full statement outlining there course of action to all lightweight owners

[Mat-Moo]

Trev, just a question, is RHSC still doing anything for you? The way I read the news is kinda like, hell ours is ok,so tough *bleep*...

 

BW Trev, think you are handling this very well