The inaugural post for this site was an example of how the requirements of a race car environment can push around the design and why 3d printing things for racing can be much more daunting than recreational printing. Now I’d like to introduce myself, and further clarify the purpose of this site.

My name is Gus and I race cars. (you can all say “Hi Gus” as a bored sounding chorus at this point). Racing cars is an adventure that comes in a wide variety of flavors. My favorite flavor is SCCA Solo, also known as autocross. The cars used in autocross are divided into about 40 different classes, and the class I chose is Super Street Modified.

My class allows a very high level of modification and my car (a Lotus Elise) does have good aftermarket support, but even so, sometimes there just isn’t anything available to fill a need. Things I have designed and/or printed for my car to date:

• End plugs for a carbon fiber tube, with screw holes (for attaching end plates to my custom wing)
• Brackets to hold carbon fiber tube (the leading edge of my custom wing)
• A wrench that fits onto and allows removal/install of a Canton-Mecca spin-on billet aluminum oil filter
• A prototype for an “engine lock” that prevented my engine from rotating while i tightened the bolt for the harmonic balancer. The final piece was made from steel by an online machine shop.
• A mock-up of a dry sump tank to verify that a tank of a given size would actually fit in the relatively complex space intended.

I also have a stalled project in which I hope to print a light weight hard top for the car, and when I get stronger, UV resistant materials going I hope to print an entirely new wing with much better aerodynamic properties.

So that’s who I am…

What I am not, is super knowledgeable about 3d printing. I would still classify myself as a beginner. I am something of a terrier when it comes to researching a problem however and can wind up wasting oodles of time researching stuff via Google. I am in fact hoping that by starting this site and building a community I can make my (and your) efforts to find details and advice for things specific to race cars easier, and reduce the time I spend googling things.

So the point of this site is not to share my skills in 3d printing. It is meant to share things I make and information I find, and build a community of like minded racing enthusiasts that also 3d print stuff for their cars to help each-other.