While the F600 body project is underway, I’ve been finishing up other work to get ready for F600 chassis production.  Below are photos of the Carbir F1000 suspension spar.  These billet aluminum parts get bolted to the frame, just behind the engine.  All of the rear suspension gets bolted to the spar along with the differential.  Lots of CNC time in these parts.  As always, Jay Novak of NovaRace LLC provides 3D models of all components.

The picture above is the rocker support bracket being machined on my Bridgeport CNC.  Just push the start button and stand back!

Here are a few photos of the body buck of our new car.  Mike Devins of HRP is directing the body project with Jay Novak of NovaRace LLC (Engineering and CDF) and Clark Lincolnof Lincspeed (Design) providing input.  Photos by Mike Devins.

The buck is made of low density bead foam blocks and CNC cut from 3D models.  This is by far the least expensive, fastest way to get a body shape IF you have the capability to do the engineering modeling.

NovaRace, Piontek Engineering, Hurley Racing Products and LincSpeed Design have teamed up to produce the most advanced F600 race car available and we are pleased to announce that the next generation of F600-F500 race cars will be going into production immediately.

The first production car will be developed by our driver team of 2 time National Champion, Brian Novak and the Multi-Divisional Champion, Calvin Stewart. Testing will commence early this summer and production Nova Blade F600s will be available later this year.

How fast are the F600 race cars? These cars are powered by 14,000 RPM 4 cylinder 600CC motorcycle engines with 6 speed sequential gearboxes and paddle shifters. The sound of these cars is absolutely amazing and the F600 lap records are the equal of FF lap records at all kinds of race tracks. And the best part is the cost, all this and at a cost that is less than ½ of a new FF car.

The new Nova F600 Blade is a state of the art design that has taken over a year to complete. The NovaRace design/build team includes our partners:
NovaRace LLC (Jay Novak, overall design)
Piontek Engineering (Dave Piontek, chassis design/build)
Hurley Racing Products (Mike Devins, body design/build)
LincSpeed Design (Clark Lincoln, body design)
Every member of our design/build team has worked tirelessly over the last year to ensure that the design of this new car has taken advantage of every technology available.

Solid models of every single component have been completed and this includes the body of the car. The design of the body has been developed using the best available solid modeling and CFD technologies. The resulting body is a very significant improvement on our 2007 Runoffs winning F500 and our 2010 ARRC winning F600 car in every respect.

The chassis design of the new Nova Blade F600 has been greatly simplified such that the setup of the car is extremely robust but is still very tunable. The Nova Blade has simple adjustments for all important tuning factors such as wheel rates, corner weights, ride control, ride height and roll couple distribution. The new Blade will tune and adjust just like a conventional open wheel car.

Simplicity of maintenance was a very important factor in the design of the F600 Blade. One of the things that is extremely important to the club racer is the time available to maintain and to prep the car. The design of the new Nova Blade has been focused on improving this very important factor.

The driver package of the new Nova F600 Blade is the best in the business. Many of you who have sat in our previous cars have commented on how roomy the package was. Well the new car is just as good and will certainly fit the bigger racers out there and still make minimum weight.

Nova Blade specifications:
Wheelbase – maximum 80”
Width – maximum 55.0”
Weight – 650 lbs ready to race with steel belly pan.
Chassis – large section tubular steel construction with a .083″ steel belly pan, aluminum belly pan optional.
Brakes – 8” diameter floating front rotors 9.5” diameter floating rear rotor. Wilwood calipers with Nova forged calipers optional.
Wheels – Keizer aluminum wheels with forged 4 bolt centers. Front 10” x 7”. Rear 10” x 8.5”.
Center lock wheels optional.
Bodywork – CFD developed multi-piece fiberglass composite body with structural Kevlar anti-intrusion panels. Carbon fiber body for lighter weight optional.
Engine mounts for late model Suzuki GSX-R600. Optional mounts for other engines as requested.

The first 5 customers will receive their cars as roller assemblies at a cost of $22,000 plus shipping. Add your late model Suzuki GSX-R600cc motorcycle engine with wiring, hook up the cooling package and go racing. The Nova F600 Blade will be the best value in open wheel racing, you simply cannot go faster and have more fun for your $$$$. Get your order in now. Call to discuss options, deposits and delivery.

Dealer inquiries are invited.

