Building a car - almost from scratch!

[TubularFab]

Ok, I have gotta a few questions about the cars we build where I work. So, I thought I'd post the link to some pictures documenting a car I built at home "Johnny Cash, One Piece at a Time" style. Actaully, I made a deal with the owner of the company for as many obsolete and unusable (including crash tested!) parts as I could scrounge up. As the pics document, I worked on it over a few years doing a little here and there. I had access to the factory chassis jigs, but had to weld each bit of it myselft. It's chassis is all 304 stainless, the body is all 5083 or some weird aluminum alloy around there. The body panels were pre-formed; I just had to fit and weld them. The chassis was designed for a beam axle in the back, so I built my own independent rear suspension with '95 T-bird parts and my own round tube control arms. The final car weighs in at 2100lbs with fuel and has a stock '95 mustang 5.0 liter powerplant - plenty of torque! I later switched to BBS 18" wheels and 245 - 45 R 18's up front and 295 - 35 R 18's in the rear.

Enjoy - My Roadster project

[Wannabe]

Where are the photo's?

Mike

[TubularFab]

Click on that link at the bottom of my post.

Here are a couple of more recent shots at a car show:

[zapster]

nice!!

i've built my share of cars over the years..nothing that exotic but none the less..
and i'm glad there's not a small block chebby in there!!!

great job my friend..

so.. whats next?

...zap!

[mla2ofus]

That, to my knowledge,is one of a kind and a work of art!!! My hat's off to you. Is your title as thick as Johnny Cash's?LOL!!!
Mike

[ZTFab]

"Huh, This is the COTTON MOUTH
And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there RED RYDER
You might say I went right up to the factory
And picked it up, it's cheaper that way"

I LOVE that song.

Incredible work Panoz. Definitley some nice craftsmanship.

[Antibling]

I take it you're a engineer at Panoz? Those roadsters are pretty sweet, so if it was originally designed for a "beam axle" in the back, does that mean they come from the factory as a FWD car?

[elvergon]

Very Nice job.

Man you have the greatest work of everybody here (at least for me).

I´m so glad someone with such an automobile experience came to this forum

Keep up the good work

[smithboy]

My dad used to sing that song to me...your car turned out much better than that one in the song did. Just out of curiosity, how tough is it getting the suspension right? I have been toying around with the idea of building an offroad buggy of some type and that's the part I feel I will have the most trouble with.

[Weldordie]

Wow, wow, wow!

[wello]

wow very nice ride nice powerplant as well

[TubularFab]

Antibling - I guess saying beam axle was a little misleading - those cars had solid rear axles just like a mid 90's mustang.

Smithboy - I kind of cheated on my independant suspension desig since I had a 3d model of one we developed for later models of the cars in my computer. We spent a couple of months trying various geometry and had zeroed in on one that worked well for us. So, I simply used the geometry from that computer model to design my own. The Panoz Roadsters from '92 through '95 had the solid rear axle, Ford 302 engine, and stainless steel tube frame chassis. In '96 we redesigned everything under the body to incorporate independant rear suspension, the Ford 4.6l 4 cam, and an aluminum ladder type chassis. Mine is built with most of the chassis of the early model and my own interpretation of the independant rear suspension. I actually used parts off 4 models of Panoz's spanning the years '92 through '01 to build it - including a couple of carbon fiber parts from the GTR1 racecars - so that's where I got the Johnny Cash reference. And most of it did go home - "one piece at a time" only it was all with permission. I'm guessing it's one of a very few cars that really fits the song as well as it does!

We won't talk about the title - but it does have a nice clear one.

Jason

[TubularFab]

BTW - if you look at the photo of the car in the separate webpage towards the bottom where you see the dash and just a driver's seat you'll notice a white line down the center of the seat cushion. I drove it around for a while with seat cushions I'd snagged out of a crash tested car until I got news ones made with the green leather to match my interior. The line was in there for lining up the crash test dummy! I left the lines on for the humor....

[LuzRD]

Originally Posted by Panozeng

I left the lines on for the humor....

nice touch = }
great looking car!!! looks like lots of fun

[elvergon]

I have heard of a lot of people saying that when you put stainless with another metal you´re forming a battery and they usually get welded.

Ever had a problem like that?

Show some vids pls!