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Gordo's Gull Wing GT Adventure

61K views 559 replies 44 participants last post by  The Scifi Guy 
#1 ·
I just bought the black with purplish tint gullwing GT from Todd Martin at OU shown in these 2 pics:


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#39 ·
Found it! Quite possibly the very same cars...
Did a Google search on
kit car Cimbria

The name was the first one that bubbled forth from my memory.

Lo and behold, within the first 10 images in the image results was a red Cimbria...with a gold Bricklin next to it. Supposedly some guy had them at a show in Harrisburg PA. No date, just a pic in a Reddit thread.
 
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#43 ·
Out of curiosity, is anyone else seeing that "NSFW warning" on the first photo in Gordon's post (#34) I clicked on it and was disappointed that it was a strut for the gullwing door for the red car. Not sure what the algorithm thought it was though. :oops:
That's very interesting. I didn't know that our overlords even monitored our pictures.
 
#42 ·
Cimbria. Yeah, that rings a bell. I think Charlie might have said that name, but then his memory got muddled and he said maybe it's a Bradley. The guy was handicapped in a wheelchair with a female assisting him and the show was just a few miles from Harrisburg, so I'm sure it's the same guy and cars that Opelbits found.

Notice that the red car has no door latch at all. Only the air pressure keeps the door closed.
 
#44 ·
Except for rod length/travel considerations, I don't know the reasons why the bottoms of the actuators/struts are more towards the middle of the cars. If you assume the further the strut mount is from the hinge for ease of operation, the strut could be aligned vertically with the B pillar. No change of force direction and less load pushing the door into or away from the roof pivot. As it is, and this could be just from the angle of the phone pics, from a closed position, those two look like the leverage force is away from the pivot before getting vertical movement. Seems like it would be easier on all the mounts and pivots if the lifting force was already in line with the lifting direction.
 
#45 ·
Todd not responding?

Say it isn't so.
 
#47 ·
It could be. It's one of those things where many ways will work, but are not optimal. It goes back to my previous posts about struts tearing mounts out because the forces applied to the mounts change direction as the struts and mounts move thru their arc. Plus the closer the mount is to the pivot (hinge), the more force is required to lift the door.
It's all levers and leverage with the mounts taking all the abuse.
 
#48 ·
That's why I'm investigating this. I saw a lot of struts and their mounts fail at work over the years. One of the things I was told about my new car is that the owner was "dissatisfied with the quality of the work". I have no idea what aspect of the work he was unhappy with. Why wasn't the car finished? Well, Todd buying it is one reason. He sold it to a guy who took 8 years trying to pay for it and then threw in the towel is another reason. I'm just preparing myself for any mods I may need to do.
 
#51 ·
Looking closer at the pics, I don't like the single sided ball and socket mount of the Cimbria. The leverage on that bracket is all on one side. It even looks like there is a crack in the sealer on the base. I'd like to see a clevis that spreads the load out and doesn't try to twist the bracket. The Bricklin mount looks better, plus....instead of using a bolt, they used a quick release pin that can disengage the strut allowing manual opening.

Also, for those that are unfamiliar with Bricklin, it was created by Malcolm Bricklin. His two greatest successes, in my opinion, were starting Subaru of America and Yugo. Some may say that Yugo was nothing to brag about, but selling over 160,000 cars in three years is an achievement and it provided me with newer door seals for a couple of GTs as the seal profile is identical.
 
#52 ·
I just signed up with a Briklin forum to see if I can get some info about those pneumatic struts. At work we have motorized and air actuated, as well as the normal hydraulic forms of linear actuators or struts. The nice thing about air actuated ones is that if you set the air pressure softly enough they won't force whatever they're pushing too hard. You can set the air pressure to just barely open the doors. You CAN accomplish the same thing with electric ones, but you need to install a current limiter or overload circuit. That's a bit more involved and expensive.
 
#55 ·
Hey Gordon-
You still have mail sorting machines to remove?...

How loud are the actuators you have? Pneumatics always struck me as loud. What about stops and limiters so that they don't go too far either way?
 
#59 ·
Ha! Well, if electric linear actuators do have limit switches, then they would certainly then be a good choice. The car probably has gas springs in it right now. I was impressed by how well the air cylinders opened the doors on the 2 cars I observed, they both worked extremely smoothly with no clunking. Considering that they were on cars made in the 70's and were still working very well was very impressive.

Either way it will be a fun project. I wanted or need a project that will engage me heavily and present me with some challenges. Next will be to investigate how other gull wing cars support their doors. Such as, how do Deloreans do it? I'm going to research all the gull wing cars I can. There are also the new self-opening SUV rear hatches. Those hatches are about the same weight and they seem to open in a very controlled fashion. I'll want to investigate how those doors are actuated also.
 
#62 ·
I guess he lost whatever title he may or may not have ever had. It's a Euro car, I don't know if a proper title was given to him when it came off the boat. Apparently he had some sort of motor vehicle agency inspector come a week out or so ago to verify VIN numbers and they are now verifying or doing a "discovery" to assure that it wasn't stolen or had any liens against it. Then I guess they issue a title to him and we move forward with this potential purchase. I was told up front that it would take a month or two for him to get a tile for it.
 
#66 ·
Another consideration that is necessary in my particular case is variable opening positions. My garage is very low and narrow, opening the doors or just one door may be a real challenge and I may have to do some redesigning. I may even be forced to make a lean-to extension of the side of my garage to house another car, thereby nuking my whole back yard. I can't alter the roof of my garage due to a recalcitrant neighbor that I share the garage with and town regulations.
 
#69 ·
I would guess that most of the weight of the door is held by the shock absorbers, positioned and lengthed just right for the balance/weight/motion of the door. Every time I've tried this (not on vehicles), it's surprisingly difficult to match all those things up. You'll get the right strength but not enough extension. You'll get enough extension but it passes through a point where it's not strong enough but it's too strong at the end again, etc.

Ideally, the shock absorbers should make the door nearly weightless, like a teeter-totter, and the actuator is only like a little weight that tips the balance one way or the other.

You probably want the first 5% of the door's travel to be favorable towards closing (so it doesn't flip open like a jack-in-the-box the moment you unclick it, taking your knees, gut, then chin off). Then the next 70-80% be powerful opening, that's the annoying part you'll have to wait for where you can't even start to get in. Then the last 10-20% be fairly light and only barely want to continue opening(so it doesn't snap the door right off).

That's steady enough you can probably do that mechanically (perhaps even passively), just by the placement of the shock mounts. I think you'll probably have a lot of fun making it and tweaking it. Might be helpful to have a model that's at least proportionally weighted so you can tweak it without much penalty.
 
#70 ·
Check out this story about the Bricklin SV-1. The video is really interesting, and they mention some of the engineering issues they had with the gull wing doors. Malcolm Bricklin was also the founder of SOA, and inflicted the Yugos on North America. A really fascinating guy with some great stories. On a personal note, I used to work for the aforementioned "bathroom tile manufacturer" which in truth was a multi-national specialty chemical company with a vast portfolio of products including ( yes) acrylic tiles. I never knew that they were also used for the SV-1 bodies.
Cheers,
Ron in FL

The Storied Bricklin SV-1's Body Was Made by a Bathroom Tile Manufacturer
 
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