StanceWorks: Designing Quick-Disconnect Splitter Mounts That Don’t Require Tools – PT 1 – Honda-Swapped Ferrari

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Welcome back guys it feels so good to be back in town for the last two weeks i’ve been in colorado with a group of friends on our annual off-road and camping trip i had a blast i broke a bunch of stuff on my truck i filmed the entire thing

I’ve got an episode coming out in a week or two if you’re interested in that but today we’re gonna dive back into the 308 and see if we can make some progress when you take two weeks off of a project like this you build a lot of resting

Inertia and it can be really hard to overcome that and pick up the tools again but we’re going to dive in with something fun i figure why not try getting some of our arrow components mounted starting with the splitter we’ve got to engineer a solution that’s easy

To install and remove while also being strong enough to support the weight of the splitter and all of the downforce that it’s going to generate so let’s get creative and build something the last time we worked on the 308 was almost three whole weeks ago and at the

Time we put the car on the lift for the first time where we chipped away at progress on plumbing the brake system we’ve still got a little ways to go but today i’d rather focus on something that’s a bit more enticing i want to get the arrow mounted underneath the car or

At least get started on it so we’re going to get the car up in the air once again and take a look at what we have to work with under the nose of the car are two very strong frame rails and it’s from these that will likely aim to support most of

Our load it’s been a while since we’ve seen it but what we need to support is our rs future splitter which i last mocked up under the car in our wing reveal episode this is a one-off splitter that rs future developed specifically for our 308 project some months ago he came out

To the shop took a bunch of measurements made a few templates and returned with this 11 pound carbon fiber splitter but while amir did the hard work of building the thing it’s still on us to actually mount it to the car so let’s get it mocked up and figure out

How we want to do that as you guys can see there’s currently no provisions to attach anything to the splitter itself so we’re gonna have to develop some mounts that we can attach to it we’re also gonna need to find several points on the chassis that we can attach to

The splitter is gonna develop a lot of downforce and therefore need a lot of support i spent a lot of cumulative hours trying to decide exactly how i want to attach the splitter to the car itself obviously we could do something really simple like running some bolts up

Through the splitter and into some extensions that then attach to the chassis something very simple straightforward and solid but instead of that i decided to put forth some design constraints to yield a better finished product i made a traced paper template with the splitter in place on the car and then on

The workbench drew up some ideas that i think could become a finished mount but before i show you the cad file let’s talk about what those design constraints are the first and most important is that i want the removal of the splitter to require no tools i don’t want any

Sockets or wrenches needed in order to remove this thing in case i need to do it on the side of the road to get this thing onto a tow truck or a trailer i want serviceability to be absolutely paramount so it needs to come off as simply as possible

The second is that i want to be able to remove the splitter without the use of a jack i don’t want to get underneath the car i’d rather pop the hood and be able to remove it that way i don’t want to have to remove the front

Bumper or air dam or any other part of the car to remove the splitter and i don’t want any hardware going up through the bottom because the heads of those bolts will get ground down through driving the car making removal of that hardware all but impossible last but not least

We do need some adjustable brackets so that we can extend this splitter for track use this is definitely a tough list of demands but it’s one that i think that we can accomplish and i spent some time trying to figure it out so let me show you what i’ve drawn up

Now i spent a lot of time in fusion 360 figuring this one out we’ve got the chassis of the 308 represented by the yellow blocks extending down from them is a pair of brackets that we will weld to the chassis each of those brackets has two pegs

Sticking out of it represented by the gold bolts if we zoom in you can see the main component of how this whole system is going to work we have a pair of self-aligning hooks that will lift and then align the splitter into its final resting place

A number of holes at the bottom of this hook structure allows us to re-index the splitter for and aft on the car but most importantly a pair of pip pins actually locks everything into place and it’s with these that we can remove the splitter using no tools at all

Now if you don’t know what a pit pin is i’ve got some here and these are a really cool track oriented part let’s take a closer look and i’ll show you how they work these in particular have an eight millimeter shaft and there’s a button on the end

Pressing the button releases the locks and if we use an eight millimeter washer you can see how it functions if we press the button we can slide the washer over the shaft but if we don’t it’s locked into place we can use this principle to lock the

