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I was wandering around in Palo Alto California, and came across a McLaren showroom.

They had a McLaren chassis available. The photographs are below.

I was actually surprised by the simplicity of the design, it is a rectangular tube frame chassis, with a big huge “bucket“ that held the transaxle. It did not appear to me to be very sophisticated.

Well - I say that generally, obviously I would guess that a lot of detail design work went into the suspension, A-arm lengths & mounting points, geometry, etc.

The transaxle itself, which I was unfortunate  enough to not get any good pictures of, was a huge monster - at least three times as large as our ZF transaxles.

(I may have to go back there and get a picture of it because it was so stunningly huge that I couldn’t believe it. Standby for more pictures)

The exhaust it’s pretty cool, with extremely small mufflers, vented on the top of the engine. Simple design, nice execution. Not much to it.

Not sure about the induction, it didn’t appear like it had enough flow to support the breathing of the engine, but obviously those guys know a lot more about it than I do.

Here are some pictures. Feel free to criticize my comments or add to the knowledge base.… Especially if you own a McLaren, and you have detailed knowledge of what you’re talking about. I’m just a walk-on, and don’t have enough a lot of knowledge about the car… My comments are based on what I know about Panteras,  not first hand experience of McLarens.

Last edited by rocky
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@rocky posted:

Here are the pictures. Not sure why my picture above is upside down, and I’m not sure why the pictures that I posted previously didn’t show up. Please bear with me, until I get off my phone and get to a real computer where I can edit these so they show up correctly!.

I have recently discovered that some of my posted pictures have been deleted by someone else. I must presume that this is the moderator here at work?

Hey Rocky,

Are you here on business? vacation? etc?  Will you be here Thursday of this week?  If so, come to the PCNC Meeting in San Jose/Cupertino.  It's only about 10-15 minutes down the road from Palo Alto.

PCNC Meeting starts at 7:30PM, many arrive earlier for dinner.

Holder's Country Inn, 998 S De Anza Blvd, San Jose, CA 95129

Hope to see you there!

Chuck Hi

after the pictures I will go down the road to the MC Laren shop in Böblingen  "Böblingen  FLUGFELD" (besides Lamo and Fera...shops) (the old Mercedes air port now a CAR mile).

Well Problem as I go there in yeans and black finger nails they assumably are not very supportive to me from the snobistic sales folks in old D land.....love my Pantera..may be I take it for the inscpection but we still have rainiy weather.I do NOT want clean it  for a Mc L..

will go on the  floor and take a look at the set up..if they let me...is a race car set up per my uneducated guess, does not last.. And guess we agree, as in these days it is mainly ELECTRINIC/Electronic ..just look at the Formular 1 ..ok airodynamics but more their rules drive it ....

Mat  @ Böblingen

Hi Mat -

Here in California they don’t care what you look like. This place is in Silicon Valley, and they can never tell who’s got money and who doesn’t, so they treat everyone who walks in like they might buy a McLaren.

You bring up an interesting point about the electronics, I have wondered that about the more modern cars. How long will those computers last, and who can fix them when they do have a problem?

A friend of mine has a Ferrari 355, and the computer failed on it. He looked at three or four computers for about $4000 on eBay, before I finally found one for $700, I bought that one, which fixed the problem.

But that will be getting harder and harder to do as the cars get older and older. And most of these manufacturers don’t release their proprietary design information and software….

Time will tell though!

Plus you’re an affluent guy, an engineer, you might actually buy a McLaren one day!

Chuck

@rocky posted:

Hi Mat -

Here in California they don’t care what you look like. This place is in Silicon Valley, and they can never tell who’s got money and who doesn’t, so they treat everyone who walks in like they might buy a McLaren.



The founder of a company I worked for a few years back walked into the local Jaguar dealership to buy a new Jag, but the salesman was rude and dismissive because our founder, who is a billionaire, showed up in the middle of the day wearing jeans, a tee-shirt, and flip-flops (his usual attire).  He left and went a short drive up the highway to another Jaguar dealership where he bought the new Jaguar he wanted, then he went right back to the first dealership, sat down with the sales manager and showed him is paperwork and explained what happened, and encouraged them not to judge people by appearance, but to treat ALL potential customers with dignity and respect.  They missed out on a lucrative sale that day.

Good on him!

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