“New Year — New You” and all those other delightful cliches about making empowered decisions to start off the New Year can be quite corny, but the truth is good habits are started with small, intent filled actions. Taking a stroll down memory lane and looking at what Insanity Lab Racing has accomplished in the past year of 2021 is a great reminder on how many elements goes into our collective production capabilities here at the shop.
What Insanity Lab Racing was up to in 2021
To start the 2021 year, we had just completed erecting our 50×30 metal shop and had begun moving in tools and equipment. Over the year, we (Dave) built a heavy-duty chassis table and completed the jig systems to fabricate the tubular GT40 chassis that makes chassis fabrication accurate and repeatable within 1/16″ of square in all directions. The chassis itself went through several design iterations in CAD before being sent out for fiber laser cutting and through progressive iteration we were able to reduce the chassis weight down to roughly 300 pounds. Dave was busy on the metal fabrication side of the house, completing our first four chassis and putting in extra hours into the GT40 chassis that we purchased to begin this whole adventure. All ancillary systems, tabs and components were integrated into the chassis, completing the suspension, steering, and engine mounts (including Coyote to Porsche transaxle mid-plate adapter). Our chassis have been built to be stiffer, lighter, offer more cabin space than the original, fit a Coyote (or Voodoo supercharged engine) as well as being compatible with a Tesla motor up-front for high-voltage AWD goodness.
We spent months fixing the GT40 body shell that we purchased, fixing crazing issues and distortion caused from decades old [cheapo] polyester resin. After the body work was completed with a marine grade primer, we buffed and waxed the master parts to begin forming our GT40 molds. It took over 1,000 hours to create the molds themselves, not including any of the body correction work, ensuring that the materials and processes used would be conducive to multiple composite fabrication techniques, including vacuum infusion and pre-preg.
After the mold making was completed, we rejoiced briefly before getting right into body shell production. We created a forged carbon fiber body for the MK2 and spent a tremendous amount of time and energy creating our first pre-preg carbon fiber GT40 body. The amount of effort that goes into pre-preg carbon fiber fabrication is significantly higher than other methods, but the weight saving results speak for themselves — the entire body weighs around 60 pounds!
As a bonus, we snuck in a widebody carbon fiber widebody kit in a two-tone red metallic carbon fiber 2×2 twill and red metallic “forged” carbon fiber. We also created several import dashboard molds and established a production workflow that creates exceptionally light, strong and authentic (i.e. no fiberglass, no polyester resin) carbon fiber composite parts.
The year ended with another Carbon40 GT40 build coming in and a few dozen dashboards to send out, but Mother Nature had a different plan and snowed us out of the shop the day of Christmas. All in all, it was a crazy, insanely productive year and we can’t wait to put in another big year of hard-work and dedication in service to the people and relationships that make Insanity Lab Racing possible!