Clubsport Converting to 2 seater

[Ross_328i_sport]

Hi there,

I have the car clubsport up for sale and a number of people have asked can the car be converted to a 2 seater and how difficult a task this would be. One interested party spoke to Radical who confirmed that there was a conversion and the price would be in excess of £3k. I know from other peoples posts there are companies that can supply Radical parts far cheaper than Radical. Therefore have many people done the conversion themselves or are the alternatives to the conversion Radical sell?

Thanks in advance

Ross

[SportsLibre]

I wouldn't want to convert my clubsport to two seats, if I did I certainly wouldn't want to sit in the 3/4 passenger seat it would create.

Edited by SportsLibre on Thursday 20th January 23:28

[Josh Smith]

Van Kaiser at Slipstream did the conversions.

What it involved was a widened SR4 twin seat (I believe), bulges in the bodywork to allow a bit of room for shoulders either side, and the roll hoop down bars were then removed and attached on the outside of the roll hoop instead of being attached to the front.

Alan Hamilton has a converted 1500 Prosport by VK which looked very good in my opinion.


Cheers

Josh

[splitpin]

Josh Smith said:

What it involved was a widened SR4 twin seat (I believe), bulges in the bodywork to allow a bit of room for shoulders either side, and the roll hoop down bars were then removed and attached on the outside of the roll hoop instead of being attached to the front.

Alan Hamilton has a converted 1500 Prosport by VK ....

Absolutely and as it happens to be for sale somewhere else on here, pics can be seen of same ............. notwithstanding it's for sale in-house, no live link just in case it gets the thread deleted

Cutting a single seater heavily triangulated lightweight space frame about to make it a compact two seater obviously made some sort of sense pre and immediately post SR4, but surely someone contemplating doing it afresh today can't. The factory put a lot of design effort, stress analysis and chassis metal into making a two seater tub that can get by without those integral forward facing stays and to my mind that's why easily the best way to get a compact two seater is to buy an SR4.

[BertBert]

Well Trev and I disagree completely on this one and I claim the moral highground having actually owned one There's no cutting up of a "heavily triangulated lightweight spaceframe" involved. The only change was a re-position of the roll hoop forward stays. Looking at the history of the clubsport, they got moved about anyway.

So as an owner, I was a/ perfectly happy with the construction side and b/ the pax in the two seater clubby has lots more room and they dont have to sit with one foot on top of the other in the clubsport.

Now the problem is that VK is not going to be doing any more as I was talking to him about it before xmas. The cost was about 1500 to do, not the 3k BTW. If someone really wanted to do it, they could get all the info from VK and a parts list and get a decent fabricator to do it. I know one in Woking who could do it.

Or as Trev rightly says, the easiest way to get (low cost) 2 seats is with an SR4 these days. When I did it, the lowest price SR4 was in the mid 20's and I paid less than half than for my converted clubbie. It's not like that any more!

Bert

[splitpin]

Surely 'beg to differ' is more accurate Graham?

These tiny photos (from The Big R's Online Shop Categories) try to show why I think removing the Clubbie's factory welded in forward stays and replacing with them bolt-ins (in any location) isn't the brightest chassis engineering mod idea anyone has ever come up with.

First one is the Clubbie, second is the SR4; look at the chassis side framing's broad depth, triangulation and shaping leading to the roll cage of the latter compared to the former; imagine what chopping out those forward stays of the former does to it's overall rigidity with that much less deep, triangulated and straightline chassis side framing? IMHO, it weakens it substantially and bolting in replacement stays (often only as strong as the bolt that holds them onto the side of the roll hoop!) can't possibly reinstate that direct face on and welded in strength. With the SR4, you don't have to imagine; that's the way it was designed and made by Radical e.g. with it's massively back braced double tube roll bar as one of the many components 'in lieu' of the Clubbie's integral forward stays.





As BertBert says, there's no apparent reason nowadays why anyone would want or need to undertake this nowadays! At least we're eye to eye on that

[double d racing]

Lateral thinking...............can't the passenger sit on the drivers lap....
if its male passenger they should be looking forward.......if its a female passnger they should be looking backwards





tee Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[LCM]

double d racing said:

Lateral thinking...............can't the passenger sit on the drivers lap....
if its male passenger they should be looking forward.......if its a female passnger they should be looking backwards





tee Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Blue Book (2010) S 14.2.5 applies surely - "Two seater Sports Racing Cars complying with 14.2.2 but with the driver’s seat crossed by the longitudinal centre line of the car and both seats crossed by the same transversal plane."

However, I can't see any provision as to the gender or orientation (physical or sexual) of the passenger...............

[BertBert]

splitpin said:

(often only as strong as the bolt that holds them onto the side of the roll hoop!)

In Trev baiting mode...

So you're quite happy with the bolt in stays of the SR4 then?

Trivia question...what engineering mechanism is used in the bolt in stays to maximise their strength?

Bert

[Simon T]

Load in the stay is transferred into the roll hoop through the female cone in the stay to the male on the roll bar. The purpose of the cone faces is to achieve a uniform load path from the stay to the roll bar. I think it helps to remove the shear load off the bolt. Sounds good anyway

S

[splitpin]

Nibble, nibble

To be fair, I was a bit over-enthusiastic with the underlining - I was meaning to draw attention to the fact that the Clubbie's original forward stays are welded straight on longitudinally to the main roll bar hoop, whereas on the conversion, they are bolted sideways on to it; a weaker jointing method acting in a much less rigid axis. That's what you get when you try and create enough space for two in front of a main roll hoop only ever designed for one.

Yep, 100% happy with the bolt-ins on the SR4 and SR3; both have a designed in chassis rigidity that doesn't rely on them, whereas the PR6, Pro & Clubby all do. Despite being non-essential, Radical's design, engineering and fabrication to enable the same in both the SR3 & SR4 without involving welding-in is first class; massively strong, whereas the conversion just isn't in the same league.