Splitter to the car and these pit pins also have a lanyard that we can rivet to the chassis so we don’t have to worry about losing them when we take the splitter off now let’s talk about having no hardware under the splitter i’ve decided to use some weld nuts attached to some

Massively oversized washers to distribute the load we’re going to pass these through the core of the splitter and then bolt to them from the top the upshot here is that even if we do grind these away on rough roads or on track we can still get them out we’re

Not relying on the head of a bolt to be usable after sustaining damage in fact because they have an open end we could put a bolt and a nut in the end of it tighten the nut and then back them out with a bolt from the bottom side making this relatively foolproof i’m

Sure someone a lot smarter than me could come up with a better system overall but i’m really happy with how i’ve decided to mount this splitter so now we just need to get these parts cut so with our mounts designed and sent off to sendcut send we have another design

Project to conquer and that’s figuring out what to do with this gap that exists between the front air dam or valence and the splitter itself it changes in shape going all the way across the front and we need to close that up and i’d like to do something that looks good obviously

Now ideally i’d love to try scanning this gap with our phone i showed you guys in a previous episode kind of the basics of that and i’d like to try it out and see if we can model a piece that can go in this gap and then from there

3d print it probably in multiple pieces so that we can install it make a carbon overlay and have a carbon part that fills this gap and makes the whole thing function properly but if i want to do that i’m going to need a 3d printer i’ve been talking about adding a 3d

Printer to the shop for quite some time obviously i’ve got the cad skill set and i’d love to be able to turn out quick and prototype parts test pieces and simple parts that we can actually use and this ender 3 pro went on sale so i decided to jump on it

I feel like i’m really late to the 3d printer game but better late than never and how hard could this stuff really be i got the whole kit put together and everything’s looking really promising all that’s left is to go through the setup process and then get some prints going

All right so i’ve got the printer assembled as you guys can see it powers on all that jazz however i’m about ready to throw this thing in the dumpster because i’m hitting issue after issue the firmware the menu is missing options i’m supposed to have i can’t even follow the instructions that

Came with this thing until i update it in order to update it i’ve got to have like a bootloader and an arduino and a whole bunch of other stuff i don’t know anything about i’ve had to download a whole like marlin software coding base and a code compiler vs code

Software i mean just all of this stuff in order to try to make this thing work and i’m really quickly realizing i’m not happy with it this is not the experience that i wanted i know that it’s possible to make this thing go but the more

People that i talk to after posting on instagram about it the more i’m realizing that this is definitely like kind of a diy modded build it code it yourself type of thing and that’s not what i’m here to do i just want to 3d print some parts so

We’re going to scrap this idea i’m going to send it back i’m going to follow my buddy alex nelson suggestion i’m gonna get a prusa machine that will work straight out of the box that i don’t have to tinker with because i’m really eager to 3d print some stuff and put my

Cad software skill set to work but not like this this is not fun so far so let’s pretend like this segment didn’t happen and let’s work on the car again hold on i’m not quite done talking about tools some of you guys might remember when i bought this ryobi belt sander and

Ever since i’ve been putting it through its paces more than a year of abuse on this 150 machine and i have to say it’s done a great job i did not expect it to last this long and i’d suggest it to anybody looking for a small hobby machine however

This recently fell into my lap it is a dayton 20 inch disc sander a 2 horsepower 220 volt 1750 rpm monster now i was given this machine by a friend because it doesn’t work it arrived at his shop in a non-working state and after a warranty claim a new one was

Delivered and this one was never taken back and after sitting around for a long time he finally told me to take it off his hands now there’s something wrong with the motor so i took the whole thing apart and dropped the motor off across the street at an electric motor repair shop

And it turns out it was just wired up wrong maybe it was made on a friday at 4 59 pm or monday morning at 701 but after a 45 repair bill i got the motor back i put the machine back together and it turns out this thing is unreal

It chewed this 3 16 inch piece of steel up like it was nothing a hot knife through butter if you will i am thrilled to get to put this thing through its paces and see what it’s going to offer in the way of fabrication this thing is an amazing addition to the

Shop and you cannot beat a 45 purchase price now i just need to patiently wait for the next big fab project all right enough about tools i’ve got some new parts to show you we’ve got some side splitters these are our side splitters from rs future and they’ll be traveling down the

