måndag 5 mars 2012

Hosler's IMSA



What you see in the pictures above is a wet dream of many Fiero enthusiasts. This is an IMSA Fiero, a real one, not another bodykit on yet another "ordinary" Fiero. This particular car is owned and driven by Paul Hosler. Before we continue, have a look at the rest of the pictures. If you know anything about the IMSA Fiero, you will notice immediately that Paul's car isn't original. He modified it to take a V8 with a Porsche transaxle. Yep, that means that the drivetrain now sits longitudinally in the car. Notice also how clean his car is. And his garage. My garage has never been this tidy.





I first got in touch with Paul as I was trying to find information on the IMSA chassis. I figured it would make an interesting CAD project and Paul sent me a scan of the drawing for the rear upright just to let me have a taste of what I was getting myself into. Being me, I couldn't resist to model the upright and send Paul an IGES. Apparently, this was appreciated as Paul made me an offer I just couldn't resist: he would send me drawing scans and measurements and I would model the original chassis and his modified version. The plan is to compare the torsional stiffness (between the original and Pauls version) and see if any improvements can be had.
Now, this is where I would post pictures of the CAD model, but I'll save those for the next post.