Contacts:
National Sales:
Dave Piontek, Piontek Engineering.
Davepiontek2@gmail.com , 810-991-1148

Dealer and Technical inquiries:
Jay Novak, NovaRace LLC
http://www.novaracecars.com/
jnovak@novaracecars.com
313-445-4047

Stay tuned for many more pics as the build of the cars continue.

I am a retired automotive engineer with a degree from the University of Michigan.  While my engineering jobs were lucrative, I always had a had a shop so I could get my hands dirty.  I was never able to fully express my creative side in my engineering positions (except for the six patents), but working in my shop has resulted in many projects that I am extremely proud of.  For  15 years I mainly did automotive restorations.  At first only my own cars and then later I did body restorations for friends and family.  The best restoration was a 1969 Daytona Charger 440 Six-Pack.  This was a rotisserie, nut and bolt project that took me 12 months working full time.  The car had been sitting in the desert in Arizona for years, but had been beat-up by kids playing in and on it.   Awesome power and updated brakes and suspension made this a better car than when it came from the factory.

A position at the Ford Motor Company Design Center designing and building concept cars pushed me to try a ground up project of my own creation.  After a year of design and fabrication I had a running chassis powered by a 1325cc Suzuki motorcycle engine.  It was mounted mid-ship and used chain drive to a differential.  A trip the drag strip resulted in a 12.8 second quarter mile at 112 mph.  That got a lot of attention (this was 1987 by the way).  I was able to get some help from a couple of young body designers and the final result is the Sportech below.

The Sportech was road tested by Car and Driver Magazine in December of 1989.  It was the first street legal car to reach 1.0g on DOT tires.  It was faster 0 to 100mph than the Lingerfelter Corvette in the same issue.  Fourteen more magazines followed including Road and Track, Popular Science, Kit Car, Show Time (an AutoRama publication), Sports Car International (6 pages), a French magazine on American cars and a couple of books and  two calenders.

Unfortunately, the Sportech lead to my leaving Ford.  It had embarrassed my manager that I had built this car in my garage for an investment of $15,000 while the department I was working in  couldn’t build a car that would drive around the block for a million bucks!   Shortly after the Sportect’s completion I left for a management position at a supplier company were I was appreciated ($$$) and it was there that I was awarded most of my patents.

Another great project was the Fun Car.  It was pretty simple compared to the Sportech but no less fun to drive.  Based on a Chevy Metro (Suzuki Swift) chassis, this was a composite body bonded to the Chevy chassis.  The concept was originally build for a composites company supplying GM.  I pitched the idea to my boss and used one of the designers of the Sportech to do the art work.  The modeling was done at a local show car builder (my son Mike worked on the clay model).  We used it for a show  car at composite shows and it won an award for the concept of a structural composite bodied car (even though the show car had a steel chassis).   Later, I was allowed to take a splash from the molds and then had the design completely reworked to what you see in the last photo.

If you remember the Austin Mini Moke you know where the inspiration came from!

Jay Novak guided the suspension design of the Sportech but we finally worked together as partners on the TwinTech project.  This was a full solid model engineering design using all of Jays race car suspension knowledge that was civilized for the street.  Long oval tube control arms, rocker arm actuated shocks and lots of billet aluminum parts made for a phenomenal handling car (1.1g on street tires) and still able to handle the pot holed road of Michigan.  Oh, and by the way it was powered by a nasty 120 cu in/120HP Harley motor.  A transaxle resulted in perfect 50/50 weight distribution.  We almost had a deal put together to build 100 copies but the failing economy of 2007 was to much to overcome.  There is only one and nothing else out there compares to it.

Piontek Engineering Inc. is a one man shop that does just about anything except composite body work.  There are many people who can do composites better and I’ll leave that part of car building to them.  Most of my work is in conjunction with Jay Novak of NovaRaceLLC.  He does most of the design and I do all of the machining and fabrication.  We have been working together for almost 30 years.  Jay has been involved in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) racing for better than 45 years racing cars that he has highly modified or completely designed and built from the ground up.  Generally we do the prototype parts and then farm production out to suppliers who have large equipment and can often produce a finished part (as long as the quantities are large enough) for what I pay for material only.

The last 6 years we have been working just about full time on SCCA race car projects.  We have built complete cars and provided conversion kits to customers for more than 30 cars.  These cars have won 4 national championships and countless regional and national races.   Most of them have been motorcycle engine powered with a couple of custom race engines or modified production car engines thrown in.  They have all been formula cars or sports racers, no door slamers.