Hey heres some rough measurements.... ill clean it up later.
Basically 5 ft long 2 ft wide or more and 2 ft tall
edit: messed up on the seat area a bit its not supposed to be slanted its supposed to be straight up and down so use your common sense on what it would look like.
Still haven't finished the rough design, because of school and I'm thinking about what would make my design better.
Here's what I've done so far: http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/5374/lfscockpit3.jpg
The holes in the sides are there to let your arm get to the shifter, because I couldn't have it to fit in the cockpit while keeping an open-wheeler look. However their size and shape aren't finalized yet. I'll also have to add some parts to increase the resistance of the overall structure, as I don't know how it will behave once it's built (if ever built, that is :razz, and that's why I'm using 2cm thick wood.
Basic measurements will come once I finished the global design, and I will proceed to have a clean thing in Inventor then.
EDIT: Just wanted to give the overall dimensions:
for the moment, I have length: 160cm, width: 88, height: 85cm.
And the part where the shifter lies is also on the left, so you can choose where you want it to be.
Do you mean something like the blueish box for the hole? http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9118/lfscockpittest.jpg
If so, I think the difficulty would be to keep the shape, because aoun specified that the wood couldn't be curved, but if I keep the bottom-front part as it is now, I could remove the back half of it.
For the hinge, I don't understand where you would put it, and the rubber stop too, could you please explain?
Thanks anyway for the comments
whatever you think will work is great, but my suggestion ws more like (see attachment :razz
from the looks of it, getting out would be next to impossible, so where the wheel is mounted, you should put a hinge so it can be put up, and where there is a hinge, there should be a rubber stop so when you put the wheel back down, if it slips out if your hand it doesnt hurt anything
where i colored black you remove from design, and where i colored red you make the new supports for the wheel, and you would no longer need a hinge to get out, because you have where the shifter isnt
EDIT: also you could make the wood holding the shifter have a metal plate attached to it, so you could then have its support relying on butterfly nuts (type of bolt :razz and have only one and have it reversable depending on what side you have the shifter on, and dont forget wire harnesses or a place to put them
Looks like a huge effort to get in and out of. Not much room in the opening there. If you go this route then might I suggest a forward & up tilting/hinged wheel plate mount.
Perhaps just widen the whole thing a bit and then you wouldnt need the holes, (which I thought looked really ok)
But hey, I'm not telling you how to design it.
Also if I didn't have easy access to my keyboard & mouse then playing PC games is pretty impossible.
Even my cockpit's open design is still a bit of an effort to get into and out of. I must slide the seat back anytime I want to get in or out.
Here's what i'm planning on doing once i have the motor/gearbox out of my spare wreck MR2, i'm going to get a reciprocating saw, and cut the floorpan out from the far side of the centre console to the sill, basically from the rear firewall of the cab, to up where the front firewall is. Tech screw a tray in for the wheel, sit the screen up on it etc, and bam simple cockpit. Hoping i can mount the shifter into the original shifter position too. This will mean i can use the MR2's drivers seat, and also have the option later on of having an outgauge dash fitted in place of the factory dash. Also means i don't have to **** around too much making seat mounts and so on. This isn't a competition entry, just maybe worth thinking about, if you can get a wreck for a couple hundred bucks
EDIT: would be even cooler if i could suss out a way to use the MR2's Light switches etc to work in LFS too...
It's been more than a week I haven't posted an update, because I don't have much free time at the moment...
I'll be back on my design from next saturday on (maybe sooner if I'm not too busy this week...).
Ill perhaps give this another week or two. And then come up with a winner. If for some reason more people start entering for any reason, ill extend it to give them more time.
Its not too late to enter, still more time to go .
Hi, I would like to ask another question: I suppose you will want to be able to reach your keyboard and mouse even when in your cockpit. So do you prefer having them below the wheel, next to, etc.? Just asking because I have trouble finding a place for them...