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I noticed that you're from Denver? We were based in there in 1977, at Al Lager's shop and his crew worked for me for that IMSA season. When I decided to build the new RSR, I tried to copy our Sebring 12hr winner, as a tribute to Al, who passed a few years ago. In June, we plan to have a team reunion at the Colorado Concours D'Elegance in Littleton, where we'll show the new RSR, so please stop by and say hello.
Doing all the research for the new RSR was fairly straight forward, dig through old photos, copy what we saw and call old crew members and ask what they remembered. I had a chance to see my old car, but somewhere along the line they put the car back to it's original condition, so that was no help.
When I set out to build the fuel cell, I called ATL since Peter built my original 32 ga 120 liter tank, but they no longer had any drawings, so I was on my own. I found Bob Hagestad's old RSR and luckily it still had a similar fuel cell, so I was able to get some measurements and start the design. Next, I had to find a shop to fabricate the container, since no fuel cell bladder provider would do it for us. I finally found a shop in Nova Scotia and after much back and forth on the CAD, they produced the can and finished it yesterday. The Rellumit dry breaks will have to be made from scratch and that will happen after the fuel cell has been installed and we have measurements, so the dry breaks will be flush with the front hood.
Here are a few photos of the original fuel cell and some shots during fabrication.
A labor of love. It takes perseverance to get it right. We had to make the fuel cell container on the Monza but it was simple, rectangular box, but needed to calculate the volume based on the average adsorption volume of the cellular foam.
A labor of love. It takes perseverance to get it right. We had to make the fuel cell container on the Monza but it was simple, rectangular box, but needed to calculate the volume based on the average adsorption volume of the cellular foam.
I contacted three fuel cell companies and everyone of them had different foam displacement values for the same yellow foam. It will be interesting to see how close I get to the target 32ga.
THIS IS AN AWESOME BUILD. tell me, are you planning on venting the front oil cooler wash down, under the car? i just bought a duct ( from TRE Dave in Ca.). which does that. its billed as an original "RSR" part. so i i wonder if it was actually used in period. (retrofitting my 77 backdated to 73 RSR.... it came with some incredibly cheesy aluminum diy ductwork trying to do the same thing....)
If you vent down, would you still use a front splitter undercarriage panel?
THIS IS AN AWESOME BUILD. tell me, are you planning on venting the front oil cooler wash down, under the car? i just bought a duct ( from TRE Dave in Ca.). which does that. its billed as an original "RSR" part. so i i wonder if it was actually used in period. (retrofitting my 77 backdated to 73 RSR.... it came with some incredibly cheesy aluminum diy ductwork trying to do the same thing....)
If you vent down, would you still use a front splitter undercarriage panel?
thank you very much. Frank
My factory 1974 3.0 RSR came with the oil cooler duct welded in. Mine was the second RSR built in '74. Many teams cut this small duct out for different oil coolers, cooler position, or fuel cell position. If I remember, the factory duct was not very efficient, since the cooler was set back very far. For my new RSR, the cooler duct will be fabricated from aluminum and it will be removable.
Not sure what you mean about the "front splitter undercarriage panel". We are replicating the front spoiler we built for the Sebring car and that had a small splitter. I think cooling was enhanced by the large exit duct and the splitter which helped to lower the air pressure under the car.
Last edited by 9114609048; 03-13-2020 at 06:19 PM.
Photo: Factory oil cooler position in 1974-1975.
In '76 we stripped the car, lightened the chassis substantially and had a NASCAR shop in Georgia build in the cage-subframe. The cooler was moved forward and a larger exit duct installed.
IMSA RSRs in that early '70s era evolved a great deal from their original FIA status.
The RSR I'm building now, tries to replicate my 1977 Sebring car.
thanks. ! cannot tell from photo.. is the front cooler exhaust being ducted to each side into the wheel wells? or is it still just deflected down.?
that fuel tank takes up monstrous space .. had no idea
Duct exits down. Not much space back of the cooler, that's why we moved our cooler forward and we removed as much of the chassis as we could, then a new, larger duct got welded back in. Maybe some heat got by into fenders, but those were also vented. We never had cooling problems, so our set up must have been good, even at the '77 Sebring, the year it was in the high 90s, The RSR ran perfectly, only the drivers overheated.
I reproduced the fuel cell that held 32 ga-120 liters, exactly as it was made for us but ATL in '74. Yes, the fuel cell is very big, but that's what IMSA allowed us to run in the '70s. I'm also replicating the Rellumit refueling dry breaks.
Some more work this afternoon. Not an exact replica, but I would never use the original ('74) steel trailing arms, even though they were reinforced for the 3.0 RSR.
I noticed that you're from Denver? We were based in there in 1977, at Al Lager's shop and his crew worked for me for that IMSA season. When I decided to build the new RSR, I tried to copy our Sebring 12hr winner, as a tribute to Al, who passed a few years ago. In June, we plan to have a team reunion at the Colorado Concours D'Elegance in Littleton, where we'll show the new RSR, so please stop by and say hello.
Not sure you knew but Skip Roberts also died a few years ago. Kneeling on the right.
03-06-2020, 08:50 PM
Denver