Rocker panels and between the fender flares of our body work if you want to see what they look like on a car here is a mirror of rs futures nsx and you can see them here at the bottom of the doors as for how they work that’s a question

He’s better equipped to answer and we’ll touch upon in a future episode featuring his car these side splitters are going to require a lot of cutting and trimming in order to fit and i got started on that process but unfortunately the lift arms are going to keep us from making any real progress

But i’m working on some mounts and we’re going to touch upon these parts again in an episode very soon but in the interim let’s go back to the breaks that we worked on in the last episode while i was out of town these arrived and if you don’t know what they are

They’re one of the coolest pieces of the entire brake system they’re called dry brake fittings and what they allow us to do is to effortlessly and simply remove the brake calipers from the car for servicing or any other purpose without having to bleed the brakes these fittings separate without allowing

Any air into the system and it means serviceability just got a whole lot easier let’s look closely at these fittings and talk quickly about these 37 degree an fittings on the ends pretty much every single brake component on this car from the master cylinders to these dry brake fittings use 37 degree

An fittings or jic fittings if you will in my brake line episode a few weeks ago a bunch of you commented and said you should never use single flare fittings like this one on brakes and i want to chime in on that now i should say i’m not an expert do

Your own research but if you look at any motor sports application they all use this type of fitting for their brakes using this is fine the problem is flaring your own single flare brake fittings and we talked about that in the last episode if you’re not careful you’ll crack the

Material and if you crack the material you’ll have a leak if you leak you lose your brakes if you lose your brakes you could kill somebody and we don’t want that and i spent a lot of time in the last episode making sure i got all of my

Flares really nice and correct and i’ve done this many times i’ve put these fittings on a lot of cars never had a single issue however i do feel like these days with this platform it’s my obligation to lead by example and follow everything with respect to safety as closely as i can so

What i’m going to do is i’m going to scrap what progress we made on the brake system a few weeks ago and i’m going to soft line the entire car i’m going to take measurements of what we got i’m going to have a hose shop make stainless braided lines for

The rest of the system so that we can just hook it up and be done with it this is a very common way to do the brakes on race cars plenty of cars are done this way it’s totally fine totally safe and by using machined 37 degree fittings

We’re not going to have any leak issues and i think it’s the right way to do this i think it’s the best way to lead by example as opposed to leaving anything to chance no matter how good i think i got it hey let’s just uh let’s just do the smart thing here

It cost me a little bit of money definitely cost me some time but i think it’s the way to go and as some of you guys pointed out using stainless line can be prone to cracking and this car is going to vibrate a bunch so let’s just

Do it that way sometimes you take two steps forward and then two steps back but at least we know what direction to go on that note that’s everything i have in this episode and if you liked it please leave a like if you aren’t subscribed you should be we’re getting closer and

Closer on this car and your support means a bunch to guys like me every small creator benefits when you support them so subscribe to my channel subscribe to other channels show people that you like the effort they’re putting in but i’m not quite done with the episode yet i’ve got some final episode

Thoughts that i wanted to chime in and put into this episode because they felt valuable and i really like showing everything that goes into a build like this including some of the non-glamorous or sometimes just kind of frustrating stuff as i said in the beginning of the

Episode i spent two weeks on vacation or at least some form of vacation at least coming back and getting back to work on this car was a huge challenge i mean obviously i want this car done i’m excited to work on it but i had no idea

Where to begin it just felt like starting over from square one i had no motivation and tons of inertia to overcome when you stop and you lose all that momentum on a build it can be really really difficult to get started again i sat here and just stood on it for a

Couple of days it was a huge struggle i actually felt nothing but frustration over it and i’m only sharing this not to complain i’m still excited we’re back into it we’ve got our momentum going again but because i i know that that feeling is relatable to a lot of other people

Out there with project cars and you’re not alone when you feel that way it doesn’t matter who it is everyone gets to that point on a project sooner or later and all i can say is the only way to overcome it is to pick up the tools and

Force yourself to work and man is it tough to do sometimes it’s so difficult but you have to pick up the tools you have to dive into it it could take a few minutes could take a few hours or days even but eventually it’ll click you’ll have your motivation back and it’ll be

Game on you’ll be making progress just like we are here so get out in the garage turn a wrench get something done get that project car off your jack stands let’s get these things done i’ll catch you guys next week thank you as always for the support You