Mclaren M8F nose section

When the nose of the Mclaren M8F got damaged for the first time in South-Afrika it had a total rebuild by hand. Now the nose is damaged again and needs to be fixed again. The nose section consists out of a number of different folded plates of aluminium connected by rivets. On top of the aluminium there is a steel frame to connect it to the rest of the monocoque and there are mounting points for the front part of the body. The nose houses the radiator and some other air ducts for the brakes and cooling of the cockpit. The process of making al the plating by hand took a lot of time and is not really useful in future crashes. That’s why Maarten from Tachyon requested me to make a CAD drawing of the complete nose. The advantage of these drawings is that the nose is easily to reproduce. Also the holes for the rivets can be cutted in the plating. This makes the assembly much easier because the locations of the parts are already marked out. Just before i went to Mexico i finished all the drawings and now the parts are going to be cut by the laser cutter. After this first version of the nose we can make final adjustments to the drawings so that future assembly’s can be made with as less handcraft as possible.

Here is a picture of an early modelling stage of the CAD design more pictures will be uploaded when I’m back from México